Speaker 1: Welcome to Pod Dave America. I'm Alex Wagner. I know
Speaker 1: some of you may be tuning in today expecting our
Speaker 1: conversation with the Michigan Senate candidates on the Democratic side. Well,
Speaker 1: unfortunately you're going to have to wait just a little
Speaker 1: bit longer. We had to reschedule that conversation to accommodate
Speaker 1: for an unexpected change in candidate schedules.
Speaker 2: But do not worry.
Speaker 1: We are setting a new date and we will have
Speaker 1: more on that very very soon, so stand by today. Instead,
Speaker 1: I wanted to focus on the avalanche of corruption some
Speaker 1: folks might just call it theft coming out of the
Speaker 1: White House. The one point eight billion dollar slush fund
Speaker 1: to pay off January sixth rioters, the announced that the
Speaker 1: president and his family are now immune from IRS investigations.
Speaker 1: The ballroom slash bunker slash money pit, the reflecting pool,
Speaker 1: the president's three thousand plus stock trades while in office,
Speaker 1: the self enrichment, the cronyism, the taxpayer abuse. All of
Speaker 1: it has hit new heights, or should I say new lows,
Speaker 1: and I wanted to talk to someone who could help
Speaker 1: me make sense of all of this, but also about
Speaker 1: what Democrats in Congress and lawyers outside of it can
Speaker 1: do to fight back. Joining me for that conversation is
Speaker 1: the incredible Norma Eisen, founder of the Democracy Defender's Fund
Speaker 1: and former Special Counsel to the President for Ethics and
Speaker 1: Government Reform in the Obama administration. There is truly no
Speaker 1: better expert in America on White House corruption than Norma Eizen.
Speaker 1: We are going to get to that conversation in just
Speaker 1: a moment, but before we do, I want to remind
Speaker 1: you that Crooked Con twenty twenty six tickets.
Speaker 2: Are on sale now.
Speaker 1: Come hang with us November fifth through seventh and washing
Speaker 1: to DC for live shows and panels and meetups and more.
Speaker 1: I will be there and you should.
Speaker 2: Be there too.
Speaker 1: Get tickets at Crookedcon dot com. And if you like
Speaker 1: what you hear today, please do check out my show
Speaker 1: also on Crooked called Runaway Country, where every week I
Speaker 1: talk to people at the center of the headlines. We
Speaker 1: just published I think a pretty awesome, if disconcerting episode
Speaker 1: where I talked to one of the police officers who
Speaker 1: was at the Capitol on January sixth about his reaction
Speaker 1: to the news that he will be funding payments to
Speaker 1: the people who beat him unconscious that day and gave
Speaker 1: him traumatic brain injury.
Speaker 2: Check it out.
Speaker 1: Okay, here is Norm, I sin Norm, thank you for
Speaker 1: doing this. I have so many questions. I think everybody
Speaker 1: has questions, but I have, like many, many, many, many
Speaker 1: questions for someone who really knows what the hell is
Speaker 1: up with all of this or has a sense of
Speaker 1: the law.
Speaker 2: At least, let's just start at the beginning.
Speaker 1: On Monday, the DOJ announced it had made a settlement
Speaker 1: agreement on Trump's ten billion dollar lawsuit against the IRS,
Speaker 1: which he filed over the twenty twenty leak of his
Speaker 1: tax returns to The New York Times in pro publica.
Speaker 1: As part of that settlement, the DOJ announced they would
Speaker 1: establish a one point seven seven six billion Anti Weaponization
Speaker 1: Fund to compensate individuals who claim they were victims of
Speaker 1: government weaponization during the Biden administration. Norm was your Your
Speaker 1: reaction the same as mine, namely, what the fuck?
Speaker 3: Yes, Alex? It might have even arn day, what the
Speaker 3: double fuck technical legal term? You know? When I was
Speaker 3: the White House Ethics ar, I would not even allow
Speaker 3: Barack Obama to refinance his modest family home in Chicago
Speaker 3: because it was the Great Recession and he was regulating
Speaker 3: the banks. The thought that the President of the United
Speaker 3: States can in essence sue himself and throw that case out.
Speaker 3: Set up by one point eight billion dollar slush fund.
Speaker 3: It's an endowment for January sixth insurrectionist, including those who
Speaker 3: attacked the police and were convicted by juries. It's just inconceivable.
Speaker 3: We filed an immediate legal objection on behalf of ninety
Speaker 3: three members of Congress the very first, and there's been
Speaker 3: a tsunami of other opposition that has developed since. And
Speaker 3: like the Epstein files, this is one that is not
Speaker 3: going away because also like that scandal, it's such an
Speaker 3: outrageous corruption situation.
Speaker 1: And there's a paper trail explaining just how first of all,
Speaker 1: utterly unnecessary and totally corrupted is with that paper trail
Speaker 1: exists within Trump's own administration. I was stunned by the
Speaker 1: reporting we got this week that IRS lawyers compiled a
Speaker 1: twenty five page memo that was supposed to be sent
Speaker 1: to the Justice Department saying, hey, guys, listen, Trump's lawsuit
Speaker 1: isn't going to stand up in court. This is literally
Speaker 1: Treasury Department lawyers saying this whole thing is bogus. And
Speaker 1: yet that notwithstanding, first of all, it's unclear if the
Speaker 1: DJ ever read the memo they felt the need to
Speaker 1: set make a settlement agreement with Trump. Nonetheless, I mean,
Speaker 1: there seems to be like, I mean, I have questions,
Speaker 1: norm do you have questions about this?
Speaker 4: I do?
Speaker 3: And you know who else has questions? It appears the
Speaker 3: top lawyer at the Treasure Department who quit in proximity
Speaker 3: to the establishment of this outrageous slash fund taking one
Speaker 3: point eight billion dollars out of your in mind in
Speaker 3: the American people's pockets in order to payoff Trump's cronies.
Speaker 3: The legal flaws were in the filing that we made
Speaker 3: with the court on behalf of those ninety three members
Speaker 3: of the minority in the House of Representatives. There's no
Speaker 3: constitutional authority to do this, including because it creates an
Speaker 3: a monument's issue. There's no statutory authority. It's contrary to
Speaker 3: the rules governing the judgment Fund, which is the pot
Speaker 3: of money that is going to be rated for this.
Speaker 3: I mean, the illegalities are vast, and it's so bad
Speaker 3: that reportedly dozens of members of the president's own party
Speaker 3: confronted Todd Blanche, the acting Attorney General Donald Trump's former
Speaker 3: defense lawyer, and he's still behaving that way. Confronted him
Speaker 3: and they had to Alex had to shelve the reconciliation negotiations.
Speaker 3: It blew up the reconciliation package because it's these senators
Speaker 3: who are normally lap dogs. Even they can't take it.
Speaker 3: So it's the worst corruption scandal in the history of
Speaker 3: the presidency.
Speaker 1: Yeah's okay, So that is the breaking news of today.
Speaker 1: We're recording this on Thursday. So Republicans were all set,
Speaker 1: they were all teed up to pass a reconciliation bill
Speaker 1: before the imposed June first deadline set by Donald Trump,
Speaker 1: and that was going to give Ice up to seventy
Speaker 1: two billion dollars in funding, which was a tidy sum
Speaker 1: for a paramilitary organization that slaughtered American citizens. But I digress.
Speaker 1: That's neither here nor there in terms of this conversation.
Speaker 1: But as part of that reconciliation negotiation, senators and Republican
Speaker 1: senators apparently wanted to put some guardrails on the slush fund.
Speaker 1: According to The New York Times, Republicans were exploring adding
Speaker 1: a measure to the immigration bill, that's the ICE Bill,
Speaker 1: to limit the slush fund.
Speaker 2: I'm the slush fund.
Speaker 1: That's my terminology, not the New York Times, in part
Speaker 1: norm because leaders were worried that if they didn't, a
Speaker 1: Democratic effort to kill the slush fund could draw enough
Speaker 1: Republican support to succeed. First of all, walk me through this,
Speaker 1: I mean, how how are these two things related? Like,
Speaker 1: you're talking about on one hand, reconciliation funding that would
Speaker 1: have given money to DHS to ice, But then you're
Speaker 1: also talking about about a fund, a pot of money
Speaker 1: that exists at the DOJ that's already been allocated.
Speaker 2: Is that right?
Speaker 1: I mean, how do how do they how can they
Speaker 1: use one to tackle the other?
Speaker 2: I guess is what I'm asking.
Speaker 3: Reconciliation is a budgeting process that Congress uses that under
Speaker 3: the rules of the Senate, it's called the Bird rule.
Speaker 3: Under the rules of the Senate, is not subject to
Speaker 3: the usual procedures for purely budgetary matters. You don't have
Speaker 3: to get sixty votes in order to move the bill.
Speaker 3: You can do it on a pure majority. But Alex,
Speaker 3: once you have that majority, you can put anything into
Speaker 3: that reconciliation package relating to how the federal government spends
Speaker 3: its money and you.
Speaker 4: Do it on a simple majority, So that means if
Speaker 4: only a handful of Republican Senators and members in the House.
Speaker 3: Were willing to agree, Hey, we should not be creating
Speaker 3: a slush fund to compensate violent cop assaulters from January
Speaker 3: sixth were convicted by juris who had long jail terms
Speaker 3: until Donald Trump himself, a thirty four times convicted felon,
Speaker 3: pardoned them on day one in what was previously the
Speaker 3: greatest scandal in the history of the presidency. We should
Speaker 3: not be paying them out of a fund of one
Speaker 3: point eight billion dollars. That proposition might have garnered enough
Speaker 3: votes that this reconciliation bill would have been used to
Speaker 3: limit or shut down the slush fund. So leadership freaked out.
Speaker 3: Everybody go home. Funding ICE is on hold, and now
Speaker 3: we're going to see what happens and whether finally, finally,
Speaker 3: like with the Epstein files, but unfortunately, unlike hundreds of
Speaker 3: other outrages where the president's party has caved, finally, we're
Speaker 3: going to see if there's another example where a few
Speaker 3: of them are willing to stand up to him.
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, and we can talk about the new reality
Speaker 1: as of this week where Trump is just saying off
Speaker 1: with their heads to any of his Republicans Republican critics
Speaker 1: in the Senate and effectively creating an anti Trump coalition
Speaker 1: inside his own party. But just let's table that for
Speaker 1: a second, because to your point about the Reconciliation bill
Speaker 1: and the way in which this is such a a
Speaker 1: cocked up piece of political strategy.
Speaker 2: Here's Burge's effort from Politico reporting.
Speaker 1: Senator Kevin Kramer says it would have been a good
Speaker 1: idea for the Trump administration to announce the one point
Speaker 1: eight billion dollar fund after the reconciliation bill passed. Instead,
Speaker 1: it exposed the bill to all kinds of amendments because
Speaker 1: of its judiciary title.
Speaker 2: We can't help the president.
Speaker 1: With a bucket budget reconciliation package with this hanging over us.
Speaker 2: Okay, can you unpack that for me? Like I just did.
Speaker 1: The White House shoot itself in its in its own
Speaker 1: foot on this and obviously not in consultation with Senate Republicans.
Speaker 3: The incompetence of this White House knows no bounds. We
Speaker 3: see that I had to fill my car gas with
Speaker 3: gas today, and you see that every American sees that
Speaker 3: when they go to the gas station. Or they drive
Speaker 3: by one the So if they had just waited until
Speaker 3: this budget package were done, you wouldn't be able to
Speaker 3: peel off Republicans to attach a provision to shut down
Speaker 3: or believable slush fund. So it's an it's where would
Speaker 3: we be as a democracy if Donald Trump were not
Speaker 3: at I mean, does Alex fortunately he's not very good.
Speaker 2: I mean, in some ways he is good.
Speaker 1: I'm going to give him a little credit because he
Speaker 1: just I feel like I'm living in a tyrannical moment.
Speaker 1: But in terms of the practical execution of tyrannical endeavors,
Speaker 1: he's not very good. Not only does he announce this
Speaker 1: slush fund before the reconciliation bill has passed, which throws
Speaker 1: the whole thing into doubt, he does at the same
Speaker 1: moment he's alienating members of his own party, who he
Speaker 1: needs marching in lockstep to get this thing over the hump.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's just a it's like it's pure own
Speaker 1: goal after own goal from this administration.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and we've seen a lot of that at Democracy
Speaker 3: Defender's Fund and Democracy Defender's Action, the organizations I co founded,
Speaker 3: where we have over three hundred legal cases and matters
Speaker 3: again and again. Donald Trump has tried to break the
Speaker 3: law in the stupidest way possible and has been slapped
Speaker 3: down by the courts for doing it. But you also
Speaker 3: see it in his handling of the other main job
Speaker 3: of a president, foreign policing international relations. There has never
Speaker 3: been a bigger fiasco in the history of American war making.
Speaker 3: And we've had some fiasco's Vietnam, Iraq, We've never had
Speaker 3: a bigger one than Iran, you want to talk about
Speaker 3: on goals, he handed the straight of war moves over
Speaker 3: to Iran. So this but the slush fund, like the
Speaker 3: Epstein files, this really end like the war. It's breaking
Speaker 3: through and day after day the country is saying what
Speaker 3: and you know you are getting this pushback from Republicans
Speaker 3: in Congress. We'll see if that holds up when it's
Speaker 3: time for a vote. But it's a sign of just
Speaker 3: how foolish Veno, corrupt and wrong. This one point eight
Speaker 3: billion dollar pot of cash for January sixth insurrectionists and
Speaker 3: others is Can I.
Speaker 1: Ask a word about the money itself? Like we keep
Speaker 1: talking about slush fund, It's already been allocated. The Senate
Speaker 1: may try and put some guardrails on it post facto.
Speaker 1: But the reality is this money already exists.
Speaker 2: Somewhere at the DOJ.
Speaker 1: Can you explain, I mean, for people who don't understand
Speaker 1: how and where this money is pooled, can you shed
Speaker 1: some on that.
Speaker 3: There's a fund at the Department of Justice called the
Speaker 3: Judgment Fund, and typically it is used to pay judgments.
Speaker 3: You don't have to go back to Congress every time
Speaker 3: the United States government loses a case. If you have
Speaker 3: to pay somebody, or you have a legitimate settlement of
Speaker 3: a case, not a case where the President is suing himself,
Speaker 3: you use the judgment fund. But Alex, like all money
Speaker 3: spent by the United States, it is subject to congressional guardrails.
Speaker 3: Congress establishes the rules on how money can be spent.
Speaker 3: And because here there never was a real case to
Speaker 3: be settled, the people who are benefiting from this were
Speaker 3: not a part of that phony tax case that was
Speaker 3: about to be perhaps thrown out in Florida. There's none
Speaker 3: of the triggers that under Article one of the Constitution,
Speaker 3: Congress passes the laws to govern the utilization of money,
Speaker 3: including the judgment Fund. None of those triggers are implicated here.
Speaker 3: This would be an illegal disbursement of money. Anybody who
Speaker 3: took the money would be at risk of having it
Speaker 3: clawed back. It's part of a you know, a gigantic
Speaker 3: cash grab. It's as if the President wrote in his
Speaker 3: limo to the Treasury Department, took bags of cash and
Speaker 3: then went to a picnic of the insurrectionists through the
Speaker 3: money in the air. It's totally illegal in every way.
Speaker 3: So you know the people who participated in January sixth,
Speaker 3: including violently assaulting cops, you should not be too excited
Speaker 3: about the cash that they're about to collect.
Speaker 5: This episode is sponsored by Betterhelp.
Speaker 6: Life is a lot sometimes, regardless of what's keeping you
Speaker 6: up at night or leaving you overwhelmed, it's easy to
Speaker 6: feel like you have to figure it out all on
Speaker 6: your own. You do not have to face these challenges alone.
Speaker 6: Having someone to listen, to understand and support you can
Speaker 6: make all the difference.
Speaker 5: That's where better Help comes in.
Speaker 6: Better Help therapists work according to a strict code of
Speaker 6: conduct and are fully licensed in the US. Betterhelp does
Speaker 6: the initial matching work for you so you can focus
Speaker 6: on your therapy goals. A short questionnaire helps identify your
Speaker 6: needs and preferences and their twelve plus years of experience
Speaker 6: and industry leading match fulfillment rate means they typically get
Speaker 6: it right the first time. If you aren't happy with
Speaker 6: your match, switched to a different therapist at any time
Speaker 6: from their tailored rex with over thirty thousand therapists. Better
Speaker 6: help is the world's largest online therapy platform, having served
Speaker 6: over six million people globally, and it works with an
Speaker 6: average rating of four point nine out of five for
Speaker 6: a live session based on one point seven million client reviews.
Speaker 5: It's a scary world out there. There's a lot of
Speaker 5: things happening.
Speaker 6: There's politics, there's you know, all this AI doomer stuff.
Speaker 6: People think that they can just deal with it by
Speaker 6: talking to a spouse or a friend or someone else.
Speaker 6: My message to them is you can't because that person
Speaker 6: is tuning you out. You need someone who is paid
Speaker 6: to listen to you. That's why you need a therapist,
Speaker 6: and you'll really benefit from it. You don't have to
Speaker 6: traverse life challenges alone. Find the personal support you're looking
Speaker 6: for in therapy. Sign up and get ten percent off
Speaker 6: at betterhelp dot com slash PSA. That's better h elp
Speaker 6: dot com slash psa.
Speaker 7: Hotdave America brought you by High We're only beginning to
Speaker 7: understand the impact of ultra process foods on our health,
Speaker 7: and especially on the health of our kids. That's exactly
Speaker 7: why HI exist to give parents a real solution in
Speaker 7: a market flooded with kids vitamins that prioritize candylike appeal
Speaker 7: over actual nutrition. Some children's vitamins on the market today
Speaker 7: contain up to seven grams of sugar per serving and
Speaker 7: are stuffed with artificial additives and petroleum based size. Hi
Speaker 7: I took the opposite approach, zero sugar, zero gummy additives,
Speaker 7: just clean nutrition. Working alongside pediatricians nutrition scientists, how I
Speaker 7: created a powerful chewable vitamin that packs a blend of
Speaker 7: twelve organic fruits and vegetables, plus fifteen essential vitamins and
Speaker 7: minerals into every dose. The ingredient list is clean, non GMO, vegan,
Speaker 7: dairy free, allergy free, gelatin free, nut free. They've thought
Speaker 7: of everything designed for kids. Twoing up, I ship straight
Speaker 7: to your door. You get this awesome reusable bottle with
Speaker 7: your first order, and then they send refills every month.
Speaker 7: One less thing to remember at the store. Tommy has children,
Speaker 7: I do.
Speaker 6: And also one child I know takes high vitamins all
Speaker 6: the time is Charlie Favreaum. I was over the other
Speaker 6: day and he was just talking me through girdles incompleteness theorems.
Speaker 7: The So, what's interesting about the incopleten his theorem is
Speaker 7: it it proves that you actually can't that there must
Speaker 7: be some part of a mathematical structure that is not provable. Right,
Speaker 7: there must be some part of it that that that
Speaker 7: can't be provided by the proof. There has to be
Speaker 7: some assumption baked into it, and that's not solvable.
Speaker 5: It can't be solved. Yeah, Charlie explained it. That may
Speaker 5: be wrong too. I think that's right.
Speaker 6: I think that's you know, the deepest they don't improve
Speaker 6: mathematics itself is fundamental limits.
Speaker 5: Yeah, or always be true statements that cannot be proven. Yeah,
Speaker 5: I got it. I nailed it. I nailed it. I
Speaker 5: believe great.
Speaker 7: There was this is somehow tangentially connected to some There
Speaker 7: was a two guys that wrote like a five hundred
Speaker 7: page proof to just show that.
Speaker 5: One plus one equal too.
Speaker 7: Really, Yeah, things got peas got pretty crazy. And though
Speaker 7: like I think, like the nineteen twenties in math anyway, Oh,
Speaker 7: I'm the reading the ad and here something every parent
Speaker 7: needs to hear. You get your kids eave vegetables feels
Speaker 7: like an impossible daily battle. High Ast Newkids Daily Greens
Speaker 7: plus Superfood is a total game changer. It's a Greens
Speaker 7: powder design specifically for kids that's packed with fifty five
Speaker 7: plus whole food source ingredients. Just mix one scoop with
Speaker 7: milk or milk alternative and wants them actually enjoy something
Speaker 7: that's secretly fueling their growing bodies. We've worked at a
Speaker 7: special deal with HIA for their best selling children's vitamin,
Speaker 7: received fifty percent off your first order. To claim this deal,
Speaker 7: you must go to high Health dot com slash crooked.
Speaker 7: This deal is not available on their regular website, So
Speaker 7: go to h I Y A H E A l
Speaker 7: t h dot com slash crooked and get your kids
Speaker 7: the full body nourishment they need to grow into healthy adults.
Speaker 1: Can I ask, I mean there's already you know Blanche,
Speaker 1: Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, who's I don't know, conducting
Speaker 1: the most pathetic, stunningly pathetic job audition, job interview ever,
Speaker 1: just doing literally anything, breaking all laws and norms to
Speaker 1: get the title permanently, but nonetheless. Acting Attorney General Todd
Speaker 1: Blanche has been very opaque about whether and when the
Speaker 1: American public might find out who is a potential recipient
Speaker 1: of these funds. Here's my question, because they are public
Speaker 1: funds and because they are subject to some oversight. You know,
Speaker 1: the DOJ says, we wash our hands of this money,
Speaker 1: like we have nothing to do with it once it's
Speaker 1: given out.
Speaker 2: Don't come knocking on our door. But that's not the
Speaker 2: end of this.
Speaker 1: Right the America, there can be feyer requests to find
Speaker 1: out where this money went. I mean there is There
Speaker 1: are mechanisms by which, whether the administration wants the public
Speaker 1: to or not, the public can find out how this
Speaker 1: money's been spent.
Speaker 2: Is that correct?
Speaker 3: To be sure, the government is still subject to congressional oversight.
Speaker 3: Members of Congress can demand that information. Should Congress change
Speaker 3: hands come January, the House and perhaps the Senate will
Speaker 3: have enforceable subpoena power to pursue those information that information.
Speaker 3: But Alex, you and I also have the power to
Speaker 3: do it. Any journalist than any American, through the Freedom
Speaker 3: of Ination Act, can file a request for this. We
Speaker 3: have filed hundreds of freedom of information requests over the years,
Speaker 3: including a large number at the Democracy Defender's Fund and
Speaker 3: Democracy Defender's Action. And then if we don't get the
Speaker 3: information we want, we go to court and the court
Speaker 3: forces the disclosures. So they should not think that at
Speaker 3: the Department of Justice that they're going to be able
Speaker 3: to hide this. But more to the point, I believe
Speaker 3: the litigation has already begun and there's going to be
Speaker 3: a very substantial court pushback on the first dollar ever
Speaker 3: going out the door at the fund because it's so
Speaker 3: blatantly illegal.
Speaker 1: Yes, going to a J six picnic and throwing a
Speaker 1: bunch of cash up into the air doesn't seem like
Speaker 1: what the founding fathers intended. Let's talk about tho lawsuits
Speaker 1: because you're part of your organization, Democracy Defenders filed a
Speaker 1: motion to block this use of taxpayer funds, and it
Speaker 1: was filed in the coalition on the suit includes as
Speaker 1: you mentioned, members of Congress, including Congressman Joe Nogose and
Speaker 1: ranking Member Jamie Raskin. Can you talk a little bit
Speaker 1: about your confidence that that can move forward? And then
Speaker 1: I also want to get your thoughts on other suits
Speaker 1: and who has standing here.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and we filed the initial legal objection within moments,
Speaker 3: literally within minutes, we had that ready to go on
Speaker 3: behalf of those members of Congress got a whiff of
Speaker 3: this at the end of the week last weekend. It
Speaker 3: worked through the weekend. The team pulled an all nighter
Speaker 3: to get this together. The judge in Florida, who had
Speaker 3: the power to investigate and perhaps to block it, did
Speaker 3: not exercise that power. That means that we and others
Speaker 3: now will go to court. We're going to need to
Speaker 3: find new places to do that. Those lawsuits have started
Speaker 3: to pop and anybody who has an injury as a
Speaker 3: result of this misbegotten slush fund has the power to
Speaker 3: bring that case. People who are entitled to reparation for
Speaker 3: genuine abuses of the government. There have been so many
Speaker 3: over the past sixteen months who've been targeted by the administration.
Speaker 3: They're the real victims of weaponization, Alex. It's dubious. You
Speaker 3: can tell from the context that's not who's going to
Speaker 3: be getting money. And then others who are injured in
Speaker 3: various ways by the funds, including people who might have
Speaker 3: gotten under properly congressionally authorized disbursements. From the judgment fund
Speaker 3: that one point eight billion has to come from somewhere.
Speaker 3: There's people who would have been able to recover that
Speaker 3: money has gone. So there's a huge number of folks
Speaker 3: who are injured in various ways by this, and the
Speaker 3: litigation is going to be going on, I predict for
Speaker 3: months and years to come. And if you liked our
Speaker 3: first brief on behalf of those ninety three members of
Speaker 3: Congress where we laid out all the illegalities here, stay
Speaker 3: tuned much more ahead from us at Democracy Defender's Action.
Speaker 1: What do you think about you You mentioned there's an
Speaker 1: excess of lawsuits that are either being filed or that
Speaker 1: are coming down the pike. Two officers who famously and
Speaker 1: publicly defended the Capitol on January sixth, Daniel Hodges and
Speaker 1: Harry Dunn, sued the administration this week to try and
Speaker 1: stop the creation of the slush fund. What do you
Speaker 1: think of that effort and where does it go?
Speaker 3: I think it's great effort. Hats off to Harry and
Speaker 3: to Daniel. I know them both. They're wonderful public servants
Speaker 3: for taking the leap. The Public Integrity Project and my
Speaker 3: friend Brendan belou who brought that case was pulling no punches.
Speaker 3: So I think you're going to see that case unfold
Speaker 3: together with other litigation that is coming down the pike
Speaker 3: for all the different individuals or groups of individuals who've
Speaker 3: been injured by this terrible case. So I'm optimistic that
Speaker 3: the litigation front is going to result in putting some
Speaker 3: limits and even an injunction stopping the implementation of the
Speaker 3: fund to work together with Congress or I think they're
Speaker 3: also going to impose some limits and that one two
Speaker 3: punch of the court of law and the court of
Speaker 3: public opinion, if you will. The public outrage has reflected
Speaker 3: in the even the Republican members anger about this. Well,
Speaker 3: you know, you won't lose money by betting against their
Speaker 3: willingness to take on the president. But here you have
Speaker 3: all of the cylinders of the scandal clicking. And it
Speaker 3: does remind me of the Epstein files, where it became
Speaker 3: more and more intense, and finally the president's own party
Speaker 3: broke with him. There seemed to be, according to press reports,
Speaker 3: somewhat of a mutiny today when the president's former defense lawyer,
Speaker 3: Todd blanche tried to sell this to the Republicans in
Speaker 3: the Senate.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean.
Speaker 1: And by the way, Thomas Massey, who led the charge
Speaker 1: on it, still in Congress. John Cornyan, who Trump basically sent,
Speaker 1: you know, to put on top of a.
Speaker 2: Door in the floor. He's still in the Senate.
Speaker 1: You know, these people who Trump has alienated are very
Speaker 1: much still there, still angry, and I think, ready to
Speaker 1: go out Yosemite stamd style guns a blazon. I want
Speaker 1: to ask you know, your level about your level of
Speaker 1: alarm on the on the Why so we know that
Speaker 1: Trump likes, you know, throwing bags of cash at people
Speaker 1: we know that he likes and sort of mob style
Speaker 1: come up, and but I you know, I wonder what
Speaker 1: it signals that he I mean, how worried are you
Speaker 1: about the midterms? That right now, as the polling shows
Speaker 1: Trump and Republicans on track to lose one or both
Speaker 1: houses of Congress, the strategy is not to pivot towards
Speaker 1: a better message, but to throw cash at a.
Speaker 2: Group of people who have proven.
Speaker 1: Themselves violent and willing to do anything to upend an
Speaker 1: election in Trump's favor, Like, does it make you worried
Speaker 1: about the levers Trump might pull as the sort of
Speaker 1: weather forecast gets worse and worse for him?
Speaker 2: In the party ahead of November.
Speaker 3: I think that the kind of machinations that we've seen
Speaker 3: and we've been litigating already, are a sign that Donald
Speaker 3: Trump fears the will of the people. But based on
Speaker 3: the track record, I think voters can be confident that
Speaker 3: there will be free and fair voting no matter what
Speaker 3: he tries. Look alex at Democracy Defenders Fund and Action.
Speaker 3: We litigated against Donald Trump's election takeover executive order he
Speaker 3: issued one last year. We went to court, we got
Speaker 3: a preliminary injunction. Then he pivoted to try to steal
Speaker 3: five seats through redistricting in Texas. We represented those Texas
Speaker 3: legislators who fled the state to sound the alarm on redistricting.
Speaker 3: The result was there was five seats added in California
Speaker 3: to cancel out Texas. We went to court, we defended,
Speaker 3: We won that Prop fifty. We helped defend it in court.
Speaker 3: We won it. We won again at the Supreme Court.
Speaker 3: The trial judgment was untouched on an emergency Supreme Court
Speaker 3: opinion without a single noted dissenting vote. Donald Trump has
Speaker 3: tried another elections takeover EO. We're in court on that.
Speaker 3: He's trying to do more redistricting in the South in Florida,
Speaker 3: more seats being stolen. We're in court on that, and
Speaker 3: we've been winning these cases now since January twentieth, twenty
Speaker 3: twenty five, plus the lot of others in our over
Speaker 3: three hundred cases. So voters should know it's not just us,
Speaker 3: We're part of a very big coalition. Voters should know
Speaker 3: that we are going to go to court, we are
Speaker 3: going to fight for them, and we are going to
Speaker 3: make sure no matter what Donald Trump and is crownies
Speaker 3: try that voting is safe, free and fair.
Speaker 1: And you know, to your point before, it's a system
Speaker 1: wide it's an attack on the separation of powers. It's
Speaker 1: an executive branch, attack on the legislative branch and potentially
Speaker 1: the judicial branch. And those two branches are potentially not
Speaker 1: going down without a fight, right, they're the lawsuits. And
Speaker 1: then there's also Congress saying uh uh, like this is
Speaker 1: actually I mean at least Democrats and perhaps Republicans join them.
Speaker 2: This is our purview.
Speaker 1: We are granted the authority, we are granted the power
Speaker 1: of the purse, and you can't take that away from us, because,
Speaker 1: by the way, what.
Speaker 2: Is the appropriateations process matter?
Speaker 1: If a president can just come up with a fake
Speaker 1: lawsuit and then a fake settlement and give himself, you know,
Speaker 1: control effectively over billions of dollars. Like why bother having
Speaker 1: Congress if that's going to be the new strategy.
Speaker 3: Republicans in Congress have been disappointing. That's Article one, Article two.
Speaker 3: The president has been outrageous. But thank heavens for our
Speaker 3: federal trial court judges and the Article three because they
Speaker 3: have been the guardrail. But those cases don't start themselves.
Speaker 3: You need groups like ours and our wonderful coalition partners,
Speaker 3: hundreds of clients and partners who go to court, who
Speaker 3: bring those cases, and that makes it possible to have
Speaker 3: these these many, many victories that have hemmed Donald Trump in.
Speaker 3: And the other good thing about that is each one
Speaker 3: of those court cases is an alarm bell, and the
Speaker 3: American people have woken up. They see what's going on.
Speaker 3: And that's why the president has these historically low approval ratings.
Speaker 3: So he's not coming from a place of strength. He's
Speaker 3: coming from a place of weakness. Of course, that can
Speaker 3: be very dangerous, and that's why we are all on
Speaker 3: our guard. But there's a proven record of success in
Speaker 3: court over the past sixteen months to build on in
Speaker 3: elections and more broadly.
Speaker 1: I got to ask you about one last part of
Speaker 1: the slush fund, the Settlement Agreement, which is the provision
Speaker 1: that the DOJ added on Tuesday that the IRS is
Speaker 1: forever barred and precluded from investigating Trump and his family
Speaker 1: on their taxes, making the first family effectively immune from
Speaker 1: audits from the I R s okay, norm, I mean
Speaker 1: double what the fuck on this too?
Speaker 2: But like, is this can you do this?
Speaker 3: You can't, You can't know? Oh no. First of all,
Speaker 3: the transaction was already complete, so it's like, oh, we
Speaker 3: forgot We're gonna throw in a freebie. Secondly, they have
Speaker 3: no power on uh this kind of a false and
Speaker 3: phony basis to get rid of the existing cases much
Speaker 3: less as it appears to forgive future wrongdoing. It's like
Speaker 3: a preemptive pardon. It won't hold up in court. The
Speaker 3: whole sick she bang is gonna be flushed. But this
Speaker 3: is one of the worst parts, and it's like, oops,
Speaker 3: we forgot one more freebie at the end. I mean,
Speaker 3: it's so transparent. We are still a government of laws,
Speaker 3: not of people, and in these many court cases we've
Speaker 3: brought and won. We've seen again and again that our
Speaker 3: federal trial courts have stood up to Donald Trump, and
Speaker 3: he's gonna fail in these in these efforts, and you
Speaker 3: know we and many others are going to fight him
Speaker 3: on this worst of all presidential corruption scandals in the
Speaker 3: history of our nation.
Speaker 6: Pata America is brought to you by Rocket Money. Thanks
Speaker 6: for the good people at Rocket Money. That I had
Speaker 6: been up charged by a streaming service for access to
Speaker 6: one show because it was a foreign thing that Hannah
Speaker 6: and I'd watched during the pandemic one time, one episode
Speaker 6: of it, then abandon it and then forgot to cancel it,
Speaker 6: and we're getting charged like ten bucks a month in perpetuity.
Speaker 6: That's why you all need Rocket Money, because they allow
Speaker 6: you to track subscriptions and cancel them within the app
Speaker 6: with just a few taps. In fact, Rocket Money has
Speaker 6: saved users over eight hundred and eighty million dollars and
Speaker 6: cancel the subscriptions. You can categorize automatic transactions across your accounts.
Speaker 6: You can customize categories with tags to help shed light
Speaker 6: on your spending patterns, and much more. You get personalized
Speaker 6: insights and regular reports, and your spending habits. You can
Speaker 6: even receive real time alerts for large transactions, upcoming builds, refunds,
Speaker 6: and low balances. Consolidate your checking, savings, loans, and investment
Speaker 6: accounts into a single dashboard to give you a clear
Speaker 6: picture of your finances. Rocket Money is a personal finance
Speaker 6: app that helps find and cancel unwanted subscriptions, monitors you're spending,
Speaker 6: and helps lower your bills so you can grow your savings.
Speaker 6: Let rocket Money help you reach your financial goals faster.
Speaker 6: Join at rocketmoney dot com slash crooked. That's rocket money
Speaker 6: dot com slash crooked, rocket money dot com slash crooked.
Speaker 2: Okay, so here's my segue. It doesn't end here.
Speaker 1: Like the corruption, the malfeasans, the self enrichment, the megalomania,
Speaker 1: it all continues. I mean, this is not the only
Speaker 1: scandal this week. Buried in all of this is the
Speaker 1: news that in the first quarter of this year, Trump
Speaker 1: made thirty seven hundred trades not himself but his accounts.
Speaker 1: A managing director a major Wall Street brokerage told Bloomberg,
Speaker 1: in the forty plus years of my time on Wall Street,
Speaker 1: this is an unusual amount of trading by any standards.
Speaker 1: I mean, yes, okay, we all assumed Trump was insider trading,
Speaker 1: but thirty seven hundred trades norm I mean, do you
Speaker 1: have a sense of the scale of this. I know
Speaker 1: you're not a Wall Street trader, but it seems eye watering.
Speaker 3: Another trader said that it was insane to have this
Speaker 3: level of trades and the enormous dollar value. Many of
Speaker 3: the equities being traded are companies like Nvidia or Intel,
Speaker 3: where the president is involved in decision making, but given
Speaker 3: the presidency, you're involved in decision making for every American company. Now,
Speaker 3: the Trump organization has said the president does not personally
Speaker 3: make these trades, and number one, you shouldn't have to
Speaker 3: ask the question. Number two, forgive me if I approach
Speaker 3: anything that they say with a bit of skepticism given
Speaker 3: the over thirty thousand lies that Donald Trump has told.
Speaker 3: According to Washington Post, Tally, you know, like the slush
Speaker 3: fund scandal, Alex the American people elected Donald Trump to
Speaker 3: put money in their pockets, to make their lives better,
Speaker 3: to make their lives more affordable, not himself to expand
Speaker 3: his wealth. So this stock trading scandal is another profoundly
Speaker 3: concerning case of the president doing the opposite of what
Speaker 3: he was put in office to do. At The Contrarian,
Speaker 3: where I'm the publisher, we included both the slush fund
Speaker 3: and the stock trading on our weekly top ten list.
Speaker 3: It changes constantly. Started putting together this top ten list,
Speaker 3: and I had to revise it four or five times
Speaker 3: in the space of forty eight hours because there were
Speaker 3: so many new corruption scandals. So how can you pick
Speaker 3: just ten.
Speaker 1: It's like Taylor Swift top single. There's just always another
Speaker 1: one singles. I want to get the language right from
Speaker 1: the Trump Organization, a spokesperson from the Trump Organization told
Speaker 1: Axios President Trump's investment holdings are maintained exclusively through fully
Speaker 1: discretionary accounts, independently managed by third party financial institutions with
Speaker 1: sole and exclusive authority over all investment decisions. Now, let
Speaker 1: me read to you a list of all the companies
Speaker 1: that Trump traded, whose CEOs also norm happened to a
Speaker 1: company trip on his field trip. Trump to on his
Speaker 1: field trip to China, Nvidia, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Broadcom, Goldman, Sachs, Micron,
Speaker 1: and a handful more.
Speaker 2: I mean, are you buying? You don't not buying? Are you?
Speaker 1: I shouldn't put words in your mouth, the idea that
Speaker 1: a third party has exclusive authority over Trump's investment decisions.
Speaker 1: And oh, by the way, some of those big companies
Speaker 1: just happen to be my you know, travel buddies as
Speaker 1: I went to Beijing.
Speaker 2: No, it's just a co WINKIDNK.
Speaker 3: This is another matter that will be investigated. There's no
Speaker 3: official immunity for doing personal stock trades to the benefit
Speaker 3: of her president's account. So should the House or the Senate,
Speaker 3: or for that matter, state security regulators or anybody else
Speaker 3: have the occasion they ought to check whether that's true.
Speaker 3: And is it really the case that the president had
Speaker 3: no awareness he now knows what's in his accounts? How
Speaker 3: does he build a wall in his brain so his
Speaker 3: decision making is not influenced by these stock holdings. I
Speaker 3: think we're entitled to ask highly skeptical questions about this
Speaker 3: whole pattern, and particularly given the amount of dishonesty and
Speaker 3: dissimulation on other topics in the past, not to accept
Speaker 3: at face value this statement. Oh, the president had nothing
Speaker 3: to do with it.
Speaker 1: He's going to build a wall in his brain that
Speaker 1: Mexico will pay for an RM. I do want to
Speaker 1: talk a little bit about as we talk about the
Speaker 1: megalomania and the corruption, some of the construction projects that
Speaker 1: so animate whatever part of Trump's brain has not yet
Speaker 1: been walled off.
Speaker 2: Where would you prefer to start?
Speaker 1: There's so many to choose, from the ballroom, the no
Speaker 1: bid multimillion dollar reflecting pool contract or the Trump Arch
Speaker 1: that the administration is now claiming they don't need congressional
Speaker 1: approval for because Congress approved a plan for the Arlington
Speaker 1: Memorial Bridge in the year nineteen twenty four, one hundred
Speaker 1: and two years ago that contained an arch like structure
Speaker 1: that was never built. For people who are unfamiliar with this,
Speaker 1: now this absurd argument. The Washington Post reports that Congress
Speaker 1: formally ratified a report in nineteen twenty five that allowed
Speaker 1: for the building of Memorial Bridge. However, the columns that
Speaker 1: were part of that design were not actually constructed, and
Speaker 1: Trump officials today argue that in building the arch, they
Speaker 1: would be carrying out past lawmakers' wishes by building an
Speaker 1: arch that was maybe at one point part of a
Speaker 1: design one hundred and two years ago. But where do
Speaker 1: you want to start?
Speaker 8: Norm all of these projects serve the president's personal ego
Speaker 8: is whims, his desire for self aggrandizement, not the public interests.
Speaker 3: I think the granddaddy of them all. The thing that
Speaker 3: kicked us off was renaming the Kennedy Center, and then
Speaker 3: when artists and audiences fled, pretextually shutting down the center
Speaker 3: claiming it was necessary for repairs. We're litigating that case
Speaker 3: and others of the matters that you describe as our
Speaker 3: wonderful partners and colleagues in the democracy movement. So it
Speaker 3: started with the Kennedy Center case. Then you have the
Speaker 3: destruction of the East Wing ballroom, where there's a great
Speaker 3: legal team working on that. We also we and colleagues
Speaker 3: also have a piece of that case, Alex, because it
Speaker 3: turns out that when you demolish that historic, beautiful East Wing,
Speaker 3: the debris has to go somewhere. Donald Trump trucked it
Speaker 3: to a public park and public golf course in DC
Speaker 3: where he dumped it. Alex. It's full of toxins lead,
Speaker 3: chromium as best as carcinogens pardon me, arsenic carcinogenic substances.
Speaker 3: And we're litigating that case of the toxic dumping coming
Speaker 3: out of the East Wing demolition. And then other folks
Speaker 3: are working on the reflecting pool, which should be called
Speaker 3: the fifty Shades of Blue case because they can't even
Speaker 3: match the paint colors. It's so incompetent. Like the renaming
Speaker 3: of the Kennedy Center that caused all those names damorrhage.
Speaker 3: We do that case for Congresswoman Joyce Baties, our client there,
Speaker 3: and then you have this archcase, which another group of
Speaker 3: lawyers is litigating. So the courts are looking scants at
Speaker 3: these projects. We did get a temporary restraining order to
Speaker 3: get information about the Kennedy Center. What was going on here.
Speaker 3: Donald Trump had claimed there was a one year review
Speaker 3: involving outside experts. When we got the documents pursuing to
Speaker 3: a temporary restraining order for Congresswoman Batty to go into
Speaker 3: the White House for a Kennedy Center board meeting and
Speaker 3: confront the President, it turned out there had been no
Speaker 3: one year review of the kind that was promised. So
Speaker 3: these whims are extremely expensive for the American people. They're
Speaker 3: extremely damaging to the history, our environment or in the
Speaker 3: case of these this toxic dumping to the humans within
Speaker 3: the district of Columbia. And it is yet another corruption scandal.
Speaker 3: And this basket of horribles is also part of our
Speaker 3: contrarian top ten list.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean again, a top ten list that has
Speaker 1: no that that should probably be like a top one
Speaker 1: hundred given the number of the candidates you have to
Speaker 1: put on the list. Can we talk a little bit though,
Speaker 1: specifically about the you know, we talked about the resistance
Speaker 1: inside Congress to the slush fund. There's real resistance to
Speaker 1: the ballroom. The lawsuits could be a way to stop it,
Speaker 1: but it also again it's a legislative branch looking at
Speaker 1: this and saying this is totally corrupt, and this is
Speaker 1: a vanity project. And even Senate Republicans, who I am
Speaker 1: loath to give any credit to, are it looks like,
Speaker 1: I mean, we know almost for certain that it's going
Speaker 1: to get dropped, that they're not going to put it
Speaker 1: in the reconciliation package. The Senate parliamentarian has been like, nice,
Speaker 1: try that kind of shit doesn't belong in here.
Speaker 2: Do you I mean, what do you think? I mean?
Speaker 1: Are you surprised that, first of all, there's even that
Speaker 1: resistance and do you think that this dies in the
Speaker 1: legislative branch?
Speaker 3: Well, when we were talking earlier about the reconciliation laws
Speaker 3: and how Congress allowed for purely budgetary matters to move
Speaker 3: with less than sixty votes. You can do it with
Speaker 3: a simple majority. They put in a rule that policy
Speaker 3: decisions can't be part of that it has to be
Speaker 3: pure appropriations. Obviously, it's a huge policy decision in our
Speaker 3: country to build this ballroom. And the parliamentarian, she's a hero.
Speaker 3: She said no, the centate parliamentarian, No, I'm not going
Speaker 3: to let this through. This is not a purely budgetary matter.
Speaker 3: Donald Trump demanded she be fired. To his credit, it's
Speaker 3: a pretty low standard. But Majority Leader John Thune has
Speaker 3: so far declined to fire her, and the Republicans do
Speaker 3: not seem to be overruling her. So they let the
Speaker 3: parliamentarian do their dirty work for them. But they're not
Speaker 3: pleased about building a golden ballroom in a time of
Speaker 3: tremendous fiscal challenge and a cost of living crisis for
Speaker 3: Americans that is exacerbated by this kind of corruption. So
Speaker 3: that is a positive sign that the system is holding,
Speaker 3: particularly that wonderful parliamentarian.
Speaker 2: Yeah, not all heroes wear caps.
Speaker 7: Pod Dave America has brought you by Sundays. Have you
Speaker 7: ever tried to actually look at the ingredient lists in
Speaker 7: your dog's food after the first ingredient good luck gross.
Speaker 7: Traditional store bought is made using extreme high heat to
Speaker 7: keep its shelf stable and inexpensive, so brands have to
Speaker 7: add back synthetic vitamins and minerals in the form of
Speaker 7: additives whose names you don't understand and definitely kind of pronounce.
Speaker 7: Is that really what you want your dog eating? No
Speaker 7: Sundays for dogs is different. They start with eighty percent
Speaker 7: plus all natural meats and then finished with superfoods like kale, ginger,
Speaker 7: blueberries and gently air dries them instead of using high heat.
Speaker 7: Sundays doesn't look or smell like dog food. It looks
Speaker 7: like high quality human grade jerky. No fillers, no nutrition blends,
Speaker 7: no chemicals, just simple, complete nutrition. Founded by doctor Tory Waxman,
Speaker 7: Sundays was created to meet high standards as a veterinarian
Speaker 7: and as a dog parent.
Speaker 5: And the best part.
Speaker 7: Sundays requires no fridge, no freezer, no prep, no mess.
Speaker 7: You get the quality of home cooked meals with the
Speaker 7: scoop and serve ease of kibble. It's what dog food
Speaker 7: should have been all along. You've got to be your dog.
Speaker 7: Good stuff give you wouldn't give a part of your family.
Speaker 7: It's right, give them give a healthy jerky.
Speaker 5: I'm on, amen, grow up. Make the switch to Sundays.
Speaker 7: Go right now to Sundays fordogs dot com slash crooked
Speaker 7: fifty to get fifty percent off your first order. Or
Speaker 7: you can use code crookeet fifty at checkout. That's fifty
Speaker 7: percent off your first order at sundaysfodogs dot com slash
Speaker 7: crooked fifty, Sundays for doogs dot com slash crooked fifty,
Speaker 7: or use code crooked fifty at checkout.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think you're so right to point out
Speaker 1: the sort of real economic climate in the country contributing
Speaker 1: to and really exacerbating the outrage over the corruption. Right,
Speaker 1: the corruption on its own is eyewatering and historic, but
Speaker 1: the fact that it dovetails precisely with the moment when
Speaker 1: Americans can't afford Hamburger meat and gas and air conditioning
Speaker 1: and you know, health insurance, it makes it that much
Speaker 1: more galling. I think when people, just in terms of
Speaker 1: the political moment, people have said, oh, well, the corruption
Speaker 1: message hasn't stuck in the way that I think Democrats
Speaker 1: have wanted it to. Well, we're in a different moment
Speaker 1: right now. And as you point out, the dichotomy, the
Speaker 1: chasm that separates the corrupt activities of this president, the
Speaker 1: gilding of the ballroom, the arch, the painting of the
Speaker 1: reflecting pool, many modeled shades of blue for multiple times
Speaker 1: what it was supposed to cost. All of this seems
Speaker 1: like the senseless, deeply cynical, completely self absorbed behavior of
Speaker 1: someone who at the same time is asleep at the
Speaker 1: wheel when Americans need him the most to tackle the
Speaker 1: one issue he was elected to tackle, which is affordability.
Speaker 1: I mean, is it's really giving Marie Antoinette vibes. You'd
Speaker 1: think they would have just point say, let one point say,
Speaker 1: just like let them eat cake, Like that's kind of
Speaker 1: where we are, where's your Like he's building his own Versailles,
Speaker 1: and the American taxpayer sees what's happening here and they're outraged.
Speaker 3: And I do think you see it reflected in polls.
Speaker 3: Americans say in poll after poll that corruption and fighting
Speaker 3: corruption in government is one of the most important issues
Speaker 3: for them, that the cost of living and the crisis
Speaker 3: around the cost of our everyday existence is a very
Speaker 3: important issue for them. Well, he's basically applying a Trump
Speaker 3: tax to every American to pay for these construction projects,
Speaker 3: to pay for the one point eight billion dollars slush fund.
Speaker 3: And the people see the connection. They don't like it.
Speaker 3: And I think that the public opinion polling demonstrates that
Speaker 3: this corruption free is a part of why we have
Speaker 3: the most unpopular president at this point in modern presidential history.
Speaker 3: As you said, that's not why the people put him there,
Speaker 3: and he has hemorrhaged independence. It's another form of corruption.
Speaker 3: It's corruption of the rule of law to utilize ice
Speaker 3: the way he has to attack innocent people. He said
Speaker 3: he'd protect the border and arrest criminals, not that he
Speaker 3: would tear moms and dads and kids out of their homes,
Speaker 3: out of their communities, out of the American economy, or
Speaker 3: that he'd his ICE agents would murder the Renee Goods
Speaker 3: and the Alex Pretties. That corruption of the rule of
Speaker 3: law also matters. And then you throw in the other
Speaker 3: scandal that has really broken through, like the slush fund,
Speaker 3: or the ballroom or the Kennedy Center, and that is
Speaker 3: has broken even bigger, the Epstein files. That's a corruption story.
Speaker 3: I think the American people will get it, and I
Speaker 3: think there's going to be a very serious price to
Speaker 3: pay come November.
Speaker 1: I wonder, you know, you may I think a lot
Speaker 1: of people don't know about the garbage from the East
Speaker 1: Wing demolition being put onto.
Speaker 2: A public park. I believe it is a public golf course.
Speaker 1: That was really inexpensive to play on, and so people
Speaker 1: from all over the city used to play on that
Speaker 1: course and now they can't because it's covered in toxic
Speaker 1: building materials that Trump unlawfully foisted on the park grounds.
Speaker 1: The reflecting pool is way over budget, it's not getting
Speaker 1: done on time, and the work, from the reporting we have,
Speaker 1: at least in the Washington Post, seems to be incredibly shoddy.
Speaker 1: Their holes and the waterproofing their bubbles, the blue, as
Speaker 1: you say, is fifty shades. Even as a construction magnate,
Speaker 1: he's failing at the job. He's failing politically in terms
Speaker 1: of strategy. He's failing the country in terms of being
Speaker 1: a leader and adhering to the principles of the constitution
Speaker 1: or the letter of the law.
Speaker 2: And he's also feeling it.
Speaker 1: The one thing he's like kind of known for, which
Speaker 1: is the building part. I wonder you know, first of all,
Speaker 1: do you think this stuff is going to get built?
Speaker 1: And if it does, what should Democrats do about it?
Speaker 1: First of all, it might be shoddy, dangerous construction. And
Speaker 1: second of all, like does anybody, I mean, do we
Speaker 1: need the arc to Trump?
Speaker 4: Like?
Speaker 1: What what do you think should happen to this stuff
Speaker 1: if it exists once Trump leaves office?
Speaker 3: Well, will need to take it on a case by
Speaker 3: case basis. You know that certainly.
Speaker 9: The public park, the golf course that's for families, people
Speaker 9: of modest means, those should be reopened.
Speaker 3: We have to get rid of those toxic substances there.
Speaker 3: I think we'll accomplish that through our litigation. That's the
Speaker 3: point of doing it.
Speaker 8: And the.
Speaker 3: Kennedy Center needs to be opened. We need to protect
Speaker 3: the independence of the Kennedy Centers. So you know, it's
Speaker 3: very clear that it cannot be renamed for Donald Trump.
Speaker 3: Congress has said it must be named for John F. Kennedy.
Speaker 3: So we'll have a court order in place. I think
Speaker 3: on many of these projects, what you're going to see
Speaker 3: is the courts are going to step in. I don't
Speaker 3: think the arch is going to be built, that is
Speaker 3: being litigated. But look, both with the built environment. As
Speaker 3: with our government in the post Trump era, we are
Speaker 3: going to have to rebuild. Fortunately, there are good examples
Speaker 3: the United States can learn from both domestically where and
Speaker 3: internationally where you've had authoritarian regimes replaced and you are
Speaker 3: able to rebuild and reconstruct. In you just had a
Speaker 3: super majority coalition oust a far more entrenched autocrat than
Speaker 3: Donald Trump in the form of Victor Orbon After fourteen years,
Speaker 3: they're embarking on a very bold rebuilding project. In Brazil,
Speaker 3: the Bolsonnaro regime was oust that Lula has built a
Speaker 3: big tent coalition. He's a man of the left. He's
Speaker 3: built a larger coalition to do reconstruction there. And of
Speaker 3: course we have the examples of what happened in the
Speaker 3: former Iron Curtain countries after the end of the Cold War.
Speaker 3: They were able to rebuild after a much longer, more
Speaker 3: difficult struggle, the post World War two rebuilding, truth and
Speaker 3: reconciliation in South Africa. There's a lot of examples we
Speaker 3: can learn from. It will start with knocking down. Personally,
Speaker 3: I thought some of these monuments to Trump need to
Speaker 3: be knocked down. But it's what comes after and the
Speaker 3: most important rebuilding will be the rebuilding of our government
Speaker 3: and setting America back on on our course of fulfilling
Speaker 3: what doctor King called the promissory note not yet fully
Speaker 3: collected on of the Declaration of Independence and the United
Speaker 3: States Constitution. We have to continue that work going forward,
Speaker 3: but dealing with some of these fiascos, domestic fiascos, is
Speaker 3: going to be a part of that as well.
Speaker 1: Alex Well, I mean, I think you're so right to
Speaker 1: suggest that there is a path forward that we can
Speaker 1: come out of this, that the judicial system will continue
Speaker 1: to function in its critical role providing some alternatives and
Speaker 1: some dose of reality in terms of what the law says.
Speaker 1: And also elections matter. You know, you point out Orbon
Speaker 1: and Lula, these are the results. Those changes are the
Speaker 1: results of a public saying no longer, no more, And
Speaker 1: everything that we see suggests the public is overwhelmingly rejecting
Speaker 1: this corruption and malfeasance, and that change, real and significant
Speaker 1: change could be on the menu after election day of
Speaker 1: this year.
Speaker 2: So, you know, norm.
Speaker 1: As depressing as all of this is, I think it's
Speaker 1: also cause for outrage and engagement, and that I think
Speaker 1: is hopeful, right, having people involved on a civic level,
Speaker 1: being enraged by their democracy and wanting to fix it.
Speaker 1: Is an unfortunate way to encourage engagement, but is also
Speaker 1: a really powerful way to do it too. And I'll
Speaker 1: take it.
Speaker 3: And that that has been the history of our country.
Speaker 3: And we've seen extraordinary turnout and electoral performance over the
Speaker 3: past sixteen months for pro democracy candidates. So I think
Speaker 3: the America We're going to continue to do our work
Speaker 3: in the courts of law, but we're going to count
Speaker 3: on the court of public opinion to restore that trajectory
Speaker 3: of progress in American democracy and to finally vindicate those
Speaker 3: honissary notes of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.
Speaker 3: We will resume that if we all do this together.
Speaker 1: The great and inspiring and brilliant normalize. And it's great
Speaker 1: to see you. It's great to have this in depth conversation.
Speaker 1: It's been very helpful for me and understanding the sort
Speaker 1: of ins and outs of the lawlessness of all these
Speaker 1: rrible endeavors embarked upon by Donald Trump. But you know,
Speaker 1: the work continues. It's great to have you. Norm Thank
Speaker 1: you guys for listening. The guys are off this Monday
Speaker 1: for the holiday because they're slackers.
Speaker 10: See you Soon Positive America is a Crooked media production.
Speaker 10: Our show is produced by Austin Fisher, Saul Ruben, McKenna,
Speaker 10: Roberts and Faris Safari, with Reed.
Speaker 5: Jerlin, Elijah Cone and Adrian Hill.
Speaker 10: Our team includes Matt de Groate, Ben Hefcot, Jordan Canter,
Speaker 10: Charlotte Landis Krol Pelavive, David Toles, Mia Kelman, Ryan Young
Speaker 10: and Naomi Single. Our staff is probably unionized with the
Speaker 10: Writers Guild of America East