David French: Our State of National Shame

Welcome to the Bullard podcast. I'm your host Tim Miller. Delighted to welcome back to the show and an opinion columnist for the Not So Failing New York Times compared to the competitor. He's also the co-host of the legal podcast advisory opinions. It's David French. How you doing, sir? Tim, great to see you. Great to see you. And I'm so thankful we're not so failing. In this business, Tim, my goodness. Yeah. If you are going to go woke, go mainstream, you know, and leave your conservative media purchase for an actual business. You picked the better one, it appears. Yeah, yeah. I mean, you know, it's just sad. I mean, it's just really sad. The idea that you're going to heal your institution by cutting out your reporters in a war zone, I know that war reporting, for example, is extremely expensive. And quite often not enough people read it, right? Yeah. But we, how do you, this is absolutely vital. And we're now leaving it in the hands of, you know, we're doing a great job over there. The Wall Street Journal's had a lot of great resources. But I don't think. enough people understand sort of how the entire news gathering, global news gathering enterprise is now hanging on just a very few institutions right now. Us, the BBC. I mean, there's just not very many. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, I know that's not what we're going to focus on today. We've covered that pretty well yesterday with Marty Barron. I want to start with you in an area of expertise, which is praying. There was a prayer breakfast yesterday. Donald Trump, the president, I'm just picking a few choice things. He called Thomas Massie a moron. He said that Biden was the worst president we ever had, and Biden had no idea that he was president. Biden's watching right now. He has no idea where he is. He praised the El Salvador Gulag policy. But Kelly spoke earlier, and he painted his authoritarianism as a fight against Satan. Trump closed out by saying, I don't know how any person of faith can vote Democrat. I really don't. And he also vamped a bit about how he should probably make it to heaven. He's not a perfect candidate, but he did a hell of a lot of good for perfect people. So there was the prayer breakfast summary for you. So the only bright spot in all of that is when he said that Democrats couldn't be, a person of faith couldn't be a Democrat. There was a minor Russell of disapproval to him. That's probably the biggest pushback he's gotten from a conservative religious audience in a decade. Wow. But, you know, thank goodness for small victories, a minor rustle of discontent within religious circles for him. I mean, well, within conservative religious circles. But the, it's a joke. It's ridiculous. I mean, at some point, you know, I almost feel like he's going to say to sort of conservative religious organizations, I've been punking you this whole time to see how much you will debase yourself for access to power.

What will you not overlook? I've just been pushing this just to see it's a social experiment. How bad can I be from the standpoint of? traditional Christian values and positions. I mean, this is a person who turned the Republican Party decisively from a longstanding pro-life platform. You know, his administration has approved, the abortion pill, generic version of the abortion pill. And he's just constantly just exposing the total hypocrisy of conservative evangelicals over character just every day, just every single day. You know, it's just a push and a push, this idea anymore that he is actually for religious liberty as opposed to only the religious liberty of his allies or for free speech as opposed to only the free speech of his allies. You know, at some point you just have to say, it's just very clear there's no line. And then he goes and keeps pushing further and further, you know, with a video, I'm sure we want to talk about that he posted. Oh, yeah, we're going to get to the video. This was so on the nose, I thought it was a spoof. There was one of the affirmation conservative evangelical commentators and allies of Trump posted yesterday asking if anyone had briefed Trump that the prayer breakfast was a prayer breakfast. It's a prayer breakfast. It's kind of like, it's there in the name. I don't know that we can blame this one on the staffing. I think, I know we're desperate to always find the bad advice Trump gave to explain away his behavior, but I don't know that that's apt. in this case yeah i mean this is sort of the ultimate example of trump can't fail he can only be failed because it is it is now a staffer's job to fully explain that the national prayer breakfast is in fact the national prayer breakfast that has to be now explained and it's somebody's fault that that was not explained it You feel like you're being punked by this, you know, that there's just no capacity to see him and to view him in any way with the same metrics, the same evaluations that they apply to everybody else in the world. It's just remarkable. It's just remarkable. And it's not new. There's nothing about this this new. There's, except for maybe the video, there's nothing about this. It's even escalatory. It's not worse rhetoric than he's engaged in before. Yeah. It's just a constant reaffirmation. He just shoves your moral compromise in your face every day. Well, you've mentioned it. So I guess we should go to this. Because Donald Trump was bleeding last night a lot. A lot of posts, I guess having trouble sleeping. You know, maybe it's the peptides. One of the videos that he posted included a short section that had pictures of the Obamas as monkeys.

Right. And this was at the end of a longer video. The screenshot was obviously going around because it's just so nauseating and noxious and racist and horrible every word. But I was wondering to myself, I was like, so what was this part of? What was he posting that this was part of? So I, you know, I ventured over to truth's social, clicked on the full video. Do you know what the actual video was about? It's election conspiracy. It was about the Dominion voting machines. Yeah. I swear to God. The president was posting about the Dominion voting machines cheating and getting Biden to win. And at the end of that video, there is like some bonus coverage where they're making fun of Democrats and includes pictures of the Obama's as monkeys. And so like it is all of Trump's just perniciousness wrapped up in one post. You know, here's best case scenario, Tim. Here's best case scenario. If you want to, like, put on how can I possibly defend Donald Trump, it is this. And people will be doing that over on Fox today, so you might as well. Yeah, yeah. Here's your talking points, guys. Let's spitball. While posting my deranged conspiracy theory video, I inadvertently include footage that I had not viewed till the end, my deepest apologies. That's best case. Yeah. You can't back away from he intentionally posted the deranged conspiracy theory. So that's just there. That's baked in his best. his best possible case is he just didn't posted it without watching all of it. Well, I've got some bad news for you on the best case because the White House has put out a statement. Oh, here we go. And the statement did not say that. The statement did not. The statement did not say my apologies or the president didn't see that, you know, he should be more judicious in the future about his rebleeds. Like that was not the statement. The statement was. Cawn down fake news media, this meme was part of a larger video, which was a Lion King parody, where Trump is the king of the jungle and his opponents are animals. They pointed out that in the video, Hillary Clinton is also a boar, and Hakeem Jeffries is a mere cat, and the Obama's are monkeys. So the defense is that the president was posting about his political enemies as fast-pans and monkeys. Yeah. And intentionally posting about our political enemies as animals, Michelle and Barack Obama were what randomly selected to be? I mean, this, again, I just said punking you. He is just absolutely shoving your moral compromise in your face every single day. And he's giving you no room, I mean, no reasonable room at all to sort of wriggle out of it to say, well, there was some way, if you squint this way or that way, that everything's okay. He's just shoving it in your face. Yeah. And he's been doing it for 20 years or longer, I guess, to go back to the Central Park 5, but what the Obama is. Like, you almost hate to do this, but it's like, And folks have chosen this. You know, I mean, to me, you know, when we get you and I and others get smeared about Trump Drainjment Syndrome and all that, it's like when somebody shows you who they are, you can believe them originally. And you can just make a decision in the original moment when Donald Trump was the leading purveyor of a racist conspiracy theory about the first black president, that a person that was going to be spearheading that effort does not have the character to be president.

And I think that that was like a statement that a lot of Trump supporters would have agreed with in 2013. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And so, but then once you make the moral compromise, you're like, well, I guess, you know, then it's hard to then put up future guardrails and so you end up with this. You know, I also think that what has happened and the reason why he is able to do whatever he wants at this point and the reason why, you know, you're looking at things that if he had done this at 2016, probably maybe, I don't know. I mean, the Access Hollywood tape came out. I mean, who knows? I don't know. Who knows? I mean, what am I saying? Who the heck knows? But nothing would have ended up. But here's what would have happened in 2016. There would have been at least some people speaking out about it, right? People do remember, like, we've gone through this like slow debasing and slow and slow accommodation. I mean, Paul Ryan was the speaker of the house and was not a profound courage to my standing. Did I live up to what I would have wanted from him? But like, for two years. He would put out statements criticizing Trump. You know, Mike Johnson is obvious, you know, there's none of that now. Yeah, yeah. And so I think what is important for people to start doing now is to begin in your minds to separate MAGA and Trump. And here's what I mean by that. There are millions of Americans, sadly, who will see nothing wrong with that video. be glad it's out there, are happy to make liberals as angry as they can possibly make them, even if they're not hopelessly racist themselves. There is a category of Americans we now know that's larger than we thought that relishes in this kind of cruelty. But there's a lot of other Republicans that know they don't relish in this kind of cruelty at all, but they've been through so much with Trump. They sort of feel like that they have been through all of this together. And I think that people who are on the outside looking in, they really underestimate the bonding power of feeling like you've stuck with it when everyone's against you. And so it becomes a kind of... It's almost part of your identity. The Trump support, the Trump support becomes a matter almost of identity. It's unshakable. We've been through this together. I've been through him through this and this and this. But with MAGA, there isn't that same kind of personal loyalty. There's no that kind of personal loyalty to a JD Vance, to you name the MAGA politician. There's not that kind of bond. There's nothing like that. And so. That's why I think you consistently see MAGA politicians underperforming Trump. They just don't have that same sort of sense of shared identity and community and bond that you specifically have been through this with him. And you don't have that with these other politicians. And so I'm going to be very interested. And I think the Trump approval rating is still a rough proxy for where we are. But I'm beginning to think that maybe the Trump approval rating is overestimating.

actually, Republican support because it's including within it, sort of that cohort of Republicans are just going to be with Trump, right? Yeah. And so this might be a partial explanation for that Texas Senate flip. which was so dramatic. It was so dramatic. Much more, it was beyond the state senate. We were just the state senate. We were talking about the Senate primary too, but the state senate. Sorry, state senate. Be very clear about that. It was so dramatic. Why do you get so dramatic in a Republican district with these Trump approval ratings? And I think there might be a gap, an emerging gap between the continued loyalty to Trump. and the loyalty to MAGA. Not to get too high on hopium, but it's a Friday. I do think there's also a potential death spiral. I do like to get eye on opium. Yeah, there's a little death spiral element potentially to it too, because you could imagine those MAGA politicians, JD Vance, already seen this from JD Vance, feeling like they can win those voters over by being more extreme, right? Not by like dialing back on Trump, but by doing the stuff that he kind of says with a wink and instead saying it with a straight face, you know, and you do wonder if that then ends up. You're kind of helping them solidify that core base of people that relish this. You mentioned earlier, but continues to cause bleeding among other folks. Hope can spring a turn on that. I have a question for you about Obama. You know, you don't want to be responsive to every racist thing Trump does. And it's like, don't let Trump dictate your life and don't go out there and put out some whatever statement about, you know, whatever. I'm not sure that like the Obama choice though to just like appear once a year on a panel is right for our current moment. And I don't know what you think about that. But I do think that they're like Democrats could use somebody who is a. capable messenger to kind of engage from time to time on stuff and raise the salience of stuff. And I think that he has an audience and some loyalty with some people that ended up voting for Trump. I mean, there's all the famous Obama Trump voters. I don't know. Maybe that's wrong. But I just look at this today and I'm like, it feels like he could be more useful in the fray. And I feel like he might be abiding by some mores that are a little out of date. But I'm guessing you might be on the other side of that. So what do you think? I honestly, Tim, I'm on the fence about this. And I'll tell you sort of what pushes me one way and what pushes me the other. I mean, you know, I know for a fact that, you know, there's sort of a sense amongst former politicians, including ex-presidents, that in reality, when people like you and me say, you need to get out there more, the reality is that. that some total of the demand for their voice is actually the chattering class, that they don't have that ability that they used to have because they don't have any future potential power. You know, their time has come and gone. And yes, they absolutely have loyal supporters and friends and all of that to a degree that you and I will never experience and all of those things. But as far as their ability to move the needle, they're also keenly aware.

that sometimes it accompanies a backlash, that if you're in an anti-establishment age and the old establishment comes forward, are you going to do more harm than good? And so I think there's a lot of back and forth, but I do think one thing that they're right about is that people like us tend to dramatically overestimate the ability of an Obama or a Bush to move the needle. And that we often tend to drastically overestimate the ability of senators and congressmen to move the needle unless they're actually exercising their power. So like, for example, Republican senators would say to you, we could all speak out against Trump and it would destroy us all. Sure. At the same time, they could have voted against Trump in the impeachment trial and destroyed Trump's career. So the actual influence of a member of Congress or a senator, you know, a member of the House or the Senate, is their exercise of power, not their moral voice in the world because they just don't really have that. And I think that... You know, as this era has gone on, that's why I tend to focus more on what are you doing as opposed to what are you saying, because that's where these politicians can actually achieve something in the real world. That's well put. I guess then as a communications person, I would say that you can do some things. You can nudge some people. And so then maybe it's just a point of personal privilege to the Bushes and Obama's when you do decide to say something, one of the Clintons as well. the screenshot phone statement that is like three pages long, you know, that seems like it was written by four staffers. Yeah. They could just stop doing that. Like I would just like, just like Malia and Sasha to teach him to pick up his phone and be like, Trump's a dick and then put it down. You know, unfortunately, that's kind of more effective at this time. It might feel a little unpresidential, but I don't know. Here's where I come down, I think, on this. Yeah. maybe where they're going to be most effective is where they also have some of their most experience and where a lot of their relationships still matter. And that would be something like, let's say, a Barack Obama getting off the sidelines on a specific issue fight. Like we're going to talk about something later in the podcast, a legal proposal that I have to try to help reign in federal abuses. You know, if you had an Obama and, you know, a Bush. working the phones or going out and saying this, this is something that in my experience as president is necessary to restore the health and integrity of the executive branch. In other words, you've got somebody who's a former president saying, look, and on the phone with existing allies, people who you can still raise money for, for example, and say, look, this is something that will actually matter. And it matters so much, I'm willing to sort of come out of, you know, the hibernation period to emphasize that it really matters. So I don't know. I mean, we're spitballing here because we're all in uncharted waters. None of us have confronted this kind of situation before. Let's just talk about the exercise of power for a second because there's a specific example of this that was profiled in the New York Times this week. I want to chew over with you because I have like a natural.

emotional reaction to it that is hostile, but then you start to think about, you know, the considerations and like what, what is actually best. So let's talk about Katie Britt as a case study here. There's a New York Times profile on her that the premise of it is that she was. Very struck and moved by the plight of Liam Ramos, the five-year-old boy that was detained and sent to Texas. And in the Times article, they said this. Through a series of interviews and emotional moments at her home, Ms. Brett offered a rare look at how one Republican lawmaker is navigating Trump. She seldom challenges him. When she does, she believes that to be effective, any outrage must be felt quietly. Any response conducted through back-channel phone calls and peppered with words of admiration for him. I said I was going to run for the Senate to be the voice for the voiceless and I mean it. She had tears in her eyes. I'm sorry. I just keep thinking about that child. And she basically talks about how she worked some back channels with Kristi Noem with regards to that case. And I look at that. I'm like, on the one hand, it's like, great, good. I mean, I'm glad somebody's trying to help that kid. Okay. On the other hand, it's like, well. There are two ways to think about your exercise of power as a senator. One is back channel relationships with Trump where you're kind of no different than one of his buddies at Maralago. And another exercise of power is actually passing laws that constrain his excesses. And Katie Britt supported everything that led to Liam Ramos being detained. And they now have a big debate coming up for the next two weeks where they could change the rules. You know, to make it so that there are rules around detention for, you know, children. Rules around detention for people who are not convicted criminals or who do not have whatever. You know, there are a lot of different potential ways they could design it. So what did you make of that story? Okay. I've got a charitable and an uncharitable take, Tim. Okay. I want the uncharitable. So feed me the uncharitable first. Let me get the uncharitable. The uncharitable take is. good Lord, the idea that of all of the things, you know, it begins to feel as if, you know, you've got a situation where Trump gives you off ramp after off ramp after off ramp after off ramp after off ramp. And, you know, you drive by 10, 15, 20 exits from Trumpism. And then finally, you flip on the blinker very tentatively, you know, and you say, wait, hold on. Why now? Why this? You know, what is it about now and this? Is it? That it actually, something actually penetrated that sort of through the haze of, you because you have to realize that red state senators have red state staff. They have red state constituents. They're in the red bubble of information. A lot of the scandals that they read, they get. Yeah, that's true. But they're also college. I look, the college educated chamber of commerce crowd in Alabama is pretty messed. Oh, I know. Like everywhere, even in Alabama, you know, it's not as if Katie Britt is like.

deep in a bubble in rural Alabama. No, no, no. Or she's only getting newsmax and the Facebook memes, you know? But you are living in a culture that is reflexively defensive and extremely familiar immediately with defensive arguments. And so you're just marinating in that. What actually happened here is it something penetrated through those defenses finally or the downward arcing of the polls rendered your defenses more vulnerable? Okay, so is this, which of these two? So that's the uncharitable. The uncharitable is that Republicans broadly are seeing that the way that ICE has been behaving Minnesota is just resoundly unpopular and that they need, they're looking for ways to protect themselves politically. And it's as simple as that. Yeah. The charitable take is different things hit different people at different times. You know, like Liz Cheney was with Trump big time for a long time. And then 2020 rolls around, 2021 rolls around, and she's off the bus. And she had a lot of opportunities to get off the bus before. But, you know, I think obviously, and to her credit, you know, the efforts to steal the election really breaks through, you know. So different things break through at different times. And we should welcome that. We should welcome that because part of me is... very keenly aware that when somebody starts to raise an objection to Trump in that world, they immediately start to lose. almost everything that really matters like in your life. You start to lose your church community. You start to lose your friendships. You start to get family turning against you. And so in those circumstances, the worst thing I think for us to do just from a human standpoint and also from just practical standpoint is to look at somebody who's in the midst of a crumbling community because they're doing the right thing, however late it might be, and then go, where you been? As opposed to come here. You know, come here. I'm going to give you a big hug. This is a place where you can feel comfortable because we're going to be defending the values that you've always said you've upheld. And so I'm very much in the camp of when the crack opens, when their eyes seem to open, whether it's tactical or true. Like, come here. Come on in. Come on in. The door is wide open. I've got a casserole in the oven for you. Here's some sweet tea. I'm not a casserole fan, but okay, I hear you. We're doing. We've got some big, got some king cake for you. It's Marty Gross season. I'm with you in the principle. I'm skeptical that that's what's happening with Katie Britt. And here's the good news. We'll get to see. We've got two weeks. Yeah, sure. We got two weeks to learn. They extended the DHS funding two weeks. She is the chairman of the committee that oversees, you know, the relevant budget. And she has an opportunity to make some changes here. Because I think that there's another sort of aphorism that comes to mind here, which is a little bit of put up or shut up, you know, which is like, I will welcome you. I'm going to welcome you. That's great. But I don't.

Like, don't cry about how bad it is and then do nothing. And then I want to pat on the back for that, you know? And so I would love it. We've asked Senator Britt to come on in good faith. I would like to hear what they would like to do and change. This stuff I really care about. Like, I think that the policy has been horrible. You know, maybe some people didn't see, you know, what this was going to look like. That was a mistake, but that's okay. We all make mistakes. Yeah. But we've all seen it now. And so it's like, this is their opportunity to change the rules and they need to do it or else they're complicit. Because frankly, as it is right now, like they're responsible for what happened to Ramos. You know, not anybody else, Trump too, but like they gave the budget for this. You know, and here's the thing, Tim. You know, you're talking about we're seeing things. What we're seeing in the streets, we are getting good visibility on that because thank goodness people have phones everywhere. So if someone says you can't or shouldn't film law enforcement, that's fundamentally false. You can, you should. But we don't have great visibility into what's happening in these detention centers. And the visibility that we do have is really, it's really grim and bad. When we get more complete information about what we're doing, and let's just keep in mind here. These are supposed to be civil proceedings. These are not criminal proceedings. A deportation is not a criminal conviction. These are civil proceedings, not criminal. And we're treating them in ways that are worse than we treat felons in this convicted felons. So it's a civil proceeding. Illegal entry isn't a felony. It's a misdemeanor level crime. If you overstay a visa, that's not even illegal entry. You haven't even committed a crime when you can be deported. But so think about the brutal treatment of people, not even in non-criminal proceedings, much less refugees who are being detained for days, sometimes weeks to, quote, reevaluate them in these brutal conditions. I mean, Tim, this is literally a moment that your grandchildren will say, how did we let this happen? Great grandchildren would say, I cannot believe this happened. You know, that's the magnitude here. We see with our own eyes incredible brutality, but we also know that there is additional brutality happening out of view. And when that is fully exposed, we are already in a state of national shame, and that shame will just deepen. That's a great point. And by the way, there are detention centers in Alabama that she could be visiting. Their detention centers here in Louisiana. It's hard for some Democrats have been able to get in. Chris Murphy and Castro, one in Texas. We've been able to get some visibility into the one outside of San Antonio. But, you know, a lot of these detention centers, they've been blocking people, like elected officials from trying to get in. Among the other things, just as you give these examples of things that are happening a little bit away from view, that it's kind of harder to grasp on whatever things happening. Just a couple of stories I wanted to mention. The Godfrey Wade, he's a Jamaican-born veteran. He's served in the military for eight years. He's been in the U.S. for more than 50 years. He's facing imminent deportation to Jamaica. He's been in ICE custody for five months.

It's like, why did we have to keep a veteran in custody for five months? Like, even if you're going to deport them, which I'm not for, but if there's a legal rationale for it, you know, okay, we can fight that out in the next ballot box. But like, there is no rationale for detaining a veteran. of our military for eight years who has no criminal record for five months in these disgusting ICE detention centers. There's no rationale for it. When I was on that Jubilee or I was debating the Maga Kids, one was like, what are we supposed to do? Just knock on the door and say, hey, Mr. Illegal, you have to leave in a month. And I was like, yeah, that's exactly what you should do for God, Wade. Like, send him a letter. It's a civil proceeding. It's civil. It's not criminal. Yeah, anyway. So that's a veteran. We're doing that too. I don't know if you saw this story. I've been wanting to get to it all week. You remember that raid in Chicago? You're in Chicago right now where they like repelled onto a building like we were in Fallujah and there's like the helicopter and that we stormed into the building with guns. And what we were told at the time was that that was like a Trenda Aragua. hot spots or something and that the guy that owned the building had told the government that like he can't get these gang members out of the building. That's what we were told. It turns out that like there was just another scam happening where some guy was was taking people's rent and not telling them that that he was not the owner of the building. And so the owner of the building was mad at that guy. So anyway, they end up doing like a military intervention of this building where they. like bring out a lot of citizens, a lot of black citizens live there. And then a lot of Venezuelans who were there under the TPS, not trying to Aragua. And the story interviewing all these people were like, we were treated like animals, like we were scared to death. We had children. To get rid of squatters. Yeah. To get rid of squatters. Seriously. To get rid of squatters. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, Tim, here's what's very important for people to understand. there's been a lot of plot it's given to Trump for closing the southern border, that he's gotten the southern border under control. And to some extent, you know, there are things that he's done that are to his credit on that point. But another part of this is the brutality here is part of that process. because the brutality and this brutal treatment is a means of telling the rest of the world, stay away from here, look what we'll do to you. And I think that not enough people have really focused on that, that the brutality is actually part of the border control. And Now, some MAGA listeners, I don't know how many MAGA listeners you might have, Tim. Maybe a few hate listeners, I don't know. A few hate listeners for sure. And I just saw a comment on YouTube I was very excited about from a woman who said that she used to listen to Matt Walsh and ended up down a reverse radicalization pipeline. She saw me on some other, some show I did with Emily Jisinski, who I like, who's conservative. You know Emily. Yeah. And now she's watching us. So you never know.

That's a brave world out there on YouTube. Some people can have fallen asleep and the algorithm send them to us and they wake back up. Next thing you know, they got David French. So you can speak to them. There are a couple out there. There you go. But there are some MAGA listeners who'd say, yeah. Yeah, absolutely. This is the whole deal. This is what it takes. This is deterrence. We're restoring deterrence or whatever. And so, you know, I think the brutality is in many ways inseparable from the larger strategy. And, you know, that's a very important thing for people to realize. And so, you know, when this moment ends, God willing that it ends, that we're, you know, we're not in this kind of permanent deep polarization. But. But let's just, let's assume for the sake of argument it's going to end. When this moment ends, there's going to be an absolute crying need for legitimate, real immigration reform so that we're not seesawing, you know, every four years between the whim of various presidents. And where one is irresponsible in one direction and the other one is utterly, grotesquely brutal in the other. You know, this is why you have to have a function in Congress. I mean, I'm always going to go back to that. Well, let's go to one, to the example you wrote in a column today of something that Congress could do. Maybe we could forward this on also to Senator Britt's office. That's something they could review as part of this DHS negotiation that's happening over the next few weeks. The story originated. I'll give people the backstory. Then you can kind of take what you think is a good solution. There's a letter sent an email by a Pennsylvania resident named John. And he wrote to a federal prosecutor named Joseph Dernbach urging leniency for an immigrant who is facing deportation back to Afghanistan. It was a very friendly note. Within hours, John received notice that DHS had issued a subpoena to Google to compel the company to release information about his account. Then days later, a police officer and two Homeland Security investigators showed up at his house to question him about the email. An absolutely insane story. Again, these kinds of things, we don't even have full visibility into everything that's happening. But I want you to talk about that and also some proposed remedies. So what we have here is something that you would really read about in totalitarian societies. It's something that, you know, interestingly, like JD Vance, you remember at the start of this term, he went to Europe and lectured Europeans about free speech violations and there was, you know, some coverage of the way. the United Kingdom has legitimately gone off the rails on free speech. Like, I am not going to defend the UK's free speech regime. But in many ways, a version of this where there's surveillance and if somebody says something that is subjectively deemed out of line by state authorities, there's going to be immediate state intervention. And this is like a, this is like from a college bias response team fever dream.

Except instead of like some activist undergrads and an administrator showing up at your door, it is federal agents. And this is just the tip of the iceberg on the way the federal government under Trump has been explicitly attacking and chilling the exercise of constitutional rights, much less the basic human rights violations we're seeing in the streets, right? And so... You know, there's a lot of reform proposals here for this. And, you know, you've seen the Democrats have come out with a, you know, X number of point plan about eyes with masks and, you know, dealing with masks and body cameras and all of this stuff. And I'm like, guys, these are just pinpricks. The real problem that we have is that if you have a president of the United States like we have here who will use the pardon power, the way he uses the pardon power, to excuse even violence on his behalf. And you have the legal structure we have now where federal officers have immunity from civil liability that state and local officers do not enjoy, then what you have is total federal impunity. You have federal impunity in the administration of law. Trump can do what he wants. His federal officers can do what he wants. And so if you're just going at masks, yeah, that matters. That's not irrelevant. It's not a tiny thing. But in the scope of things, it's a small thing. And here's the big thing. If you want to hold people accountable. We know exactly how to do it. It's not perfect. It has holes. It has gaps. But apply the same standards to federal officers that apply to state and local officers and that allow citizens to sue for violations of constitutional rights. And if you can prove that a clearly established right was violated, you will recover money, compensation, or punitive damages. And so the issue here is... From the government or from the person? Well, it depends. Then, you know, the liability is individual. Yeah. The liability is against the person. Now, the government could potentially choose to indemnify, but what we are talking about is the potential of imposing individual liability. Good. And here's the interesting quirk about this. The president's pardon power applies only to crimes. It does not apply to civil liability judgments. So the president may be able to keep you out of prison by pardoning you if you violate the civil rights of another citizen. But if you violate their civil rights and you're held liable in civil court. The president can't pardon that judgment. So he can keep you out of prison. He cannot keep you out of bankruptcy court. And I spent most of my time in law practice suing state and local officials over constitutional violations. And I know for an absolute fact that big liability judgments are a deterrent. They are. universities change their behavior in response to liability judgments, that police departments change policies in response to liability judgments. And this matters. And it is bizarre to me, Tim. And I think it's a legacy of the fact that historically and the balance between the federal and the state government, the state governments have been the primary threat to liberty in the United States, think slavery, Jim Crow. But it's flipped. It's flipped. And the federal government right now is the primary threat to liberty.

And because of the web of immunities it's created for itself, there's no accountability. And so the law I'm saying that should pass is just five words. It's five words that change the meaning of one law, 42 U.S.C. Section 1983, that allows me to sue the federal, the state, and local government authorities when they violate the Constitution. It's not creating special burdens on the federal government. It's giving them the same burdens. same legal liabilities that apply to other parts of the government. And that would be a massive legal reform that would have radiating positive effects, not just in the Trump administration, but for a generation to come. So to me, it's a no-brainer. Yeah, and Democrats should feel good with this. I think about things that flipped, I've always been kind of uncomfortable with unnecessary litigiousness, like over litigiousness, you know, and found myself when I was back to I was working in Republican politics, you know, being drawn to more of the tort reform side of things, creating rules to make it harder to sue. And it was a lot of times then the Democrats who are more in favor of types of laws like this would encourage, you know, that would allow for lawsuits to give people protections. That is kind of flipped as well. Like, Republicans recognize the power of this. And if you look at just two things that come straight to mind. Now, you mentioned this, the so-called don't-say-gay bill in Florida that was encopied in other places and the abortion bounty law in Texas, it was civil liability that was the cudgel that they used in both of those, right? Yeah. The idea was that schools would just stop, you know, including. whatever, the gay penguin book in their library because they were afraid that they might get sued, you know, by moms for liberty. And so, like, that was the enforcement mechanism, essentially, for that bill. And so, you know, there are ways to do this improperly. And, you know, we'd have to work through all of that in the future. Yeah, yeah. But just recognizing that that's a powerful tool is something, obviously, that the right has grabbed onto recently. And so it makes sense that the Democrats should fight back on that ground. Well, you know, here's why I think it's possible to pass, if not right now, because I'm not naive. I don't think it's just going to pass right now, but at some point in the future, until three minutes ago, this was very much a Republican position. And one of the reasons why it's very much a Republican position, libertarian-leaning Republican position. There are different factions, as we all know. And one of the reasons is the Obama administration during the Tea Party targeting. scandal, it became very clear to a lot of the Tea Party groups, and I represented dozens of them, that federal immunities made it very, very difficult to sue the federal government and to achieve any kind of meaningful result. It was a huge hurdle. These federal immunities were a huge hurdle when there was evidence that the IRS had. explicitly engaged in ideological targeting in its nonprofit approval process. And also years and years and years of left-wing violations of civil liberties in universities had also led a lot of conservatives to say, we need fewer immunities for all government officials, including state and local. And then I saw an interesting chart, Tim. This is going to tell you what you need to know about why the Republican Party is flipped against governmental accountability.

There was an interesting chart. It was based on data from fire, Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression. Full disclosure, I was president of fire 20 plus years ago. And they track censorship on campus. And they track it from, does it come from the left or does it come from the right? And there was a chart online that showed that even five years ago, the vast majority of campus censorship was coming from the left. Around 21, 22, right about the point of the rise of sort of the CRT panic, the lines crossed. And now the right is far more likely to censor even on college campuses than the left. And so is it any wonder? And then we're seeing systemic constitutional violations in the streets. We're seeing systemic constitutional violations against other universities, against law firms, you name it. Is it any shock that suddenly the Republican Party is less interested in government accountability? But it's still somewhere in there. It's still somewhere in there. And I think there's hope. The underlying problem here, the Fed's feeling like they can act with impunity and immunity on all of these things, does take us a little bit back to the Supreme Court decision about Trump's immunity. And I'm wondering what your current thinking is on that ruling. Well, I've always hated it from day one, from minute one, when I realized what it was saying. I hated it. But it's also been. misconstrued. It is not actually holding that the president can do whatever he wants in office and he's immune. That is not, you know, when he's exercising power within his core executive functions, he's immune. But the thing that's weird about the case, and this is what's difficult about it, is that not everything he does officially does he receive immunity for. But the line is so unclear. of where it is and where it isn't, that you can read the whole opinion and you'll have a conflicting notion of whether it covers bribery. You just don't know the answer to it. Now, what's very clear is... This is a pretty relevant matter since he seems to be getting bribed a lot. Yeah, when you're, when you've got people who've pumped vast amounts of money into your family's holdings and then you give them a pardon, it raises an eyebrow. So it's, I think it's a bad decision. that was, and any time you're going to read the decision and not really know clearly is a bribery going to, can you prosecute a president for bribery, then it's a poorly drafted decision. But it is not an absolute blanket waiver of all, you know, potential criminal accountability for a president. While we're on SCOTUS, a couple other SCOTUS stuff, they upheld the California redistricting this week, which is pretty noteworthy. They're MIA on the tariffs. There's a lot of folks kind of expecting that they might have, I don't know what the appropriate term is, whether they use their secret docket or the winter docket for that, but they seem to be in no hurry to deal with the tariff decision. That's an interesting one. Yeah. So I broadly agree with this.

But I only shakily broadly agree with this. And that is that the longer we go without an opinion, that the more likely it is that the tariffs are being upheld. Because one of the problems is what do you do, if you strike down the tariffs, so does that mean that the Treasury now has to repay all the money that it took in? Right. And that is a lot of money. And that amount of money is building day by day by day. And so part of me is wondering, okay, wait a minute. If they're going to have ruled the tariffs, the potential financial cost of that is escalating at a remarkable rate, right? And so, huh, or it could mean that, you know, look, you've got a lot of concurrences and dissents and you've got all this flying back and forth and is just not ready yet. So it's all speculation, but every week that passes, I'm more worried. that they're going to uphold the tariffs, and that's just based on nothing but exactly the speculation I just shared with you. I'll just go back to Minnesota for one second. Another story that I've just not had a chance to get to this week that was extremely remarkable is the story of this woman Julie Lee, I believe you pronounce her name, Julie Lee. She was working as an attorney in DHS and gets moved over to DOJ. And she is in court in Minnesota and getting upbraided by a judge who's like, you guys are not following any of our rulings, like dozens of examples of people that judges have said should not be in detention that are still in detention. And she basically like. as I like melts down to court and is like, fine, hold me in contempt. I would like to be in contempt. I need a good night of sleep. Like put me in jail for the night so I can get a good night of sleep. And as you learn more about her story, Chris Geider at Lawdorke did a good backstory on this. We'll put the link in the show notes. But basically like, she saw her job as like, I'm going to do as best as I can to get justice for some of these people that are wrongly detained and I'm quitting this job. And, you know, just in the meantime, I'm going to do anything that I can, which is pretty admirable. That story is happening simultaneously to the story that in the Minneapolis district, 75% of the prosecutors have quit in the district. They're struggling to find people to do the job to represent the government in these cases because the demands are so contrary to what, you know, folks feel like is in their integrity and what folks feel like is the law. When I saw today reports they're bringing in military lawyers, JAG officers, to try to fill in the gap. And let me tell you, they're not trained. I thought they fired all the JAG officers. I guess maybe that's why they need something to do. The very tip of the spear, you know, the JAG generals, but they're bringing in JAG officers. And they're not trained for these cases. I mean, yeah, you do quick refresher courses and you try to brush up on your way in. But they're not trained in this. She wasn't trained in this. And to just put this in perspective, when you see people leaving a U.S. attorney's office, for example, I want to put this in perspective for people who don't know much about sort of the culture of law practice. These are some of the most coveted jobs in the practice of law. Being an assistant U.S. attorney is an absolutely coveted job.

It is extremely competitive. You're not generally waltzing out of law school into the U.S. Attorney's Office. You've got to show, you've got to prove yourself in your private practice before you're going to be seriously considered, especially for the most elite offices. Now we're saying, you know, there was what, a former DOJ official was advertising on Twitter. Hey, apply to be an AUSA. That's mind-blowing. That's mind-blowing. Just to add one line on that. Apply to be an AUSA if you believe in executing the Trump agenda. Yeah. So, like, we're not looking for the best people. We're just looking for hacks. Yeah. What a meritocracy we have now, Tim. Bringing in a bunch of lawyers who've not practiced in the area, pulling in military lawyers. Yeah, just thank the Lord that they've done away with DEI. And we're now in the world where the best rise to the top. With each one of these Trump scandals, it's a layer upon layer. So you look at what's happening in the streets, and that's brutal, and that's horrible. And then you look at what's happening in detention centers, and it's brutal, and it's horrible. And then you look at what's happening to the Department of Justice, and you realize that there's generational damage being done to the infrastructure in the DOJ. And, you know, I was on a one-year reflection podcast with my friends at the dispatch. And then we were talking about a couple of aspects of Trumpism. One is... A lot of what he's done is vaporware. That, in other words, it's just a bunch of executive orders that the next president can come in and undo. But the damage from the vaporware will radiate for years. Even if you elect somebody who can walk in tomorrow, undo all of the Trump executive orders, you're going to still have a hollowed out DOJ. You're going to still have a lot of the new career highs, our second rate MAGA lawyers, whose chief qualification is ideological commitment to Donald Trump. You know, that's what you're going to inherit and broken and damaged institution. Just like, yeah, just as an example of that, I was thinking about this the other day. What about Kevin Warsh? Like, what do you do with Kevin Warsh? Like, do you fire the Fed chair who came in on an obviously corrupt deal? You're not going to be after that. Yeah, with Worse, you're going to be, because in the Cook case, I think the Supreme Court's going to be like 9081, leave these guys alone once they're confirmed. So, no, I mean, that's structural. And in some level, like, sure, you'll be able to hire any way USA's. But man, the career rolls in a lot of these other spots, it's going to be tough. Like the FBI, and that time story a couple weeks ago about the FBI, there was like 40 some odd FBI officials. And they were like explaining what they used to do and how they got pushed out. And that's a type of expertise that is very challenging to replace. Okay, there's our legal and immigration briefing. That's uplifting. Before I get to the Super Bowl, we're kind of running out of time. I wanted to pick your brain both on trad culture and on your article about liberalism and reflecting on what if you're wrong. Which one of those? Dealer's choice. Do you want to do, we can do the other one the next time you're on? Trad culture or liberalism? What would you like to do? Well, we've got the trad culture, a little trad culture story going on right now. So you guys have been covering it.

Go back to liberal. The short of the liberalism column, people should read it. I'll put in the show notes. It's like, hey, maybe reflect on the fact that you're not right about everything. It's good for everybody to do it. I'm working on that myself. It's a challenge. All right. Trad culture, you wrote this. Me and Sam Stein and Will Summer did a video last night breaking down this insane story among, you know, right-wing, trad, which is short for like trad, Catholic or trad, evangelical or traditionalist religious folks. And there is. There's just, there's a lot of craziness. I mean, there's, there's cheating, you know, accusations being thrown around left and right. You can go watch that. Yeah, you can go watch that video. But it has led to kind of some discourse around this or even, you know, some on the trad right who. ostensibly are authentic in their views or saying that we're being made to look bad by these new influencers who are just you know who just like the aesthetics of like the dad having muscles and being in charge and the mom being you know dressed up like a 50s housewife and and they like the aesthetics more than they like the actual policy and you wrote this even when they're not sexually libertine A lot of this trad culture embodies the works of the flesh from Galatians 5. Hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, and factions. So talk about that a little bit. Yeah. It was a very popular tweet, Tim. Was it? Yeah, I thought it was quality content. Here's what I mean. And Tim, I'm sure you've seen this. I prefaced it by saying a lot of this trad culture stuff is really libertine. And actually it's covering up for a lot of libertinism. And so you see a lot of sexual scandals and sort of in this subculture. But when I say libertinism, I'm just talking about sexuality. I'm talking about how culturally a lot of the post-liberals, the new Christian right, really on the one hand, proclaim that they're upholding core Christian values. At the same time, they really indulge. and relish in some really grotesque sense, including... You remember the old against David Frenchism nonsense from like seven years ago. Yeah. Saurah, by the way, I thought we were winning him back over. One of the key players of against David Frenchism was starting to kind of see the light, it seems like, and now has had a full snapback and was like gleeful in the murder of Alex Preti. So, you know, I think it's a good shorthand for me. As we said earlier, we welcome all people who want to convert. But anyone who is active in against Frenchism, I think, is a good shorthand for things. thinking that that's somebody who doesn't have good judgment. But, you know, one of the things in there, and a lot of these post-liberals live this out every day is...

the statement, I believe it was something along the lines of civility and decency or second order values. In other words, you know, when the stakes are high enough, you can be really indecent to other people. You can be very uncivil and you can be cruel, just cruel. And so what you see a lot of the libertinism of the post-liberal world in the trad world is cruelty, is manifested in indulging. What libertinism is a really indulging. your sort of your basis desires and then rationalizing and justifying. Like a lot of us mess up and we make mistakes, but we recognize that that's wrong. We apologize. We repent. We do better. Libertines don't do that. They take something that is wrong and they relish it. They love it. They indulge in it. And that's what you see in a lot of the trad and post-liberal world, even if they're not involved in the hypocritical scandals. They are very openly, joyfully, gleefully. cruel, vicious, deceptive, dishonest in their interactions with people. And that's what I mean by it. And the proof is just everywhere around you all the time. Yeah, I like that, though. Galatians side. JVL did a article about the beatitudes this week. And I had a similar reaction to yours. You know, people don't really like getting the beatitudes and then Galatians thrown in their face. But it's what it is. It is what it is. It is right there. And folks can interpret it. Ways that they feel is appropriate for their own integrity. Speaking of trad culture, we have a Super Bowl halftime show coming up this week. Bad Bunny is there. They added Green Day. I've heard some rumors about some guests. It should be fun. And Franklin Graham. evangelical leader posted this about the halftime show. Like most Americans, I've enjoyed watching the Super Bowl, but halftime shows began pushing moral boundaries and have become more and more sexualized. This year, they're having Bad Bunny perform. The NFL leadership is pushing the sexualized agenda. Thank you, TPSA, and Mrs. Erika Kirk for providing an alternative, the All-American halftime show with the agenda of celebrating faith, family, and freedom. Headlining the All-America halftime show is Kid Rock. Just an exemplar of traditional values. I have a game for you. I want to play a game. Should we go straight into the game or do you have any kid rock thoughts? Franklin Graham thoughts first. Let me just say this about Franklin Graham. Franklin Graham wrote an op-ed during the Clinton era saying adultery disqualified, you know, Bill Clinton. When the Stormy Daniels stuff came out, he said, that's just between Trump and his wife. And then when Pete Buttigieg ran for president, he said, you know, we can't have a gay man be president. The Franklin Graham moral ethos here seems to be pretty clear, which is if you're left-leaning and you're violating Christian morals and standards,

Well, you have no business in power. If you're right-leaning and you violate Christian morals and standards, well, whose business is that of yours, Tim? So anyway, that's the background. I wrote that up once and the American Family Association launched a petition drive against me. Why? What was their complaint? My yellow journalism, Tim. Did they object to any of the facts? No, no, no. No, no. You're yellow. You are yellow. I attack Franklin Graham, Tim. It's just you can't do that. Here's a fun game. It's inspired by Billy Eichner's Billy on the Street Show. And it's called Kid Rock or Bad Bunny. And I'm going to read you some lyrics. And you're going to guess whether the lyric is from Kid Rock and his traditional mores or whether it's from Bad Bunny and his sexualized anti-Americanism. Okay. Here's the first. Young ladies, young ladies, I like them underage, see. Some call it statutory. I say it's mandatory. Yeah, that's Kid Rock. I know that one. That's Kid Rock. Yeah. Yeah, that's Kid Rock. Very in the spirit of the Jeffrey Epstein moment, I would say. Here's another one for you. She opened up wide and put balls in her mouth. Next, the cutie started rubbing my back. She put her finger right between my booty crack. So I grabbed her wrist quick and said, hold up, slut. Ain't nobody sticking nothing in my butt. Do you think that's kid rock or bad one? So why are you doing this? There's only two more. I mean, I'm going to just go ahead and guess it's Kid Rock. That is Kid Rock, yeah. Okay, okay. Here we go. That also doesn't seem to be traditional Christian morees, but we're still going. Maybe this next one is a little bit more appropriate for Franklin Graham. Here we go. I pull them young and start fucking with their virgin minds. I give a fuck about your papa or your mother. Okay. Okay. That ends with I'll fuck you blind bitch. Yeah, that's Kid Rock. All right. Okay. Last one. Last one for you. Ready? Mm-hmm. No, actually. If you caret, divert. With encanto and with remorse, solo you have to live. A verano in Nueva York, Nueva York. Who do you think that would be? Okay, you're baiting me into saying it's bad bunny. That's going to be Kid Rock. No, that is bad bunny. Kid Rock can not speak Spanish. That is translated. If you want to have fun with charm and delight, you just have to live a summer in New York, New York. So, Tim, one thing I've learned from this is the next time I'm on here and you say to me, at the end we're going to play a game, I'm going to respond, we are not. We are not going to play a game. At the end. I apologize to Nancy for making it go through that. But, you know, I had done some fun on a Friday. All right, you got a Super Bowl pick for us? You got to pick anything? You know, only because Minnesota Vikings fans, for some reason, have been sentenced to eternal cosmic suffering. I think that Sam Darnold is going to be their Super Bowl winning quarterback. And they're going to be looking at that at him hosting the trophy.

And, you know, with him, the Seahawks hosting the trophy and then looking at their young quarterback that they gave him up for, who is not appearing to be like the, I'm rooting for him. I really am. I'm rooting for him. But it's looking like a bust maybe. Yeah. So I think it's just because the universe hates the Vikings. It's going to be the Seahawks. Yeah. I agree with you. But I've got some good news for Vikings fans. I'm wrong a lot. So betting against me is a good bet. So maybe the Patriots will win. And my other good news is if I'm right, I'm going to be in Minneapolis, not David French, but your Bullwark friends, unless you want to come. Do you want to come to our Minneapolis live show, February 18th and 19th? It sounds fantastic, but I'm going to be in Miami on those days. Oh, okay. Well, I think I got the better of that deal. We'll be with the Vikings fans of Minneapolis. We got a couple tickets left for the 18th show. So it's going to sell out probably this weekend. So go check it out. the bulwark.com slash events. David French, sorry about the game. Thank you, Tim, question mark. I appreciate you, man. We'll see you back here soon. Everybody else will be back Monday with Bill Crystal. Peace.

The Bullwark podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.