#1676 The Incompetence of Authoritarians: Trump's cabinet picks are all loyalty, no ability (Transcript)

Air Date 12/13/2024

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JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: [00:00:00] Welcome to this episode of the award winning Best of the Left podcast. The most important thing to understand about authoritarian and dictatorial governance, is that it is neither efficient nor competent, contrary to the myth. The problem lies with the need to hire people based on their unquestioning loyalty, rather than any kind of demonstrated ability to do the jobs they're tasked with. The results are, unsurprisingly, chaos. For those looking for a quick overview, the sources providing our top takes and about 50 minutes today includes The Thom Hartmann Program, The Dig, The Muckrake Political Podcast, The Brian Lehrer Show, No Lie with Brian Taylor Cohen, Americast, The Aspen Institute and Farron Balanced. Then in the additional deeper-dives half of the show there'll be more in four sections: Section A- The Lineup, Section B- The Playbook, Section C- Global References, and Section D- Cracks [00:01:00] in Authority.

Fight Trump With Everything You Have! Shocking Warning From Hungarian Democracy Movement - Thom Hartmann Program - Air Date 11-25-24

THOM HARTMANN - HOST, THOM HARTMANN PROGRAM: This is a former Hungarian minister of, member of parliament, excuse me. His name is Gabor Shearing and he notes, he wrote an essay for Politico. And he says "There are numerous similarities between Orban and Trump." You know, both are former presidents who lost elections and then returned to power. And then both are strident culture warriors. And he says Orban deployed both the hardware and the software of autocracy or authoritarianism or oligarchy. The software is, Orban portraying himself, even though, arguably he was a member of the intellectual elite (George Soros paid for him to go to college in England), but he portrays himself as a folksy outsider who is a populist hero of the working class. And the same. They also share an intense platform. Orban has said that immigrants are polluting the blood of Hungarians. [00:02:00] Trump says they're poisoning the blood of Americans.

Just pure, unadulterated racism. And Orban and Trump, they are demonizing immigrants as a way, he says, of dividing and conquering the working class. And this has certainly worked well for Trump. Another crucial piece of that software is something he calls economic nationalism that combines greed with the real, very real frustration that people have had after 40 years of neoliberalism has chipped away at the middle class in Hungary as well as the United States.

Sharing the former Hungarian member of parliament says "Right wing populists glorify makers over takers," which he said resonates with working class voters who value hard work. So, even the plutocrats in Hungary, just like the billionaires, I mean, Trump now has five billionaires and two people worth, seven, eight, nine hundred million dollars in his cabinet.

If you're, or as his advisors, I mean, if you're including Elon [00:03:00] Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy. He says they're all, in Hungary, these billionaires, they're all portrayed as hard working value creators as opposed to lazy bureaucrats or benefit scroungers. He said that, now that's all the software of autocracy.

He said the hardware of the far right authoritarian state that Victor Orban has built in Hungary is fourfold. Number one, strengthening executive power. Orban, since he was re elected in 2010, after being out of power for a couple of years, he immediately began consolidating all of the power of the state within the office of the prime minister.

And this is what Trump has declared he's going to do starting on January 20th. Orban has gotten the judiciary under his control. He has appointed enough, authoritarian, right wing, hard right, you know, billionaire loving, fluffing judges that he basically controls the judiciary.

There's no meaningful opposition to him at the level of law. [00:04:00] And, you know, Trump is looking forward to the same, and the Supreme Court has kind of advanced telegraphed that , they're down with that, they're up for that, they're ready to go. He has changed election processes. Victor Orban, he has basically done what we call gerrymandering, only at a federal level.

Making it very, very difficult for him ever not to be reelected. He's started an American style voter registration system, he can get purged from the voting, I mean just, he's basically taking control of the election process. And he's also controlled the media. He, he has changed the libel laws so that he can sue individual writers and newspapers and magazines and newspapers, excuse me, and television stations and radio stations.

And then did so, ran them into bankruptcy, had his billionaire buddies buy them out. And now all of the media, for all practical purposes, all of, certainly all of the mainstream media in Hungary praises Viktor Orbon 24/7. It's like Fox News is the only thing that exists in Hungary. And, this is all, these [00:05:00] are all of the things that Donald Trump has literally talked about doing.

So, what do we do about this? Well, his advice, Shearing's advice to Americans is, fight back at the state and local level. Wage war in the media, and don't back down. Do absolutely everything you can with every tool you have.

MAGA 2.0 w Quinn Slobodian & Wendy Brown - The Dig - Air Date 11-29-24

DANIEL DENVER - HOST, THE DIG: Let's start with the economics where the contradictions of MAGA's politics have been very clearly reproduced in Trump's nominations. First, you have the marquee economic nationalism, these promises of tariffs and trade wars, and that's paired with figures like former U. S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer, who may or may not return to that role once again. Then you have these various strains of far right libertarianism emerging In particular from Silicon Valley, most evident may be with Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy's strange new role [00:06:00] at DOGE, the not actual government agency that will be recommending how to make deep, deep cuts in government named after the cryptocurrency Dogecoin. Thirdly, there are these more traditional forms of right wing capital, probably best represented by Trump's picks for Treasury and Commerce, both of which come from Wall Street. Then there's this guy that I was just reading up on, the new appointment to run the Office of Management and Budget, Russell Vought, who was a leader of Project 2025, and his thing seems to be destroying the administrative state, and I'm not sure which camp he would belong to, or if he's instead maybe a point of synthesis and connection across the three camps.

There's so many disagreements over monopolies, consumer protections, what to do about the labor market, whether to support American workers or to make the labor market scream, entitlements, whether the government, a sort of chauvinist welfare state has, a principal incentivizing families. 

[00:07:00] Does MAGA economic politics form a cohesive ideology even while it's an internally contradictory one? And if there is a cohesive ideology here, has that ideology taken coherent shape at the level of theory or a self conscious political formula, or does it mostly find its coherency in the individual person of Donald Trump? 

WENDY BROWN: I do think that 'cohesive ideology' is probably not our best friend analytically here, and I think the left probably should give it up. Because we're always looking for it, and it always means we miss really important features of a multi pronged project for remaking the state, and that's how I would understand both the economic and the social project of Project 2025 and Trumpism more generally. I do think, economically, all of these tributaries are projects of remaking the state for capital, from the proposal to [00:08:00] curtail an independent Fed, to building a crypto reserve, to policies toward China, contradictory as you mentioned. The trade and tariff policies can go in several different directions. How to do all of this without inflation. How to cut taxes massively for the wealthy, while funding some new projects for the state, which threaten, I think the figure I saw last was a 13 trillion increase in the debt by the time Trump's legacy is over, which is not four years from now, but maybe a decade from now.

What I do think links them all—and this will be a provocation to Quinn, so this is where I'll conclude—is Melinda Cooper's beautifully titled Extravagance and Austerity, her last book. I don't remember the whole title of the book, but those are the key words: "extravagance" for capital and of capital, and "austerity", obviously, for the people. So, extravagance at the level of deregulation, letting [00:09:00] oil go wide, tax cuts for the wealthy that I've already mentioned, but austerity at the level of education, health care, supportive social services of every kind, from headstart to food stamps. And I think we also need to remember that as wild as Trumponomics promises to be in important ways—and I do think we need to talk about the new OMB head and how much power he's likely to have in building budgets, that's what that office does, it builds the budget for Trump, so we'll maybe talk about that down the road—but as wild as Trumponomics promises to be, it's still supply side economics. Even with crypto and possible crypto reserves, only it's supply side economics with tax cuts, whereas Biden gave us supply side economics with tax credits.

So, there's still some basic trajectories that we can follow here, but I think rather than thinking about it ideologically, we need to [00:10:00] think about the concrete projects of state making and state remaking that Trumponomics is promising that's very different from just imagining the old neoliberal antagonism to the state that is the caricature of neoliberalism that neither Quinn nor I believe in.

A Slew Of A$$hole Nominations...- The Muckrake Political Podcast - Air Date 11-15-24

NICK HAUSELMAN - HOST, THE MUCKRAKE POLITICAL PODCAST: But, I hate to inform you, Jared, that there might be, again, it's never Trump. He is not smart enough, can't read, doesn't process. But somebody has been going through all the pages of the Constitution.

JARED YATES SEXTON - HOST, THE MUCKRAKE POLITICAL PODCAST: We know who, by the way. It's the think tanks and the institutes that are funded by the people who have put this entire thing forward. 

NICK HAUSELMAN - HOST, THE MUCKRAKE POLITICAL PODCAST: Yeah. So you can picture, like, it's a library and amongst all the stacks and they're like digging, all you see is the one guy, like, the big realization in the movie, 'wait a minute', and he comes running around the hallways and bursts the door open and says, basically, he says, what they're looking for is the Presidential Reorganization Authority. Have you ever heard of this before? 

JARED YATES SEXTON - HOST, THE MUCKRAKE POLITICAL PODCAST: I have, unfortunately. And this is one of those moments where [00:11:00] the things that I have as specialized knowledge, things that I never thought that I was going to have to really deal with, I anticipated this. I was worried about this. And now here we are. 

NICK HAUSELMAN - HOST, THE MUCKRAKE POLITICAL PODCAST: Yes. This authority actually grants on a temporary basis, quote, unquote, wink, wink, nudge, nudge, say no more. a temporary basis that the president could basically abolish whole departments if he wants to. And it's stunning to me that this actually exists and that they've even used it in the past.

Because this is the way that he can open up—and this is going to influence how we're talking about the nominations as well—but he'll be able to open up a can of whoop ass, I suppose, if we can call it, and just start redlining things and then crossing them out and getting rid of them. 

You know what the ultimate irony of all this is? Do you know who the last president was that used this for a major reorganization of the government? 

JARED YATES SEXTON - HOST, THE MUCKRAKE POLITICAL PODCAST: If I am not incorrect, I believe it was Jimmy Carter.

NICK HAUSELMAN - HOST, THE MUCKRAKE POLITICAL PODCAST: That's not what my information stands for. I'm talking about major... there's [00:12:00] been little tweaks. I think Reagan used it as well, like in '80-something, '83, for some minor tweaks here and there. 

JARED YATES SEXTON - HOST, THE MUCKRAKE POLITICAL PODCAST: He used it almost like going in and getting a trim instead of a new haircut. 

NICK HAUSELMAN - HOST, THE MUCKRAKE POLITICAL PODCAST: Exactly. Too much red tape. I get it. It makes sense you kinda gotta cut through this stuff, which is sort of what Musk's whole MO tends to be, right? Because he thinks he knows so much better than everybody else, the pesky laws and the things that protect people. He just wants to get rid of. But the last time we saw it, according to my research, a major adjustment using this authority was Dwight D Eisenhower. And you know what he created? He actually didn't abolish. He created departments from this. You know what he did? He created... 

JARED YATES SEXTON - HOST, THE MUCKRAKE POLITICAL PODCAST: Yeah, I do actually. Yeah, go ahead.

NICK HAUSELMAN - HOST, THE MUCKRAKE POLITICAL PODCAST: Okay. Well, I'll tell you if you want, but he basically, he created, I wrote it down, the health department, the education department, and the welfare department, the big three. The ones that they've been probably trying to tear down this entire time on the Republican side and the MAGA side. So how crazy is it going to be that the last time we've seen [00:13:00] this use was to establish the exact department...

JARED YATES SEXTON - HOST, THE MUCKRAKE POLITICAL PODCAST: ...that will now be destroyed. And it goes back to one of the things we've been talking about for the past few years, Nick, which is the entire point of this project is to roll back the progress of the 20th century. A reminder that Dwight D. Eisenhower, who is a Republican, was operating within the New Deal consensus, which was the idea that the government should invest in the future of America and also take care of people. And now that we are in the neoliberal consensus, you have to get rid of those things. 

So what are we looking at, Nick? We've already said that Elon Musk has said he wants to get rid of 2 trillion dollars. Elon Musk wants to merge with the federal apparatus and basically funnel any type of money that comes through into his own pocket for his own projects and his own enrichment. On top of that, Vivek Ramaswamy, who, need I remind people, is a bloodthirsty psychopath, and him even being near this thing should absolutely turn your blood cold.

And while [00:14:00] we're talking about it, Nick, not only did they find that loophole, but also they're looking at another strategy to go ahead and make Congress go into recess to go ahead and push forward all of the appointments without any consideration of any of these things. On top of that, we've already seen from Ramaswamy a public acknowledgement that he's open to using another couple of loopholes to cut social security. And by the way, I say 'cut', but I mean deal at a fatal blow, is what it is. On top of that, Veterans Affairs and a bunch of other very, very vulnerable programs that most people would have never considered cutting. 

What is Musk going to do in order to make this happen? Is he going to sit there and crunch the numbers? No, he's going to have a bunch of these sycophants go through and figure out what is going to hurt people the most and where they can make these cuts to, again, deal this mortal blow. Musk though, has to make sure that the Republican party, which has been mostly taken over by this authoritarian movement, that those other people are going to play ball.

And so, [00:15:00] Nick, we've already seen the beginnings of the stirrings of how that's going to happen, including where Elon Musk is now threatening to use his own money and his own resources to blackmail any member of the Republican party who would think about standing up to any of this and automatically bringing to bear a primary challenger that will get rid of them and replace them with a sycophant who will play ball.

NICK HAUSELMAN - HOST, THE MUCKRAKE POLITICAL PODCAST: Right. And because it felt like to me, they would just be using the platform that he now has control over on X to embarrass politicians, which again is sort of that blackmail. Like, if you don't want them to find out that you supported this bill that definitely goes against your people's values, then you're going to have to play ball. It is frightening. So there's a lot of influence here. 

Here's the other thing. It's really kind of galling. Like, Musk, he runs space X. He runs X, he runs Tesla, right? I mean, he's not on the board of Tesla [indecipherable]. He needs to have his posting time, [00:16:00] every hour or two, he posts like... 

JARED YATES SEXTON - HOST, THE MUCKRAKE POLITICAL PODCAST: Not to mention his time getting acquaintanced with all the substances that keep him going. Sure. 

NICK HAUSELMAN - HOST, THE MUCKRAKE POLITICAL PODCAST: Yeah. So, this is ridiculous to think that he's now going to take this on and have any time. Oh, Vivek will help him, I guess, right? Because, two guys have to do this job instead of one. 

JARED YATES SEXTON - HOST, THE MUCKRAKE POLITICAL PODCAST: Model of efficiency.

NICK HAUSELMAN - HOST, THE MUCKRAKE POLITICAL PODCAST: That is also the most ridiculous thing of all. Because again, if you watch how often he posts, he's not working, he's not working for more than like 20 minutes at a time before he's going to stop and start, because he's not even just posting, he's reacting. So clearly he's scrolling. He's not working. He's just looking at Twitter all day long, which is not unlike Trump who would just watch Fox News. I think the reports, and I believe them, were he'd watch Fox News eight or nine hours a day. Isn't that what he would do? And then he'd golf? This is kind of all sorts of crazy stuff because we know that these people don't have the kind of work ethics that would require anywhere near being able to pull any of this stuff off and we're going to realize that there's a lot of nefarious actors behind the scenes here doing [00:17:00] a lot of other bullshit.

And the other weirdest thing is that Dwight D. Eisenhower, not only was He's MAGA. He is the time they want to go back to. That's his time. That's his happy days. And he's the guy, like Nixon who looks like a complete pink Commie liberal now. 

JARED YATES SEXTON - HOST, THE MUCKRAKE POLITICAL PODCAST: Yeah. And, I want to, by the way, you couldn't have nailed that more. That's exactly how this thing is shifted. What you just said is correct, if you were trying to do this in a way that would make anything better. That it would make government actually work. We need to look at everything and that's how we're looking at these appointments. It's not just saying here's the way they want to make the government work better and it will fail.

The point of all of this is this is a planned demolition. It is to finally eradicate representative government as a regulatory body and to turn it into what it's been turning into, which is a redistributing organ to the wealthy and the powerful. What this government efficiency thing is meant to do isn't to trim [00:18:00] fat. It is to deliver advanced hyper austerity. What they are attempting to do is completely evaporate whatever remains of the social safety net, any regulatory power that still resides within the government, and basically put us into a situation where our standard of living craters. Our economy is going to fall apart while this happens, if they're allowed to do all of this.

And what happens in that situation? People get more scared and more desperate. They'll turn more and more towards authoritarianism. And, in the midst of all of this, the United States is going to lessen in terms of power and influence. The entire purpose of this is to free capitalism from the centralization within the United States, and also more or less turn us into a client state the same way. And I want to be on the record about this, Nick. It's the same thing that we've done to countries in the so called second and third world.

What Pete Hegseth Has Said About Civil War and Whiteness - Brian Lehrer: A Daily Politics Podcast - Air Date 11-27-24

BRIAN LEHRER - HOST, THE BRIAN LEHRER SHOW: Another one says, would you please at least mention Hegseth's utter lack of qualifications for the role [00:19:00] of Secretary of Defense and the fact that he would need top security clearance for it. What about the experience question, Abigail? 

ABIGAIL HAUSLOHNER: It's interesting that this was something that I think one of the most immediate, concerns that came up when he was named, that I think frankly has just been overshadowed by these other big issues that have come out, such as the sexual assault allegation and the wokeness plans and so on and so forth.

But certainly, Hegseth has no experience, has never run a government agency, has never run any government office that we're aware of, certainly hasn't managed a military that has 3 million, a workforce of about 3 million people worldwide that includes, service members and civilian personnel at the Pentagon, and the biggest budget of any federal agency in the U. S. [00:20:00] government. And so that, that is a huge, huge task that normally is not given to someone who has never run anything, even sort of a fraction of that size and heft. And so, I think lawmakers do have questions about that. That's something that, when his nomination was announced it took a lot of people by surprise.

 I heard Republican senators tell me, one refrain I heard over and over again was, yeah, I don't know anything about him. People really didn't. He wasn't sort of on this presumed short list of people to be potential defense secretaries. He was a Fox News host for, about a decade.

And he was a veteran, he had served abroad, he had served in Iraq and Afghanistan, as a National Guardsman. But there are many, many veterans and beyond that. 

BRIAN LEHRER - HOST, THE BRIAN LEHRER SHOW: What was his, what was his highest rank [00:21:00] or what he commanded? 

ABIGAIL HAUSLOHNER: You know what, you'll have to give me a second to confirm that, to check back on our reporting.

BRIAN LEHRER - HOST, THE BRIAN LEHRER SHOW: I think I read Major and that he was, he really didn't have any kind of command position. He did, I guess, if people want to push back on that lack of experience, they could say he did run a veterans advocacy organization. Maybe you could tell us more about that and how big a thing that is and that he does have kind of big think whether we agree with them or not thoughts about military policy.

He's written multiple books and whether it's about wokeness or women in combat or whatever it is, he's got a real philosophy of how the Pentagon should be run. So, somebody could say, well, they pick people from academia sometimes to run big departments because they've got the ideas. Maybe they pick Pete Hegseth on that basis as well because his ideas align with Trump's ideas. And he ran a veterans [00:22:00] advocacy organization. And they'll find other people to do the implementation. 

ABIGAIL HAUSLOHNER: And that's actually, something that I did hear from some republicans was, we don't know anything about him. It was kind of a surprise, but, he is a decorated combat veteran.

One senator, Mike Rounds, told me, and that gives him credibility. And then I, asked, Rounds at the time, I said, are you at all concerned that Hegseth hasn't run a government office before? And he told me that, there's never going to be a perfect individual.

And he told me that they're going to be for in these hearings, as they get to know him, and Rounds on the armed services committee, I should say that. So they will be doing the initial kind of assessment of Hegseth. He said that they're going to be looking at what his philosophy is and how he would approach the Defense Department, which, what kind of [00:23:00] changes he would try to make, what his management style would be, and that's, something that they are open to, that they could, Rounds sort of indicated, he could potentially have all the right answers to that, even though he has, doesn't have the more traditional experience.

And then I heard other people, sort of farther to the right, actually say that his lack of experience, was a bonus. Because, there, they were sort of citing this idea that part of the reason in conservatives views that the military is too, quote, woke or too, broken in their mind is that, it's run by all these sort of career generals who have lost touch with the rank and file and who are, at their core politicians, these are their allegations, their perceptions. And that they think you need kind of a rogue outsider to really shake things up and fix this big kind of bloated institution and make it more [00:24:00] representative of their views and less kind of, less connected to what they see as liberal politics.

 

Trump goes off the deep end with Cabinet pick - No Lie w Brian Tyler Cohen - Air Date 12-1-24

BRIAN TYLER COHEN - HOST, NO LIE: You know by now that Donald Trump has nominated Kash Patel to lead the FBI. To give you an idea of who Kash Patel is, I'm actually going to defer to Bill Barr's words here from his book. 

"The President then started advancing the idea of appointing Kash Patel as Deputy FBI Director. Patel, who was completing a stint as Deputy to Acting Director of National Intelligence Rick Grenell, had been a staffer to Congressman Devin Nunes and had served briefly on the NSC staff at the White House under Trump. I categorically opposed making Patel Deputy FBI Director. I told Mark Meadows it would happen 'over my dead body'. In the first place, all leadership positions in the Bureau, except the Director, have always been FBI agents. They've all gone through the same agent training and have had broad experience in the field and at headquarters. Someone with no background as an agent would never be able to command the respect necessary to run the day to day operations of the Bureau. Furthermore, Patel had virtually no experience that would qualify him to serve at the highest level of the world's preeminent law enforcement agency. The Bureau had already had an [00:25:00] exceptionally able deputy, Dave Bowdich, in whom I had total confidence. He was a strong leader with high integrity, he was indispensable as far as I was concerned. The very idea of moving Patel into a role like this showed a shocking detachment from reality". 

That was Bill Barr. That was Trump's hand picked Attorney General. The same guy who straight up lied about the Mueller report in an effort to protect Trump from what the report actually said. For that guy to say that Kash Patel should lead the FBI 'over his dead body' probably gives you a decent indication as to why he is so unqualified, so uniquely unqualified, for this position. And if Bill Barr's warnings don't move you, listen to Kash Patel's own words during an interview with Steve Bannon from just before he was nominated FBI director. 

STEVE BANNON: do you feel confident that you will be able to deliver the goods, that we can have serious prosecutions and accountability? And I want the Morning Joe producers that watch us, and all the producers that watch us, this is just not rhetoric. We're absolutely dead serious. We're not, you cannot have a constitutional republic and allow what these [00:26:00] deep staters have done to the country. The deep state, the administrative state, the fourth branch of government never mentioned in the constitution is going to be taken apart brick by brick. And the people that did these evil deeds will be held accountable. and prosecuted, criminal prosecutions. Kash, I know you're probably going to be head of the CIA, but do you believe that you can deliver the goods on this in a pretty short, in a pretty short order the first couple of months so we can get rolling on prosecutions?

KASH PATEL: Yes, we got the bench for it, Bannon, and you know those guys. I'm not going to go out there and say their names right now so the radical left wing media can terrorize them. But [coughs] excuse me, the one thing we learned in the Trump administration the first go around is we got to put in all America patriots top to bottom. And we got them for law enforcement. We got them for intel collection. We got them for offensive operations. We got them for DOD, CIA, everywhere. And the one thing we will do, that they never will do is we will follow the facts and the law and go to courts of law and correct these justices and lawyers who have been prosecuting these cases based on politics and actually issuing them as lawfare. We will [00:27:00] go out and find the conspirators, not just in government, but in the media. Yes, we're going to come after the people in the media who lied about American citizens who helped Joe Biden rig presidential elections. We're going to come after you, whether it's criminally or civilly, we'll figure that out. But yeah, we're putting you all on notice. And Steve, this is why they hate us. This is why we're tyrannical. This is why we're dictators. 

BRIAN TYLER COHEN - HOST, NO LIE: That he'll go after the media for the apparent crime of helping Joe Biden rig the presidential election. In other words, this is the guy up for FBI director who is claiming that Joe Biden lost the election in 2020, which is an outright lie and conspiracy theory, and he's willing to criminally prosecute anyone, from lawyers to members of the media, who correctly reported on or litigated in favor of Joe Biden? This is out and out weaponized government. This is what an actual witch hunt looks like. Claiming that Donald Trump won in 2020 and prosecuting those who acknowledge objective reality. 

If this doesn't scare you about Donald Trump's incoming administration, I don't know what will. But what's telling here is that while Donald Trump's picks for certain roles are pretty uncontroversial—Marco Rubio as Secretary of State, [00:28:00] Susie Wiles as Chief of Staff—the roles that he's swinging for the fences on all have a very obvious throughline. Matt Gaetz and then Pam Bondi as Attorney General, Kash Patel at FBI, his personal lawyer Todd Blanche as Deputy Attorney General—it's the positions where he needs a loyalist to be able to wield the government as a cudgel against his enemies where he's swinging for the fences.

That is where he's spending his political capital. Marco Rubio at State goes to show that Trump does not care what happens in that role. What he is focused on is being able to enact his retribution tour. And the way he does that is with the very people who he's nominated to those positions. Not only will there be no pushback from these people, but they're just as eager as him to weaponize the government.

So, look, I've been pretty clear about what we should do as Democrats in terms of resisting this administration. I've been pretty clear that we have limited capital, and that if we treat everything like a five alarm fire, then really nothing feels like a five alarm fire. This is a fire worth focusing on. This is above Pam Bondi, above Tulsi Gabbard, above Pete Hegseth, insofar as we're ranking them, or we only get a bite or two at the apple. If there's anyone [00:29:00] to raise hell over, it is Kash Patel. This should be our focus in a political environment where we still have the ability to drive the narrative if someone is particularly dangerous.

Matt Gaetz's nomination didn't survive confirmation hearings for a reason, likely because he wants to be the governor of Florida, and he knew that the ethics report would eventually come out in his confirmation hearings, and he didn't want that. But let's be clear, it was Democrats who forced the issue, and we should do the same here.

This is also why it's important not to tune out here. if you're anything like me, you're probably exhausted to some degree, and discouraged to some degree, I get it. But this is a moment where it is necessary to pay attention and to sound the alarms. This is why it's so necessary not to check out, because, let's be clear, the Trump White House will be bad, but it would be so much worse if there's nothing moderating Donald Trump's worst impulses.

The Trump Trials... Cases Closed - Americast - Air Date 11-29-24

SARAH SMITH - HOST, AMERICAST: Justin, Marianne, we should probably just run through where we are with Donald Trump's legal cases, because there has been some movement on this in the last few days in fact.

Of course this is related to the fact that he won the election and that does rather change the whole picture, really, of the criminal cases against them. I'll run you through some of them very quickly. 

The [00:30:00] January the sixth case for obstructing Congress and trying to overturn the election results, that's been dropped by the special prosecutor, Jack Smith. He said that the Constitution pretty much stipulates sitting presidents can't be prosecuted, and they've decided that even though he's not the president yet, he's only the president elect, and he had been indicted when he was a private citizen, nonetheless, they think it would be unconstitutional to try and prosecute him for that.

The classified documents case, all those documents he was hiding in the spare toilet in Mar-a-Lago, that's also disappeared. The special prosecutor is abandoning that one too. And of course the judge earlier had actually dismissed that case, but the special prosecutor was appealing that. Well, that's all gone away as well.

JUSTIN WEBB - HOST, AMERICAST: And what's going on in New York? 'Cause that case did actually come to court, didn't it? And he's awaiting sentencing? Is he still awaiting sentencing? What's going on there? 

SARAH SMITH - HOST, AMERICAST: Well, it might be a very, very long wait for sentencing on that one. So that's the hush money case where he was convicted, you're right, on 34 counts of basically erroneous bookkeeping covering up the hush money payments to Stormy Daniels.

So sentencing was set for just after the election, and it was postponed indefinitely, [00:31:00] essentially. Legal arguments are going to the judge, beginning of December he said they need to be in by, and Trump's team are saying, well, the whole thing should be set aside. You can't sentence somebody who's going to be serving as the president.

The defense are saying, no, no, no. You could just set it aside for four years and come 2029 when he's finished his presidential term, then you could sentence him. So. The judge will decide either way on that. But what we do know is, not only is he definitely not going to jail now that he's been reelected, he's not even going to receive sentence for that until at the very earliest he's left office.

JUSTIN WEBB - HOST, AMERICAST: And then the one other one-- 

MARIANNE SPRING - HOST, AMERICAST: The Georgia one.

JUSTIN WEBB - HOST, AMERICAST: The Georgia one.

MARIANNE SPRING - HOST, AMERICAST: Which, yeah, when we were, which when we were in-- 

JUSTIN WEBB - HOST, AMERICAST: We were excited by.

MARIANNE SPRING - HOST, AMERICAST: And that we were in Atlanta. And did you actually go into the courthouse? 

JUSTIN WEBB - HOST, AMERICAST: I didn't get to the courthouse, but I did get to sit down with John Eastman. So John Eastman, being the guy who revved up the crowd on January the 6th, and really got them going, Trump lawyer. And he sat down with me in Atlanta. I think you were doing something else that day. 

MARIANNE SPRING - HOST, AMERICAST: That was when I found the taxi driver.

JUSTIN WEBB - HOST, AMERICAST: Yeah, you found the taxi driver. 

MARIANNE SPRING - HOST, AMERICAST: He was convinced by the AI pictures. 

JUSTIN WEBB - HOST, AMERICAST: But he, I said, sat down with Eastman and I said to him, You're going to jail, aren't you? If this if you're convicted, [00:32:00] you're in real trouble. And I still remember, Sarah, he kind of giggled, actually. He was a very amiable guy, one to one, and he just said, Oh, he said, there's a lot of water to go under the bridge till then. 

CLIP: The president's claim is that these are frivolous criminal cases brought against him in order to disrupt the election or interfere with the election.

JUSTIN WEBB - HOST, AMERICAST: If it goes against you though, you're going to jail. 

CLIP: There's a lot of water to go under the bridge before we get to that point. 

JUSTIN WEBB - HOST, AMERICAST: I was really struck, I remember this day, didn't seem, so it was almost as if he knew that he was gonna, it was gonna be fine. But is he fine? And is Trump fine in Georgia? What's the deal?

SARAH SMITH - HOST, AMERICAST: Trump will be fine in Georgia. So that case got halted because there was this scandal over the fact that the prosecutor, Fannie Willis, had been having a romantic relationship with somebody that she had hired to work on that case. And there was a whole legal hearing about that. And that really gummed things up quite a lot. 

JUSTIN WEBB - HOST, AMERICAST: Legal term for that is screw up, isn't it? 

SARAH SMITH - HOST, AMERICAST: Which didn't do her reputation much good and [00:33:00] he got dropped from the case. So that's why it slowed up. Of course, we've still got this idea that you can't try a sitting president. If that's what Jack Smith in the federal cases has decided, that's almost certainly what a judge in Georgia will decide. It's fanciful to imagine that Donald Trump could be prosecuted over that. 

That doesn't mean his co-accused won't be though. In the hush money case, for instance, Jack Smith has dropped the charges against Donald Trump, not against the two other people that were named in that indictment So I think John Eastman maybe should be a little bit worried that that case may yet go forward, just without Donald Trump. And some people in that case took plea deals already. And it was obvious that the prosecutors really, really wanted people to drop Donald Trump in it. Well, if he cannot be tried, I don't know, maybe the value of their evidence against them goes down and it gets a little bit harder to get out of. I'm no lawyer, but that's what I would be worried about if I was an accused there. 

MARIANNE SPRING - HOST, AMERICAST: And Sarah, just to remind Americasters, so Jack Smith is this role of special prosecutor. What does that actually mean? 

SARAH SMITH - HOST, AMERICAST: So the Attorney General, Merrick Garland, who is supposed to be entirely [00:34:00] impartial, he runs the Justice Department, and that really is at arm's length from the White House. But he is appointed by the President, and so he wanted to make sure that this investigation looked as though it wasn't remotely political. So he appointed a special prosecutor, i.e., an independent outside counsel to come in and do the work. And that's been done many, many times before, precisely when the White House wants it to look as though the investigation and the prosecution is entirely independent. So he was brought in specially to do that, both in the January the 6th case and the classified documents case, because they were federal cases.

The Georgia case is slightly different, of course, because that was brought by the Georgia authorities themselves. And the key thing about that is that the president doesn't have pardon powers over state offenses. So if it gets to it, and say his two co-accused in the documents case do go to trial and are either convicted or sentenced or whatever, he can pardon them because it's a federal offense. So they don't have too much to worry about. John Eastman couldn't be pardoned because that's a state offense and the president has no jurisdiction there. 

JUSTIN WEBB - HOST, AMERICAST: Well, that's a really interesting one because [00:35:00] he'd be very cross if Eastman went down, as would Eastman, no doubt, and his family. And he would do something, wouldn't he? It would be quite tempting for him to do something to try to find a way of getting him out, or at least putting him onto some sort of long term appeal curve, I suppose, that kept him out of jail, if that was what he was facing. 

SARAH SMITH - HOST, AMERICAST: And the one thing we do know about this incoming administration is that they are certainly going to be prepared to try novel things. I mean, there's this whole theory that we've discussed before as to whether or not to get his cabinet appointees through. He could just adjourn Congress and put them through as recess appointments, which, might be just technically within the bounds of the Constitution, but it would be unprecedented, certainly not the way things were intended to be done.

I don't think they'll have any shame in just doing anything that they can, whether or not it looks bad or looks as though it's not what the founding fathers would have wanted. So there are probably all sorts of legal strategies that I don't know about that he could use to get his co-accused -- because they're all close allies of him, the people who've also been charged in the Georgia case.

So, look, John Eastman, I'm sure had a reason for looking so pleased. And of course, at the time, he didn't [00:36:00] even know for sure that Donald Trump was going to get reelected, did he? But, but now he has been, it just completely changes the legal landscape, totally across America. 

And so a lot of people are really cross that these cases weren't brought earlier, that as soon as Donald Trump left office, people didn't start working on this. Because then they might have been through the whole court process already. And you wouldn't look at them having to be dropped because he's been re-elected. 

JUSTIN WEBB - HOST, AMERICAST: Isn't that true.

MAGA 2.0 w Quinn Slobodian & Wendy Brown Part 2 - The Dig - Air Date 11-29-24

WENDY BROWN: So, well, you know, everybody's heard of it at this point, who would listen to your podcast, obviously, and nobody's read the 900 pages. Let's make those 2 assumptions. It's been depicted as the equivalent of a Federalist Society project for the American legal and juridical system, the equivalent for the entire political system. And I think that's actually a smart analogy as people may or may not know it was certainly masterminded by Russell Vaught, now the OMB nominee, a very nerdy looking and very nerdy sounding arch Christian Nationalist.

We need all of those adjectives [00:37:00] in play. It, however, was it involved more than a hundred conservative organizations, some very well known, and some that very few of us have heard of, even who pay attention to right wing organizations. Now that Russell Vought is the OMB nominee who will literally build the Trump budgets, what this will allow him to do is what Chris Ruffo so far not appointed to anything, but I assume he'll be some kind of undersecretary in education or somewhere. He'll be presumably at least hanging around the DOE. Chris Ruffo put it really succinctly what the OMB nominee will be able to do vis a vis Project 2025 is, as Chris put it, fund what we like and defund what we don't.

And we're not just talking about programs like Head Start and Medicaid, we're talking about entire agencies and departments. Project 2025 calls for defunding the Department of Justice, the Department of [00:38:00] Education, the FBI, the EPA, or its successor, various other kinds of agencies and organizations, the weather agency that among other things, reveals the effects of climate change.

And it has in it two crucial instruments that I mentioned by which the Trump regime could do an enormous amount with and to the state. The first one we've already all been alluding to it's reclassifying federal career employees as political appointees. Career employees are all those engineers and nurses and doctors, and, they're not just quote unquote bureaucrats.

They're people with a lot of expertise who run all the federal agencies and keep all the things going that we need. So this would literally transform the nature of government work. If 50, 000 of several million career employees could be reclassified as political appointees, what it would allow the [00:39:00] regime to do is fill positions deep in every agency, not just with Trump loyalists, but with people who won't say, "no, we can't do that. It's illegal or it's inconstitutional or it's just poor, poor thinking." And instead to enact a lot of the stuff that otherwise, these relative know-nothings who are nominees for each department secretary, might not be able to pull off.

But if you can get a deep bench in each department of political appointees, this really changes the game. This changes the state. It will also obviously lead to a number of resignations and could foment what we could call a kind of authoritarianism or a kind of chaos. Or, my prediction, a chaotic authoritarianism, a way of doing administrative work that isn't built on much knowledge or evidence or expertise, but has a lot of what we political [00:40:00] theorists call Schmittian decisionism in it, just power. It means on a substantive level, the FDA being run by non medical people, the DOJ being run by people who don't know the law, the DOE by people who don't have a clue about education. And it means illegal and unconstitutional procedures rolled out everywhere.

So that's one crucial thing, one crucial instrument that the Trump administration is likely to revive and it's crucial to mention that it was the Trump administration that came up with this policy late in the first term, then Biden reversed it and Trump will likely reinstate it. So that's one thing.

And then the other instrument I want to mention is the Impoundment Control Act, more nerdiness. This is a 1974 act that responded to Nixon's overreach with the budget, [00:41:00] and it was basically to prevent the executive power from being able to just fund what they wanted to fund and defund what they didn't like.

So here we get back to Ramaswamy and Musk. Because with DOGE, their plan is to use the Supreme Court to challenge that 1974 Act. And if they are successful, which they hope to be by the time we celebrate the 250th anniversary of the U. S. on July 4th, 2026, if they're successful, they can, as one GOP er put it, get rid of all this legislative BS to get things done.

Now that's another strong authoritarian move. I am not one prone to the hyperbole of fascism or authoritarianism in talking about our new regime, but I think Project 2025, both it's [00:42:00] design for America, and what it wants to attack and what it wants to build, but also the instruments that it would use are so deeply assaulting the legislative process for legislating policy and funding that policy, and they are so deeply attacking the administrative process for career officials and appointees in favor of political loyalists.

That's where, instead of Trump won, where Trump got to office, didn't expect to be in office, didn't know what to do at the office, and really blew a lot of capital as a result. Project 2025 was to make sure that that wouldn't happen. And I'll sum it up this way and then stop. The first time Trump was elected, there were those in the GOP who said, "Oh, it's okay. He's a clown, but all we need him to do is sign the legislation." What Project 2025 guarantees is that you don't have to [00:43:00] work with legislation. You can just work with executive power. And that project was a really smart one. It's coalitional. It's got instruments. It's got a design. I wouldn't worry so much about a coherent ideology. It's exactly what the left doesn't do. 

Strongmen Mussolini to the Present - The Aspen Institute - Air Date 8-8-24

CAROLYNE HELDMAN: What are the ways that strong men use the business community and, you're alluding to it a little bit right now, the ways in which they leverage that, over promise things, and then when they don't fulfill those, what happens?

DR. RUTH BEN-GHIAT: Yeah. So, one of the concepts I work with in the book is the idea of the authoritarian bargain. And a lot of political scientists and economists use this concept. Where it can be when they are coming to power, depends how they're getting to power, and they strike a kind of accord or a deal with elites. It can be religious elites, it can be financial elites, business elites. And they sign on [00:44:00] and they are guaranteed certain privileges or profits. They can cash out if privatization is on the agenda, they can cash out. In return, they give a kind of unconditional support and they put up with increasing corruption and they have to put up with violence, they tolerate violence, they don't speak out about it. 

Once these bargains are made, they're incredibly durable. Now sometimes in a true regime, it's because it's very dangerous to defect. Very dangerous. You get sent to prison or not. But even where that's not the case, these bargains are very durable. Until, often it doesn't end well. 

And so, for the business community, there have been cases where, again -- a lot of, like Pinochet's Chile, there were incredible -- it became a test case for neoliberal economics. So some people cashed out a lot from privatizations. 

But often autocrats -- and this isn't known enough -- they go after businessmen. [00:45:00] They plunder the economy. And we don't hear about that enough. So Erdogan in Turkey, after the coup attempt against him, the business community was one of the biggest targets. And what they do is they seize your assets. They go after your company. Or if you're not being loyal enough, they trump up a kind of, there's something wrong with your tax filing, or there's something wrong with some other aspect, technical aspect, and they go after you, they sue you.

And so business is quite afflicted in regimes, and one of the biggest cases is Putin, who has gone after, if you have a profitable business, Putin will go after you, because that's a kleptocracy, that's an extreme case. 

And so what it does, it's very devastating, because it creates conditions of brain drains, talent drains. So in Erdogan's Turkey, many entrepreneurs have had to go abroad. Certainly in Russia. 

All the qualities that we think in terms of prosperity, that we think about entrepreneurship and leadership, they [00:46:00] backfire because the autocrat demands total loyalty, and sooner or later, if he's plundering the economy because his corruption is draining resources, he will come after you.

And that is a lesson, that is what breaks the authoritarian bargain, when they have to go abroad or they end up in jail. It's very sad. 

CAROLYNE HELDMAN: You mentioned that they perhaps even encourage violence, or at least they don't speak out against it. I would imagine that's because that adds to the sense of crisis.

And so, as that being an opportune moment that "I alone can fix it," or "I'm the one who can save the country." 

DR. RUTH BEN-GHIAT: Yeah, one of the saddest things, I, try and take the big picture and perspective. One of the saddest things is that people sign on, and it's very rare that autocrats become more moderate. I actually don't know of any who've become more moderate. It's something to do with the dysfunctional nature of their power. As they consolidate [00:47:00] power, they become more paranoid. They need more loyalists around them. They X out anybody who's not a sycophant. And this is called, in my book, the inner sanctum. They create an inner sanctum of cronies, of family members, very common. Sons-in-law. I have a whole paragraph about sons-in-law. Because those are people you trust. And you can actually treat them as badly as you want. And they can be in on your corruption in some cases. 

So this leads these leaders over time to start believing in their own propaganda. They make bad decisions. And this often begins their downfall, or it challenges things. And then they have to respond with more propaganda and more repression. 

So, political scientists in particular, they study how these people dose out the loyalty quotients, the propaganda, the repression.

But the end is that authoritarian governance, one of the biggest myths I wanted to debunk, is that it's [00:48:00] efficient. Behind the scenes, it is a chaos. A constant hiring and firing, constant draining of resources from corruption and violence. Repression is very expensive. Constant loss of income and talent from brain drains.

And so, this is what happens when you have this kind of structures of government that autocrats almost inevitably get to. 

Trump Is Assembling The Most Incompetent Cabinet In American History - Farron Balanced - Air Date 11-25-24

FARRON COUSINS - HOST, FARRON BALANCED: I've repeatedly said that the only silver lining to all of the horrible people that Donald Trump has nominated for cabinet positions is that there is a chance that they are all so grossly incompetent and stupid that they aren't actually able to inflict the damage upon this country that they want to inflict. And I stand by that. I genuinely do believe it. And I will get more into that in just a moment. 

But we've got a question here from YouTube user @hikerSTEA9899, who asks, "Thank you, Farron for the opportunity. My question is, will the incompetence of the incoming [00:49:00] admin help us in any way? I feel it can, or is that just wishful thinking?"

It's not wishful thinking. And here's why. We still have, although it's a little rickety at the moment, but we still have a system of checks and balances. Obviously with Trump in the White House, we're not going to get any checks and balances from a Republican-controlled House and a Republican-controlled Senate. So those checks and balances are out of the way. 

Court system, on the other hand, that's a little trickier, because we have seen conservative judges go against Donald Trump. We have seen his own Supreme Court go against Donald Trump. So they've done it before, they could continue to do it, even if he replaces the two most conservative people on the bench, Thomas and Alito, even if he replaces them with loyalists, that doesn't change anything. So it changes the makeup of the court for years to come, but not necessarily how they would rule, when his people or he overstepped their bounds. 

So the court system is that last check. [00:50:00] And here is why that helps us. Even if these courts do not rule in our favor, it still helps us. Here's how that happens.

Let's say you have Department of Interior, Secretary of Energy, whoever it is, they come out and say, "Hey, guess what? I'm opening up every single land to fossil fuel drilling. You want to frack there? You can frack. You want to oil drill? You can drill. That is my new proclamation. Here it is. Get at it." Not so fast. That is actually not how it works. You do have to go through the permitting process. You have to put the lands up for auction. All of these things take time. And if you do not take those steps, then you will be sued. So before anybody can put that first drill into the ground, you're now tied up in court for months, but more likely years.

That's where it is. The delays that the court system can provide us are the only thing that can [00:51:00] save us, right? The rulings themselves don't matter. Because if we can challenge these things in court and drag them out forever or four years, then we might be able to get somebody in the White House who appoints, I don't know, normal people, smart people to these positions in the cabinet who then say, "Oh, we've still got this litigation going. You know what? Go ahead and get rid of it. Because we're canceling those leases. We're canceling this drilling project. We're not going to do this. We're not going to do that. It's over. You win, case dismissed." That's the only hope. And again, that would happen due to the incompetence of the Trump administration trying to do things that they're not technically allowed to do.

If he puts smart people in there, smart but evil, they would figure out a way to nullify those things before they happen. Luckily, these people aren't smart. And I don't mean that to just be insulting and [00:52:00] be like, these are all dumbasses. They're all dumbasses though. Hey, look at them all. You want to point to any one of these people and say, nope, that is an individual that knows what's going on? No. They're all spineless Yes people. Trump is going to have them do things they can't do. They're going to do them, and then they're going to get sued. And then it'll be years before they have any resolution.

That is our only hope. So, let's hope it happens, I guess.

Note from the Editor on why it's important to stay engaged

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: We've just heard clips starting with the Thom Hartmann Program, referencing Hungary to warn about our potential future. The Dig analyzed Trump's cabinet picks through the lens of his incoherent economic policies. The Muckrake Political Podcast, discussed the mechanisms by which they'll attempt to abolish various government departments. The Brian Lehrer Show looked at the nomination of Pete Hegseth to head the department of defense. No Lie focused on the nomination of Kash Patel to head the FBI. Americast discussed the impact of the election on Trump's legal cases. The Aspen Institute compared the coming Trump administration [00:53:00] to the historical reference of Italy's Mussolini. And Farron Balanced hoped that a combination of legal roadblocks and administration incompetence wi ll help limit the damage Trump will be able to do. 

And those were just the top takes. There's a lot more in the deeper-dive sections, but first, a reminder that this show is supported by members who get access to bonus episodes, featuring the production crew here, discussing all manner of important and interesting topics, o ften making each other laugh in the process. A quick reminder that we have once again, launched our winter sale on memberships, which obviously make a great gift. They're now 20% off until the end of the year. Discounts and gifting are available both on our site and through Patreon as well. So whichever you think is a better fit for yourself or a giftee, act accordingly. All the relevant links are in the show notes, or just go to bestoftheleft.com/support. 

The reality being described in today's episode makes it understandable that many are taking this [00:54:00] opportunity to check out from politics, but hopefully it is just temporary because we really need their help. For independent shows like ours, the support of every member and simply every listener following along with the show, makes a huge difference. So, if you are still listening, that means you are still in this fight with us and we need your support because our plan is to be here for as long as we can. Again, head to bestoftheleft.com/support or follow the links in the show notes to grab your own membership currently on discount , or snap up a gift membership for someone who would make use of it . As always if regular membership isn't in the cards for you, shoot me an email requesting a financial hardship membership because we don't let a lack of funds stand in the way of hearing more information. 

Now, one quick note to add on our topic today that is really aimed, again, there's a theme, on keeping everyone focused and in the fight. A couple of weeks ago, there was an essay in the New York Times written by someone who lived through the rise of Putin as he began to consolidate power. As it's happening now, many [00:55:00] turned away from politics and began to focus on improving their own lives without much care for the larger political context that they were living in. Or if not care, you know, they thought, well, self preservation. I got to do what I got to do, right? Well, the result was an unchecked Putin and their attempt to stay above the fray didn't last as the invasion of Ukraine sent the country into crisis. 

A couple of key quotes from this article include, quote, "We became insular and lost sight of everyone else's interests." And the second one is, "What I definitely didn't think at that time is that we are now in a completely different time. It was the start of the time where we are now with the war in Ukraine, with a completely destroyed civil society. What I didn't understand was that it was only just the beginning," end quote. 

Not one of the things that the U.S. has going for it in this current time is that we have the examples of [00:56:00] Hungary and Russia to look to. Many people, you included, obviously, will be able to say that they understood what was coming and therefore be able to work more effectively to resist it. But it starts with remaining focused, not losing sight of the bigger picture in an attempt to take care of our own needs while ignoring the larger context. And of course taking action when we can, and when it's effective. We will be here for the long run, so hang in there with us.

SECTION A - THE LINE UP

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: And now we'll continue to dive deeper on four topics today. Next up Section A- The Lineup, followed by Section B- The Playbook, Section C- Global Reference, and Section D- Cracks in Authority.

Trump Taps Fossil Fuel Ally Lee Zeldin to Head EPA, Push Anti-Environmental Agenda - Democracy Now! - Air Date 11-13-24

AMY GOODMAN: As Donald Trump quickly moves to name his Cabinet, we turn now to look at his pick to head the Environmental Protection Agency, former New York Congressmember Lee Zeldin. The Long Island [00:57:00] Republican served four terms in the House, where he earned a score of just 14 out of 100 from the League of Conservation Voters, after consistently voting against critical environmental protections and clean energy job investments.

Zeldin’s nomination came after The New York Times reported Trump’s transition team is discussing moving the EPA headquarters outside D.C. Nate James of the American Federation of Government Employees told Politico many career EPA officials would leave the agency if it moves, adding, “it could be advertised as a relocation, but really it would be decapitation.”

We go now to Judith Enck, who served as EPA regional administrator under President Obama, now president of Beyond Plastics. We’re speaking to her outside Albany.

Hi, Judith. Thanks so much for joining us again.

JUDITH ENCK: Thanks for having me.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about, as both a former EPA administrator and a person from New York, where Lee Zeldin was a congressmember for years — talk about what [00:58:00] a Zeldin heading the EPA looks like.

JUDITH ENCK: Well, Lee Zeldin at the helm of EPA will be a wonderful tenure for fossil fuel companies, plastics companies, chemical companies. But it’s going to be really bad for people who want to breathe clean air, drink water that doesn’t have toxic chemicals or lead in it. And I’m particularly concerned about what a Zeldin EPA would mean for environmental justice communities, places like Cancer Alley in Louisiana, places like Appalachia and Texas, where there’s a concentration of petrochemical facilities, and today there is not enough environmental protections in place.

I’m glad you mentioned Lee Zeldin’s tenure in Congress, where he had the not very impressive score of 14% voting record when he was in Congress. But let’s go back [00:59:00] even further. Some people don’t know that Lee Zeldin was a state senator in Albany. And his record was so bad that a statewide environmental group gave him the distinguished 2011 Oil Slick Award. And he earned that Oil Slick Award because he introduced bills that would have, for instance, reduced funding for mass transit, provide dirty water in his Long Island district. And he just really stood out when he was in Albany, and then he took that environmental perspective to Washington, where his record was equally bad.

I do want to talk a little bit about his run for governor against Democrat Kathy Hochul, because some people are saying it kind of doesn’t matter what Zeldin’s policy positions are because he’s just going to do what Donald [01:00:00] Trump tells him to do. But make no mistake: Lee Zeldin is in lockstep agreement with the Trump administration anti-environmental agenda.

When he was in Congress, he did a few good things that’ll be interesting to watch, very few. He opposed offshore drilling in the Atlantic Ocean. I don’t know what that means, though, for offshore wind development. He was a member of the Republican Climate Solutions Caucus, and they never did anything. And in breaking news, he supported protections for shellfish in Long Island Sound. Those are the only three positives that I could dig up on his environmental record. So, I have to agree with the guest from the ACLU who said this is going to be worse than anything we have ever seen at the EPA.

AMY GOODMAN: And talk about Project 2025, [01:01:00] that Trump disavowed, but that as soon as he was elected, people were saying, “Of course this is what the plan is.” Talk about the plan including over 150 pages with, to say the least, damaging environmental plans.

JUDITH ENCK: Yeah, this is very concerning. Project 2025 is 900 pages, and 150 are dedicated to anti-environmental policies. Project 2025 calls for disbanding the EPA Office of Environmental Justice. It’s disbanding the office at EPA that deals with enforcement of critical environmental laws. They want to speed approval of chemicals. They want to weaken the Clean Air Act by removing the essential part of the statute which requires the EPA to set health-based standards when regulating air pollution.

The [01:02:00] plan uses phrases like “the perceived threat of climate change.” They want to shut down climate research not only at the EPA, but at a dozen federal agencies. They want to see more fossil fuel development on public lands, not just private lands. So they’re advocating for drilling in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and also drilling for fossil fuels in Minnesota’s Boundary Waters Wilderness areas.

And finally, all of us, unfortunately, have learned about the tremendous health damage caused by forever chemicals, known as PFAS chemicals, where EPA plays a major role. Something EPA, finally, recently did was classify PFAS chemicals as a hazardous substance. That was kind of a no-brainer. And this plan wants to reverse that.

AMY GOODMAN: Finally, I wanted to ask you about moving the EPA out of [01:03:00] Washington. Is this just a geographic thing, or what would it mean, with so many people, obviously, not moving?

JUDITH ENCK: Well, I think it’s not efficiency. I think it’s an effort to drive out the long-term career employees that work at the EPA office. I want to point out there are 10 regional offices all over the country, but the role of the Washington office is to essentially establish the rules of the road when it comes to pollution, how much air toxics are we allowed to breathe in in Cancer Alley, what toxic chemicals will be in our drinking water. So, I really don’t think this is about government efficiency. I think this is about terrorizing the career staff at EPA, making their life harder, distracting them, and, most importantly, taking them away from their day jobs, which is strictly enforcing environmental laws.

AMY GOODMAN: [01:04:00] Judith Enck, I want to thank you for being with us, former EPA regional administrator under President Obama, now serving as president of Beyond Plastics.

What Pete Hegseth Has Said About Civil War and Whiteness Part 2 - Brian Lehrer: A Daily Podcast - Air Date 11-27-24

BRIAN LEHRER - HOST, THE BRIAN LEHRER SHOW: Here's an example of a text that has come in about his tattoos.

It says, I know what Hegseth's tattoos mean. That alone should be disqualifying. So, maybe you could tell us the story of Hegseth being removed from guarding the Biden inauguration and what his tattoos reportedly had to do with it? 

ABIGAIL HAUSLOHNER: Right. So, the Biden inauguration, as you recall, came after January 6th which was when uh, rioters urged on by Trump stormed the Capitol and tried to disrupt the certification or stop the certification of the election results that named Biden president you know, it was a, a pretty violent, uh, uh, there were people who were killed, uh, and injured.

And so after that, obviously Capitol [01:05:00] Police, National Guard Secret Service, everyone was preparing sort of on heightened alert. Uh, I think doing extra security for the inauguration in 2020. And Various National Guardsmen, I guess, on a chat identified an image of Hegseth, who was then in the D.

C. National Guard showing him, him shirtless and a picture of his bicep that showed some tattoos that people in the chat then flagged to National Guard leadership as being problematic, and one was, Uh, the main one are words, Latin words that, you know, you mentioned he has on his arm that say deuce volt which, uh, are kind of a crusades, a Christian battle cry from the first crusade in the Middle Ages.

Though it's become associated often with some extremist groups such as the Proud Boys, Three Percenters, and these are groups that participated in the siege at the Capitol on, uh, January 6, 2020. And [01:06:00] so, these tattoos were flagged and Hegseth was subsequently told to stand down from duty that day to not be part of the security for the inauguration.

Now, the National Guard has said that there are multiple things at play, although Hegseth has, you know, really seized on this episode and wrote about it as, formative, and certainly seems to have informed his perception of an overly woke, meaning also in this sense overly liberal military that, you know, restricts conservative speech, uh, in this case his tattoos, and discriminates against, people with Christian, religious, or conservative views.

BRIAN LEHRER - HOST, THE BRIAN LEHRER SHOW: And he is a Christian conservative. He's made that very clear. Interesting that these tattoos are with the Crusades era, which is, Christian military aggression way back then. But also I read [01:07:00] that he wrote in one of his books that American should, be focused on faith and family and that there should be laws that make it difficult for, uh, Uh, and yet part of his personal history, and I don't know if this will come up in the confirmation context, but from what I've read, he was married to one woman.

They had three kids. Then they got divorced after he had an affair with a work colleague. Those two got married. didn't have any kids, then they got divorced when he had an affair with another work colleague, someone from Fox, and then they got married and they've had another kid since. So he's got Reportedly, at least, this serial history of having [01:08:00] affairs while he's married, and in his first marriage's case, while they had kids.

But he writes that the laws should make it hard for people with kids to get divorced. Have you seen all of that? 

ABIGAIL HAUSLOHNER: Hegseth certainly he's been a big proponent of These sort of a lot of big traditional, you think of as traditional conservative values. You know, he's spoken about, you know, women in the military that women you know, he has been very dismissive of women having a role in the military and yes, has promoted these sort of Christian conservative Christian Traditional family values now, the fact that he has had, you know, multiple marriages and affairs and, you know, the assault allegation, you know, and that obviously conflicts with this stated ideology or what you would assume goes with the stated ideology, you know, that, that's hardly unique, [01:09:00] uh, I'm afraid to say on, on Capitol Hill where you find plenty of, plenty of examples.

Of, of people on both sides of the aisle whose, uh, expressed ideology or politics don't exactly align with their actual behavior. So that's not unique but, you know, we'll see. I mean, I think Hegseth, certainly in the confirmation, you know, if he makes it to that point, is gonna get a lot of tough questions from Democrats on all of these things.

On the tattoo, on the sexual assault allegation, on. His view of women in the military on his view of, family values and wokeness and, you know, who he plans to fire at the Pentagon, uh, and so on but, the question that I think a lot of people have is how far will the Republicans go?

How hard are they going to press him with these questions? Maybe they'll get the hard ones out of the way behind closed doors. And that's, that's, that's, uh, Are they, are any of them willing to really take a stand to vote down his nomination? And, you know, I think we'll be looking [01:10:00] particularly at some of the more centrist Republicans and women Republicans uh, including some who have served in the U. S. military themselves to see where they land on this.

MAGA 2.0 w Quinn Slobodian & Wendy Brown Part 3 - The Dig - Air Date 11-29-24

QUINN SLOBODIAN: So this is the national conservatism position that one figurehead like Robert Lighthizer, who you mentioned at the top, could be seen as an important representative of. Someone who managed to attach to the locomotive of Trump in 2017, a totally transformed understanding of what trade policy should do.

He just completely broke, he broke with the kind of shibboleths of free trade that had dominated both parties for decades and said that trade policy doesn't just have to aim at bottom line efficiency and the best sort of international division of labor, but you can do other things with trade policy.

You can try to reach minimum labor standards. You can try to reach economic and political goals of bringing back manufacturing to the Midwest. You can try to diversify the U. S. economic base. This was actually, I [01:11:00] think, a very big deal, and it's not for nothing that Biden and company picked it up and tried to do different things with trade policy, different kind of political outcomes.

So far, I think it's very symptomatic that here we are, weeks into the process of hearing new names, and we haven't even seen Lighthizer's name officially attached to any post yet. The only person who you might consider part of this kind of national conservatism block, the idea of using the state more proactively for an expansionary transformation of the U.S. economy is Marco Rubio, but he gets put as secretary of state, you know, very far from the sort of position in which he could actually affect something like industrial policy, even if he wanted to be true to his word in the last few years. So that post neoliberal Nat Conn position in the Republican Party, which people probably have exaggerated the importance of, so far has effectively no representation in the cabinet that he's assembling. Instead, [01:12:00] we have another group that I think you could call basically the growthers, or just growthism.

These are the people who were drawn from Wall Street. This is the place where, Scott Besent, the nominee for treasury, who was literally, working for Soros and helped him break the pound, and then founded a hedge fund with Soros' backing. And deals in the sort of, at the sort of bleeding edge of speculative investments on new technologies and, you know, sure shot things like carbon driven extraction and real estate, really just run of the mill.

Grother was a Democrat until he saw that the Trump bet could pay off and then jumped over to Trump in 2016-17. The other people around Trump, like Mark Rowan from Apollo Management, even more extreme kind of vulture capitalist, you know, doing private equity deals to basically strip value out of rural hospitals and care homes, [01:13:00] and then sell them off to different parts of the company.

So this is the kind of growth at all costs part of the coalition, which arguably is the dominant part. I think these are the people who Howard Lutnick, now at Commerce, was on the transition team coming from Cantor Fitzgerald. This is, in a way, intellectually and politically the least interesting, even if perhaps, you know, civilizationally the most destructive part of this coalition.

The third is the other one that, you mentioned a minute ago, Russ Fout, who comes from, I would say, the kind of austerian libertarianism, Grover Norquist, right? Shrink the state down so you can drown in a bathtub. Pure think tank blood just flowing in his veins. And there it's just, as you say, get rid of what he calls the fourth wing of the government, which is the administrative state of civil servants.

And for what end? To, you know, produce a crisis in which the federal government [01:14:00] itself cannot function anymore, defund the IRS to the point that there's no revenue at all coming from taxes, I mean, I think that is definitely part of the idea, but then what follows is that, idea of a devolution of all administrative responsibility down in a subsidiarity way to state and counties.

Probably that's part of the idea. That is concerning, obviously, but does seem to be a kind of direction of travel of people who are ideologically committed to decentralization in a way that, I think might even take precedent over the pursuit of the bottom line in a way that the Wall Street faction I think is more focused on.

So that I think the tussle between those three groups is what defined Trump one and it will be what defines Trump two And for the time being it looks like old fashioned Wall Street, mostly vulture capitalists are the ones who are getting closest to his ear 

DANIEL DENVER - HOST, THE DIG: You said that Lighthizer probably represents the least influential [01:15:00] economic current there. What about JD Vance and his paternalist populist welfare chauvinism or the new labor secretary who as a house republican voted for the Pro Act. An appointment that was disturbingly, very effusively praised by teamsters president Sean O'Brien is all of that whatever the work it's doing as a politics and an ideology is that is it all just sort of impossible as policy as long as these various capitalists are actually running the show?

QUINN SLOBODIAN: I mean, I think that's the question of how much power a vice president has, right? I mean, obviously they're important during the campaign as sort of messengers of the intended spirit of the incoming administration.

But after that, how much do we care about Pence's economic vision? How much do we care about, you know, Kamala Harris' economic vision before she became the candidate? I think I have yet to be convinced that the kind of Nat Conn. laborist, [01:16:00] workerist version of the GOP is actually able to translate its rhetoric into any kind of policy except to sideline unions as kind of bearers of blocks of voters and redirect the idea towards individual workers as sort of political actors making their own choices.

But the Labor Secretary is an interesting one. I don't know if you have a thought about her, Wendy. 

WENDY BROWN: I guess I just want to go back to the important point that as long as we're thinking about a coherent economic policy, we'll be stuck down where your question went just now. How is it all going to be reconciled? But it seems to me it is perfectly possible to have an unreconciled economic policy with, I mean, there are a lot of eyes on China, even there, there's going to be several different kinds of moves. Anxiety about what China can [01:17:00] and can't be forced to do. What will and won't be inflationary in trade policy and tariffs with China? But just what products the U.S. can make that could possibly compete with Chinese products.

And so there's a whole bunch of discussion over there that is conflicted and some policy will have to come out of it. But that's different than saying we need one reconciled policy for labor in the US for different kinds of capital for tech capital, finance, capital, and of course, industrial capital.

And I take really seriously Quinn's growthers term because I think that is what binds them. But I think it's possible to imagine I want to say a controlled chaos in economic policy that is disruptive, but above all, aims at transforming the state's relationship to that policy and the state's own engagement.[01:18:00] 

And on the one hand, There's crypto, which promises, if these guys get their way, to bind the state more closely to crypto than it ever has been, if that reserve idea gets legs. And on the other hand, There's the gutting, the potential gutting of a huge number of state functions, which I assume we'll talk about in a few minutes, that would be the effect of Project 2025 and has a couple of instruments, most notably, transforming a bunch of career state workers into political appointments. And that's one instrument. And the other one is impoundment, allowing budgets to come directly from the executive office and take effect and allowing, budgetary moves to not have to move through legislation. And [01:19:00] those things would be huge transformations of the American state, not necessarily bound to one coherent economic policy. 

Maddow Disgrace of Trump nepotism, abuse of pardons far surpasses Biden's pardon of his son - The Rachel Maddow Show - Air Date 12-2-24

RACHEL MADDOW - HOST, THE RACHEL MADDOW SHOW: So there's new reporting today from legendary reporter Jane Mayer in the New Yorker about the man who's been announced as the choice for defense secretary in the incoming administration. According to Jane Mayer's new reporting, before Pete Hegseth was hired to be a TV host at the Fox News Channel in 2017, he had been forced out.

of two small right wing veterans advocacy organizations that he had been involved in. The first one was a group called Veterans for Freedom. They hired him on to lead that organization in 2007. According to Mayer's reporting, by 2008, the very next year, the group's finances had collapsed. Amid concerns about wild spending and quote, sexually inappropriate behavior in the workplace.

The group's donors soon folded the organization into a [01:20:00] different veterans group, basically according to Mayer's reporting, in order to get Hegseth's hands off the checkbook. So that was Veterans for Freedom. Then it was Concerned Veterans for America, where Hegseth was in charge from 2013 to 2016, before he was forced out of that organization, too.

From Mayors, from Mayors reporting, quote, a previously undisclosed whistleblower report on Hegseth's tenure as the president of Concerned Veterans for America, describes him as being repeatedly intoxicated while acting in his official capacity, to the point of needing to be carried out of the organization's events.

The detailed report, which was compiled by multiple former employees and sent to the organization's senior management, states that at one point, Hegseth had to be restrained while drunk. From joining the dancers on the stage of a Louisiana strip club, where he had brought his team from the organization.

The report also says that Hegseth, who was married at the time, [01:21:00] and other members of his management team, sexually pursued the organization's female staffers, whom they divided into two groups, the quote, party girls, and the quote, dance girls. In a separate letter of complaint which was sent to the organization, a different former employee described Hegseth being at a bar in the early morning hours of May 29, 2015, while on an official tour through Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio.

He was drunkenly chanting at the bar, quote,

Mayor says quote, I spoke at length with two people who identified themselves as having contributed to the whistleblower report. One of them said of Hegseth quote, I've seen him drunk so many times. I've seen him dragged away not a few times, but multiple times. To have him at the Pentagon would be scary.

Adding quote, when those of us who worked at Concern Veterans for America heard he was being considered for Secretary of Defense. It wasn't no, it was hell no. [01:22:00] According to the complaint, at one such CVA event in Virginia Beach on Memorial Day weekend in 2014, Hegseth was, quote, totally sloshed and needed to be carried to his room because he was, quote, so intoxicated.

The following month, during an event in Cleveland, Hegseth, who had gone with his team to a bar around the corner from their hotel, was described as, quote, completely drunk in a public place. According to the report, quote, several high profile people who attended the organization's event were very disappointed to see this kind of public behavior, though the report does not identify them.

Nevertheless, in October 2014, the group instituted a no alcohol policy at its events. The following month, however, Hegseth and another manager lifted the policy, lifted the no alcohol policy, while overseeing a get out the vote field operation to boost Republican candidates in North Carolina. According to the report, on the evening before the election, Hegseth, who had been out with three young female staff members, was so inebriated by 1 a.

m. [01:23:00] that a staffer who'd driven him to his hotel in a van full of other drunken staffers asked for assistance to get Hegseth to his room. Quote, Pete was completely passed out in the middle seat. slumped over a young female staff member, the report says. It took two male staff members to get Hegseth into the hotel.

After one young woman vomited in some bushes, another helped him to bed. In the morning, a team member had to wake Hegseth so he didn't miss his flight. According to the report, quote, All of this happened in public, while Concerned Veterans for America was, quote, embedded in the Republican get out the vote effort.

The following month, in December 2014, the group held an office Christmas party at the Grand Hyatt in Washington. Once again, according to the report, Hegseth was noticeably intoxicated and had to be carried up to his room. The report stated, quote, his behavior was embarrassing in front of the team, but not surprising.

People have simply come to expect Pete to get drunk at social events. The 2015 federal tax filing by Concerned [01:24:00] Veterans for America has an unusual note saying, quote, major problems developed in the last fiscal year were paused. Filing also describes Pete Hegseth as, quote, president outgoing. By the start of 2016, Hegseth was out of his job.

I should tell you, NBC News has not independently confirmed the reporting in The New Yorker. Pete Hegseth would not comment for the piece, though someone described as an advisor to him told the magazine that the claims were, quote, Outlandish, outlandish or not, what Jane Mayer's reporting is describing is how things apparently went with the last two tiny organizations that he ran.

Two very small right wing advocacy groups that had a handful of staff. Now Trump wants him in charge of the largest department in the U. S. government with an 800 billion dollar budget and three million people to be in charge of.

SECTION B - THE PLAYBOOK

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: Now entering Section B- [01:25:00] The Playbook. 

Trump goes off the deep end with Cabinet pick Part 2 - No Lie w Brian Tyler Cohen - Air Date 12-1-24

BRIAN TYLER COHEN - HOST, NO LIE: So I wanted to talk a little bit about your area of expertise, which is as we move forward in the Trump administration, something that I've been especially worried about and sounded the alarms about in the lead up to this election was the prospect of Trump enacting Schedule F, which is his plan to change all of the career civil servants in the federal government into a political appointee designation. Would he be able to do this as easily as I think he's planning on doing it, as easily as Project 2025 had anticipated it would be for him to do that? 

MAX STIER: So Brian, you're 100% right to be concerned about this. I think that if you pull out for a second, the key issue here is President Trump wants to convert our current system, which is a government that's there for the public and for the people into a government that is the spoil system, one that serves the winner of the election and not the broader public interest. And Schedule F, as you just described, is an important piece of that.

[01:26:00] So President elect has already stated that he wants to use government authorities to go after his personal enemies. He's choosing people to run agencies on the basis of their loyalty to him, not to their competence and character. And the civil service is the last remaining bastion of representation for that rule of law and the public interest.

And Schedule F was something that he tried in the first term to implement, the very end of his first term. Ran out of time, but that would have done just what you said, which is convert many, many thousands of career apolitical experts into yet more political appointees. I think that he will have difficulty, getting to answer your direct question, in implementing Schedule F very quickly because the Biden team has put in place a regulation that they would have to undo to make that happen. But I think the more important issue is that he can pursue that same goal of upending [01:27:00] the career professional civil service through a lot of other means. And we need to be alert to not just Schedule F, but all kinds of other things like just terrible management that might drive away the experts that we want in our government and enable more politicization, more cronyism and worse government.

BRIAN TYLER COHEN - HOST, NO LIE: Right. People just seeing that there are unqualified, incompetent people at the top of each department and basically self selecting out by virtue of not wanting to work under a Pam Bondi, under a Pete Hegseth, under an RFK Jr., for example. I want to go back to the regulation that you had spoken about before, the fact that Biden had put forward a regulation that would presumably prevent this type of thing from happening.

You would imagine if Trump was actually serious about moving forward with turning the career civil servant, sector into political appointees that his team would just be committed to overturning this regulation. And that would be basically a very small obstacle for [01:28:00] him to have to overcome. Would you agree with that? Is that actually gonna pose some type of a serious barrier for him? 

MAX STIER: So I think it's always dangerous to say never, but government process actually matters. And when you don't understand government process and you work to use that government process to achieve your ends, you often don't get very far. And the truth is that it takes a lot of time to change a regulation that exists to do it right, so that you can actually avoid successful court challenge. Now, it may very well be that the Trump team will simply bulldoze through, not care about what the courts might say or litigation.

But the reality is that it could take six months or a year to do Schedule F. Again, you said it exactly right though. And that is, you don't have to have Schedule F to have the impact of Schedule F. If you chase away the good talent and it's worth stepping back and making sure we understand who these people are.[01:29:00] 

They're the air traffic controllers. They're the food inspectors. They're the 70 percent of the workforce that is involved in national security, keeping us safe. A third of them are veterans. You know, these are people who, overall headcount, I should also add, is the same size today in the federal government as it was in the 1960s.

So, these are people that are serving America. They deserve better. The OMB intended nominee has been taped and quoted as saying that he would like to traumatize the federal workforce so that they don't want to come to work. You do have to worry about how federal employees are being treated because that can lead to effectively the same thing as Schedule F. Great talent leaving, Americans getting hurt because they don't have the best civil servants looking out for them. 

House Passes Nonprofit Killer Bill, Most Dangerous Domestic Anti-Terrorism Bill Since PATRIOT Act - Democracy Now! - Air Date 11-22-24

AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: For more, we go to East Lansing, Michigan, where we’re joined by Darryl Li. He’s an anthropologist, lawyer and legal scholar teaching at the University of [01:30:00] Chicago. His analysis of the so-called nonprofit killer bill was published on Spencer Ackerman’s blog forever-wars.com. It’s headlined “The Most Dangerous Domestic Anti-Terrorism Bill Since the PATRIOT Act.”

OK, Darryl, why? Why is this so significant? Again, it was passed in the House. It now makes its way to the Senate.

DARRYL LI: Thank you for having me on, Amy.

As you mentioned, this bill is essentially a civil rights disaster, that would allow the government, under any administration — I want to be clear that this bill is terrible no matter who is president — but it would allow the government to shut down nonprofits on the smear of being terrorist-supporting organizations.

Now, obviously, the government, after decades of authoritarian “war on terror” policies, already has ample legal tools at its disposal to go after nonprofits, essentially, for any reason that it wishes. What this bill would do in addition, the thing that it would add and the thing that makes it so dangerous, [01:31:00] and actually the most dangerous domestic terrorism law in a generation, is that it would essentially smuggle in through the back door a domestic terrorist group list for the first time. This is something that the United States, to this day, still doesn’t have. We have many, many lists of so-called foreign terrorist organizations, that are overwhelmingly Muslim and/or based in the Global South.

This law requires an accusation with no evidence, but a tie-in. It’s an accusation that nonprofits are supporting a group on one of the existing international terrorism lists. This is important to understand, because it explains why so many people on the right in Congress are comfortable signing on, because the bill is essentially discriminatory by design. Right-wingers and white supremacists in Congress can support this bill, with the assurance that their allies, right-wing extremist groups, are highly, highly unlikely to ever be targeted by this bill, because there isn’t going to — it’s much less likely that they will be smeared with an accusation of being tied to an [01:32:00] international terrorist organization that’s already on one of the government lists. So, that’s why this particular coalition —

 [inaudible]

 — has come together. And it will — oh, go on.

AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: Talk more about the origins of the bill, why Democrats supported the bill, and what it means now that it’s going to the Senate, how organizations are organizing around it.

DARRYL LI: Right. So, since October 7th, we’ve seen a whole bunch of outlandish anti-Palestinian pieces of legislation that have been designed to crush any protest or dissent around Palestine in the United States, while Congress, of course, continues to supply untold billions of dollars in weapons to Israel for its ongoing genocide in Gaza. This particular piece of legislation is the one that has gotten closest to becoming law. And initially, it did have significant bipartisan support, because, of course, anti-Palestinian racism is one of the great bipartisan unifiers in Congress.

With the [01:33:00] efforts of civil society groups to ring the alarm and educate members of Congress about the dangers of this bill, not only for Palestine advocacy, but broadly, for any number of causes, and, of course, with the election of Donald Trump, more and more Democrats have awoken to the danger. So, right now the important thing, now that the bill has passed the House, is to ensure that it does not go anywhere in the Senate. So, it’s extremely important for people to keep up the pressure on the Democratic members of Congress, and especially those in the Senate, to block this bill in the remainder of this session and, of course, if it comes up in a future legislative session.

AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: And, of course, next session — now, this already came up just a week or two ago, and now it has passed in the House. The Democrats control the Senate, but the Republicans will soon control the Senate.

DARRYL LI: That’s right, they will. But my understanding is that they’ll still need 60 votes to pass, so I don’t think the Republicans will have 60 [01:34:00] senators, so there is still a chance that the bill can be blocked. But again, we can’t take it for granted. It requires all hands on deck and as much pressure as possible on the Senate Democrats to ensure that this bill doesn’t go anywhere.

AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: You know, Darryl, it’s interesting that I’m talking to you here in Baku, Azerbaijan, because there have been scores of journalists, civil society, climate justice activists arrested in the lead-up to the COP. And for those who write about what’s happening in this authoritarian petrostate, they talk about the targeting of nonprofit groups. And that’s the beginning of going after these people who end up in jail. A number have said they’ve been brutalized in jail. Your final thoughts, Darryl?

DARRYL LI: Yeah, so, one thing that’s important for people to understand is that the Supreme Court has already said that material support for terrorism can include speech acts. It [01:35:00] can include so-called coordinated advocacy. So it goes far beyond funding. And this is something that I think, for media organizations, in particular, should really be sort of raising the alarms in terms of the dangers of this bill for their work, in particular.

 

Surveilled Ronan Farrow on the Spyware Technology the Trump Admin Could Use to Hack Your Phone - Democracy Now! - Air Date 12-5-24

KASH PATEL: We will go out and find the conspirators, not just in government, but in the media. Yes, we’re going to come after the people in the media who lied about American citizens, who helped Joe Biden rig presidential elections. We’re going to come after you. Whether it’s criminally or civilly, we’ll figure that out. But, yeah, we’re putting you all on notice. And, Steve, this is why they hate us. This is why we’re tyrannical. This is why we’re dictators, because we’re actually going to use the Constitution to prosecute them for crimes they said we have always been guilty of but never have.

AMY GOODMAN: That’s Kash Patel, the Trump nominee for head of the FBI, to replace Christopher Wray, who was already called on the carpet around buying Pegasus. So, when not only Kash Patel, because who knows if he’ll make it, [01:36:00] but President Trump has repeatedly talked about journalists, for example, as the enemy of the people, your final thoughts, Ronan?

RONAN FARROW: Trump and his associates have explicitly threatened journalists with prosecution, and specifically threatened journalists who protect their sources with prosecution. That is dangerous for democracy. This is one of the first times — and I’m, as we discussed, someone who’s dealt with a fair number of surveillance and intimidation efforts — that I felt frightened to work in this country.

I think in this incoming administration, we’re going to need the work of journalists more than ever. And we’re going to need the space for journalism, for dissent, for all of the spaces that are shrunk and cracked down on when you have this technology freely used in an unfettered way. And we’ve just seen this horror story play out in one country after another, even where there are ostensible [01:37:00] protections in place. We see how hard it is to get accountability after the fact. We see how tempting it is for law enforcement to overreach and start to target people in a vindictive, politicized way. And then you have these sets of statements, where you have Donald Trump threatening political opponents with military tribunals, for instance.

And as ever, we’re in the media engaged in this debate of what’s a joke and what’s not, but these kinds of appointments, or at least attempted appointments that we’re seeing, are no joke. And this technology that is already at the fingertips of this government, that’s no joke. So, people need to really care. And members of Congress, of whatever party, who remain sane in a context that is increasingly not normal, really need to clock and appreciate this issue.

I have seen, in talking about this film in public spaces, how the public gets it, how ordinary Americans understand that it is scary to [01:38:00] have these spaces shrunk and cracked down on. And I think that politicians who take a stand and realize that the spyware companies in this film who say this is a weapon of war — the spyware companies themselves. We have NSO’s lawyer on camera in the film saying, “There’s no equivalent to the Geneva Conventions for this. And that’s not on us. We’re making and selling a weapon that is largely unregulated.” We’ve got to fix that. And I think people care, is what I’m seeing. And my hope is that political representatives understand that the people care. And this is not a partisan issue. People who don’t want big government, people who have traditional conservative values should especially care about protecting people from this tech.

AMY GOODMAN: Matt O’Neill, you traveled the world with Ronan as you interviewed people almost on every continent. I want to ask you, for example, about Guatemala. In 2022, a group of journalists working for the [01:39:00] award-winning Central American independent news outlet El Faro filed a lawsuit in U.S. court against NSO Group, the Israeli company that operates Pegasus spyware used to monitor and track journalists, human rights activists, dissidents. The El Faro journalists, which is based in El Salvador, allege Pegasus software was used to infiltrate their iPhones and track their communications and movements. Now, you didn’t go to El Salvador. They sued, and one of the heads of it went to Guatemala.

MATTHEW ONEILL: Yes, we went to Guatemala City to interview Roman Gressier, who was targeted by Pegasus spyware. And I think this is indicative of what you see on every continent where Pegasus is in use, is that you’re seeing journalists, civil rights activists, human rights activists who are being targeted with this software. If you’re looking at El Salvador, this tool is only as responsible [01:40:00] as the people using it. So, in El Salvador, they’re prosecuting journalists. In Saudi Arabia, they’re tracking down and executing journalists. If we have this software here, I think people listening at home might be thinking, “I’m not going to be subject to an ICE investigation. The Department of Homeland Security isn’t interested in my selfies or my pictures of my kids.” And that’s likely true. However, if this investigative tool makes it into the hands of people who have an expansive idea about what criminality is or what the reach of their institution is into people’s lives, we —

AMY GOODMAN: Or proudly announce their enemies lists they have.

MATTHEW ONEILL: We will all be caught up. We don’t need to be the target of an investigation. They could be targeting you, and our text exchange this morning would have looped me right into that.

Maddow Disgrace of Trump nepotism, abuse of pardons far surpasses Biden's pardon of his son Part 2 - The Rachel Maddow Show - Air Date 12-2-24

RACHEL MADDOW - HOST, THE RACHEL MADDOW SHOW: Last night, President Biden put out a statement explaining his pardon of his son, Hunter. The statement [01:41:00] said, quote, From the day I took office, I said I would not interfere with the Justice Department's decision making. And I kept my word, even if I, even as I have watched my son being selectively and unfairly prosecuted.

Without aggravating factors like use in a crime, or multiple purchases, or buying a weapon as a straw purchaser, people are almost never brought to trial on felony charges solely for how they filled out a gun form. Those who were late paying taxes because of serious addictions, but paid them back subsequently with interest and penalties, those people are typically given non criminal resolutions.

The president says, quote, it is clear that Hunter was treated differently. The charges in his cases came about only after several of my political opponents in Congress instigated them to attack me and oppose my election. Then a carefully negotiated plea deal agreed to by the Department of Justice unraveled in the courtroom with a number of my political opponents in Congress taking credit for bringing political [01:42:00] pressure on the process.

No reasonable person who looks at the facts of Hunter's cases can reach any other conclusion that Hunter was singled out only because he is my son, and that is wrong. He says, quote, There has been an effort to break Hunter, who has been five and a half years sober, even in the face of unrelenting attacks and selective prosecution.

In trying to break Hunter, they have tried to break me, and there's no reason to believe it will stop here. Enough is enough. He says, quote, from my entire career, I followed a simple principle. Just tell the American people the truth. They'll be fair. They'll be fair minded. Well, here's the truth. I believe in the justice system, but as I'm not, but as I have wrestled with this, I also believe raw politics has infected this process and it led to a miscarriage of justice.

I hope Americans will understand why a father and a president would come to this decision. Father and a president. He says [01:43:00] there's no reason to believe it will stop here. Enough is enough.

It is true that President Biden had said he wouldn't pardon his son. And it may or may not be related, but would it change your mind at all if after you made a pledge like that, the incoming next president that announced that he planned to remove the director of the FBI and install in his place someone who has literally published a hit list of people he wants to go after once Trump is back in power.

There are 60 names on this list. This guy published it as an appendix, as Appendix B to one of his recent books. Not his series of books that describe Trump as King Donald, no, those are his three books for kids. No, the one with the 60 names on a list of who he's going to go get in Trump's name once Trump is back in power, that's a book he wrote presumably for adults.

So what would you do? What would you do? What would [01:44:00] you do if after you made that pledge to not pardon your son, that's what the next president said he was going to do to U. S. law enforcement? What would you do? What is reasonable to demand of a man? After what's been done to your son already, right? You ready to put him back in the barrel?

Honestly, maybe what President Biden should have done is not just pardon his son, Hunter, but name him ambassador to France. Right? Maybe then the response, the criticism of the decision would be a little more muted. I mean, consider it, right? Donald Trump, the president elect used his pardon power to give pardons to his longest serving political advisor, his campaign chairman, his campaign manager, his national security advisor.

He gave pardons to seven, count them, seven different Republican congressmen convicted of dozens of felonies. He pardoned the [01:45:00] father. of his son in law. His daughter is married to Jared Kushner. He pardoned Jared Kushner's father. This man tried to blackmail and intimidate a witness in a federal criminal case against him by hiring a prostitute to seduce the witness and lure him back to a hotel room where the guy had staged a hidden camera.

He filmed the sexual encounter and then sent the tape to the wife of the witness. To intimidate both the witness and the wife into not testifying against him. And that is an astonishing thing to do, an astonishing length to go to, to commit the crime of witness intimidation. It is a whole other level of insanity when you consider that the woman this guy sent the tape to was his own sister.

Because it was his brother in law, his sister's husband, who was going to be the witness against him in this criminal investigation along with potentially his sister herself. So this is what he did to his own sister in order to try to shut down the case. In order to try to shut down those witnesses. His name is [01:46:00] Charles Kushner.

His son Jared is married to Ivanka Trump. And so he got a pardon. He got a pardon. Charles Kushner served two years in federal prison, but then I'm sure just on the merits of the case, he got a full pardon from Donald Trump in Trump's first term. And now this weekend, this weekend, Trump just named him that same guy, that ex con, he just announced that he will name him ambassador to France.

And he did that announcement right after he announced that the father of the guy married to his other daughter, Tiffany, he will be Trump's senior advisor on the Middle East. And so, yeah, cue all the hand wringing and gnashing of teeth today about a president using his power, his pardon power, hm, his powers as president, hm, to do something for a family member.

I mean, Trump pardoned a family member and then named him ambassador to France. A man who has no qualifications whatsoever to be America's ambassador to France. [01:47:00] Trump pardoned the owner of the 49ers football team and has now nominated his son in law to be the head of the DEA. The guy is a local sheriff.

He has no apparent qualifications to lead the Drug Enforcement Administration other than being a local sheriff and being related to a rich guy who Trump pardoned. The Surgeon General. Trump just announced she is a random doctor from the Fox News channel who has her own celebrity line of vitamins. She has no apparent qualifications for being Surgeon General at all, other than the fact that she's a doctor, and she's the sister in law of the guy who he just named to be National Security Advisor.

So, sure, obviously, why not? The guy he's just named to lead the Navy has zero experience with the U. S. Navy or with literally anything having to do with any part of the United States military. But the guy did hold a 12 million dollar fundraiser for Trump at his multi million dollar home, which famously features a mirrored floor.

So ha ha, you can see up people's skirts while they're standing in the living room at the fundraiser. You think I'm kidding, look [01:48:00] it up. Trump named someone who the U. S. government once felt the need to put on a terrorism watch list. to be the new director of national intelligence. He named an accused child sex trafficker to be attorney general.

He named an HHS secretary who says heroin, heroin helps him read better, and wi fi gives you a leaky brain. And I'm just going to mention this one more time, he named his convicted felon relative to be our nation's ambassador in Paris. Maybe his French is excellent. I don't know. But yes, tell me more about how outraged we all are about President Biden's pardon for his son.

Because that, somehow, that is the thing that looks bad.

SECTION C - GLOBAL REFERENCE

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: Next up Section C- Global Reference.

Strongmen Mussolini to the Present Part 2 - The Aspen Institute - Air Date 8-8-24

CAROLYNE HELDMAN: I want to come back to the present in a minute, but I'd, I'd like you to, you know, Walk us through [01:49:00] Italy, the through line from Mussolini to Berlusconi to Maloney, and vis a vis Hitler and what happened after Hitler in Germany, how Italy is so different, and then let's talk about the United States.

Is that all? Yeah. Go. 

DR. RUTH BEN-GHIAT: And you have one minute. Um. No, you have 20. Okay. So, there are very good reasons, we always hear about Hitler, um, I don't need to tell you what they are but Mussolini is actually more relevant to understanding how autocracy takes hold today. Not always, there's like, there's lots of coups where it's instant.

But Mussolini Um, he got power very quickly. Incredible. And he and Hitler were formed by World War I and the kind of total disruption of everything and crisis after World War I. And he [01:50:00] started fascism as a decentralized militia movement. It's very important. It was a, it was a militia movement. And it conquered power locally.

Like, actually Steve Bannon is a big fan of Mussolini. He was influenced by the way fascism started to have this precinct strategy. That you, you conquer locally, the town halls, the this and that. But he, he did that in 1919. By 1922 he was already prime minister. So Hitler worshipped Mussolini. And his Beer Hall Putsch that failed was an attempt to copy the March on Rome, which was successful of Mussolini in 1922.

And Hitler had this huge crush on Mussolini, and he was constantly writing him. Trying to get his autograph and Mussolini was like, I'm not giving, who is this? And then Hitler went to jail and Mussolini's like, I'm not gonna be writing to a, a convict. And so Hitler increased his, uh, he had a bust of Mussolini on his desk in the late 20s and other [01:51:00] Nazis made fun of him but he, he kept on.

And this was because as you know, Hitler was trying to get to, uh, into power for a very long time whereas Mussolini. And, and he was the one who wrote the playbook. So Mussolini created the first dictator right wing dictatorship because he was going to be prosecuted. He had been outed in a murder of the socialist leader.

And his hands were all over the crime, and he was the, a special investigator was. And he was being asked to resign, uh, or the papers and the journalists and the opposition wanted him to resign. And so he was going to go to jail. So what did he do? He declared dictatorship. Wouldn't you do that? And so he passed these laws, which I've been going back to look at that are called the laws for the defense of the state.

And in those laws is the playbook. So he wrecked [01:52:00] democracy from within. Then he did something very contemporary, which was strongmen will do anything to escape prosecution. In his case, he declared dictatorship. But those laws, they called for things that have been done since by Erdogan, by Orban, and they're also in Project 2025, where you You fire all unloyal civil servants.

You staff the civil service with people who will be loyal to you with ideologues. Right? That was very important because it's no good having a regime or a coup or anything if people will not work for your, to pass you, to write your laws and be the bureaucrats. And he also expanded executive power.

And he had many ways that he made it so that executive decrees could not be opposed by parliament. So by 1926 he had no checks on his rule. And the other thing I'll [01:53:00] mention, because then it connects to Berlusconi. He, well, this was in the late 1920s, he was a huge adherent of great replacement theory.

The idea that non white people were gonna come in and they were procreating so fast that they were going to extinguish the white race. He wrote many things, this is in my book, and he said that, this is his quote, black, brown, and yellow people are having so many babies that the white race will be submerged.

So, Hitler learned from him as well. So he's very, very important for understanding the far right today. And he just doesn't get, uh, he doesn't get noticed enough. So Berlusconi came in at a period of crisis right after the fall of communism, and then there was a corruption scandal, and all of the major parties of Italy disappeared.

This is the early 90s. So he read the political marketplace, and he created something new. He was a [01:54:00] billionaire. He was a sports team owner. He owned all the private networks in Italy. Imagine that. So, he was the first person since Mussolini to have that much control of the media. Now, this was the new, you don't need a direct, uh, you don't need direct old school dictatorship control anymore.

If you either own the networks to yourself, or you get a crony. to, you put them in the hands of cronies. So he was able to do all of that. And the main thing he did, which affects us today, all over Europe too, he brought fascists into the government for the first time since 1945. He brought neo fascists and he made them part of his governing coalition.

So, and then he started, and he rehabilitated Mussolini. And he said famously, Mussolini never killed anyone. In an interview with Boris Johnson, who was then a journalist. So, so there's that lineage. And, in the last Berlusconi [01:55:00] government, he also was a partner of Putin. Berlusconi was the person who made himself the mouthpiece of Putin in Europe.

So he backed everything Putin did. He sanitized everything Putin did. He sold Putin to European allies. And he tried to sell Putin to America, but it didn't work. And during his last government his minister of youth was Giorgio Meloni. And Giorgio Meloni came up as a hardcore neo fascist. So I like to say that Giorgio Meloni has a connection to both Mussolini and to Berlusconi.

And so, she is a superb communicator. People should not underestimate her. She's very effective. Sometimes she reminds me of Mussolini in, in her way, her oratory. And the way she looks at the crowd. She's very skilled. And she's been playing a double game because she's been very pro democratic in her foreign policy.

She supports, uh, Ukraine. At [01:56:00] home, not at all. Anti LGBTQ, anti immigrant suing today's autocrats. If you have a dissident or a critic, you sue them. That's how you financially and psychologically exhaust people. So she's suing people. She's suing a classicist who's been long retired and he's in his 80s because he called her a neo Nazi like many years ago.

But he's being sued now. So we can't really understand the right today without this lineage of Italy, but people don't pay attention to Italy. And I started out as an Italian historian, so perhaps I'm biased, but I've been able to do this work because I understood how these, how, how this functions and how it can pass in history and be be reinvigorated in different eras of history up to today.

Will Trump Turn America Into a Laboratory Of Autocracy w David Pepper - Thom Hartmann Program - Air Date 12-2-24

THOM HARTMANN - HOST, THOM HARTMANN PROGRAM: You've been talking about the autocracy model. Could you define that for us? [01:57:00] 

DAVID PEPPER: Sure. I mean, the, the, I've tried to use the state level, um, autocracies that we've been seeing in my, this book, this one book I've written is called laboratories of autocracy, and I think it's a real preview of what's going to happen in the national level on, on the current path.

You know, what's happened in these states is they basically locked out the voters, essentially through gerrymandering, but also through stripping powers away from courts, changing the way we elect or select courts, the types of stuff we're seeing in North Carolina. The people are kind of cut out of governing these states at this point.

We're living this in Ohio where I'm sitting and what I've tried to describe in, in these books is that once that happens, the aim of um, government honestly is no longer about public service at all. It's about using government to serve certain private interests and the public because of the gerrymandering or the other mechanisms that lock them out really can't [01:58:00] stop it.

And that's what we've seen in Ohio. And you know, this is not rocket science. Academics a lot smarter. I have read about this for years, but what I can do is describe what it looks like on the ground in Ohio and what we've seen in the last 15 or 20 years. very much. in states where they've locked up these statehouses and created a sense of the people can't stop anything is we've seen sort of this broad corruption of government to simply be about serving private interests.

You know, one of the best examples is, um, in states like Ohio, you know, they're giving away the farm, um, public school dollars to for profit, you know, private school models, be it charter schools, be it vouchers. We've seen, you know, the takeover of utility commissions to serve the utilities and not the consumers on and on and on and get on.

It's this broader corruption of public service for private interests. And so when I see that happen here, and I see this new doge or whatever it's called, where [01:59:00] Musk is going to run it with Vivek Ramaswamy, it's going to be the same thing. We are about to see, you know, the federal government put to work for certain private interests.

And as best they can, they're going to want to keep the people from stopping it. So the autocracy model very quickly in states of Ohio has led to corruption and has led to rapidly declining public outcomes. And my worry is that's exactly we're going to see at the national level. And it's what countries like Hungary and Russia have seen as well.

THOM HARTMANN - HOST, THOM HARTMANN PROGRAM: Let me run a thesis by you and get your take on it. Government always serves somebody. It always serves people. principally one group and the way that our government was established in the beginning and the way that it has rebooted itself, uh, you know, post civil war, post Republican Great Depression, is that we decided that government would serve the majority of the people, the, you know, the, in, in a big way, the bottom 90 percent [02:00:00] not screwing the top 10 percent but, you know, serving the bottom 90%.

And then came the Reagan revolution where Reagan. squealing that you're serving people who don't deserve to be served. You know, welfare queens and that young buck standing in front of you in line at the supermarket is buying beer with his food stamps. And and so America shifted and said, Oh, well, I guess we shouldn't be serving The bottom 90%.

Maybe we should do what the Republicans say. And maybe we'll, you know, they'll let us have some of that wealth as we shift to the top 10 percent of the top 1%. And so, you know, then Republicans shifted government so that it's serving the top 1%. I would say it's not serving the top 10 percent of the top 10 percent pay most of the taxes.

You know, the doctor, I have a friend who's a surgeon who makes around 500 a 50, 000 a year, and he's paying 46 percent of his total income in taxes. Um, so I mean, [02:01:00] it's like that. That's not happening. If you're making a billion dollars, a million dollars a year. So we've seen this shift in government where it's now serving the top 1 10th of one And now people are screwed and they're going, what happened?

What happened? And Trump comes along and says, Oh yeah, government is screwing you. I'll, I'll save you. And of course he's lying through his teeth, but it seems like these shifts are occurring in like 40 year cycles. What do you think? 

DAVID PEPPER: Yeah. I agree. I mean, in, in all the attacks on democracy that we're seeing in states and I think we'll see federally are to keep the everyday citizen from being able to stop it.

You're not, you know, in Ohio, you're no longer being served by your government Ohioans. It's serving a very narrow group. That's where the benefit goes of dollars to let's say, you know, educate. It's going to for profit companies more and more other states as well. And when you carve up the state, so people don't have to say it keeps us from stopping, you know, you mentioned the, I'll reference another book and I love that [02:02:00] you're always reading books.

I always go back to this book, but maybe it's hard to see FDR democracy. You go back and read his speeches in the thirties. He was describing exactly. I always go through and read this book because it's both amazing how similar things were, but it's also really instructive that by calling it out bluntly, And the way you just did over and over and over, he won over the American people against the very forces you're talking about.

So it is a pattern and we've seen it recur again and again. And the truth is, if you cut the people out, that's who takes over the very privileged, the very elite, the oligarchs. But when someone, and Trump did it this time, unfortunately, but it shows you that a Democrat can do it too. So if someone comes along and calls it out.

As clearly as FDR did, he was giving speeches in front of Congress that were so blunt about this. And six months or a year later, he was winning 49 [02:03:00] out of 50 states because the people saw it. And I do think it's on Democrats to be, to go back and read who were the most effective at calling out the dynamic we're talking about.

And when they had it, when they nailed it, the people responded. And I read these speeches. And as much as I admire a lot of politicians who are out there today, I don't hear a lot of people who put it is bluntly as FDR did back in the day. Uh, and it really showed that when the people heard it clearly, They saw it.

They responded. 

As Trump’s Return Looms - South Korea Offers a Lesson in Defeating Fascism - Thom Hartmann Program - Air Date 12-5-24

THOM HARTMANN - HOST, THOM HARTMANN PROGRAM: The warning from Seoul, a democracy at risk in the age of authoritarian power. And basically what we saw was President Yoon Suk Yeol, President Yoon of South Korea try for, I believe it only lasted six or eight hours, before parliament basically backed him down, tried to become a dictator.[02:04:00] 

I mean, he just proclaimed military rule, the military is taking over the media, the military, we're shutting down the parliament, congress, and I'm going to rule by dictate, basically. And now this is a guy who had been, he's a hardcore right winger. He had proposed that the work week in Korea, in South Korea, where if you work more than that, you get overtime.

If you work less than that, you don't get overtime. That be raised from 52 hours a week to 69 hours a week. He was proposing changes in the medical system and the way that doctors are trained that had caused a national strike by physicians. Because they were concerned that he was basically coming after the national health care system, which is a pretty good system and works quite well in South Korea.

He's in tight with his corporate buddies. There's [02:05:00] a reason why they call him the Donald Trump of South Korea. Now, here's what the good news is, he failed, and in fact, now parliament is calling for him to be evicted, basically impeached and if he doesn't resign, and I would not be surprised if he resigns in the next couple of weeks.

I mean, we'll have to wait and see how this shakes out. But what's the difference between President Yoon doing this and failing in South Korea? And the possibility that Donald Trump could do this and succeed in the United States, just do the exact same thing, just take Yoon's template and say, hey, I can do that.

Keep in mind, after all, this is what General Mike Flynn begged Donald Trump to do before he left office in 2020. Or an early in January of 2021. He wanted him to declare a state of emergency and declare martial law and thus [02:06:00] prevent the transition of power to Joe Biden. And not just Mike Flynn. I mean, there was a whole cadre of people who were saying, "we need to do this."

Well, Trump didn't do it. I'm not sure he could have gotten away with it then. But that was then and this is now. Yoon, South Korean President Yoon failed to control his party, the PPP party South Korea, the Republicans of South Korea. He failed to have them kiss his, you know, the way that Trump has, seized control of the Republican party. He didn't put his relatives in charge of the party itself.

He didn't line up the alliances that he needed so that when parliament voted on whether to sustain or overturn the state of emergency, 100 percent of his own party voted against him, the president of South Korea. Now that's not going to be the case with Donald Trump. Donald Trump has got [02:07:00] crazies in the United States Senate and the House of Representatives who are eager to see our democratic republic turned into a Hungarian style or a Russian style autocracy. I mean, they're salivating for it. Also, President Yoon, had the equivalent of Fox News in South Korea, a billionaire owned right wing television network in South Korea that just is all right wing all the time, is only a couple years old and doesn't have much of an audience. And there are two public broadcasters in South Korea, the equivalent of, corporation, public broadcasting, op, the television network and the radio network. There are two of those in South Korea and they've been very independent and they give actual news.

And most of the corporate news in South Korea is pretty solid news. So, the Koreans are well informed. That is not [02:08:00] the case here in the United States. Here in the United States, we've got roughly half of Americans getting their news from sources that regularly lie to them. That, certainly lie by omission, don't really fill them in with what's going on.

So I think that, we need to look at what happened in South Korea yesterday as a warning. And I believe that Donald Trump and the people around him are looking at it as a template. How can we do this without the blowback that President Yoon got? So we'll see. We'll see how this shakes out in South Korea. And of course, in six weeks we'll see how it shakes out here in the United States.

SECTION D - CRACKS IN AUTHORITY

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: And finally Section D- Cracks in Authority. 

Maddow Disgrace of Trump nepotism, abuse of pardons far surpasses Biden's pardon of his son Part 3 - The Rachel Maddow Show - Air Date 12-2-24

RACHEL MADDOW - HOST, THE RACHEL MADDOW SHOW: So at the time, it was the most destructive wildfire season California had ever had. Dozens of people died, thousands of buildings burned. And then came the political fallout. Conspiracy websites started falsely blaming the fires on an undocumented immigrant, saying it [02:09:00] was, it was all arson and, and that's who started it.

The sheriff of Sonoma County, California, issued a statement debunking that false claim. But of course, This happened in 2017, the first year of the first Trump administration. And any story that blamed an undocumented immigrant for a blue state tragedy was just too good for Trump officials to pass up, no matter how unfounded it was.

And so Trump's acting director of ICE, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, a man named Tom Homan, he jumped on it. He criticized the Sonoma County Sheriff, who had debunked the conspiracy theory. He said the Sheriff had left the community vulnerable to dangerous individuals. The Sheriff responded then to Tom Homan with clarity, with a pledge to take care of the people that he served.

He said, quote, ICE's misleading statement stirs fears. It stirs fear in some of our community members who are already exhausted and scared. Despite ICE's misleading statement, we'll continue to [02:10:00] protect and serve our community members. Well, now that same ICE official, Tom Homan, is going to be back. One of the first decisions Trump made after his re election was to announce that he was bringing back Tom Homan, this time to be his representative.

Border czar, whatever that means. But the resolve of California officials to stand up to Donald Trump, that is also back and in a big way. According to the Washington Post, by the end of Trump's first term in office, California had filed more than 120 lawsuits against the Trump administration. California, in Trump's first term, sued Trump over everything from immigration policy, to health care, to gun safety.

Now with Trump back, Set to return to the White House, California lawmakers today opened an emergency special session of the state legislature, specifically for the purpose of funding a new legal fight, starting a new legal fund to fight the incoming Trump administration in court. California Governor Gavin [02:11:00] Newsom has asked the state legislature to set aside 25 million for potential California state lawsuits against Trump's federal government.

California's top lawyer, State Attorney General Rob Bonte, says that he's ready to do that work. 

CLIP: We've been here before. We live through Trump 1. 0, which means we won't be flat footed come January. You can be sure that as California Attorney General, if Trump attacks your rights, I'll be there. 

RACHEL MADDOW - HOST, THE RACHEL MADDOW SHOW: Joining us now is Rob Bonte.

He's attorney general for the great state of California. Mr. Attorney general, thank you very much for making time to be here tonight. 

ROB BONTA: Um, to be with you, Rachel, thanks for having me. 

RACHEL MADDOW - HOST, THE RACHEL MADDOW SHOW: What should our viewers understand about how you're sort of strategizing for the days ahead? Uh, the end [02:12:00] of next month, Trump will be taking power in Washington.

He's, uh, talked a lot of big talk about what he wants to do on day one and what he wants to do right out of the gate. How are you thinking strategically about what? California can do to protect Californians rights and to defend some of the state's policy interests against what you're expecting from Trump.

ROB BONTA: My plan for my California Department of Justice is to hold Mr. Trump and his administration accountable if and when they violate the law. They did it repeatedly, consistently during Trump 1. 0. We. My office took him to court over 120 times. We won and prevailed a vast majority of the times because he was violating the constitution, in particular, the 10th amendment and separation of powers at time.

He was violation, uh, violating the federal, uh, law, including the administrative procedures act. Uh, he was misusing, uh, money, uh, that was budgeted for other purposes than the purpose he was seeking to use it for. We will hold him accountable. When he violates the law and based on what he has said, he would do his inner circle said he would do what [02:13:00] project 2025 indicates he will do.

We have a good sense of where he's headed on immigration on reproductive freedom on common sense, gun safety on environment. So we've been preparing and readying for weeks, months. In some cases, years, we've written briefs that are ready to press print. Uh, just need to dot the I's, cross the T's and file it in court based on the actions he has signaled and telegraphed he will take.

So, uh, we're ready. Uh, we are committed to making sure progress prevails in California, that our forward movement continues and we're not looking for a fight, but if he picks a fight with us, gets in the way of our progress here in California, We'll be ready. 

RACHEL MADDOW - HOST, THE RACHEL MADDOW SHOW: This 25 million request to the legislature is obviously a big chunk of money.

It's, it's not, however, the same amount of money that was spent, um, in California. It doesn't actually match the amount that was spent by the state, uh, to bring those 120 lawsuits, those 120 challenges against the Trump administration when [02:14:00] Trump was first in office. Can I just ask you, um, What were the lessons learned off California's strategy along these lines in the first term, both in terms of spending the taxpayers money wisely, but also, um, in in acting most effectively when to act alone, when to act in concert with other states, when to get things into federal court and when to do that?

When to expect that maybe holding back on that might be the better part of valor given the constitution of the federal courts right now. What were the lessons learned from the first time that you had to do this as a state? 

ROB BONTA: Yeah, I'll first say that, um, the 25 million dollar litigation reserve, Is not the same as the 42 million that was spent over four years, but this is year one.

It's a reserve to draw on as needed, as necessary. And what we do will be fully based on and related to the actions that Mr. Trump and his administration takes. If he doesn't violate any laws, unlike he did [02:15:00] in Trump 1. 0, if he doesn't violate the constitution or federal law or misuse. Budget, there will be absolutely nothing for us to do.

We don't expect that based on what he said and what he's done in the past. So, um, there's a couple of things, uh, the return on investment of the additional funds coming to the California department of justice is huge. We were able to save California. Billions of dollars, uh, for example, in striking down the citizenship question on the 2020 U.

S. Census. Uh, our, by our accounts and estimations, it saved California billions of dollars in funds that we received based on getting a accurate count that wasn't suppressed. Uh, there were federal funds, uh, that violated the 10th Amendment because they were conditioned on, um, uh, Providing assistance to federal, uh, immigration authorities on immigration enforcement.

And those were two grants of about 30 million. We sued in court because of those unlawful conditions that violated the 10th amendment. We got those grants. So we, we have, Seeing some of the [02:16:00] patterns in the violations, um, Mr. Crump likes to do what he wants, when he wants, how he wants, regardless of the constitution, regardless of federal law and regardless of the processes in place, regardless of what the budget is supposed to be used for.

He wants to use it for what he wants to use it for. So he can't help himself. He will violate the law and it's our job to be there when he does. Um, we know that it's better to go together. We can go further when we go together, uh, than when we go alone. And so we have been preparing with Democratic Attorneys General other states across the nation, uh, New York Attorney General Letitia James, uh, others in Nevada, Illinois, Delaware, um, Connecticut, um, teaming up, preparing.

We all have different, uh, expertise, institutional knowledge. Deploying our expertise and our talent as is most effective is. Part of the game plan, there will be a lot to do. And we have a lot of members on our team to do it with. We're also working with advocates in various [02:17:00] policy spaces from immigration to reproductive freedom, common sense, gun safety, and working with them for best ideas, getting best thinking, best strategy, best litigation strategy.

So we know what courts to file in and where it's best. And so we've, we've thought it down to the team.

Trump goes off the deep end with Cabinet pick Part 3 - No Lie w Brian Tyler Cohen - Air Date 12-1-24

BRIAN TYLER COHEN - HOST, NO LIE: What about the prospect of legal protections for these career civil servants? If Donald Trump does move forward with his plan to oust them in deference to political appointees, do these people have any legal recourse?

MAX STIER: So they should. But again, if you are in a horrible job where your boss or your boss's boss is intending to try to traumatize you, you may not want to stick around to see through your legal recourse. And that legal recourse might take a very, very long time to work its way through the system.

So it's not enough is what I would say. We need to support our career civil servants. We need to make sure the rule of law is being followed and we [02:18:00] need to do our best to protect federal employees from having to go through that process. They shouldn't have to, they shouldn't be in an environment where anyone is trying to traumatize them.

It should be in an environment where people are trying to help them do their job, which is to help the American people. 

BRIAN TYLER COHEN - HOST, NO LIE: Well, do you think that this would be a little bit of a different situation? Because if you're in, if you work at a restaurant and you have a boss that comes in, a new boss that comes in, that's just like, for lack of a better phrase, just being a dick, right?

That's a different example than all of these people recognizing that Donald Trump is coming in with the express purpose of trying to traumatize them in an attempt to get them to self select out so that he can replace them with political appointees. Knowing that that's the backdrop on which he's coming in, would it be easier for them to recognize, like, the context of the situation?

Now fighting back against this, maybe it's in the form of a class action lawsuit, fighting back against this is more of a duty as opposed to just a normal business in the private sector [02:19:00] where you just don't enjoy your job. I mean, Trump is coming in and we know that he's coming in with the express intent of getting these people to leave so that they do select self select out.

MAX STIER: Right. Look, I think your point is a powerful one. It's also a lot to be asking public servants who are sacrificing all kinds of other things in order to serve the public that they need to stay in order to protect the system. I hope that we do have like, the high quality people decide that they do want to stay.

They're gonna have to make their own individual choice on this. I think the system issues you raise are important, and the reality is that they're there in order to serve the public. They're there for mission reasons and it's still the case that, for many, many, many of them, they can't, in fact, help Americans in the ways they care about by being in that job. And you can't do that any place else. 

BRIAN TYLER COHEN - HOST, NO LIE: No, I'm just, I'm curious here in terms of Trump's ability to be able to enact Schedule F, his plan for Schedule F. Can you talk about what that would [02:20:00] look like and where you think the biggest barrier to him being able to accomplish it would lie? 

MAX STIER: So I think, again, just to, one quick step back once more, and that is that we have a career, apolitical system for our civil service. Because in the 19th century, we did have a spoil system. President Jackson instituted the spoil system. Basic concept was I won the election. Therefore, I get to place people who are loyalist to me in government jobs as payoff to them. And frankly, I can then tax them so that they support my political party and on, and on, and on.

The end result was first and foremost, incompetence in government corruption, and then ultimately, 1883, the assassination of President Garfield. And that resulted in people looking up and saying, this is not the best way to run our government. You really ought to have civil servants who are there, on the basis of their oath of office to our constitution and the rule of law. For [02:21:00] 140 years, that is the system that we have had. President Trump is upending, this is not a partisan issue, he's upending 140 years of Republicans, independents, Democrats, all agreeing that this is the better way to run our government. And it is. Truth is our government does need to be reformed, but not in this way.

And that's a very important point. You asked how is Schedule F going to be implemented? What are the issues that will come up here? And what I would say that the first barrier will be the regulation that the Biden team has put in place that essentially says you cannot do Schedule F. As you noted, what a president can do, a next president can undo.

That's not true for the law, but it is for regulations. It takes a long time. You need to get public comment. You need to go through a pretty arcane process. A lot of people think it may be too difficult to process, but in this instance, it may frankly slow things down. And if you don't go through that process, you open yourself up to procedural complaints in the court, not just substantive ones.

That [02:22:00] truth is that I think that Schedule F could be attacked substantively as well. We have not seen that happen, but again, I'm worried that just the threat of this will create an outflow of really critical talent and we don't need that. 

Credits

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: That's going to be it for today, as always keep the comments coming in. I would love to hear your thoughts or questions about today's topic or anything else. You can leave a voicemail or send us a text at (202) 999-3991. Or simply email me to [email protected]. The additional sections of the show included clips from Democracy Now!, The Brian Lehrer Show, The Dig, The Rachel Maddow Show, No Lie with Brian Taylor Cohen, Democracy Now!, The Aspen Institute , and The Thom Hartmann Program. Further details are in the show notes. Thanks to everyone for listening. Thanks to Deon Clark and Erin Clayton for their research work for the show and participation in our bonus episodes. Thanks to our transcriptionist quartet, Ken Brian, Ben, and Lara for their volunteer work, helping put our transcripts together. Thanks to [02:23:00] Amanda Hoffman for all of her work behind the scenes and her bonus show co-hosting. 

And thanks to all those who already support the show by becoming a member or purchasing gift memberships, . You can join them by signing up today at bestoftheleft.com/support or through our Patreon page, now at a 20% discount through the end of the year. Membership is how you get instant access to our incredibly good and often funny weekly bonus episodes. 

In addition to there being no ads and chapter markers in all of our regular episodes, all through your regular podcast player. You'll find that link in the show notes, along with the link to join our Discord community, where you can also continue the discussion. And don't forget to follow us on any and all new social media platforms you may be joining these days during the X-odus. So coming to you from far outside the conventional wisdom of Washington DC, my name is Jay, and this has been the Best of the Left podcast coming to twice weekly, thanks entirely to the members and donors to the show from bestoftheleft.com. 


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