Bulwark Takes - Bulwark On Sunday: The Velociraptors Have Learned How To Open Their Cage

Episode Date: June 29, 2025

Thomas Joscelyn, senior fellow at the. Foundation for Defense of Democracies, joined Bill Kristol to discuss Trump's authoritarian impulses, how far he will go and if we can stop them.

Hi there, Bill Kristol here. Welcome to Bullwork Sunday. I'm very pleased to be joined by my friend Tom Jocelyn, one of these before, I think, who, long time colleague at the Weekly Standard, a key staffer, really the main author of the January 6th Committee Report, a senior fellow at the excellent Just security organization and website which people should look at and I thought we'd take a look together maybe slightly depressing look but important look I hope at or useful look at where we stand sort of you know what are we almost almost half a year into the Trump presidency more than half a year after his election on November 5th try to look at the forest rather than the trees,

which Tom is good at. So Tom, thanks for joining me. Oh, thanks for having me, Bill. No, it's great to be with you. And so I thought we'd just go back to the beginning briefly because I do think we've sort of forgotten what happened in the transition really, and in the transition, and then the immediate post-it transition,

let's just call it the first week or so, where I think we really began to see what I think you and I agree is a pattern of the authoritarian project being implemented and being done so a little more systematically and a little less goofily than maybe some people had hoped and unfortunately a little more successfully than people had hoped, right? I mean, those nominations, we fought them, we wrote stuff, but I mean, if you had told us even on November 4th that Trump's gonna win and we're gonna have Bondi and Patel and Hexeth and Gabbard

and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., I don't think even we might have been doubtful or would we have been doubtful. You were always on the extremely alarmed side. Yeah, I mean, I thought this is how it would start and how they would go. I mean, I've always said, you know, I think that if Trump got back into power,

he was essentially going to start where he left off on January 6th. And that's what he did. He was gonna make sure he had loyalists in place. He make sure he wasn't having anybody who was gonna put the brakes on him and what he wanted to do as the head of the executive branch.

And he was gonna really go pedal the metal and that's what he's done. And what you've seen is that, you know, with minor exceptions, you know, with a few of the more minor nominations, a lot of these bigwig nominations got through with no real resistance from the Republicans. And, you know, a guy like Cash Patel, for example, I wrote, you know, co-authored several articles at the Bullwork about, you know, what he'd been doing for four years between the first Trump administration and this one. And it was peddling conspiracy theories about January 6th and blaming the FBI and all sorts of crazy stuff. And none of that seemed to matter in the end formulation. So I think

that speaks a lot to where they started from and where they're going. Yeah, I just don't think getting those people through and they were getting them confirmed immediately turned out to be a real indicator of where we're going, both in terms of Republican capitulation on the Hill, obviously, and the Senate, but also that Trump had learned this key lesson from the first term, no internal checks, no guardrails, no Jim Mattis, no John Kelly, none of that stuff, right? Yeah, and at the Department of Justice,

you mentioned Pam Bondi. I mean, one of the big checks on him in the lead up to January 6, 2021 was the Department of Justice. It was Barr, it was Jeffrey Rosen, it was, you know, Richard Donahue, it was these senior officials in the Department of Justice, all Trump appointees, all Trump supporters who nevertheless would not support his efforts to overturn the election or use the, corruptly use the power of the Department of Justice to overturn the election. You know, he's going to start, he started making sure he doesn't have those people in place this time,

right? Those people are not around. He started with people like Pam Bondi and others who are going to do what he wants them to do. Just on justice for a minute, I mean, the incredible overt politicization and personalization, if you want, of that department in a way that we've just never seen that, in my opinion. And it seems to me no signs of it abating either. There was a little bit, oh, well that'll just be the first few weeks and then it'll calm down to business as usual. But I don't know, I feel like it's why

they're just chugging right ahead and it's Trump's department, it's not the Department of Justice. Well, that's exactly right. In fact, he even said that. So there was a speech that he gave some months back that I thought was perhaps the most alarming speech about the Department of Justice. Well, no, it is the most alarming speech about the Department

of Justice I've ever seen. He referred to himself as the nation's chief law enforcement officer in that speech, you know, at the Department of Justice. Now think about that, you know, since Watergate, we've had this wall separating Department of Justice from the White House when it comes to prosecutions. It's more of an ethical wall than a legal one, as we've come to find out. But, you know, Trump really comes in and he says, it's more of an ethical wall than a legal one, as we've come to find out. But Trump really comes in and he says, there's no wall. I am the nation's chief law enforcement officer. I'm going to dictate how things go here.

And there's not going to be any independence to any of this. And so I think all those norms that we had really seen throughout my entire adult life, I was born in the mid-70s, from then to now, that was just gone like that when he comes into power. And the parking power which he used so it used a lot in the first term in ways that people were a little horrified by but the utterly extremely extensive use of it early in his administration to signal basically, if you're on his side, you're fine. And conversely,

I'm going to prosecute people who've gotten in my way, whether it's, you know, FBI agents doing their, or go after people, at least fire people, maybe prosecute them, whether it's lawyers and FBI agents doing the job they were told to do with respect to the January 6th insurgents, attackers or outside entities, obviously we can get to that in a minute,

the universities, law firms, the whole thing. I mean, again, I just am so struck how far we've gone and how there's been some resistance, but I've got to say, I feel like it's been more normalized than not. And finally, I'll let you talk, because I really want to hear you on this. You were very alarmed by the January 6th pardons. You predicted them. You thought they would all get pardoned. Everyone else was, no, I was even like, yeah, proud boys, maybe they'll commute some of them, a clemency,

but I can't really just pardon them, you know, the actual wing leaders. And he understood in a certain weird way, not weird way, in a certain way that he was in his interest to do it, and he could get away with doing it. Yeah, I think that's right. I mean, you know, he referred to when he commuted the sentence of all the January 6th defendants and convicts, you know, commuting the sentence of all of them and pardoning nearly all of them on the first day and then commuting the sentence of just a handful or smaller set. He referred to it in an executive order as a grave national injustice, the prosecutions of these people. So, you know, what I take away from that, I think a lot of people don't really get, is that Trump really did

ride a wave of anti-establishment, anti-government fervor into power. And by pardoning all the January Sixers, what he was saying was, yeah, you're right. The government was the bad guy here. You guys were the good guys and the victims. And that's a type of Orwellian reversal of the narrative that I think is very dangerous for a society where the truth becomes the lie and the lie becomes the truth. And that's what you saw with those pardons. And, you know, we talked about Bill, you know, I talked to some journalists and they said, wow,

he's not going to pardon everybody, right? He's not going to pardon all the extremists, for example, attack cops, or people who actually plan to attack the Capitol and overthrow it. He's not going to pardon the leaders of these extremist groups. And of course, I said, you know, I think he is, I think he's going to go all the way, all the way. He's going to pardon the leaders of these extremist groups. And of course, I said, you know, I think he is. I think he's going to go all the way. He's going to pardon all of them. And that speaks to how deep this sort of fervor on his side, this opposition to the government as it existed under the Biden administration, the establishment, how much that's a motivating ideological force for him.

And also, you know, it keeps, you know, part of the January 6 stuff, one of the big things about it that I discovered was these January six conspiracy theories that are really so stupid, Bill, I mean, like stuff that we've talked about, like the Ray Epps conspiracy theory, where they're trying to blame the whole thing on him. And this is all this idiotic nonsense. And you wonder, you know, what's the purpose of all that? And I came to understand, I think that the purpose of all that was to

inoculate or inculcate his own followers, his own movement against any moral or political responsibility for that day and purpose of all that was to inoculate or inculcate his own followers, his own movement against any moral or political responsibility for that day and himself. Right? The whole idea was let's push blame onto others for what we did. And that way you don't have to leave my cult. You don't have to leave the bubble that is MAGA. And pardoning everyone was consistent with that. Right? It was consistent with being in the bubble and saying it really isn't our fault. It really isn't my fault. It isn't their fault, it's somebody else's fault. I guess two things that I'm prompted to ask you about this and take them in whichever

order you want. They're both pretty big topics, but the first sort of, there's also a practical effect, of course, of these pardons, which is he's setting up a sort of possible paramilitary forces out there in the country that could be used for his agenda, feeling like they pretty much have a free hand, you know, if they're doing stuff for Trump in terms of pardons. And I don't think that's nothing in the current circumstance. And secondly, the conspiracy theories themselves, we have discussed this a bit the last time you were on, but it's really worth coming back to that in a minute. The power of the importance of conspiracism as part of the Trump project, I feel like I thought it was like a weird aspect of it,

but it's really central, isn't it? It's completely central to it. I mean, you go back, look through this entire political career, you and I talked about this, and I think you actually took the words right out of my mouth the last time we were talking about this because you hit it right in the nail, right on the head,

which was that what Trump saw early on, unlike others, and I think others like Romney or McCain wouldn't play this game, but he saw early on the value in embracing this right-wing online conspiracism as a base of support. And he does that very early on, and he does that with, remember, the whole absolutely insane idea that Obama wasn't born in the United States and his birth certificate was covered up to hide the fact that he wasn't born in the United States and his birth certificate was covered up to hide the fact that he wasn't born in the United States. You know, other senior Republicans are repudiating this, you know, Fox News early on is repudiating this.

There's a lot of people who aren't playing this game. Trump's the one who plays the game. Trump's the one who goes out there and says to Romney, you know, throw that out there, the crazies love it. He was willing to embrace this stuff as a source of political power for a combination of reasons, I think, and he saw that as an anti-establishment character and anti-establishment political figure, these people, people believe this stuff are going to go along with them. They're going to support him because he's coming in as a wrecking ball. And that I think is also an important way to frame what's happening in the second administration, what we're seeing now, right?

I think what motivates Trump's movement and the heart of the movement, not all of Republicans, you know, family members who voted for him, for example, but what motivates the heart of his movement is this animus to the government and to the establishment. And I don't think he can go through these four years without acting on that animus, without being the retribution, culturally and politically,

for this hardened base of supporters. Yeah, I guess the conspiracy stuff, I guess it's been shown by some of these studies that Rene D'Arresto cites these, that the best way to get someone to believe in a conspiracy that you want them to believe in 2020 election was to find people who believe in other conspiracies. It's not actually to find ideologically necessarily adjacent people. That doesn't hurt probably. But it's not necessarily the most right-wing people who will believe that. It's the most conspiracy-wide people. Right. Well, look, I mean, here's the perfect example. This is something we

talked about last time too. RFK Jr., you mentioned his nomination and confirmation. Perfect example. This is a guy who traffics in conspiracy theories that cut across the left-right pendulum. These are anti-vaccination conspiracy theories. He's a key leader of the online maha movement, Make America Healthy Again. What his nomination and his political deal with Trump last year showed was how powerful as a political constituency this online conspiracy movement is. Because in exchange for his support, Trump promises him a cabinet spot and delivers on it. That shows you how powerful it is. As Secretary of Health and Human Services,

he's put in this position to validate all those conspiracy theories he was trafficking. That's what a lot of his actions now are. That he's trying to basically say that he and the conspiracy theorists were right in how they looked at this stuff. And that shows you that that's what's motivating MAGA. That's a good portion of MAGA anyway. That's what's motivating Trump and his administration. And again, I don't think he can get away from that. I think he has to act on

this stuff and he is. That's so important. I think the conventional wisdom was Kennedy did maybe believe these things or use this as his path to power or prominence or something, or money, but, but, you know, now that he's confirmed, of course, he's going to back off some and that's really not been the case, right? I mean, it is interesting how much they, they can't really back off the conspiracies. Yeah, I mean, he's backed off a little bit at times, but not overall. No. And I mean, I think, you know, I always find it very dangerous to play the game of, well, they can't really believe this stuff, right? Because, yeah, they can. There are all sorts of people who come to believe all sorts of crazy stuff, you know, and even smart people come to believe crazy stuff.

I mean, this is something we've seen over and over again. You know, I always use this anecdote, right? Sir Isaac Newton, the, you know, discoverer of calculus, a guy who was a prominent mathematician and scientist, you know, he also dabbled in alchemy and thought there were hidden codes in the Old Testament of the Bible, right? So you could simultaneously be very bright and believe some very crazy stuff. And you can also be not so bright and believe a lot of crazy stuff. So there are a lot of people I think now who with this anti establishment mood that

the country is in and that really all the West is in. This is a time for these people to ride this conspiracism to power. Right, if they sort of turned away from it, it could undercut the whole thing, right? It's sort of like, if you believe in a whole bunch of things, the faith in Trump depends on not actually letting reality or truth penetrate that bubble, right? I think they understand that.

That was the point of the January 6th conspiracy theories, right? You can't let the bubble burst. You have to stay in the bubble of Trump is this messianic deliverer for our side against the corrupt establishment. And anything that says that their side is actually the aggressor, their side is the one that's wrong and is actually on the attack against fundamental American values and fundamental constitutional order. Anything that does that is a danger to their belief system. So psychologically, they had to sort of put themselves, keep themselves in that

bubble. How about immigration? You and I discussed this a bit offline. Yeah, I mean it does seem like that's if conspiracism is as you say, the kind of a key aspect, immigration seems like the so much of the, I don't know what the driving force behind the whole movement. Is that right? Yeah, I mean even there they're intertwined, right? I mean Tom Homan, Stephen Miller, others, they've all pitched versions

of the great replacement theory, which is the idea that the elites and the democratic establishment are trying to replace white people with black and brown people abroad to change the constituency of the American electorate. So conspiracism, and that was a fringe internet right-wing conspiracy theory a decade ago,

and now it's being trafficked on X and elsewhere by senior political figures in the Trump administration. I think the point you made in a post bill, and I keep coming back to this and I tell everybody this because you really should, I think this is really true, is that the path to an authoritarian regime does lie in mass deportations. And if you just think what would take what would be needed to sort of fulfill Stephen Miller's fantasies, or what Trump has said he would do in orchestrating the largest mass deportations in American history, and potentially even millions of people, if they're actually to follow through on that and do that, think about what it would entail in terms of sending mass numbers of armed forces, security forces into blue cities, and rounding up people at businesses and homes and then having the infrastructure to detain them on American soil, which is something they're already building up, and then also fly them out with charter flights or other

types of military flights or however they decide to do it or however the courts allow them to do it. That whole infrastructure, that whole process, if they were actually to fall through on what they've said they want to do, I think you're exactly right that that is an authoritarian regime And incidentally that bill that I guess has just been they've just moved to proceed Within the Senate has a huge amount of money You know for ice and the border patrols kind of an under reported in my mind side of the bill I mean the tax cuts the Medicaid stuff's all very important obviously as well. But they're building up the authoritarian infrastructure.

Yeah, I haven't confirmed the figures for myself yet, but I was just looking at them just before this meeting here, because it seems to be a massive growth in those. Yeah, like four or five times of what they currently can do in terms of deportation. Right, and you're talking about detention and deportation, I believe. Yeah, exactly, especially with detention facilities

and these types of things. This is, again, this is what speaks to to they at least are again signaling in these in these figures that they are planning on moving forward with these plans I mean, I suppose look if you believe in the great replacement theory, I struck thinking with this is again also just before this conversation You believe you got to get rid of these people and we say I was in the media says people report you got to get rid of these people. And we say, I know we say the media says, people report accurately, this is a nice, hardworking person who's been here 30 years.

This is a person whose kids are in the Marine Corps. This is a person who doesn't deserve this. What are you doing? You're not going after criminals. But of course they need to, they don't want these people here. And they don't want their kids here as citizens, which they might be if they're either naturalized

or born here, obviously. And they don't want them as part of the, this country's political and social fabric. I mean, from their point of view, all of us saying, hey, this seems kind of mean-spirited. And this seems like a case where you've gone too far. The case is they haven't got too far.

This is the essence of the agenda, right? It is. What is the word they use? Re, not denaturalization. Remigration. Yeah, remigration. That really is, I guess I've been- Yeah, another far right concept from the internet

that is now being pursued in the administration. Terrible. And so also with the masks, I'm curious. I mean, I for a while thought, look, they can just say, okay, these masks have gone a little too far. We're gonna try to make sure all of our agents have at least identifying things on their chest

but also when that necessary, they're not going to wear a mask, which is not necessary to see some 50-year-old woman somewhere outside of a courthouse. But they want to wear the masks. I mean, that's what strikes me. We're sort of people who are lecturing them that, don't you understand that this is kind of unpleasant and unattractive?

They're sort of missing the point. The point is that it is unpleasant at the signal. Yeah, well, I mean, if you're just enforcing law and order and you're on the side of good, why are you hiding your face? I mean, I think if you're doing what's right and what's necessary to preserve America, as they claim, you know, what are you ashamed of? Why you're worried about it? You know, I mean, they would say it's a security thing. They don't want retribution, that kind of thing. But, you know, look, there's enough videos online. You know, one of the things, like, when you talk about ICE and these agents, one of the things you get for pushback is,

well, they're just following orders or just doing their thing. That's true for some of them or even a lot of them, maybe even a majority of them, right? But we now have enough clips online where you can see these agents roughing up people in a way that's certainly not consistent with my understanding of the law

and certainly not consistent with what's necessary for law and order. You know, and I think that all is part of it. That's a very authoritarian push itself. You're dominating, controlling people you deem to be your enemies. And why is anybody surprised that this is sort of the culmination of Trump's political agenda? Since he rode down that escalator more than 10 years ago,

xenophobia has been the number one part of his campaign, number one part of his political platform, enriching himself and his friends and xenophobia. Those are the two things that really drive Trump's sort of agenda, in my view, more than anything else. Yeah. And just getting people sort of normalizing the rough behavior of the masks. I feel like that's useful for them going forward, right? They got three and a half years to maybe use some of that rough behavior and that, yeah, fear, not just on, you know, hardworking gardeners or immigrants from Mexico or Central America.

Yeah, I mean, it's all about intimidation and fear and trying to force your will. I mean, you can even see the Department of Homeland Security is putting out really ridiculous propaganda. I don't, you know, in my household, we have NBC on in the morning as the news rolls for whatever reason. And I've been struck by how many ads that Kristi Noem and DHS play during these mainstream news broadcasts. NBC obviously is still going to be one of the lodestar

of our media ecosystem, lodestar of that system. And it's going to reach a lot of people. And it's really propagandistic, the video, the things they put out and it's all highlighting how they're, what they're doing and putting it in the best possible terms for the majority Americans as opposed to what they're really doing. And you know, even on social media on X, you can see the DHS, you know, put out this picture of ice hats on alligators for alligator alley. Did you see that the other day?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, it's all, it's all like just really in your face, over the top, aggressive sort of messaging when it surrounds these policies. Yeah, and the normal political thing with the youth, you're losing some of the in-between, the swing voters or this kind of thing, but I think that's not, they correctly in a way

understand that that's somehow misunderstanding what the current moment is about. And the scary thing to me as someone who studied extremism my entire adult life is that there are a significant number of people who are attracted to it. That's the point that we're not allowed to say or not supposed to say, but we should say I think, is that there are a number of people who like the rough stuff,

who like the authoritarian push, who like the idea that people are being trampled. They love it. And so that's something that is, I still believe that the majority of Americans don't, at least I hope they don't. But they're certainly acting, the administration's certainly acting as if they have no price

to pay for acting this way. And they're paying a little price, maybe, in public opinion polls, but no price in Congress yet, and very limited price of the courts, wouldn't you say? I mean, that if you had told me on January 20th this is where we'd be in terms of deportation and this money for more of it going through Congress and they're getting away with sending almost all the one of the peoples, I guess, so far in El Salvador, right? I mean, you know, I mean, and generally just, you know, huge amounts of detentions and stuff. They've got to think they're kind of,

I mean, I get to the 1 million number, it's a very ambitious number on their part, but I get nervous when some of our friends and allies say, oh, that's so, so they don't understand how the system works. They're our immigration judges. You know what? They're going to find a way to get it work around. And they are finding a way, incidentally, to work around the immigration judges, right? Yeah. I mean, they're going to keep pressing the issue. I mean, they, you know, you look at those flights that left in mid-March of this year, they violated due process rights of 261 migrants. You know, the Fifth Amendment and 14th Amendment combined contain the same clause that applies to all U.S. persons, not U.S. citizens. So there is a right

to due process, and it's very, even under the Alien Enemies Act, there's a right to a certain degree of process. And these 261 migrants, some of whom, maybe even many of whom are bad people, you know, who knows, right? I mean, some of them were clearly innocent, in my view, and were no, were certainly not the aggressors, not the enemies, weren't even criminals. A lot of them, there's no evidence they even had any kind of serious criminal background at all. But they violated due process rights and it seemed, you know, you look at the opinion that would the dissenting opinion by three of the female justices on the Supreme Court, I think they were right in saying that this was a very deliberate thing that happened here. You know, they staged all this such

that these migrants were detained and held and ready to go the moment, for example, that Trump invoked the Alien Enemies Act. It was all done in a way to make sure there was no due process. So again, that speaks to their intentions and what they're all about. And it's a fundamental threat to the constitutional rights that conservatives are supposed to value. And Kristi Noem then shows up down there at El Salvador. Again, I always come back. All the things that seemed over the top are part of the point of it. Exactly.

Yeah, that's it. I mean, Kristi Noem standing there with her $60,000 Rolex in front of a cage of human beings, trumpeting herself in what DHS has done. This is the type of thing that in a normal political atmosphere that we were accustomed to for much of our lives would have been scandalous and would have really dinged them and doesn't mean again maybe a little bit at the margins but doesn't seem to overall have. Although you know some polls do show people are disapproving of

their deportations and the immigration policies they're put in place so you know and Paul I'm always skeptical of those types of snap polls anyway but you know we'll see. Yeah Paul suggests also people are doubtful that he should have mobilized or should continue to be mobilizing the National Guard and the Marines in LA or actually now it's in a very broad area around LA, but they seem, again, I think they know what they're doing. There are no rush to demobilize anyone. And in fact, all the rhetoric they've used in the executive order itself explicitly sort of indicates that they feel they have the executive order itself explicitly sort of indicates that they feel they have the right to do this anywhere.

They see that there could be a problem. There is a problem. There could be a problem. State and local authorities aren't doing enough in their judgment. They have reports that there could be disturbances. I mean, they've left themselves a very wide door to use the military here domestically,

which I think six months ago, we all thought, well, that's really a red line. And surely they can't get away with that. And the courts have objected to some parts of it, but basically they're doing it, and the courts are for now at least not even trying to stop them. Yes, and the other part about it is that it's a very explicit threat, and political threat, to blue governance, to blue states and blue cities. That's, you know, the mess, I'm struck by every time Trump announces this or talks about it, he talks about how blue governors

and blue mayors are doing X, Y, and Z, and are supposedly failing to secure these areas and that red America, him and MAGA are gonna step in to do it, we're using the military force. And I think that type of political messaging to it, that type of political intent can't be missed in our analysis of all this. And I think it also is a messaging to it, that type of political intent can't be missed in our analysis of all this. And I think it also is a challenge to these blue governors and mayors that they have to step up. They have to understand that this is actually a big part of

the authoritarian project is to show, to discredit blue governance, to say, you know, just as Joe Biden and the Biden administration had supposedly failed America at the federal level, which is a big Trump talking point, these blue governors and blue mayors can't be trusted to govern you at the state and local level. And that's, that's really the whole ball game to what they're trying to do with all this. They want to basically say to the American people, you can trust us to keep your, you secure, keep your city secure, keep the nation safe and prosperous.

You can't trust Democrats at all. Yeah. I think people haven't focused enough on the red state, blue state side of this. It's not that he's not doing anything in red states. There are blue pockets or dots in red states where they want to make this point as well, right? Where it's in sync with the Republican governor's agenda. But yeah, the pure discrediting of blue governance, that's a very important point, actually. Yeah. I mean, you look at Los Angeles, which is where they first deployed the guard in the Marines.

I mean, this is Stephen Miller's fantasy, right? It goes back to his nightmares in high school of the supposed invasion of immigrants. And he, you know, he and what the administration are doing, you know, they didn't go into a red state or a red city to do this first. They went back to this place where they consider it to be the heart of, you know,

Miller's nightmarish vision of America. And when they did so, explicitly attacking Gavin Newsom and Karen Bass, the mayor of LA, and doing it. So this is the type of thing where I think if I were in, if I were an official in New York, for example, which is where I live, I would be thinking about how to head off these types of incursions that are probably coming my way. There's already much heavier activity in and around New York City area when it comes to rounding up migrants, but it could get a lot worse. And then if a mayor says to the police department,

don't cooperate, then you really could get some serious crises in terms of who's actually got the power and who's got the ability to order the people with guns to do this or not do this, right? Yeah, I mean, they wanna just run roughshod over state and local authorities. And I think that if I were in their shoes, I'd be thinking right now about how to put up some roadblocks.

Yeah. You mentioned earlier the amount of corruption and grift that's going on, which also I think exceeds. It is really stunning. So you're looking into it. Say a few words about it. You know, I don't know if I think it is really stunning. So you've been looking into it, say a few words about it. You know I don't know if I have it here, hold up, pardon me for one second. So this is this is Trump's 278 filing. These are his sources of income and assets as of December 31st 2004.

He had to file this 24 sorry 2024. I'm showing my age there. And the I you know, he had to show, you know, it's a very lengthy document. There's a lot of it's really stunning when you go through it. I mean, just amazing. I mean, he's getting income streams from Saudi owned construction companies, you know, he's golf courses are intertwined with Saudi interests in a lot of cases. The crypto, the pseudo crypto stuff he's selling and marketing, enormously profitable for him.

I mean, he made between mid October of 2024 and December 31st of 2024, according to his own financial filings, he made more than $57 million in cash, just cash, from selling really kind of dubious crypto sort of offerings to the public. And there's just all sorts of stuff throughout his entire filing and throughout his entire presence publicly about how he's really selling the presidency and marketing the presidency from his meme coins to this World Liberty financial interest that he's selling to other things. I mean, it's really stunning. I mean, and having foreign governments or foreign actors, anyway, tied to foreign governments invest in all this in a way that we haven't really seen before. And the first time around, there were all these emoluments trying to basically challenge him on the emoluments clause and the fact that he was getting these gifts from foreign actors. None of, none of those succeeded that time around,

and he sort of, again, he started where he left off and has really peddled the medal on all that. And the pardon power goes from the right. If someone does fall afoul of some federal, at least authority, I guess it doesn't help with the states, but somewhere he can pardon them, and, you know, so again, I think it is just, it is amazing how un... I mean, he's potentially made hundreds of millions of dollars, you know, off the crypto stuff alone.

You know, and a lot of it's pseudo crypto, because it's like fake, like meme coins are not really crypto. You can't really use them for anything. And not the crypto can be used in a lot of cases either. But it's just stunning to watch this. You know, you think about it, I think about it in terms of the politics of it, too, where for five years, really, Republicans focused on Hunter Biden's laptop. You know, Hunter Biden's laptop became this evil magical talisman of corruption that everybody knew about, that everybody would talk about even if they didn't really know what was on it. And it supposedly showed, you know, all the corrupt influence peddling from then Vice President Biden and his son Hunter. And let's just grant off the top everything Republicans said about that, just as for the sake of argument. Just say that it all was corrupt influence peddling. It all was

something that we should be offended by. Look at what Trump's doing now and tell me that you can't make the same argument about what he's doing now. Now, this isn't what aboutism because I'm not throwing away the Hunter Biden stuff. I'm not saying that that doesn't count. I'm not saying that. I'm just saying if you're going to be consistent in your arguments and spend five years on Hunter Biden's laptop, you can look at the first five months of the Trump administration, you have way more to work with, you know, in terms of corruption in terms of influence peddling. I mean, orders of magnitude more. Yeah, it's Himalayan mountains versus a small mound of pebbles. You know, I mean, it's, I mean, what Hunter Biden was running or the Bidens were running, it's just insignificant compared to the sums we're talking about. I mean, just even again, the more than $57 million, the money that Trump brought in between October and December of

last year through World Liberty Financial selling the pseudo crypto stuff and marketing himself and Mark and his family is the head of it, according to his own financial filing, that dwarfs anything that was on a loan before you get to anything else, dwarfs anything that was on Hunter Biden's laptop. Um, so we're, we're less than six months into the Trump presidency. He's got four years. I mean, I think one thing you've been good at is looking ahead and realizing this is a dynamic situation and that we can't just take a snapshot and say, okay, we've seen Trump's authoritarianism and that's bad, but you know, that's kind of what we now can expect for three and a half years. But of course, it's a moving thing and probably in some ways a self-radicalizing thing, isn't

it? The movement. It's not just, you can't just assume that, okay, they're finished with what they've been trying to do. So say a little bit about where this could go and what worries you the most. I think what worries me the most is there are a lot of people in the elite and even on the Democratic side and even in the opposition to Trump who still see him as somebody who's just sort of a corrupt businessman, a self-dealing, self-promoting sort of con man or charlatan who's not really interested in the deeper, darker fantasies of

the far right. I just think if you look at the way the administration is composed, is comprised of terms of personnel, the policies it's pursuing, its desire to move forward with mass deportations on a level we've never seen before, and so many other things that motivate them from the conspiracy world online. I think that people need to reframe how they think about him and what they're up to. You know, I don't think, you know, yes, the grift, the corruption, it's all baked in, it's all part of the story, but that doesn't mean they can't be extreme at the same time. It can't mean that they're not focusing on an extremist agenda at the same time. I would say a lot of this is very extreme, you know, in terms of what we've already seen. And I don't think they're going to back down from that. I don't think Trump is just going to say, you know, that's it for the day. I'm calling it.

I think that's sort of the central mission for him, our certain extreme items on the agenda that he has to push, that those people have to push and will push Yeah, and I think I just struck took with someone the other day a lawyer very well informed very Very into Trump about the deployment of the troops in the LA area So well, yeah, but that's gonna end and I said they're gonna deploy them elsewhere. I mean who knows right? Maybe I'm maybe I'm being too alarmed, but why wouldn't they? Why wouldn't they when there's an excuse? Just to establish the principle, just to further the sense that he's entitled to do this, maybe further the sense among some of the military that they kind of, some of them would like to do this, and help Hexf find the people

who were willing to do this. I just feel like, again, the dynamic character of this authoritarian progress, if you can use the word progress, is underestimated somewhat. Yeah. I mean, look at what they did with the executive branch and sort of, you know, completely taking a wrecking ball to it in the first few months using Doge and Elon Musk and what they're doing. You know, they found very little in terms of actual real waste, but they did find quite a few enemies to cashier and get rid of and a lot of control over the executive branches.

And also encroaching on the powers of Congress. This is a big theme and all this. You sent me an article on this, and I've read about this myself too. There's a fundamental problem here in America where the separation of powers as it's constitutionally thought of and was set by the founders has been under attack or been basically being undermined for a long time. You know, Congress has really abdicated its legislative power, its power over the purse

and various other things in different ways over time to the executive branch, for example. And Trump comes back into power in the second administration at a time when that was a trend. You know, it's something where the executive branch has been capitalizing off across administrations, has been capitalizing off of Congress's inability to act on its own and use its own constitutional powers. I think they came in and they just sort of, again, went pedal the metal on it. They decided to go even faster on it. That's something that a trend that helps the authoritarian doesn't hurt them. Yeah, they have a certain, and Trump personally has a kind of feral instinct for what the

weaknesses in the system are and Whereas a normal president might out of a sense of response might take advantage of some of them a little bit Yeah, but out of a sense of responsibility might also try to fix some of them and generally might just restrain from taking advantage of everything He could take advantage of right? Yeah, Trump's the opposite and the Trump people are the opposite and and it turns out the system depends It was weaker than we thought I think it depends more on a kind of honor code than we thought. And here we are. I mean, the wall between DOJ and White House we talked about earlier, that's a good example, right? That was, turns out there was not as much legal as it was ethical. And, you know,

when it comes to Trump, you don't have to worry about ethics being a barrier. Right. And we don't know what an administration looks like, not after a few months of penetrating that wall and using the justice department in a political way, but after a year or after two years or after three years. That's what I mean. Yeah. I mean, you know, looking forward, you know, just answer your question to it. You mentioned it before, too.

I mean, just think about, you know, violating the right to due process. When have we had an administration do that on this level, with people on American soil, right, who are being rounded up this early on in administration? It's been a long, long time, if ever, that we've seen that. You talk about the right to free speech. The attacks on universities, law firms, the media,

major media houses, and the FCC has been going after media, launching investigations or threatening launch investigations to major media companies, based on stuff has been going after media, you know, launching investigations or threatening launch investigations to major media companies based on stuff that does not have anything to do with anything other really than speech, if you look at it. This is, and rounding up students who wrote, you know, in one case, somebody who wrote an op-ed they don't approve of, you know, you go down the board, free them the press, you know,

free speech, due process, all these things that are sort of norms that are, and constitutional norms undermine how America is constituted, they've, due process, all these things that are sort of norms that are, and constitutional norms undermine how America is constituted, they've been attacking them very systematically throughout the first six months of the administration. I don't think that's an administration that really wants to stop attacking or wants to just sort of play nice in the next six months. Such an important point, not a cheering one, but maybe a good one if it makes us really focus and think harder and maybe a little more imaginatively

about how to fight back and what's needed to fight back, as opposed to kind of just, we need to beat back stuff as much as possible, but it can't just be at some point sticking thumbs in the dike or whatever the metaphor is, right? Yeah, I mean, I think people need to understand that our fundamental rights, our constitutional order and our constitutional rights are at risk.

That's the part of the authoritarian equation I find is often missing when people talk about this. When they talk about an autocrat or an authoritarian, what that means fundamentally is that that leader, that ruler has rights that you don't, right? And your rights are no longer sacred. It can be abridged by the government, by the whim of the ruler. And this nation was founded on the opposite of that, right? That the ruler doesn't get to abridge our rights on a whim.

And I think that what we've already seen this year is that that's what Trump and his administration, that's what they're doing. There are people who are, for example, Andre the gay barber who just wanted people to look fabulous that they rounded up and treated like a gang member and sent him off to El Salvador. I think about him pretty regularly. I mean, what is that? Is that the American girl? And he's there. He's there now. Yeah. I've been here in York.

I respect, but I mean, we haven't gotten him out. Right. Yeah. No, he hasn't gotten out at all. And why is he there? I mean, what is the point of around us? I mean, aren people outraged by this that and he isn't the only one? I mean, there are other people in these, you know, have been deported who, in some cases, we've had reports of US citizens being deported, or we have, you know, there's a case of a guy who sort of has a weird history where he was born on an American army base. And so he doesn't have a citizenship somehow. I don't even know. I mean, they're rounding up people who are hardly a threat to America, and in some cases are the very definition

of what you'd want to be an American, right? Yes, some bad people too. Yes, some gang members too. I want them out too. I want the bad guys out of here as well, right? But the point about due process and having constitutional order is that you don't just get to tell us

who the bad guys and the good guys are. There has to be a process for determining that, you know? And if you leave it up to powers, then it just becomes so easy to corrupt. And they've even stopped pretending that it's about the bad guys at this point. It's about getting reformed. It's the mass deportation, 500,000 Haitians, goodbye.

We're not going to show that they're committing crimes. They're taking jobs. They're doing anything. I mean, you think about the business community, too, I think has to think about not just the direct loss of labor to across businesses from all this, but just how much how disruptive that kind of authoritarian project will be. I mean, think about disrupting businesses just in terms of their day to day operations, scaring people, you know, you know, the economic downturn from that, this type of thing could be colossal. downturn from that, this type of thing could be colossal. Well, maybe that will be the wake up call though. You need to root for that.

But anyway, this has been such a, I think, important conversation, I hope useful one for people. And one that really just, yeah, we need to really think imaginatively about what they're doing. They're thinking in their own way fairly imaginatively, I've got to say, or at least fairly, Right.

Which can make up for a lot of lack of imagination. If you just decide I'm going after everything and we're going after every weakness, you don't have to be super imaginative, but you have to have the, when you have the entire executive branch of the US government, you can do a lot of damage, right? Yeah, I mean, my concluding note would be

the big fear that we had was that their four years out of power would be like the velociraptors learning how to open the cage, right? And they did, they learned how to open the cage. And so they're out now and they're strutting their stuff. And, you know, it's gonna take a lot of effort to put them back in the cage. Yikes. Horrifying image, but a very important one for people to think about. Tom, thanks so much for this really interesting conversation. We'll do it again in a few weeks, honestly. And also, I think very appropriate. I didn't really think about this, but we're speaking on the Sunday before the 4th of July. So it's a good time to really think fresh about,

as you were saying about what a nation dedicated to equal rights really means. Yeah, some things that we're fighting for. Tom, thanks so much. Thanks for what you're doing in the fight. Thank you all for joining us on Bill Work on Sunday. you you