No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen - Trump, Republicans go into full panic over Project 2025

Episode Date: July 7, 2024

Republicans panic over Project 2025. Brian interviews the Ethics Czar under President Obama, Norm Eisen, about whether the Supreme Court’s immunity ruling is actually unconstitutional itself, what happens when government officials are tasked with following illegal orders, and even whether this means Biden could order Trump’s arrest.Pre-order SHAMELESS: https://www.harpercollins.com/pages/shamelessShop merch: https://briantylercohen.com/shopYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/briantylercohenTwitter: https://twitter.com/briantylercohenFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/briantylercohenInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/briantylercohenPatreon: https://www.patreon.com/briantylercohenNewsletter: https://www.briantylercohen.com/sign-upWritten by Brian Tyler CohenProduced by Sam GraberRecorded in Los Angeles, CASee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Today we're going to talk about Project 2025 and the panic that is ensuing on the right now that people are figuring out what it is. And I interview the ethics are under President Obama, Norm Eisen, about whether the Supreme Court's immunity ruling is actually unconstitutional itself, what happens when government officials are tasked with following illegal orders, and even whether this means Biden could order Trump's arrest. I'm Brian Tyler Cohen, and you're listening to No Lie. In what has been a remarkably bad couple weeks for Democrats, there is some sliver

of bright light. And that is that we clearly hit a nerve by focusing on Project 2025 as far as Republicans are concerned. So it started with Trump taking to truth social writing. I know nothing about Project 2025. I have no idea who's behind it. I disagree with some of the things they're saying and some of the things they're saying are absolutely ridiculous and abysmal. Anything they do, I wish them luck, but I had nothing to do with them. Which of course gave the game away because Donald Trump doesn't backtrack on anything. Like this guy's entire identity is predicated on his unwillingness to relent on anything. The dude is the political equivalent of a dad refusing to ask for directions and driving the

family into an active volcano and then saying, no, this is exactly right, I meant to do this. So for Donald Trump to backpedal and pretend that he has no idea what Project 2025 is or who's behind it is a joke, especially considering the people behind it literally staffed his entire administration. Here is just a small sampling of the people behind Project 2025. Trump-Aid John McEntee, Chief of Staff of the Trump White House personnel management, Paul Danz, Trump advisor, Stephen Miller, Trump's White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Legislative Affairs, Rick Dearborn, Trump's director of the Office of Management and Budget, Russ Vote,

Trump's acting defense secretary Christopher Miller, Trump's Deputy Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, Ken Coochinelli, Trump's HUD Secretary Ben Carson, Trump's acting director of the Bureau of Land Management, William Penley, Trump's Director of Policy Planning for the State Department, Kieran Skinner, Trump's chief of staff to the Veteran Affairs Department, Diana Roth, Trump's assistant secretary of commerce, Thomas Gilman, Trump's director of the National Trade Council, Peter Navarro,

that is literally not even the whole list. At this point, you'd be better off finding someone who's behind Project 2025 who wasn't part of Trump's White House. So the Biden campaign posted onto Twitter a screen grab, for example, of Stephen Miller starring in a Project 2025 recruitment video titled Project 2025 Presidential Administration Academy in case there was literally any shred of doubt about his involvement in Project 2025, to which Miller himself responded.

A while back, I made a video for students on how to build skills. I have never been involved with Project 2025, not one word. But keep hoaxing, losers. Hoaxes are all you have. You've heard the expression, a hit dog will holler. All the dogs are hollering right now. In fact, let's drive this home a little further. Here's Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts,

explaining how Trump's administration will be staffed expressly to execute on the Project 2025 agenda. We've been working with all of them on one project since soon after Joe Biden took the oath of office before any conservative presidential candidates had even entered the race. As my friend and colleague Paul Danz before talked about briefly, our project 2025 has developed a comprehensive policy agenda, but even more importantly, recruiting people, 20,000 people to go into. the next administration, hopefully, to help take back this country for you and for your audiences. We want no credit.

We want the American people. If President Trump is elected again, President Trump and his administration to take credit for that, but it will also be a great sign if all of this is successful, that in fact, as we know in our prayer time, but maybe not every time when we're watching the news, that the Lord is still smiling upon America. And here's Donald Trump explaining how he needs the Heritage Foundation to pass his agenda. Your organization is named the Heritage Foundation because you understand that our glorious heritage is the foundation of everything we hope to achieve, which is why we need the help of the Heritage Foundation

and everyone here tonight to get our tax cuts through the house, through the the Senate. So to be clear, you've got Trump saying that he needs the Heritage Foundation. You've got the Heritage Foundation saying it needs Trump. And yet now, Trump wants you to believe that there is no relationship between the two. Why? Because he thinks his audience is stupid. I've said it before, but I think it's a point worth repeating, Republicans may claim to hate Democrats, but not nearly as much as they hate their own supporters, which is no surprise, right? But more notable is the fact that there are a few rare instances in which Donald Trump's strongman exterior is pierced. And it follows the same playbook.

So, for example, when he had members of his own staff who would alienate him or criticize him publicly, he always pretended in retrospect that he didn't know them or he would seek to destroy their legitimacy in conservative circles. So Trump called for Ronna McDaniels ouster as RNC chair, even though the only reason that she oversaw losses was literally because she was too deferential to him. He trashed his former press secretary, Kaylee McEnany calling her a rhino. He said Paul Manafort. His campaign chairman, quote, came into the campaign. very late and was with us for a short period of time. He called George Papadopoulos, who was his foreign policy advisor, a, quote, low-level volunteer. He said of Gordon Sondland, his EU ambassador and his campaign donor, quote, I have not spoken

to him much. This is not a man I know well. He said, Michael Cohen, his own lawyer and fixer, did a, quote, tiny, tiny fraction of his legal work. Of Sidney Powell, he said, quote, despite the fake news reports to the contrary and without even reaching out to ask the Trump campaign, Ms. Powell was not my attorney and never. was, in fact, she would have been conflicted. And the list goes on, right? But the point here is clear. Donald Trump will throw you under the bus the moment he feels you become politically

inconvenient for him. And he's doing the same thing here. Recognizing that Project 2025 has become a political liability, he wants desperately to distance himself from it. The problem is that his lies, that he has no clue who's behind it are so blatantly false that it undermines his trust when it comes to anything Project 2025 related. Like, if he's willing to lie about, who's behind it, when it's literally staffed by his entire White House, then the guy will clearly lie about anything. He cannot be trusted at all with what he says about Project 2025. So when Trump says that he doesn't know the deal with Project 2025, just know that he's lying. This is his agenda and it will be implemented if he wins in November. That means

reproductive freedoms will be stripped away. The abortion pill and contraception will be under attack. Student loan forgiveness will be reversed. Climate change efforts will be overturned. The Muslim ban will be reinstated, 15 to 20 million immigrants will be deported, guns will flood our schools, trans-Americans will be banned from serving in the military, school meals will be defunded, and the executive branch, meaning the president, will consolidate power and enjoy full immunity. When I say that this is the road to totalitarianism, I'm not being hyperbolic. This agenda would usher in the end of liberal democracy and rollback rights and freedoms

gained over the last century. So do not let Trump gaslight you into thinking that he is not as extreme as he is. The truth is staring us right in our faces. Our job is to pay attention to it. Next up is my interview with Norm Eisen. But first, a quick note, we're just over a month out from the release of my new book, Shameless. If you think you might order it at any point, please help me out and order during this pre-order period.

It helps generate Buzz, which is super important, obviously, in terms of getting the book sold once it is released. And you can get a free signed bookplate, which are only available in this pre-order period. I'll put the link to submit for the bookplate in the show notes of this episode, or you can visit brian tylercoen.com slash book. Okay, thanks everybody. Here's my interview with Norm Eisen. Now we've got the ethics czar under President Obama, Norm Eisen. Norm, thank you so much for coming back on. Thank you for having me back, Brian. So I want to talk about the Supreme Court's immunity ruling in light of this new ruling

that would basically grant Donald Trump vast immunity. I want to read you a section of the Constitution. This is Article 1, Section 3. Judgment in cases of impeachment shall not extend further than to removal of office and disqualification to hold and enjoy any office of honor, trust, or profit in the U.S. But the party convicted shall nevertheless be liable and subject to indictment, trial, judgment, and punishment according to law. So is the new Supreme Court ruling not in violation of the plain text of the Constitution by suggesting that a president now isn't subject to indictment because he's got this new wide birth of immunity? The only way that section that you just read makes sense is if the words according to law mean according to what we, the members of the Supreme Court, say.

Right, right. Because we have law. We have statutes that Donald Trump violated, whether it's the classified documents case and we have espionage laws. You can't retain classified documents is the illegal retention of classified documents in the D.C. case. blocking the certification of a congressional proceeding. I mean, all of these are already law. They're already statute. So the answer to that question is that it's been inconceivable for our entire history

as a nation that a president would be put above the law in this way, that you would have the corrupt and conflicted and complicit Sam Alito. and Clarence Thomas, substituting their judgment for the words in the Constitution. That is what has happened now. It is one of the worst, one of the most unlawful decisions in United States history, together with the Dred Scott case that so unjustly enforced slavery, the Plessy, Ferguson case that set up Jim Crow, Korematsu, which allowed concentration camps for Americans of Japanese-American ancestry, and now this. I think it will go down in history as one of our

worst cases and dangerously empowers a president. If there is a second Donald Trump presidency or otherwise a terrible peril by flouting the Constitution. And we have to ask ourselves, how did we get a Supreme Court that could behave this way? If you look at the history, it's not just Thomas and Alito who have terrible conflicts. Alito's house can be mistaken for insurrection headquarters. Both of his houses were flying the insurrection flag. Lawrence Thomas's wife is up to her neck. in the pregame for the insurrection, including evidence that she communicated with Thomas

about the planning for insurrection. And then you have the other justices as well who have an asterisk by their names because Republicans in Congress manipulated to keep Barack Obama from appointing the seat that's now filled by Gorsuch. And Brian, And then they turned around. And despite saying, oh, no, we can't have consideration of Merrick Garland. It's an election year after people had already started casting ballots to throw Donald Trump out after we knew that it was likely he was going to lose, they ram through Amy Coney Barrett.

So this is, we shouldn't even call him the Supreme Court. We should call them the MAGA court. Norm, in the military, you have to disregard. guard an illegal order. So what happens in the event that the Supreme Court, the highest court in the land, the final arbiter of this stuff, offers up an illegal ruling of their own? And I'll contend that this is illegal because, A, their ruling here was created out of whole cloth and literally does not exist in the Constitution, this theory of presidential immunity. And B, the authors of the Constitution did give lawmakers civil immunity under the speech and debate clause. So by negative

inference, we could make the argument that they consciously opted not to include presidential immunity in there. So how does it work if the highest court in the land issues a nakedly unconstitutional order? The military will follow the rulings of the Supreme Court. Even if it is lying in the face of the Constitution, the military is not going to put their judgment above that. of the Supreme Court. But here is the danger that you correctly identified. This opinion authorizes death squads because it says that when the president has exclusive and preclusive constitutional authority, which he does to command the military or to command the FBI or domestic law enforcement. When he has that authority, he cannot be questioned. So the dissent says,

and I think they are absolutely right, Justice Sotomayor, the dissent says that if the president orders an assassination using those authorities, there's no recourse left. That is the horror, the nightmare that this decision represents. But it's not all bad news because what we've seen and again and again, and we saw it with all three of those decisions I talked about, Dread Scott, Plessy, Korematsu, the country will not abide such illegality permanently. So we are going to need to talk about a path to fix this terrible injustice. And that is going to be a long-running conversation. The Supreme Court has exposed themselves for the MAGA court that they are. Now, I do want to get into possible solutions here. And I want to discuss the prospect of court

expansion or holding hearings. But one more question here. And that is that the basis for this case was that a president, like you said, could order a seal team six to assassinate. a presidential rival. So I'm not going to ask you why Joe Biden doesn't do that because you and I both know that he's not going to do that. But I understand the sentiment behind it. And a lot of people have been asking me this question. Why doesn't Joe Biden just do this? But I will ask this as a thought experiment. Is there anything stopping Joe Biden, for example, now that he has this newfound wide birth of presidential immunity from the Supreme Court, from stating that Donald Trump is a threat to national security for his past incitements of violence? And so he's

making it an official act here to order Trump's arrest? Yes, I think that if Biden did that now, even based on Trump's post-presidential conduct, the behavior right now, the courts would abort it, they would reject it, they would refuse to tolerate it. And the problem, and we know when we study autocratic regimes, and you have an extremely important book coming on this topic, we know when we study the decay of democracy and we study autocratic regimes, they don't boil the frog all at once. They take gradual steps. It took Putin a long time before he started ordering extrajudicial killings. So I think the greater, the immediate danger of this, of course, Biden won't engage in any of that

conduct. The greater danger is that the opinion sets up a kind of permission structure for Trump to do other lesser things, like using the Department of Justice and the FBI to investigate his adversaries, to drag them over the coals, to open grand juries, to issue subpoenas, is using the IRS to go after his adversaries, all of the things that Nixon wanted to do. And John Dean, who was a key figure in the Nixon Watergate scandal, and in bringing that nightmare to an end by cooperating, Dean says that this decision makes all of that legal. So that's the immediate danger.

Biden won't do it. The risk is that Donald Trump, should he return to office, will. And that's why it's so important. Whoever the Democratic nominee may be, anyone is preferable to the prospect of Donald Trump emboldened by this decision. And threatening to start imposing autocracy, anything is preferable to that. Yeah, I think that's a great point because a lot of people view this election, I think, just to go off topic for a moment, a lot of people view this election as a way to either reward or punish Joe Biden, but this election is not about Joe Biden. Joe Biden is not long for this world. We're going to be here a hell of a lot longer. And it's us who are going to have to deal with the consequences of a Supreme Court, for example, that is continuing to hand down decisions on abortion, contraception, IVF, fair maps, democracy itself, LGBT rights, same-sex, marriage. I mean, the list goes on and on. That is, that has, Joe Biden will be fine. It's us who have to live with that. So this election is not, you're not casting your ballot for or against

Joe Biden. This is the future of the country that we want to live in. Norm, do you think that going back to the topic that I said, I wanted to start diving into here, do you think then that the Senate Judiciary Committee, for example, where we do have a majority is making a mistake by not holding hearings here. And yes, I understand that the end of this process, impeachment or conviction wouldn't happen, but like, does that mean that we still abdicate a responsibility to shine some spotlight, to shine some sunlight on what's happening here? There's a number of senators. Senator White House has been the most outspoken about this who want much more robust activity using all the levers that we have to call out this corrupt MAGA court. And certainly Senate hearings

should be part of that. My study of history suggests, and I've written a number of books about it, suggests that these kinds of injustices will not stand. It's not an if question. It's a when. And so those Senate hearings could be an important part of laying the groundwork. After we've seen the Supreme Court, this radical MAGA court, first it was Dobbs, take you. away the power of women to choose. Indeed, that affects all of us. Then you saw them destroying the ability of government in their case, setting aside the Chevron doctrine, basically saying government can't regulate, can't keep our air and our water clean, can't keep our kids and our families safe, they stripped that power away. Then they gave this imperial presidency. It's

hearkening back to when we had a king over us, King George III. That's what Independence Day celebrated, getting rid of King George III. This will not stand. And I will, and you and I will be talking about this for years to come. It is going to be a campaign. It's a terrible thing, but it's also a privilege. If you or any of your viewers ever looked at the campaign for civil rights to end Jim Crow and admired those heroes, I got to know John Lewis used to make me laugh when I was doing work in Congress, he would say, Norm, you're my hero. I say, John, that's ridiculous. You're my hero. If we ever admired them, the campaign begins now, Brian, we've got to have term limits on the court. We've got to have more members of this court. We're going to have to change

the filibuster in the Senate that requires 60 votes to do anything real. The constitutional power is there to vary the makeup of the court and the length of its members serving. There's other things that can be done. And that is among the critical changes that we're going to have to work to after Trump v. U.S., after this opinion, we no longer have a Supreme Court. We have a MAGA court, and they've made a mockery of the Constitution and the law. And that is going to have to change, and it will change. It's just a question of when. Norm, how do you reconcile when you have a Democratic Party that wants to protect the institutions

that Republicans are trying to tear down? But at the same time, in doing so, doesn't seem to be up for the fight that Republicans are bringing them. So, like, we are just kind of blindly relying on the courts, even as the courts are showing that they're fully aligned with Donald Trump and his agenda and willing to do their bidding. And it kind of feels like far from even bringing a knife to a gunfight, we're showing up with a spoon.

We're showing up empty-handed. So I guess what's your message to these, to those in charge who continue to defer to the institutions but not seek to think critically about the fact that if we just carry on in this path, we're going to lose? We won with making the election on a referendum on Donald Trump in 2018. In 2020, it was a referendum on him. We won. In 22, his candidates were rejected. And I've lost count of how many times Trump has been pronounced politically dead, Brian.

He keeps coming back from the grave. He's the presidential equivalent, the political equivalent, of a vampire or a zombie. He keeps coming back from the political grave. I think this wake-up call of this Supreme Court decision, the whole term, the powers, they're irrigating to themselves. Those words you read, when it said law, they said, well, but they've added a new clause to the Constitution,

but the law is what I conflicted, corrupt, complicit. Clarence Thomas and Sam Alito say it is. Why are they even sitting on this case? It's crazy. It's against federal law. There's a federal law that says judges are not permitted to have those conflicts. So yes, it is time for us. It's a wake up call. Look, the conservative movement was pronounced down and out, 1964, when LBJ trounced Goldwater. They didn't quit. They said, we are going to build. They invented institutions. They empowered the Chamber of Commerce.

They built the Federalist Society. Federalist society has totally captured this court. The actual agenda is an economic agenda. And let me tell you, it's not an agenda of getting more prosperity to you and to me. It's those billionaires who gave Clarence Thomas four million dollars. Think of it. Four million dollars, right? No wonder the Supreme Court. They also did this this term. They legal, basically legalized bribery between this immunity case. You can no longer prove a bribery case. And another decision that they made on making it very tough to establish the illegality of gratuities to public officials. So we are going to have to take an example from that struggle. I hope it won't be that long. I think it can be done shorter. We've got to make sure that 2024 is a referendum on these issues,

that everybody knows what they're voting on. But we've got to keep an eye on the contest in 26, the contest in 28. The good news is, yes, there are examples when you get an autocrat, if Trump should be successful, where they defeat all opportunities to oust them. But history, contemporary political science, plenty of examples where if you keep your eye on the prize, you focus on that horizon, we all wage this peaceful political battle together. Then what you get is like the Polish example.

Autocrats took over Poland. They were ousted a few years later at the ballot box. We don't want the Hungarian example. We're all efforts to get rid of the autocrat there. Victor Orban have failed. So I'm, I talked to you before we went on the air. This has been some of the toughest days that I've experienced in over 40 years of doing this work. But I'm actually optimistic and confident. This will not stand if we all determine that it won't. Well, I appreciate the optimism. And I'm absolutely certain that the audience does too here. So Norm, with that said, thank you so much for taking the time. I'll talk to you soon.

Thanks, Brian. Thanks again to Norm. That's it for this episode. Talk to you next week. You've been listening to No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen. Produced by Sam Graber, music by Wellesie, and interviews edited for YouTube by Nicholas Nicotera. If you want to support the show, please subscribe on your preferred podcast app and leave a five-star rating in a review. And as always, you can find me at Brian Tyler Cohen on all of my other channels, or you can go to Briantellercoen.com to learn more.

Thank you.