Trump vs. the Rule of Law: A 5-Year-Old Detained + Election Power Grab

Welcome to another edition of The Oath and the Office. I'm John Fuglesang. On this episode, the most normal sentence ever uttered in a functioning democracy. The president sent the director of national intelligence to Georgia to rummage through ballots from an election he lost five years ago. Nothing to see here. Just the nation's top intel officer hanging out at a county election office like she's browsing at a thrift store for ballot Scooby-Doo. I need someone smarter than me to make sense of this. Please, people of Earth, welcome the star of our show, Professor Corey Bretschneider. You know him and love him from his work in the poli-sci department at Brown. You've seen him on CNN, MSNBC, Time Magazine. You should already own the book, The Oath and The Office. Professor Bretschneider, it's so good to have you with us. Thanks, John. What a pleasure to do this podcast with you. And, you know, we started this show because we were worried about a president who was going to disregard the oath to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution. And, you know, I wish it turned out that we were totally wrong. And this is a normal presidency, but we know it's anything but. And the stories today really illustrate that. What you mentioned, the attempt to sue Trevor Noah, we'll talk about. Oh, we've got a lot. We've got Tulsi Gabbard and the Georgia Election Center raid and Trump saying the quiet part out loud about taking over the election. I want to talk about Trevor Noah and the Grammys. Epstein files as well. And the Epstein files now affecting Trump's new pick to run the Fed and do his bidding. But first, we have to talk about five-year-old Liam Ramos, who many of you got to know from a photograph of this little boy in Minnesota wearing the blue bunny hat with his Spider-Man backpack, a preschooler who was seized by ICE to be bait for his father, Adrian Alexander Cornejo Arias. They were sent to the South Texas Family Residential Center in Dilley, Texas. They are Ecuadorian asylum seekers. They are legal asylum seekers. And this week, what a blistering, blistering federal judge ruling ordering the release of both father and son. Professor, wow, Judge Byrie got fiery. I've become a real fan of outraged judge rulings in the Trump era. But when a federal judge says the government is ignorant of the Declaration of Independence and the Fourth Amendment, that's extraordinary language, right? I mean, that's not normal. It was a really tight, short, and brutal assault, a lesson, as he put it, for the government and how our basic system works. It's what we're really trying to do each week, come back to the basics of our law, of our Constitution, the documents that formed it. And really, this judge brings us back, and this is going to sound like an exaggeration, but read it. I'm urging listeners to read it, to the 13th century, because what he's really saying is that the writ of habeas corpus, which goes back to Magna Carta, literally from the 13th century in England, declaring that government can't just randomly hold people in prison, can't just detain them with no reason, and demand some reason. And the writ of habeas corpus, the ancient writ of habeas corpus, requires the government not act arbitrarily. And what is happening here in the petition for habeas corpus is this child is really demanding, and his father, to be told, what's the reason here for holding me? And what the judge says is not only is there not a good reason, it looks completely random, a violation not just of habeas corpus, which really goes to the foundation of the rule of law, but the Fourth Amendment right against unreasonable search and seizure. And, you know, we'll talk more about this, but one thing he doesn't mention that I think is so important is that undocumented people have rights under the Constitution, even if they're not citizens, even if they're not legally here, as it looks like is the case in this instance. Well, they are legally here. They're legal asylum seekers. So, I mean, if you are standing on our soil, it is legal to claim asylum. And this guy was doing everything by the books, which is, by the way, why ICE has been spending so much time at courthouses, because they're going after indiscriminate brown people who are following the rules. But please go ahead, Professor. Sorry. Yeah, I mean, I was just going to add that in the end, it might be that this is a deportation proceeding. They have a right to seek asylum. The judge makes it clear that in the end they might actually be deported. They're not going to be deported under the procedures that ICE used. They were completely unreasonable. But even let's assume that there's another case here. And this is, I think, just been lost in all this horrible treatment of detainees by ICE. But the court has said that even non-citizens, even undocumented people have a right to education. And the fact that this child was seized, I think he was coming back from school. You know, of course it's an interference with the right to education. That is a right of people, of persons, according to the Constitution. The court has made that clear. What's happened to our most basic laws that we have ICE acting in this lawless way? And that's the screaming point that this judge is making. And one last thing just about the Declaration of Independence. I love that part. He's really saying, what's the purpose of all these rights? It's a response to tyranny, to monarchy. And we're right back to the beginning, not back to before the founding of the country. Again, back before the 13th century. That's really the point of this amazing opinion. Okay, Corey, one of the deals with this podcast is that I have to ask the dumb questions so you can give the right answers and our listeners can feel smarter. And I'm here to be your deeply ignorant proxy, dear listener. I have yet to hear you ask a dumb question. I got to say, John. Well, I mean, we've talked in the past about how, you know, the constitutional rights are not a limit on humans. It's a limit on governmental power. And just to give a refresher here. Yeah, Judge Barry emphasized that even undocumented people are entitled to due process and basic constitutional protections. When our right wing friends try to compare this, well, Barack Obama and Joe Biden deported more people. Yeah, they did. But those people all had hearings. They weren't kidnapping them and dragging people out of cars by their hair and throwing them out the American gulag for torture without having a hearing in front of a judge. Can you please just quickly explain why equal protection applies regardless of immigration status and why this idea is foundational to American constitutional democracy? Our rights extend to undocumented humans that are here. Right. And I think to do that, we've got to do what this judge helps us to do, which is go back to the point of the American Revolution. It was to go beyond limits on the monarch that had been placed. And British democracy, although it was both democratic and also had a monarchy, had progressed beyond absolute monarchy. There were all sorts of constraints on what the administration could do. But of course, the American Revolution, this is the point about the Declaration of Independence, didn't think that those limits were enough on the king. and especially in relation to us, to the colony. And so when the king's abuses are pointed out, that isn't irrelevant to the Constitution. What we're trying to do in the Constitution is resolve the abuses of a king-like figure, including a president. So how did we do it? And this is your point, that we went to not just protect rights of citizens, and citizens, of course, have rights that are specific to citizenship, like voting, but to more broadly protect all people from arbitrary imprisonment. That's the writ of habeas corpus from unreasonable search and seizures. It's a Fourth Amendment that this judge talks about. And I've been adding this idea of equal protection of the laws after the Civil War, not limited to citizens, but a right of persons. And that's why the court has said, especially when it comes to children and their education, that they're included, too. Absolutely. So you mentioned how the judge opened with habeas corpus, the great writ, just as a refresher, professor, for the guys like me, who are confused by shiny things. Why is habeas corpus especially important in moments like this case with this five-year-old boy when we see executive power being exercised and weaponized against vulnerable people? You know, I think it's so important to think about the bedrock principles of what it means to live in a democracy and with the rule of law and a constitution. The phrase, the rule of law, not men, is very helpful here, right? It's meant to say we don't just live under an arbitrary tyrant. We have a system in which the law governs, in which that law is made by our democracy. So what is the point of habeas corpus? It is the foundational right that says, and I'll say it in the simplest possible way, that if government's going to seize us off the street or in our houses, it better have a good reason. And that's the presumption of our system, that anybody can say. And I'll just I want to say how this procedure works. You know, anybody who's held in American prisons and detention can petition a federal judge under the constitutional federal right to be told, why am I being held? And when government gives an answer, it's not enough to say, well, because I said so. And that's what J.D. Vance and Trump and ICE and Kristi Noem are all trying to say. And this judge, in such a brilliant way, is saying, no, that's not an answer. You have to have procedure. You have to have respect for rights. And that's not happening here. I want to see how remarkable it is seeing this angry judge quoting both Thomas Jefferson and then the Gospel of Matthew. Yes. And then Jesus said, let the little children come to me and do not hinder them. And then he quotes the Gospel of John. Jesus wept. I mean, we got some church and state in this ruling. And in the midst of all of this now, a shout out to Judge Reyes, who has just blocked the Trump administration from ending temporary protected status for 350,000 Haitians who are living in the United States. Now, this was set to expire. There is obviously no plan from this White House to renew it. These are hardworking folks who came here from Haiti. They are not able to go back. It is not safe for them to go back yet. And under President Biden, they were welcomed here. And under President Biden, we witnessed J.D. Vance and Donald Trump spreading hateful, evil, demonstrably racist lies about these Haitians stealing and eating pets. Now, this is a sore spot for me because these folks on this side pretend to be Jesus followers. The Republican governor said it wasn't true. Republican mayor said it wasn't true. Chief of police, the woman who reported her cat missing in the first place, later told the Wall Street Journal she found the damn cat in her own basement. and J.D. Vance actually went on the record saying that he knew it was a lie, but it's okay because you need to do this to get the media to talk about these kind of stories. Now, people have been terrified there'd be a mass roundup of hundreds of thousands of folks who can't safely return to Haiti because of the ongoing violence there and the ongoing instability. So this judge do a scathing comparison between George Washington and Kristi Noem. And once again, Corey, we see the judicial branch is the guardrail that is still holding just as it did in Trump's first term. Not so much the Supreme Court, but God bless these judges who are looking out for the least of us. Yes, and I have something to say about the Supreme Court, but first I want to give a shout out to this opinion as well, which talks about the hostility, and this is blunt language, that Kristi Noem and her team, the administration generally, has shown the hostility, as she puts it, to non-white people. And of course, that couldn't be a better description of what's going on here, and I'll go back to my theme of equal protection, you can't engage in our government at any level, unanimous. You can't discriminate based on your prejudice, based on arbitrary characteristics like race. It's almost the core idea of the equal protection clause. Now, there are limits to that. So in the travel ban case, my colleagues in our amicus brief and a brief that was cited by Sotomayor in the dissent, we tried to argue that even if it's people outside the country trying to come in that this equal protection idea, anti-animous idea applies. Now, the court rejected that in Trump versus Hawaii, but now we're reviving the argument when it comes to those inside the country. And thankfully, at least this judge is saying, it doesn't matter if the people, the Haitians that we're talking about are citizens. You cannot show racial hostility to a group and make a governmental decision, even one about questions that the federal government has control over, like immigration and residency status, based on hatred. And that's what's going on here. And, you know, this will go through appeals. This is a kind of first round. But it's such common sense based on the public statements that we've seen and the lies, the racist lies, as this judge puts it, against non-white people. So, you know, again, we are seeing a vindication by the lower courts. One more thing about the Supreme Court, John, which is so often in both these cases, I've just felt this extreme frustration. And I'm not seeing the media reporting on this, but you and I have talked extensively about it. A main power of these federal judges, both of these judges, has been stripped out as a result of the litigation, the Supreme Court's decision and the birthright citizenship litigation. And just to remind people, it used to be that what judges could say was, you know, there's a nationwide injunction. They could just say, for instance, in the case of children being seized, ICE can't go near school districts and use the case in order to have a nationwide block on systematic abuses of civil rights. But I think, you know, as great as these judges are acting in these cases, they're much more limited than they should be, partly because the Supreme Court and the most important abuse of power by a president, a presidential administration has stripped the power of these lower court judges to do as much as they should be doing. yeah so I mean there's much to cover here and we'll be talking about it in the weeks to come but I want to shift gears professor and bring it to uh the grammy awards I know you're excited about bad bunny uh I know you're excited I am Corey the the cure won a grammy the cure almost 50 years but the cure won a grammy and and Billie Eilish said no when I was 13 right hey no no the new the new cure album is so solid man I've been playing it non-stop and And Billie Eilish saying that no one is illegal on stolen land. Many highlights of this broadcast. And yeah, it's designed for young people. It's not designed to necessarily award music. It's designed to get ratings for a TV special. So it's very geared towards young people. And that upsets a lot of older folks and a lot of racist folks. And that's fun. It's designed to upset the straights. But the story that's eclipsing everything else at the Grammys is a joke from Trevor Noah that wasn't his strongest of the night, but it made the most impact. And I'm just going to quote it verbatim. Song of the Year is a Grammy that every artist wants almost as much as Trump wants. Greenland, which makes sense because Epstein's island is gone. He needs a new one to hang out with Bill Clinton. Now, Trump actually owns an island not far from Epstein Island, and we've got to talk about that someday because no one's ever flown into Epstein Island. When someone says, oh, when Elon Musk says, I never flew to Epstein Island, well, no one flies there. There's no landing strip. They go to other islands and then cross over. So we'll get to Epstein. But Donald Trump now says he's going to sue Trevor Noah for joking about Epstein Island. He never said actually he went there. He said he needs a new one to hang out with Bill Clinton. And he tried to cover his bases, Trevor Noah. I know him. He's a good guy. He threw in Bill Clinton to have some red meat for all the right wingers that were still watching at this hour. This seems constitutionally quite safe. I want to see Trump sue anyway and get to the discovery process. I don't actually think Trump's going to go through with it, but under New York Times versus Sullivan, I have learned a little bit about this from you. Under New York Times versus Sullivan, Professor, how protected is political satire about public figures, especially presidents? It's very protected. I have to say something about the Grammys and Bad Bunny and music in general. I mean, I think Bad Bunny has been incredible. I've been listening to the new album and to his kind of version of reggaeton. It's a dance record, man. I tell all these racists, play that Bad Bunny album while you clean your house. You can clean your house to it. You'll be a fan then. Yeah. But go on, please. And, you know, I think it's so important to see artists speaking out in a clear way. And Bad Bunny certainly has been speaking out against these awful detentions by ICE, this illegal behavior in as clear a way as possible. And, you know, that's wonderful that he's doing it because he is reaching people who might, you know, everybody should listen to The Oath in the Office, but his audience, I think, is a little bigger than ours, and he's reaching different people in a different way. And so his audience is a lot bigger than Kid Rock's as well. I mean, like they're having this alternate halftime show. Bad Bunny gets 83 million streaming views to Kid Rock's like, you know, 9 million. But go on, please. Yeah. And the guy is so mainstream. he bad buddy is so mainstream and unlike nikki minaj he's an american citizen but a lot of our friends on the right haven't learned these facts yet yeah well he's pointing that out that right puerto rico you know born in puerto rico you are a citizen as much as many trumpers want to deny it i'll say two i mean this is a little more off topic but i know it's a topic close to your heart that when it comes to music there's nothing more powerful than the bruce springsteen anti-ice song that's been released. A really incredible moment. So shout out to Bad Bunny and to Bruce Springsteen, of course. I mean, on your question, just to go back to it, here's what's frightening, John. There is no question that under the current way that we think about free speech, that satire is protected. And that joke is, you know, the definition of satire. He wasn't making an accusation against Trump. And more than that, that you really have to show in our current way of understanding the Supreme Court that there intentional malice towards an individual that even factual mistakes are protected And that for good reason because you know, you're getting sued every time on the oath in the office or on your show on SiriusXM that we make a mistake. We're not going to want to do it. We're not going to want to criticize Trump. And that's exactly what he wants. So we're protected under this doctrine of New York Times versus Sullivan that says, I'll be specific, that when you're criticizing a public figure, you're protected from being sued unless you're being malicious. But Trump is trying to change all that. He promised in 2016 to rewrite our libel laws. He's got justices like Thomas and possibly Alito pushing to get rid of these protections and to allow him to sue his critics into oblivion. What a frightening idea that is, but it might come to pass. I mean, legally speaking, if Trump did sue Trevor Noah, wouldn't discovery potentially expose far more damaging information about Trump himself? I mean, when you sign a law saying these documents have to be released and someone makes a joke about the documents you had released, I don't I mean, it's just more intimidation, isn't it? Yeah, I mean, and even going back to well before New York Times versus Sullivan, truth has long been a defense in libel cases. So when you sue somebody for libel, you're essentially saying that, you know, they lied or slander that you were lied about in public and your reputation was damaged. But one response to that is I didn't lie. I told the truth. That's an absolute defense to libel and slander. But, you know, what if you insinuated something that wasn't quite true? Or I'll go back to the actual case when the NAACP was criticizing a police chief that was attacking the civil rights movement, including Martin Luther King. this is the actual case, New York Times versus Sullivan, there were mistakes about little details of factual assertions of what the police chief had done. And the police chief tried to sue the New York Times and the civil rights groups that had taken this ad out. And what the court said so brilliantly was, we're not going to allow people to be sued when there are questions of politics, public matters, and people involved who are public figures. We're not going to allow them to sue for small mistakes. So that's what it would protect Trevor Noah. And it's not just, you know, if he could show that everything he said is true, okay, but that's too much to show. That's too much of a burden. He shouldn't even have to go there. And that's what that case ensures. And even if it's not this joke, you know, you should be able to make an insinuation with satire that might be not completely true because that's what free speech demands in a democracy. That's what it means to hold our leaders to account. Did I lose you, John? Did that make sense? I did a lot of cases. is no no i'm following all of it but i mean but again trump and his and his flunkies are all they've openly said they want to overturn sullivan or or weaken it so what would happen to journalism or political speech or comedy if those protections disappeared i mean what kind of right what kind of are we looking at here i mean let's let's get specific you know because you and i are doing this all the time. We have a podcast about calling this president to account. Of course, we fact check it. We do a lot of research. We're very careful as we're preparing it. But if the case was overturned, and let's say that we inadvertently made a mistake, that we said that, you know, Trump had gone to, this is a hypothetical, that a certain president had gone to Epstein Island four times, but he'd only gone three times, right, in this hypothetical example. And we were wrong, that we were off by one number because we didn't check enough sources. That would be an instance of New York Times versus Sullivan wasn't there where we could be sued into oblivion. Now think of what that would do to the podcast. Would we still be doing this? I think you and I would be like, this is scary. We talk about Trump all the time. Are we so sure that we're not going to make one small mistake that he's going to sue us? And by the way, it's not him. He'd have his people sitting there listening to podcasts like this, looking for that small mistake and then jumping on it. And that's what New York Times, which we saw them, protects against. And as we discussed last week, this is how authoritarianism deals with free speech now. They don't throw journalists in gulags anymore. They sue them into poverty. They know, Trump and Pam Bondi know, they have no case against Don Lemon and the three African-American journalists who covered that nonviolent church protest that had no property damage and no injuries. They were covering it. No law is broken. But that's not the point. The point is to intimidate other journalists, have them nervously checking their savings account. And Trump's whole MO has always been to sue people into oblivion with your unlimited resources, which is showing that our court system can be a weapon for the wealthy to use on the nonwealthy. Yeah, it's such a good way to put it. You know, I think, of course, he is trying to put people in prison by having prosecutions of Letitia James and James Comey. And now Don Lemon, his opponents, he wants to throw them in jail. and we had an unfortunate period of time during the Sedition Act, very early in our history, 1798 to about 1801 specifically, when that was routinely done. About 126 people were prosecuted under the Sedition Act. Trump is trying to bring it back. One of the cases that makes it very clear that the Sedition Act is unconstitutional is New York Times v. Sullivan, but it's so sophisticated in recognizing your point. I really am grateful about this case because it recognizes just what you said, that even if you're not throwing somebody in jail, there are other techniques that the rich and powerful can use to silence people. And I keep coming back to our example. They could threaten us that we wouldn't want to do this anymore. It would be too frightening if your entire financial existence was dependent on the guarantee that you weren't going to make a small factual mistake. And there's really a case that protects us against that kind of weaponization of the courts, of the use of libel and slander, to stop people from speaking out and holding people, the powerful to account. And that's New York Times versus Sullivan. So important. And as you say, Trump is figuring it out. You know, he said he wants to shut down the libel laws. That's what he said in 2016. Now he's figuring out how to do it. And he's got allies on this office. Well, then it will be great to watch Barack Obama retroactively sue him for the years of racist lies that he wasn't really a citizen. That'd be great to see. By the way, again, Trevor Noah never said he spent time on Epstein Island. But Trump sure is anxious to deny this. And by us talking about this fake lawsuit, we're not talking about the damaging evalation. So I guess it worked. But you're right. He's going to send a BS lawyer letter and then he's going to scamper off and hide before the discovery phase. We got to hit a break. When we come back, we have to talk about how they're trying to steal Georgia 2020 again. This is a bizarre story and I need your help, Professor. Don't go away. Right back on The Oath in the Office. Here's what you've been missing on the Stephanie Miller Happy Hour podcast. Telling women to smile more part of his presidency. When they talk about child rape. You're being fairly unpleasant when you're talking about child rape. Stephanie, you're being so unpleasant right now. I just, I, first of all, the whole Hillary and Kamlo were right about everything part. So we were already mad enough. And now, first of all, what did he say in there? And I'm, so it came out and I'm not in there. What do you say? I'm not in there at all. or I'm not something like that. Something like that. There's nothing about me in there. Oh, I see. If you don't count the 58,000. Oh, my God. Okay. And then once again, what are we most pissed about? No other reporters stand up for her. Like in the quiet piggy one. What the actual, what is wrong with our media? Subscribe to the Stephanie Miller Happy Hour podcast on Apple Podcasts, stephaniemiller.com or wherever you get your favorite podcasts. Welcome back to The Oath in the Office. I'm John Fuglesang along with Professor Corey Bretschneider. Professor, I want to just review some facts here for this Tulsi Gabbard Scooby-Doo mission in Georgia. We already know that Trump already tried to steal Georgia in 2020. We've all heard him on tape telling the Secretary of State, Find me 11,780 votes. Not count them all. Not verify them. Make sure it's the right number. Manifest this. Georgia had multiple recounts headed by a Republican secretary of state who voted for Trump. They found no evidence of voter fraud. The courts rejected him. The recounts confirmed the loss. Judges laughed him out of the room. Giuliani lost $148 million for lying about this election. So naturally, the next step is wait five years and send the director of national intelligence to an FBI raid to seize ballots from an election that has been audited far more times than Trump University. This is not election integrity. This is election necrophilia. So by any measure, Corey, the FBI seizing truckloads of ballots from a five-year-old election is unprecedented. But from a rule of law standpoint, what alarms you the most about this search? Well, you know, John, we've had a lot of amazing guests and amazing episodes, but one of my favorites is certainly last week when we had Tom Jocelyn, who literally wrote the January 6th report for the House committee, helped America to understand this plot to steal an election, this attempted coup, and how at the level of the states and the demand for fake electors, the demand for votes, literally the number of votes needed to win, how all that fit in with both the violence at the Capitol and the pressure on Mike Pence to really refuse to certify legitimate votes and to throw things to the House of Representatives where, you know, they had counted the votes and under a pretty obscure procedure in the 12th Amendment, the House of Representatives would have voted to elect Donald Trump president. They had it all figured out, but it was stopped and it was uncovered largely by, I was going to say by Jack Smith, but by Jocelyn first, who exposed the plot with his committee and really put pressure on Smith to bring those, I should say, on Merrick Garland to appoint Smith, who brought those charges, largely based, I think, on the research that Jocelyn and his team had done. So why am I detouring into that? Not just because it was a great episode, because I thought one of the most important points of the whole episode was Jocelyn saying it's still happening. I mean, that's what I took away from it, that it never ended, the plot to steal the election. And here we are, Trump ordering Tulsi Gabbard to basically do his bidding using the power of the national government to try again to steal elections. And when you combine that with his horrific, I mean, some of the worst statements, and I know we're about to get to this, saying that we need to nationalize elections when they are in the control of local governments, as you saw in Georgia, what that would mean and would mean that he could make stuff up and steal elections. We'll get there, but I got to talk about Tulsi first. Yeah, sorry. Yeah, I have too many dumb questions about Tulsi Gabbard first, Professor, before we can even get to Donald Trump's saying the quiet part out loud because they didn't campaign on this in 2024, right? They didn't bring this up once in 2025. They didn't need to do this until right before the midterms. So, I mean, this isn't about 2020. This is about how they want to find 11,000 votes in 2026. There is no obvious legal reason for the director of national intelligence to be present at a domestic election raid. It's getting the conspiracy theories fired up. And I've got a few that I'm kind of obsessed with. But what is her involvement there signal to you? Well, you know, the federal government is supposed to be set up in a way where the president can't weaponize the director of national intelligence or the FBI to simply go after political opponents. But here's the problem. All of the ways of isolating the president's political ambitions and desire to win at all costs have been separated from institutions like you mentioned Tulsa Gabbard, but of course also the FBI was through norms. And that after Nixon, there were a series of ways in which the Justice Department in particular was interacting with the FBI in a way to isolate them from the president, specifically in the president's ability to, as Nixon did, to seek the prosecution or destruction of political opponents. But the legal barriers are few and far between. There should be, and we did have periods of time where there would be independent prosecutors, for instance, that could look into wrongdoing. But all that's gone. It's all subsumed under the president. And some of the worst details in this reporting, most frightening, is how obvious and direct the control and order has come from the president of the United States to look into this so-called wrongdoing, really to mess with elections. Yeah, it's terrifying. It's so scary. New York Times reported, Professor, that Tulsi Gabbard called Trump from inside the FBI meeting and put him on a speakerphone with these loyal FBI agents investigating on Trump's behalf. Like he's given them a workout pep talk. This is the president of the United States personally hyping federal agents in an investigation that directly benefits him. How is this not a mob boss checking in on the crew? I mean, how does this compare to basic DOJ norms about independence and non-interference? You know, there are so many norms that are being flouted. And again, Nixon did a lot of what we're talking about. Of course, most famously in Watergate itself, it was an attempt to interfere with an election. And the presidents and the people, I detail all the unknown instances that DOJ was looking into in which he went after his opponent, Daniel Ellsberg, the attack on Ellsberg's psychiatrist's office. and as I get out through my one of the last interviews with Ellsberg that he gave before he died also the attack to kill him and incapacitate is how some members put it and Nixon's dirty tricks involved the CIA it involved the plumbers who are sort of rogue unit within the White House and certainly he was willing to weaponize even the IRS and agencies that were supposed to be independent so after Nixon these norms that we were talking about were established certainly within the Department of Justice, to create a situation in which there was independence for the FBI and for the Attorney General and for all the employees of the Department of Justice from being able to be co-opted. But these were all done through regulations, through norms within the department. And Trump, you know, when it's not legal, when it's not criminal violation, for instance, to do what Trump did, and when you have the immunity case to protect him further, He can just blow through those norms. So we're right back to Nixon using what are supposed to be internationally focused institutions like the director of national intelligence, the FBI, combining them. That alone is a violation of the norm and then using it to try to steal elections. And, you know, we're right back to where we started with Nixon. No, it's I mean, to me, this is like, you know, this five year old. It's like watching Star Wars try to retcon Episode nine through TV shows for the geeks out there. But here's my question, because we always have to bring up the stupid part. And this is a stupid bunch of humans. By speaking directly with the FBI agents investigating on his behalf, didn't Trump just give ammunition to any future defense if they ever decide to charge anyone in this case? I mean, his conversation with the agents doing the investigation that would help him would have this whole case dismissed as a vindictive prosecution, right? Or is this just me getting too big for my britches here? Well, you know, it's hard to show, Vindictive, that the motivation of the prosecution is enough to undo guilt. So that's one worry that maybe not, even though it is so egregious, you would hope so. But I also don't think it's necessarily the point here is to bring charges, because what we've seen in the cases that we talk about so often in Don Lemon and in Letitia James and James Comey is the attempt is to shut down critics. And whether it's libel laws or using the FBI to conduct a raid, it's to frighten people. And even if they can't get a conviction in court, as we keep saying, it's part of the technique of the web of going after opponents. Trevor Noah probably won't be successfully sued, but are comics going to think twice about going after him? Even the joke itself, you said this, but I don't want listeners to miss this. It was so safe. He had to throw Bill Clinton in there because he was worried about looking biased. I mean, he's even thinking of it. That's in itself. The First Amendment scholars talk about a chilling effect. And the idea is, like, even if speech isn't shut down formally the way that it was during the Sedition Act, you can scare the hell out of people. And threatening libel, threatening to get rid of New York Times versus Sullivan, even if you don't do it, threatening these prosecutions and this raid, even if it doesn't result in prosecutions, it is a chilling effect. That's the danger. I completely agree. And I just want to say to you FBI agents who took that call, if you're listening, just remember, Trump has immunity for crimes. Y'all don't. And history is history is littered with people who thought they were just following orders right up until the subpoenas showed up. So in the midst of all of this, Corey, I just have to do a sidebar. Can I say, John, I got to interrupt because I just love that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think I think we need an oath in the office bumper sticker that says Trump has immunity. You don't. And you don't. In the midst of all this mishigas, and I don't know if this is going to wind up being connected, but a whistleblower complaint against completely unqualified DNI, former Democrat who hated Trump, Tulsi Gabbard, who then flipped for power. There's a whistleblower complaint against her that is so sensitive that for months the administration has been figuring out how to tell Congress it exists. This is new This is not how whistleblower laws work And the complaint directly concerns Tulsi Gabbard Again this is the director of national intelligence Directly concerns her, implicates another federal agency. It may involve executive privilege, and it has been stonewalled and covered up without precedent. And they asked about it. Her office said it's baseless and politically motivated, which I think is a fancy way of saying stop asking questions before this becomes a Netflix documentary. I should say that Tulsi Gabbard has a long, cozy record of defending dictators and adversaries. She loves Putin. She loved Assad when he was killing people in Syria. She has not been present for major intel briefings. And apparently the reports are that she's not trusted inside the intel committee with good reason. And yet this is the person Trump sends to Georgia to chase his election fantasies. So the question I have, Professor, is what's more likely that Tulsi Gabbard on her own uncovered earth shattering evidence missed by dozens of courts and state officials and DOJ investigations five years and Republican election officials couldn't find five years ago? Or is it more likely that Donald Trump picked an obedient supplicant with compromised credibility to help him launder another lie? Yeah, I don't think this is a hard question. And some very, very hard questions today. I'll give this to an easy one. It's very clear that he's ordering the FBI here, that he's ordering Tulsi Gabbard to do all of this. And, you know, we've got to think, too, about how we recover. And we need criminal legislation that protects America against abusing its national intelligence, its CIA, to be engaged in domestic abuses. We went through this in the 1970s with the CIA investigation by Congress and by institutions like the New York Times uncovering how many abuses there had been in Latin America and other places. And now we're seeing the director of national intelligence abuse her power in the worst possible way to help Trump spread the lie that, you know, there's election fraud against him. And to further the conspiracy of January 6th, to go back to Tom Jocelyn's point. We need to make this criminal. And I think that we never really reckoned with how dangerous Nixon was and Nixon's abuse of foreign intelligence. And in this information war that we're in, it becomes all the more important. I'd like to see an iron wall that prevented anything like the director of national intelligence being involved in domestic investigations like this from ever happening again. They weren't able to cover up a whistleblower complaint against the president call. But this whistleblower complaint against the director of national intelligence, who is a person with a problem with honesty, has been locked away. I mean, is there any legitimate justification for covering this up and blocking Congress from receiving such a complaint? I mean, what does that mean for Democratic oversight when the president can just cover up whistleblower complaints involving the executive branch? Yeah, you know, I'm always looking for themes, and this relates in an interesting way to free speech and Trevor Noah. The whole idea of a democracy relies on information flow, the voters who are going to make decisions about how our country should proceed, that we know what's going on. And if you silence the critics who are trying to hold Trump accountable, including satirists, that information flow doesn't happen. And a related idea is whistleblowers. That's the reason for all these legal whistleblowing protections so that we the people, the citizenry, can hear what's going on and to hear about abuses. Relatedly to the inspectors general who have been shut down within various government agencies who are also supposed to provide information. So what this war is, is as much, and we've talked about this with Malcolm Nance and others, it is an information war. And so, yeah, whistleblowers are a threat to the regime and silencing them as much as possible. That's what's going on here. So let me bring this full circle then, because this is a very long story. And again, we don't know if the whistleblower event is related, but it sure seems to be. But all of this is going on because subtlety is not Trump's thing. Neither is game. Trump goes on disgraced and loathed by MAGA, Dan Bongino's show, his new old show. And he just blurts it out. He just ran a focus group on stealing an election. He said Republicans should take over the voting, should nationalize the voting, and should take over elections in at least 15 places. So we're not even pretending anymore, Professor. Nationalize the voting doesn't mean election security. It means put elections under this felon's personal control. Now, I have learned from you, elections are run by states by design. I know a federal takeover requires Congress. I mean, this isn't dementia or paranoia. This seems to be a playbook. What do you make of this guy saying that from a constitutional perspective, he's going to take over or nationalize our elections? I mean, we're well into Mussolini and Franco territory here. I think, you know, I've been teaching the Federalist Papers to my class and shout out to them who see the connections. And I'll make it extremely obvious. Madison says in the Federalist Papers, you know, there are two kinds of checks on power. One is department to department that we have Congress checking a president. We have the court checking a president. So we're not going to have a dictator. Well, that turns out not to be a terrific check when the Congress is controlled. He didn't anticipate the rise of political parties when it's controlled by the president's party. And when the court is essentially controlled by the president's party, those checks don't really work well. The anti-federalists, those who urged us not to ratify the Constitution, predicted exactly that, that you would get the president acting as a sort of co-conspirator with the other branches, especially a criminal president, as Patrick Henry used the phrase. But there is one check that Madison talked about that I think is working in a better way, that we can rely on more, although it's being challenged. And that's the role of the states. We don't allow elections to be controlled by the federal government through one centralized person, because if that person is the president and his cronies, they can cheat. And if you think of why the plot failed on January 6th, there were a lot of reasons. But one was that states refused to many states to send these fake electors. And there was a recognition, too, that the vice president of the United States wasn't going to usurp the role of the states in sending electors. Now, imagine that that system is wiped away and the real control over, you know, you'd have the same person. This is what ties to the FBI story. Sending the FBI in order to find a fake election fraud, claiming fraud every time he lost in any election or his party lost in congressional elections. So you nationalize the elections, you take away that main Madisonian check. The idea of dual sovereignty, that we have a federal government and we also have sovereignty of the states, that's protecting us right now. Of course, that's had a bad history, too, an anti-civil rights history. But right now, it's the main threat, I'd say, that's keeping us from full-on dictatorship. Wow. Okay, so last question on this. I know we see parallels in other countries where leaders use legal or rhetorical groundwork to discredit elections. And absent Congress, Trump can't legally do this. Here's my dumb question for this block, Corey, and then we'll take a break as I know we want to talk Epstein. Why does the Constitution deliberately place election administration primarily with the states? I know it's a dumb question, but what is the danger if a chief executive tries to centralize that power under him? Well, I think, you know, Madison's really trying to respond. I'm going back to James Madison, the federal space. He's trying to give the best response he can to your question. The question is, what's to prevent the president from becoming a dictator and taking all the elections, say, for House of Representatives and making it all about ensuring that he wins and stays in power? That kind of critique about a criminal president. And his answer is, well, we don't have a unitary system in which the president controls everything. We have the role of states as having independent powers. And regulation of elections has got to be one of the most important ones. and that prevents against cheating of the most bold kind. We've seen this president again and again, not just do it by sending the FBI, for instance, to look into fake election fraud, not just in January 6th, which is the main smoking gun, and I urge listeners again to listen to the details last week of how he almost succeeded in stealing this election. But if he's able to wrestle control over elections, including questions of fraud, you'll see exactly what he said. did when he sent the FBI in. And what he, you know, listen to him. This is one of the most frustrating things that I've seen from commentators, not paying attention to what he says. When he says he wants to nationalize elections, we know what that means. He wants to steal them. And that's really what's keeping it from happening is local control. Amen. We got to hit a break. But when we come back, we got to talk about this new Fed chair, Kevin Warsh, because Donald Trump really, really does not want an independent Federal Reserve. We've known it for a long time. He wants it to be obedient, but apparently he wants it pretty creepy too. Back in a moment, this is you with In the Office. One million downloads. That's the listenership that Good News for Lefties has gotten since we started bringing you positive news stories for progressives every day of the week. These may be difficult times, and the headlines may seem bleak. But if you believe in justice, progress, and democracy, you are not alone. There are millions like you. And there is reason for hope in the news every single day. That's what we remind you on Good News for Lefties and America. Every day of the week, positive news stories for progressive listeners. Because no matter how disturbing the headlines might be, there's always hope that we can build on for a better tomorrow. One million downloads and more coming. Good news for lefties and America. Listen on this platform at goodnewsforlefties.com or wherever podcasts are heard. Welcome back to the Oath in the Office podcast. I'm John Fugel saying, hey, Professor Brett Schneider, have you heard the Springsteen song yet? I have. I have, as I mentioned before, enthusiastic about it. It can do, music can do things that just claim, you know, legal analysis can't. And Bruce has done both. I mean, it seems to have legal analysis, but also to have music that the way that he says that they claim it's self-defense in these two cases, but we saw what happened. and, you know, the bluntness of it and the clarity. So I just really, I was thrilled and heartened to see it. I think, John, you interviewed Bruce Springsteen at one point, right? Is that correct? Yes, I have. I've been blessed to have a lot of the E Street Band on our SiriusXM show. I got to interview Bruce years ago when I was very young for VH1. And just an absolute prince. I mean, I can't tell you what a lovely guy he is. And, you know, this is everything they wanted Bob Dylan to be. Bob Dylan hasn't done a political song in 40 or 50 years. Bob's not going to do it. And Springsteen is everything they told us Elvis was, but Elvis couldn't play guitar or write songs like him. I mean, he is really the greatest rock star this country has produced for me. And I want to recommend to you and our listeners, check out Billy Bragg's song, City of Heroes. It's a very stripped down acoustic number. Billy Bragg has been a fantastic advocate for working people and for justice and racial justice. for decades. I remember I worked when I was very young. I worked at the rally for Nelson Mandela at Yankee Stadium and Billy Bragg was one of the artists who performed. City of Heroes is just as good as the Springsteen song. It will turn you on. Trust me. Now I want to talk about... Can I ask you one more question, John? Yeah, of course. I'd much rather talk music than talk about pedophiles. Go ahead. I mean, we have a moment and I don't know how many of our listeners know that you were a VJ at VH1 and how extensive of course, and your expertise is about music, but this is a chance for some of them who don't know to hear it. I mean, you introduced me to David Crosby, of course, in the Sirius XM studio. Oh, that's right. I did. Yes. An amazing moment. Oh, I loved him. I loved him so much. What an amazing chance to meet a real hero. And of course, Crosby was involved. And to my mind, and I'm interested in what you think after Kent State in this amazing song about the massacre there. I mean, do you think this, I mean, that I think came to define the anti-Nixon realization that, you know, murdering students was not okay and that Nixon really was moving in this tyrannical direction that we weren't going to tolerate. And that song did it in a way that was so powerful. Do you see an analogy between the Springsteen song here and Crosby or is it hard to match? well first off uh ohio is really more of a neil a neil song uh that was that was all neil young but um and he wrote it in one day it's not crosby stales nash and young or it's yeah but yeah but it's it's but neil it's neil sang it neil wrote it you know i i keep looking for this corollary and we see it sometimes with hip-hop artists we see it sometimes with rock artists artists who are willing to take the stupidest thing that humans have ever invented fame and use that fame to help the less fortunate, use that celebrity to advance issues of social justice. A lot of older people hate when actors do this and when actors use their award speeches to pontificate. And yeah, sometimes they're tone deaf and they came off as preaching and thirsty and it doesn't always work well. Springsteen is someone who's always hit the right notes with this. I mean, this guy won an Oscar for a song about a man with AIDS in the early 90s. Like this man has always, born in the USA was the greatest act of artistic cultural resistance against the Reagan regime when I was a kid. He's never shied away from it. He's always lent his hand to causes that uplift the working man. And people mock him all the time for being, well, Springsteen does it himself in better days. He's a rich man in a poor man's shirt. But the reality is that there's rich people who fight to have their own taxes raised. And then there's rich people who fight to protect their wealth and cut funding for the less fortunate. Robert F. Kennedy Sr. Robert F. Kennedy was a guy who was born of incredible wealth. And the more famous he became, he argued for raising his own taxes. Rob Reiner was a very wealthy man who grew up wealthy and argued to raise his own taxes. Bruce Springsteen votes for the people who try to raise his own taxes. That is a very unique form of patriotism that I think we need to celebrate a lot more. And it's also, if I heard you right, that there could be forms of celebrities speaking out against injustice that is just them pontificating. But what Neil Young, and thanks for the correction there, it's my turn to make mistakes and not understand things when we're talking about music. What happened there in this Neil Young song wasn't just speaking out, of course, it was the creation of an amazing art piece that shifted the terrain and that you see Bruce, of course, And I certainly agree doing that here with this amazing song against ice. And I should also say, because I'm thirsty, that I told Stephen Stills this and I told Graham Nash this and I told David this many times. I will always believe that Crosby, Stills and Nash helped end the Vietnam War. And Bob Dylan has said he thinks it, too, that their activism and their music and the way they presented their music in the 1960s. I wasn't around, but for all that I've learned about the era, that their music helped culturally to turn the tide against this war. And I think that's a profoundly moral act for an artist to undertake. I mean, I've got to ask one more question, John. Why are we not seeing more of this? I mean, we have these two instances that we've talked about where ICE is, you know, we have songs calling out the evil of what's happening. but I feel like during the Vietnam War I mean correct me if I'm wrong there was more of it that was part of the music landscape so why are we not seeing it as a commercial of the music industry? No I think a lot of artists look here's what I say on this one I don't get to impose my will on other artists right I would love Bob Dylan to do more political music he really hasn't since Hurricane 50 years ago maybe some would say neighborhood bully in the 80s but like you know if Bob Dylan doesn't want to write protest anthems in his 80s, it's not his job. I would love to see Paul McCartney take a braver stand. Paul McCartney takes really brave stands on animal rights, on gun violence. He made one joke once about George W. Bush. That's as brave as he got. You know, I think of young Paul McCartney getting banned on the BBC for writing Give Ireland Back to the Irish, which is still a banging wing song 50 years later. I would love to see these artists put their popularity on the line when you've got hundreds of millions of dollars. And maybe it's okay if a few right-wing people don't buy tickets to your live shows or don't buy them. No one buys albums anymore anyway. So you're not taking a head. But it's not my place to impose my will on an artist. Artists have to do what they want. And there's a lot of times when I just want to do stand-up, you know, about drinking and sex and dogs and cats. And I wouldn't want someone to tell me I have to talk about anything. But yeah, it grieves me. Obviously, in the hip-hop community, you've got I mean, Chuck D and Public Enemy have just been so consistent for decades. At most def there plenty plenty of MCs in hip that are very very political and I like to see more of it I mean the Black Eyed Peas started being very political and then they decided they wanted to hire Fergie and make a lot of really successful questionable pop music I love everyone to be like Sean Penn and put your popularity on the line but it not an artist's job. I wish they would, but it's not their job. Yeah. I mean, I push back a little bit. I think, you know, this is not a moment to be caring about your MAGA ticket buyers or your fan base that wants to see you transcend politics. It's not time to transcend politics. It's time to do what Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young led, I've now learned by Neil Young did, which was to take a very clear stand against the murder of people, or in this case, the awful abduction without any rights. This is not a partisan moment. And so I just hope this is the beginning. We have seen it with Bad Bunny and we've seen it with Bruce Springsteen and with Billy Bragg. I agree. So, you know, let's have more. But again, like, but like, you know, it comes in interesting places. I mean, look at Kimmel. Like, Jimmy Kimmel is going to, you know, Jimmy Kimmel is going to get a Presidential Medal of Freedom someday. Right. I mean, you know, because Trump went after him. I mean, Don Lemon, he's not an artist, but I mean, we do see it, you know, and we do see resistance in unexpected places. No one talks about how Monday Night Football is really the hero of getting Kimmel back on the air when Trump tried to censor artists. because it was Monday Night Football that said to Sinclair affiliates, okay, you want to keep the show off the air? You're not getting us. And, you know, I'll praise big corporations. I'll praise Disney when they occasionally stand up and do the right thing. And I will praise artists for doing it as well. It's very frustrating to me. I mean, I think there's a lot of artists who would actually, their popularity would benefit from taking a stand. And at this point, I don't think it's partisan to call out human rights abuses. I think it's partisan to play dumb about human rights abuses. I think that's the partisan angle on this. And I want to bring it to the new FedShare pick. I'm going to wait for this transition. I'm looking for it. Well, I don't have a transition for you. I love this topic, and I could talk about it all day, but I don't want our listeners to grow old in this episode. But I'll talk about this with you anytime, because it's very important to me. And, like, you know, there's artists who have the guts to do it. But, again, it's not their job. It's not their job. I wish they would. Yeah, I mean, it is this moment, I think, in which constitutional law and all these ideals of the founding that we're talking about, and of course, the news stories that we're covering, you know, have to intersect with the culture. And there has to be a way of capturing people emotionally. And that's what this Bruce Springsteen song does. That's what Ohio does, even when I hear it now, even though it's not something I lived through. And, you know, I think just paying attention to it really does, although it seems like a different topic, music and culture. It's so much a part of what this podcast is about. It's not a different topic, exactly. Look at Nina Simone. Look at Gil Scott Heron. Look at Billie Holiday singing Strange Fruit. There's an incredible tradition of artists actually using, not just using their platform to fight for bigger issues than themselves, but it being commercially viable as well. I mean, you got a good hook. Look at Creedence Clearwater Revival. John Fogarty deserves the Presidential Medal of Freedom, in my opinion. He wrote Fortunate Son, and then he wrote the best song about the Iraq War, Deja Vu, all over again. So I'm a big believer in it. And, you know, there's artists that I would love to see be more brave. But I've learned over the years, Professor, I can't impose my morality on another person's artistic output. I just can't. I want them all to be like Bruce. But, you know, that's – and I think it's good for your career too. But I'm grateful for the ones who have the guts to do it. But we do have to get to the Fed, which is morally the opposite of Bruce Springsteen. So we've talked a lot about how Donald Trump can't stand that Jerome Powell and the Federal Reserve are independent and the way he strong armed him all year to cut interest rates to hide the negative impacts of these tariffs. And he's gone after he's trying to sick the DOJ on him. It's just shameful and embarrassing. And it's easy to overlook because there's so much what the F's coming at us every day. So now Trump's not really waiting for Chairman Powell to leave. He's appointing his replacement, this guy Kevin Warsh. And this is a fascinating chap. Close family ties to Trump. He's, they believe, the son-in-law or grandson-in-law of Ron Lauder. Political connections and what an Epstein history. Kevin Warsh appears in these emails that were released on Friday so many times. I don't really know if this nomination is already dead in the water, but I want to ask you about it anyway. Why is Federal Reserve independence from presidential pressure so critical to democratic stability in this country? I hate that we need to remind people of this. Yeah, I mean, I do think that it's worth going in depth on this because the Federal Reserve is created by Congress. And like many independent agencies, it's supposed to be insulated from the most gross political decision making. And all Trump wants to do is lower interest rates to stimulate the economy in as fast a way as possible. And that's not the Fed's job. The Fed's job is to care about unemployment and to look out for the danger of inflation and to use their best judgment accountable to Congress. And this Fed chair has been brilliant about reporting to Congress, cultivating relationships with Congress. But that's, as it's known, the dual mandate. Now, you know, the question now about this nominee is whether or not there's a debate among economists. Some are saying, actually, this guy is really not going to do Trump's bidding, that he hates inflation and that he actually doesn't like cutting interest rates, that he's going to bring them up and that he cares about inflation. He's not going to just do Trump's bidding. So that's one. I think the markets have largely reacted thinking that. I'm not exactly sure why, but I think that's almost the mainstream reporting. But Paul Krugman and others, and I take it you, have a very different way of seeing it, and I'll add myself to this too, which is this guy doesn't have principles. It looks like he's somebody who wanted to keep interest rates high during Biden because he was worried about a stimulation of the economy that could help Democrats in a future election. And if Trump wants lower interest rates, it's not a matter of principle. He's going to give Trump what he wants, that he really is a sycophant. and Krugman goes so far as to say too I don't have the expertise that Krugman has Nobel Prize winning economist from Princeton now a Cooney, New York Times columnist I'm sure our listeners are well familiar with him but his assessment is the guy is a bullshitter that he's looked at the way he speaks it sounds like he knows the words of economics but he doesn't know how to make an argument that he isn't a serious thinker and what he is is a Trump sycophant and that certainly fits with everything that we've seen from Trump's other appointments Yeah, and I want to point out that he's actually married to Ron Lauder's daughter. So he's the son-in-law or grandson-in-law of Estee Lauder, if you want to go back for a deep. And his name is on some email guest lists for a Christmas event in St. Barts with Epstein. But there is no evidence that he ever met Epstein, attended the event. We're going to see a lot of well-known names showing up in these files. This guy was a financier. You know, I mean, a lot of artists went to him to get funding for their movies. We have to always acknowledge that unless something's specifically alleged, we have to acknowledge that it isn't. And he moved in a lot of circles. I mean, Martha Stewart, you know, is on the same invite list as this guy. So it's going to probably be a factor. If it's not, it's going to be curious to see why this guy's name in the Epstein files is okay. Other people, Trump wants to humiliate for it. The hypocrisy will be all over the place. But you look at the family ties, like I said, the political connections. Trump and Ron Lauder go way back. what standards should apply to someone who is controlling U.S. monetary policy? I mean, I guess their personal life doesn't matter, but what standards should matter? Well, I mean, I think the question is, it's a job of expertise. The whole reason why the legislation that creates the Federal Reserve also insulates the Fed chair from firing is because it's dangerous for the economy to let the president juice the economy when he or she wants for political reasons. And that's exactly what Trump wants to do. And so that independence is meant to put an expert who is genuinely committed to these two publicly important things, keeping unemployment low and also keeping inflation low. And that's a hard task. You also want somebody, you know, in a financial crisis, as we experience, to have the guts to do what's needed in order to save the economy, whatever that might be, and to have the know-how. So Ben Bernanke, for instance, had been a serious student of the Great Depression. It's part of how he was able to navigate us through that turmoil in the last very serious financial crisis. If you just have Trump navigating us through, I mean, imagine that, that you just have a Tulsi Gabbard type who's pulling the levers as Trump wants. I think it might permanently destroy the American economy. And it sounds like hyperbole, but it's really that important a position. It's why it's so insulated. And even the Supreme Court, I should say, we've talked about how they are about to destroy most independent agencies in this Federal Trade Commission case. That's right. They are going to preserve Fed independence because I think even they see how dangerous it would be to have a president in control. But this president can, without any legal changes, subvert all of it by finding a sycophant rather than an expert. And strongmen always seek loyalists rather than independent officials in institutions like central banks, especially if there's some compromise on them and they have leverage and can be blackmailed and controlled, which is the scariest part of all of this. And by all of this, I mean Donald Trump's entire political career. Professor Brecheneyer, when you look at these stories we've covered here, detained children, attempts to silence speech, weaponizing law enforcement for lies, election interference, captured institutions. What do ordinary Americans need to understand about this moment we're living through? Well, I always want to come back to why we're doing this podcast, the urgency of it. And that's the idea that our system is not nearly as stable as you learned in civics class. I've tried to point this out in a variety of ways. But all the institutions that we have that give us protection against a criminal president are being eroded. He's succeeding. And, you know, when you have national stormtroopers arresting people based on their color, and that's not just I'm saying, a federal judge said it, going after people from Haiti, again, because of their non-whiteness, as that judge put it in that case. It's the creation of stormtroopers, a national force to subvert civil liberties. It goes back to the undermining of all the things that from the 13th century on, habeas corpus, Magna Carta, that we fought for, limiting the power of tyrants and kings. And that's all in question now. That's why we're doing this podcast. That's what each of these things that we've talked about has done. Yet we've also talked about resistance. I'm so glad we had that conversation about Bruce Springsteen, about Crosby, Steele's Nash and Young. It shows that there is power to resist and to win. And if you were living after Kent State, I guarantee you it felt frightening. Soon after the hard hat riot at the order, this was investigated. It looks like Nixon very well, he was possibly going to be prosecuted for this before the pardon, ordered an attack after Kent State on protesters in City Hall in New York City, where they were beaten severely by construction workers. You know, the country looked frightening. It was falling apart. And then that song emerges, a movement emerges. That's where I think we are starting to get, that the abuses are so profound. The abuses that are analogous to those that we suffered and talked about in the Declaration of Independence by a British king are that bad that we're starting to rise up, to fight back. And song, I really just want to emphasize how much emotionally that helps me in listening to that song. Listen to it. We'll listen to the Billy Bragg song and push it away. So thanks for that, John. Oh, listen. And, you know, there's films that get me through it. I mean, like every 10 years or so, I have to watch Born on the Fourth of July. I have to watch Gandhi. Every 10 years, those two movies kind of help sustain me and remind me of the principles that we're fighting for. And Professor, outside of Springsteen, what's giving you hope? You know, I think that one of the things I argue in the presidents and the people, five leaders who threaten democracy and the citizens who fought to defend it, is that all of the things that we talk about, due process, free speech, habeas corpus, they're abstract until they're violated. When you see a kid, a five-year-old, and that judge included a picture of the child being abducted, you know, on the way back from school, that tells you something morally that is so profoundly wrong, that evil is occurring, tyranny is occurring, that starts to reorient us towards our principles. And I think beyond the song, that's what's happening. I mean, it's what prompted the song. It's what's prompting all of us to stand up for our rights and to push back against this tyranny. We will win. I am increasingly confident, as bad as it looks now, that we will win in the long term. We will have a truth commission to hold people to account. There will be prosecutions of these ICE officers that have so badly violated people's rights. As our slogan now of the show says, Trump has immunity, you don't. And I think justice will prevail in the end. That's where my hope's coming from. How about you, John? I'll ask you the same question. Listen, I mean, I don't know what we will win looks like. To me, you know, this is an ongoing struggle. This is always the struggle of America, the struggle between selfish white supremacy and selfish authoritarianism and selfish oligarchy in a country founded by wealthy white men who thought only wealthy white men should be allowed to vote. And they owned people and called themselves fighters for freedom. And the last 250 years has been a nonstop struggle between a plural society based in justice and evil, rich white dudes thinking they should run everything and brainwashing frightened white people to go along with policies that don't hurt non-millionaires. So I just view it as we're in this period of time carrying the baton and the struggle was here before we were born and the struggle will go on after we're here. But I would like to be part of a generation that makes fascists and white supremacists terrified to show their face for the next century. I'm all about a truth and reconciliation committee. I think Democrats need to start talking about a special counsel right now, an independent special counsel right now, just for the Epstein files, because we've got a thousand victims, but no criminals, no perps, no one's being arrested for any of this, except a dead guy and a live lady who just got upgraded to a cushy prison. So clearly, this administration is part of a cover-up. There's no accountability. They're not going to get on the right side of history. And I've been saying this for a while, Professor, the Democrats who run saying there's going to be hands-on Bibles in January of 2027. There's going to be members of this cabinet having to give testimony on camera about their crimes and about these policies. Those are the Democrats who are going to win the almighty fundraising. And I think the Democrats who start talking about an independent counsel for Epstein right now will not only be doing good for the Democratic Party and the overall causes, they'll be the only ones who give a damn about the victims, many of whom did not have their names redacted. Many of whom have had their names go out there. The child rapists have all been protected by Pam Bondi. But a whole bunch of victims had their names not redacted in this and are suffering more greater humiliation and pain right now. So I will support and donate to Democrats who start talking about independent council, because this is a wave. People are rightfully disgusted by this, and I don't want to be part of a generation that brushes this whole thing under the rug like the Catholic Church did for so many years. Yeah, it's a horrible moment. It calls for some independence. And even if we're not going to get it tomorrow, talking long term, I just add to that the struggle is, I love that way of putting it. If we're in the struggle, then we haven't lost. And cynicism, of course, is what's the enemy of that, somehow thinking that we can give up or that it can't be won. And the fact that there is a crisis going on, I keep saying this, that there is a struggle, that's a good sign. The success of the coup would be the end of the struggle. So really well said. And what a great episode. Thank you, John. Corey, I want to thank you. I want to thank the listeners for giving all this astronomical charting. Oh, my God. How are we doing on the charts right now, Professor? It's crazy, right? We have been just consistently top five, as high as top two. And I keep hearing from people. People responded to Tom Jocelyn. I think a lot of listeners knew a lot of what happened on January 6th. Some knew less, some knew more. But now you know a whole hell of a lot. And that's thanks to that guest. And we have Preep Arara next week. Come and listen to us for that. It's going to be an amazing episode. And what a pleasure to do this with you, John, as we continue to fight for what's right. How do our listeners follow you and keep up with your brilliance the other six days of the week, Professor? You can find me on Blue Sky. I'm Democracy Prof. You can find our Substack newsletter where we're detailing and having links to the topics that we're talking about. Certainly we'll link to the Bruce Springsteen and the Billy Bragg songs. So you can listen to it for next week. and you can, you know, find us wherever you get your podcasts, Spotify, we're on YouTube, and wherever you listen, if you leave a review, I think I talked about the 500th reviewer, we're well past that, so you could be like 530 or something at this stage and leave a review, tell your friends and, you know, share it with one person, that would be great. Brilliant. Professor, thank you so much. I want to thank all of our listeners. You can hear me on Sirius XM Progress, Channel 127, five nights a week. Also, the John Fuglesang podcast, My book is called Separation of Church and Hate. And I want to thank Wendy and Beowulf and everyone who puts this monster together every week. Thank you all, and we will see you next time on The Oath and the Office.