No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen - Trump sets himself up for failure with Cabinet post

Episode Date: November 17, 2024

Trump makes an extreme gamble with the Matt Gaetz attorney general nomination, and risks a lot by doing it. Brian interviews congressman Daniel Goldman to discuss what he and Democrats are doing in light of Trump’s threat to run for a 3rd term.Shop 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 Trump's extreme gamble with the Matt Gates Attorney General nomination and what he risks by doing it. And I interview Congressman Daniel Goldman to discuss what he and Democrats are doing in light of Trump's threat to run for a third term. I'm Brian Tyler Cohen, and you're listening to No Lie. Donald Trump has nominated Matt Gates, who was until recently under investigation by the DOJ to lead the DOJ as Attorney General. And of course, this comes amid a wave of other highly unqualified nominees. we've got anti-environment Lee Zeldin at EPA, anti-science RFK Jr. at Health and Human Services, the aggressively unqualified Fox host Pete Hegeseth at Defense, and of course Elon Musk and Vivek Ramoswamy got their participation trophies of a made-up new agency called the Department

of Government Efficiency or Doge so that Elon can post memes about it. But Gates is a different level of uniquely unqualified and dangerous. So why is Trump doing this? First, Trump thinks he's going to succeed. He believes that he has some giant mandate to plow ahead with zero moderating forces, no need to sacrifice anything. And so why not arm yourself with a grovelling sycophant who's going to turn the DOJ into your own personal retribution force? But second, the prospect of Gates' confirmation serves the added purpose, the added benefit

of proving a larger point that Trump wholly owns this Republican Party, that he's got this party so under his thumb, though vote for even the least qualified nominee. And I mean that literally. The guy was literally, again, just investigated by the very agency that he is seeking to lead for alleged sex trafficking of a minor. Like, that is the one thing that Republicans have effectively predicated their entire identity on blocking. For the last decade, these people have been losing their skulls over the prospect that Democrats are trafficking kids in some pizza place basement. You literally can't log on a Twitter without seeing some unhinged right-wing or call a Democrat a pedophile. And yet, this is the hill that they do.

die on, elevating someone alleged to have literally committed sexual misconduct with a minor to the job of the top law enforcement official in the country? Like, if you're wondering why I titled my book, Shameless, this is why the concept of shame isn't even a distant thought for these people. But here's where Trump may have actually jumped the shark, because in the same way that he's trying to box the Republicans in by making them vote for the literal least qualified nominee to any cabinet-level position in American history, these Republicans now have the opportunity to do the exact same thing to him.

If they vote down Matt Gates, which may certainly be possible based on a lot of the reporting that we're seeing right now, then this air of invincibility that Trump is trying to convey is going to be pierced in the first week of his presidency. He will have been neutered at exactly the moment he's trying to show strength,

which is not to say, by the way, that Republicans won't still go along with him 99% of the time because they will, but Trump derives his strength from this idea that he commands total fealty, total loyalty from his underlings, zero dissent, he would lose that in a heartbeat, all on some stupid gamble of making this overtly corrupt congressman in charge of the country's legal apparatus. And, you know, for me and I'm assuming for you, as people who value democracy,

this would at least offer me some relief, knowing that even for a political party so willing to contract its own power to Trump, there are limits. And that when necessary, they're capable of exercising their own power. That at least gives me some hope. as we enter what promises to be a really difficult and tumultuous period that there is a check on his worst impulses. So I do hope that these Republicans don't contract out their power to Trump. I hope that they don't give him recess appointments. I hope that it's not just Susan Collins level concern and shock and disappointment

and that they're actually going to assert the power that they were elected to wield and don't just kowtow to this guy at every turn. Against my better judgment, I do think that's what's going to happen here. And if it does, that will unequivocally be good news. And finally, just a note on how I think we can all be most effective moving forward, given what we're seeing right now, talking about right now, there are going to be a lot of fires to put out over the next four years. We're already seeing that now with virtually all of Trump's cabinet picks.

But I think the onus is on us to figure out where to put our energy. If we treat everything like a five-alarm fire, then eventually nothing really feels like a five-alarm fire. So I get how in a vacuum somebody like Pete Hegseth as Secretary of Defense or Lee Zeldin at EPA would unto themselves, be the worst cabinet picks in history, we have to pick our battles here because Trump thrives in an environment where Democrats are railing against everything because then we're scattered and looking in 10 different directions and nothing sticks. But if we stay focused on the stuff

that truly deserves it and I would offer that Matt Gates as Attorney General and Tulsi Gabbard as Director of National Intelligence truly deserve it, then we'll be much more effective at stopping his worst impulses. And we'll save ourselves the frustration of feeling like the sky is falling and that we can't do anything about it. There are a few lessons that we can take from this 2024 election and being deliberate and being organized

are chief among them. Next step is my interview with Daniel Goldman. I'm joined now by Congressman Daniel Goldman. Thanks so much for taking the time. Thanks, having me again, Brian. So we've just found out that Donald Trump had teased this idea while speaking to Republicans

about the prospect of running for a third term. And this is especially timely right now because you just introduced a resolution on exactly this topic. So first off, can you explain what this resolution says? Well, the resolution is pretty simple and straightforward. It recites a number of times where Donald Trump has referenced the possibility of him staying on as president or dictator for more than two terms. And after FDR served four terms or won four elections,

the Constitution was amended with the 22nd Amendment that made it very clear that a president shall serve two terms and two terms only. So this resolution just reaffirms that the 22nd Amendment means the two terms, including in the aggregate, meaning non-consecutive terms, and it also says that it applies to Donald Trump. And this should be a no-brainer for anybody who cares about the Constitution. Do you anticipate that Mike Johnson will even allow this to be brought up for a vote? I have no idea. I don't see any reason why he wouldn't. This is... Well, I can think of one reason why he wouldn't want to bring this up for a vote.

Well, I'm sorry. You're right. I mean, Donald Trump is the reason that he would not do it, of course, because Trump, you know, completely controls him as a wholly un-subsidiary at this point. But when you look at the Constitution and you look at the law, it's so basic. It's so clear that there really is no reason why anyone in, who upholds an oath to the Constitution would ever vote against this. And so I think it would be a very important message for Speaker Johnson to send to Donald Trump and to everyone else that this Republican Congress, now that they are fully in control, is still going to adhere to the Constitution. Well, the success of this resolution notwithstanding, can you, for posterity explain what the 22nd Amendment does and whether, more importantly, there's any way for Republicans to be able to subvert it in deference to Trump? Well, I'm certainly not going to try to come up

with different ways. I mean, it is, as I mentioned, pretty straightforward in that it simply says that no president is allowed to serve more than two terms. And obviously, it was done, It was passed in 155, ratified in 1951, shortly after FDR, won four elections in a row before he passed away. And I think there are very good reasons for it. What you hear a lot from the Republicans is some cockamamie explanation that because there were investigations and impeachments into Donald Trump in his first term, that somehow that doesn't count as a first term. So, you know, I don't know. I would respond to them in their own vernacular that, well, that may be the case.

If that is the case, you say that he won the 2020 election, so he already had another term. Correct. Yeah. With that said, what is the process? Because I know folks are going to be wondering about that. They're going to look at the 22nd Amendment. And even if it is respected, what is the process for amending or withdrawing that amendment? What does that process look like?

Well, you have to change the Constitution, which is, you know, an onerous task requires two-thirds of the House and the Senate and three-quarters of state legislatures in order to do that. I mean, that's the most common way. And that's not going to happen. So it is, it's not that the Constitution is going to change. It's that somehow Donald Trump would make an argument adopted by Republicans who, as I said, are wholly owned subsidiaries of him, that it doesn't apply to him either because it's non-consecutive

terms or because of the bogus explanation for the first term. And effectively, he would overrule the Constitution, undo our democracy, and become a dictator. Well, and that's the thing I was like kind of going to get at if I can go full cynic for a moment, which to a degree might be warranted. But there is this idea that our laws and our norms are only as strong as our government's own willingness to enforce it. And so is there some degree of worry, at least among you folks? I mean, if anybody understands the threats to democracy, it is the House Democrats, right? it's the Democratic Conference in the House and the Senate. So is there any worry that that kind of the party-wide apparatus, at least on the right,

is so blindly deferential to Trump that they will put him above any adherence to the Constitution itself? You raise a really, really important point, especially now that it looks like the Republicans are not only going to have the presidency in Donald Trump, but also have the majority in the Senate and the House. They have full control of all three bodies of government. And so if our constitution and our democracy is going to survive someone like Donald Trump, who has already tried to undermine it in his first term and has made it very clear that his intentions are much more devious in his second term, it's going to have to become in part from Republicans who have the responsibility of governing, who have taken an oath to the Constitution,

not to Donald Trump, and who are going to have to stand up to his worst instincts to make sure that we continue to have a functioning democracy based on the rule of law and that where checks and balances and our Constitution prevails. Do you think there's an appetite among those people from what you've seen, from the conversations that you've had, and also on the flip side, knowing, knowing the mandate that he has, given the fact that he's, he's improved his lot among, you know, across the country, in all demographic groups, and loyalty or fealty to him was basically the litmus test in this election. Do you think there's going to be an appetite for people in the Republican Party to serve as something of a bulwark against him, against his

worst instincts, I should say? I think there is not, there is very little appetite in the House, and we saw that last, or in this Congress that we're still serving in, the 118th, because the Freedom Caucus, the extreme right, the MAGA Republicans, completely controlled the House. There traditionally have been more thoughtful, measured Republicans in the Senate where there are six-year terms, and you have, you're not up for re-election every two years. And so I certainly think that there, even though Trump has more control over the Senate, there are institutionalists, there are people who recognize that their legacy is also on the line here. And I think a lot of Republicans are going to be faced with a question that they have not yet been faced with. And when people face decisions, rather than hypotheticals, they often have different answers.

But that question is going to be, what do you want your legacy to be? Do you want to be someone who goes down in history helping Donald Trump undermine our democracy, overrule our constitution, and turn this country into a banana republic? Because they will be on the hook. And I think that's part of the reason why Mike Johnson ultimately. moved forward with Ukraine aid, is he understood the intelligence. He understood how essential that aid was to defend Ukraine a democracy against Putin. And he didn't want to go down in history as the enabler of Vladimir Putin to take over Ukraine. And all of the other Republicans

are going to be faced with a similar or many similar questions in this upcoming two years. Well, that's a good segue into what a lot of Senate Republicans are going to do when they are faced with the opportunity of either voting for or against someone like Matt Gates for Attorney General. Can I have your initial reaction to the news that Trump's nominated Gates as AG? It's pretty remarkable. I like to say that nothing surprises me about Donald Trump after I've spent five years. is simply immersed in standing up to him. But this one really stretches the limits of imagination. Matt Gates is currently under an ethics investigation in the Congress that was started after a serious criminal investigation of him

for sleeping with underage women and traveling out of state and out of the country with them, among perhaps other things. And so the idea that you would put somebody who clearly has such a vendetta against the Department of Justice in control of the Department of Justice, someone who is so unserious, someone who is so unqualified is scary. But Matt Gates is not the only one, Brian. I mean, you see Gabbard now who was nominated to oversee the entire intelligence community. And there are many, many people who believe that Tulsi Gabbard is either a witting or unwitting agent of Vladimir Putin. And now she's overseeing our intelligence community. It is absurd. And you have Pete Hegseth, who's a Fox News host,

an able service member in Iraq and Afghanistan. I'm not trying to take anything away from his service, but certainly unqualified to be the Secretary of Defense. And these are Donald Trump loyalists through and through, and that's what he wants. Unlike the John Kelly's, the Rex Tillerson's, the Jim Mattis's, the people that he hired in his first term who were competent and qualified and put guardrails around him, the only qualification right now to be nominated as someone in Donald Trump's cabinet or other White House is undying loyalty to Donald Trump. And the reason why that's so scary is that we know he has no respect for the rule of law. He has no respect for the Constitution.

And he will ask those people to do things that violate the law, that violate the Constitution, that undermine our democracy. And whereas last time around, they resisted in people in those positions. this time around, he is trying to ensure that nobody will resist him. Can you talk for a moment about the importance of recess appointments and how Donald Trump can subvert the advice and consent process that the Senate will rely on? So if there's a law that if you, if the Senate is in recess for 10 days or more, a president can make an appointment during that recess that can,

that can last, I think, up to two years. I'm not exactly sure, but it can effectively install someone in an appointed position without the Senate's confirmation process. Traditionally, the Senate under both parties control has never allowed a recess to go for 10 days so that a president cannot use that subversion of the Senate's advice and consent responsibility and cannot get around Senate confirmation. And that is true for Republican Senates and Republican presidents and Democratic Senates and Democratic Presidents. The Senate understandably values that responsibility very highly.

So the pressure that Donald Trump is trying to put on, and now I think we're coming to see why with the nominations of Matt Gates and Tulsi Gabbard is to put pressure on the Senate, new Senate Majority Leader, John Thune, to change the rules of the Senate to allow for recesses of 10 days or longer, which would then allow Donald Trump to install his nominees in what's called a recess appointment without having to get confirmation from the Senate. Now, it is not right now the practice and the rule of the Senate, so they would have to change that to allow for that. And that's why you're reading about all the pressure that Donald Trump and Elon Musk are putting on the senators, which did not seem to come to bear in the Senate majority leader race because John Thune, who's an institutionalist in the Mitch McConnell mold, one, not Rick Scott, who seemed to be the preferred. candidate of Donald Trump.

And let's finish off with this. I know more broadly, even among, you know, among Democrats, among myself, and I'm sure to a degree you and your colleagues as well in the House, there's a lot of exhaustion and a sense of despair or discouragement. What's your message to folks who are looking at the road ahead, even including moments just like today where we find out that Matt Gates may very well be the top law enforcement official in the United States, that Tulsi Gabbard, somebody who's a lot of lined with the Kremlin may very well be in charge of national intelligence. What's your message

to folks in terms of figuring out, you know, how to stay engaged, how to stay involved and not just check out? Well, it's a great question. And I have spent the last five years trying to stand up to Donald Trump and the Republicans from the first impeachment when I led the investigation all the way to, you know, now toward the end of my first term in Congress, I certainly did not want to spend the next two to four years of my life pushing back against Donald Trump's worst instincts and trying to continue this quest to preserve and protect our democracy. But this is the hand we're dealt. And it is going to get worse. And what I would urge everyone to do is that I understand the temptation to turn off the TV, to put your head under a pillow, and to just hope it goes

away. If we, the Democratic Party that stands for democracy, are going to be in the minority and are going to effectively be powerless in Washington, D.C., our power is going to come from the American people, rising up, making their voices heard, objecting to the lawlessness, the anti-democratic moves and decisions of Donald Trump. And that what we need more than anything is the opposite of putting your head under a pillow. We need everybody to lean in and to participate and to organize and to advocate. And it makes a difference. And it will make a difference to a lot of members of Congress, especially, even if it doesn't

make a difference to Donald Trump. And ultimately, we can work together to force Republicans. to put a check on Donald Trump to preserve our democracy. But it is going to require all of us. And I'm happy to be in the fight and leading the fight, and I intend to do so. But I need everybody in there with me. Yeah. And I would argue that the only reason we have the ACA today is because of the immense amount

of pressure that Americans put on Republicans and folks like John McCain in 2018 and in the lead up to that election. I would also argue that, you know, we were in a similar position. the same position virtually in 2016 and within two years, we would usher in the biggest House majority in modern American history into the House, and then two years later, full control of government, House, White House, and Senate. So, you know, it's going to be a long road ahead, but I appreciate the work you're doing and you being in this fight here. Congressman, thank you for taking the time. You too, Brian. Thanks for having me.

Thanks again to Congressman Goldman. 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.