Bulwark Takes - Should There Be Any Checks on Trump's Power? Cameron Kasky Debates Tomi Lahren

Episode Date: April 9, 2025

Cameron Kasky joins Tomi Lahren on her show, Tomi Lahren Is Fearless, to debate the DNC's messaging problems, the Trump admin's handling of immigration and trans women in sports.

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bit. Joining me now for this liberal Tuesday from the other side of the divide is For You podcast host, Cameron Kasky. All right, Cameron, I'm happy to have you. Thank you for joining the conversation. I want to just start off. We have a lot to discuss, but let's start off with the first thing. First, these books coming out about Joe Biden, right? I understand the left is like, hey, we don't want to talk about that. That's the past. Move on. But the books are coming out. So I'm wondering what your initial reaction is to some of these tell-alls and the disturbing details we're getting. Well, I think it's about more than just the past. It's about? Well, I think it's about more than just the past. It's about the future, because is this going to be a party where we keep on enabling

things like Biden's cognitive decline? You know, I was one of the first people in my kind of liberal influencer circles to be saying, hey, this is not somebody who would be hired to manage a small ice cream shop, much less president of the United States. And there were so many people in his inner circle, in the media, who were sort of just making these excuses. And you kind of, you have to say, Biden was probably being effectively convinced that he was all right, because all these people in his circles were telling him, no, Joe, you're going to be fine, because there's this sort of cult. And this happens with Trump too. And it's been happening with Trump since 2016. There's this

cult of personality that forms around these political figures where the people around them want the career opportunities and the praise that come from you telling this politician what they want to hear. So folks were telling Joe, no, you're so sharp. And they were saying to their friends, no, he's so sharp behind the scenes. But it just became this kind of feedback loop where everybody was reinforcing this completely nonsense narrative. And now it's like, OK, Democratic Party, are we going to continue letting, you know, Ivy League consultants convince us that the politicians we're putting forward are better than they are. The Democratic Party and Republican Party, in terms of policy, leading up to the election, were fairly aligned. It was really messaging where they felt so

different. You know, the Democrats weren't going up and rambling about how they're eating the cats and they're eating the dogs. But Kamala and Joe and the Senate, in terms of the Democratic Party, we're all pushing pretty aggressively on immigration. I think the difference right now is when the Democrats are saying, we have a crisis at the border, we need to do something about this. And you saw so many deportations under Obama and Biden. You saw very many. It just becomes a messaging thing. But it's like now they're not just deporting illegal immigrants anymore. They are getting rid of due process. They are deporting like random people from Maryland. Wait, wait, wait, I have to stop you there. I have to stop you there. I appreciate your perspective,

but they are not deporting random people from Maryland. Oh, yeah. The chief justice. Yeah. No, no. They're not deporting random people. The gentleman that you're talking about that's being coined as this Maryland father has already been, first of all, illegal alien, already been deemed by not only the police department, but a judge that he is gang affiliated. So the whole thing about he was deported with the administrative error, it had to do with the flight he was on. And I did a deep dive into this with a gang attorney. It didn't have anything to do with, oh, he shouldn't have been deported. It was the administrative error of the flight and the seat and the manifest. That's what it was about.

So to say that the Trump administration is just swooping up, you know, people off the street for no apparent reason and send them to El Salvador. That's just simply not what's happening. So I have they have owned up to certain they have owned up to certain like miscalculations. And also I have a hard time understanding what is and is not gang affiliated because they've come out and been like, oh, we saw this tattoo. So they were gang affiliated. I think that was about the barber that they threw out. But at the end of the day, gang affiliated or not, there's due process. You know, you put these people in front of courts and you give them. But these people have been in front of courts. And in the case of the Maryland father, he's already been in front of a court. He's been here since 2011. He was supposed to be

out of here already. He is ripe for deportation. The whole issue with him was an administrative error of which flight, what time. That was the whole thing with him. And the Supreme Court has now ruled President Trump does have the authority. And we're talking about due process. You know, illegal aliens don't get the same due process that you and I get. No, we're not going to swoop people up and just say you're going to El Salvador. But the due process is a little different. And if the police department says you're gang affiliated and an immigration judge

says you're gang affiliated and also you're an illegal alien and you broke the law to get into this country, I'm sorry, I'm not sure it's even the best messaging for the Democrat left to take that you want those people to stay here on our dime in our communities. I mean, I think that's a hard sell. And I think that you mentioned the messaging, the messaging on that. I think that's really hard for most Americans to chew on. I don't really know what the rights messaging is other than we're just going to get rid of the people and anyone who we say is gang affiliated is gang affiliated. But I think it speaks to just a larger situation with the legal system right now, where we're seeing how weak the legal system in this country is, because it turns out, you know, when we have a president who's going after these law firms, when we have judges who are getting,

you know, when we're spending millions and millions of dollars against these quote unquote activist judges, you know, how much can our legal system do to protect just human rights in general when it's something that can kind of be bought, paid for, and, you know, kind of MAGA bullied out of efficacy? So that's of concern to me. I mean, you see, like, MAGA's even turning on Amy Coney Barrett, who is an extremely conservative judge, handpicked by Donald Trump. They're going after a judge that was picked by George Bush. And it's like these people are very conservative. They voted against Roe. They are conservative across the board. And when they don't vote the way these people want

them to, suddenly they're a traitor to this country. And I'm like, I don't say that. I mean, listen, I'm personally I've never been a fan of Amy Coney Barrett. I just haven't. I've never really liked her. But her decision is her decision. I respect the Supreme Court and I respect the decision that was ultimately made in favor of the Trump administration. So I don't put myself in that bucket. I've criticized mega. I've criticized President Trump when I felt it was necessary on many occasions. And I've been ripped up and down for it, by the way. So I'm not existing in that world. And I do believe in the co-equal branches of government. I do, however, look at activist judges, and I will call them activist judges, because when you have a judge that's sitting in D.C. that's making sweeping orders that

hand ties the president of the United States from deportations and handling matters of national security, I think that's going too far. And I think there's been a lot of discussion. And you know what? It happened. And Democrats didn't like it when judges hamstrung the Biden administration over things like student loans. So I think it goes both ways there. But I don't think that one judge sitting in one district should be able to make sweeping orders that impact the chief executive of this country and his ability to carry out his tasks. I think it should be limited to the jurisdiction that you're in and the parties that are in front of you. It's kind of wild that somebody that could be, you know, in one jurisdiction could say,

I'm making a rule for the entire country and hamstringing the president. That's where my issue is. But I do want to move on. Oh, go ahead. I want to give you the last word on this, but I have so much to go over. So I do want to move on after that. Got it. Totally. Just real quick. Yeah. It just brings to mind sort of what are our lines of defenses in terms of checks and balances?

Because, yes, we have this bicameral legislature. But you see, you know, Republicans who are popular in their home states are voting very often not in line with the policies that they run on and not in line with the values that they use to build their public presence. They're just voting alongside Trump because the second you stand against his specific agenda in the Republican Party, you're kind of toast. So I don't mind an activist judge if they are going to stand up to administration that normally doesn't have to face accountability at all. I saw that you were talking about the group chat and you said they effed up, they need to admit it and move on. And I'm like, when is there going to be some sort of accountability? Like, you know, getting MSNBC to report on something is not accountability.

Like punishing people for doing the wrong thing is accountability. So when judges and courts get in the way of the administration's agenda, I say, OK, at least somebody is doing it. Yeah, I think, well, the Supreme Court already made that decision. So we can I do defer to the Supreme Court. Sometimes they make decisions I don't like. Sometimes they make decisions that I do like. And they're the final word. And that's just how it goes on this. I do want to move on to some other things in the Democrat Party. And I want you to tell me if you think this is the right move strategically. You're a young person in the Democrat Party. You're critical of your own party. And I want to hear from you. Do you think that this continuous fight to keep trans women,

biological men and women's sports is a smart move strategically for your party? I think it's just one of those situations where we're getting out messaged. I mean, the types of people who stand up for trans people who are one of the most bullied and discriminated against groups of people in this country, a minority where you can't stress enough minority. It is such a small group of people who take up so much time in the news, who so many specifically conservatives and certain liberals spend so much time talking about. It's, you know, whatever one less than one percent, I mean, significantly less than one percent of people anywhere ever. And, you know, the Democratic Party has two options. We

can either say, we're not going to leave you guys behind and we are going to support you because your rights are human rights. Or we can say, no, we're going to throw you under the bus to win the Liz Cheney Republicans who, like I said, are made up and imaginary. Oh, I don't think it's just Liz Cheney Republicans. I mean, this is a 70, at least a 70-30 issue. So it's not just Republicans. We're getting out message. You're getting out message because it's ridiculous. You understand how ridiculous it is to say that you mentioned it's a small minority, the tyranny of the minority to go in and compete against women and entire teams of girls and young girls and collegiate athletes and say, we're going to win your championships. We're going to win. And I mean, the list just keeps going on and on and on.

We're going to take this away from you and you just have to deal with it because we say we're women and get over it. I mean, that's essentially the message to young girls and young women. How many trans women were in the NCAA final last night? It doesn't matter how many. You just said win your championships. Like, UConn won the championship. Do they have trans women on the team? You know what?

In a couple years, they might. So that's the thing, is that your party is not saying, hey, there's a couple of these cases, they're outliers. Your party's actively encouraging more people to be trans. And you're actively encouraging people that are trans women to do whatever they want outliers. Your party's actively encouraging more people to be trans and you're actively encouraging people to people that are trans women to do whatever they want to do. So this is not something that's going away anytime soon. But when you see the list, how is it that you can look at these young girls that are competing, that are losing their opportunities or scholarships that are actually getting physically hurt? How can you look at

these girls and be like, get over it because there's not that many of you? Just a few of you are going to have to die at the altar of trans. I would say two things. I would say, first of all, you know, I think the reason the Democrats are getting out messaged, you could say it's because it's ridiculous. I think it's because what happened when we started taking steps towards social progression is the thing that led to people talking about woke is the fact that the hoity-toity fancy corporate world started to adopt it. And therefore this kind of woke speak took over what is otherwise just a matter of basic progressive values. And therefore there's just certain steps we took in certain directions where people didn't see it as authentic anymore,

because it's the same stuff that you're seeing in like billion dollar company memos so the way people talk about trans issues in my opinion is so often so performative many of the democrats i know who are talking about trans issues like don't know a trans person and they're talking about how you know we need to fight fight fight and stuff like that and agree. But there's this big disconnect between the trans community. And I don't think the Democratic Party is necessarily trying to convince more people to be trans. I think they're trying to convince more trans people to comfortably be themselves for the sake of their mental health. But to what I was saying, I think that we're getting out message because we're not saying the obvious, which is this doesn't really affect almost anybody's lives. You know, while people's college funds and 401ks are disappearing,

like a trans person swimming, that's an issue that the Republican Party has been able to milk so effectively. But the people who talk about trans issues the most are often the people who know the fewest trans people and i i want you to be able to respond to that but one more thing i'll say is like i personally have a hard time thinking about like the whole girls sports argument when it comes to trans women because and i'm not trying to like pull some sort of cheap victim card here that's not my side of the democratic party that's not my so to speak. But I'm from a high school where 17 people got murdered by a 19-year-old who had had dozens and dozens of reports to the FBI about his behavior and who the police had been

notified was a danger and who the school system had been notified was a danger. He legally bought an AR-15 at the age of 19 years old and came into my high school and shot 17 people. So when people are talking about this terrible thing that's going on in schools, I'm like, hey, I got one. I got one even worse for you. Right. And I don't want to take away from what you went through. We had a trans person murder young kids here in Nashville. So, you know, I can't understand your unique perspective on it, given your connection to it. But I can tell you that obviously it's important to talk about school safety. We had a trans murder young kids here, here in Nashville. But I don't think.

And then you get someone like the bipartisan school safety board and it's like, oh, we did away with that. Well, I'd have to look at your bipartisan school safety board in order to actively give you my response to if I think that it's worthwhile or not. I'm sure that it is. I'll tell you this. It's not it's not my board because the Democratic Party would never let me near anything they do. Like, yeah, I got invited to a press conference by Schumer to talk about that board. But generally speaking, the Democratic establishment is not going to be making room for anybody who has anything to say about things like, I don't know, a president deteriorating in front of everybody. So I appreciate you saying it's my board. I wish it was my board because it's a great board, but they ain't letting me anywhere near anything like

that. Question for you. Well, why do they let Harry Sisson next to anything? I have been asking that question since long before anybody else was asking that question. But, you know, there's just a certain type of influencer who it's like if you can find a young person who is acting like an older candidate is good for young people, it's like, OK, well, let's come let this young. It's like when the Trump campaign was able to find people from different minority communities who you don't think you're able to reach and get them to show up in front of the camera smiling and say, hey, this is actually good for people like me.

I think you're going to want to do that. I appreciate you being so honest and forthright. And I hope we can have this conversation again. A lot more to discuss. So please do come back. Thanks for having me.