Plain English with Derek Thompson - Donald Trump vs. the FBI: Everything We Know About the Investigation So Far

Episode Date: August 16, 2022

I've never before recorded an episode specifically about Donald Trump. I guess I’ve been holding out for the chaos that typically swirls around him to exceed an extremely high bar of freaky nonsense. This week, I am forced to conclude that the bar has been surpassed. The January 6 investigations in D.C. and the New York state business investigation are newsworthy on their own. But last week, federal agents descended on Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s private club and Florida home, and came away with a trove of top secret documents and papers. This investigation could implicate the president as an agent of law-breaking espionage. Or it could lead to ... nothing at all. In this episode, the author, CNN analyst, and former government official Juliette Kayyem joins the show to separate fact from speculation and to help us imagine several ways this saga could end. If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at [e-mail]. You can find us on TikTok at www.tiktok.com/@plainenglish_ Host: Derek Thompson Guest: Juliette Kayyem Producer: Devon Manze Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I'm Matt Bellany, founding partner of Puck News, and I'm covering the inside conversation about money and power in Hollywood. With my new show, The Town, I'm going to take you inside Hollywood with exclusive insight on what people in show business are actually talking about. Multiple times a week, I'll talk to some of the smartest people I know, journalists, insiders, all of whom can break down the hottest topics in entertainment to tell you what's really going on. Listen now. Today, we have to talk about Donald Trump. So every month is a chaotic month in the world of our former president, and careful listeners of this podcast will know that we've never done a Trump-specific episode because I've generally been holding out for the chaos that constantly swirls around him to surpass an extremely high

bar of freaky nonsense. And this week I am forced to conclude that that bar has been surpassed, and it's been surpassed because of not one, not two, but three coinciding investigations. Number one, in Washington, the January 6th committee is still uncovering evidence that Trump cheered the invasion of the Capitol and refused pleas to condemn the riots, even as his own vice president feared for his life. Number two, in New York, Trump declined repeatedly to answer questions in a New York state investigation into possible corrupt business practices at the Trump Organization. And number three, with a bullet. In Florida last week, federal agents descended on Mar-a-Lago, Trump's private. private club in Florida home, and they came away with a trove of top secret documents and papers

that the president was not supposed to have at his private residence. And these are papers that could implicate him as an agent of law-breaking espionage or, you know, lead to nothing at all, as so often seems to be the case with these investigations. Today's episode focuses pretty exclusively on this latest investigation. The FBI versus the president. in Maralago. And I think it's useful to begin, as we sometimes do here, with the facts, with a story of the facts. So let's review the timeline. I want to rewind the tape to January 2021. So Trump loses the election, and he is required by law under the Presidential Records Act to return several top secret documents to the National Archives. Within a few months,

the National Archives realizes that Trump actually hasn't delivered these documents, he's actually taken a slew of them with him down to Florida. They say, hey, Mr. President, we need these records, sir. So one year later, January of this year, Trump returns 15 boxes of material. Except when the archivists look over the material, they realize a lot of it has classified markings all over it. This guy hasn't exactly just taken the shampoo from the hotel. He's taken something far more valuable. So they refer the matter to the Justice Department, which begins an investigation this spring, the spring of 2022. The Justice Department starts talking to Trump and his legal team about these boxes of material these taken down to Florida with him.

They subpoena surveillance footage of Trump's Florida home, Mara Lago. And they see something a little fishy. Boxes of top secret and supposedly classified information are being moved in and out of a basement near a commonly used pool. This is, at the very least, let's just be fair here, a pretty crummy way to store sensitive information. The head of the Department of Justice, Merrick Garland, signs off in a plan to search and seize whatever documents are remaining at Mara Lago, and a Florida judge approves this search. And that is the story of how Maralago got a surprise visit from the feds this month. Now, as with everything related to Trump, the story immediately goes meta in the most lurid of possible ways. Some Trump

haters jumped to the conclusion that the ex-president is clearly a proven traitor. Some Trump's supporters threatened to defund the FBI for the sin of investigating a former president. Some maniacs even threaten to kill the magistrate who approved the search. But what do we know for certain from the search warrant? What do we know for certain from the search inventory? And what do the things that we actually know for certain tell us about the future of this case? Today's guest is Juliette Kayam. She is an author, a writer for the Atlantic, and the former assistant secretary for intergovernmental affairs in the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

She knows little something about classified information, top secret documents, and how they should be treated. Juliet guides us through the extraordinary Mara Lago search. She helps us separate fact from fiction, real analysis from pure empty speculation, and throughout we imagine several ways this latest chapter of the Trump saga could unfold. As always, please send any questions and episode ideas that you have to plain English at Spotify.com. I'm Derek Thompson. This is plain English. Juliet, welcome to the podcast. Thank you for having me. So there is so much heat around everything that Donald Trump does and every way that he seems to violate the law. But I want to start by pointing out how much we do not know. We do not know exactly what

documents Trump had at Maralago. We do not know why he had them. We do not know what he was doing with them. We don't know what the FBI even thinks he was doing with them. So I want to begin on a solid piece of land here. I think there are three things we can say we know for certain. We have a timeline of events, number one. Number two, we have a warrant that authorized this FBI search. And number three, we have a partial inventory, a partial list of things seized from Maralago. I've already covered the timeline in my introduction, so let's get to number two, which is the warrant. The warrant lists three criminal laws as the basis of this investigation. The Espionage Act, obstruction of justice, and a statute that bars the unlawful taking or destruction of government records or documents.

Okay. What is the most striking part of this warrant to you? So the most, I think the most sexy of you put it, of course, is espionage because he's a former president and they're making a charge of espionage, which is the dissemination of what they call publication of information to, it doesn't say to whom, that would impact America's national security. And we know that this is relevant because the division within the Department of Justice, who requested the warrant is the national security division and a part of the national security division that deals specifically with sort of espionage and other issues like this. So we know that this is sort of a

focus of theirs. What's important when you hear on cable news and the legal analysis, but we don't have to get into why this is, is that these three charges are unrelated to the classification status that everyone's getting all worked up about of the documents that Trump retained. And so the layperson may think, well, how can that be? How can you do espionage without classified information? So here's, I was trying to think, what's a good example for you in plain English? So, so, um, so, um, I'm on a train and I see a U.S. troop deployment in a country where we might invade. Let's just say that. And I see details of the weaponry.

I'm a U.S. citizen and I call the Iraqis immediately in 2002 and tell them what I happen to see or what I happen to hurt. That is not classified information to me. I haven't, I'm not a part of government. But even the mere publication of that, to say an enemy, would be viewed as espionage. So that's a way to think about that the status doesn't really matter. And of course, he's the former president of the status is relevant to him in some ways because he should be more careful than the average American citizen. So the espionage one is a big deal because it suggests that there's some evidence.

And we're hearing rumors of it about videos and others, that it was the publication of these documents to others. Business people, foreign governments, we don't know yet that is of key concern to the National Security Division. So the Espionage Act statute that is in the warrant is about publication. How could you possibly prove publication by looking at a box of documents, right? Like, if I take a photograph of this troop movement in whatever country, let's just call it Ukraine, and I have that photograph of that troop movement and I'm holding it in my basement, and the FBI comes by and they check it out and they look at the photograph and they're like, oh, my God, why could I be charged on the espionage act for just having that photograph in my basement?

So what we do know is that Mar-a-Lago has been a site in which the sharing of classified information has gone on willy-nilly at public tables and Trump sort of likes doing this. he shows people things. We already knew that before, and presumably therefore, so did investigators. But the second piece is that if there is evidence of the dissemination of this in a way that would have harmed the U.S. So there's pictures that have been taken. There's video surveillance that have been taken.

Those are the things that will add on to the potential charges. Remember, the warrant is just for one thing related to a much larger case. is we don't know what else they have that would let them put pieces together. And so I do think that it's, I think it's like the sort of, you know, sort of scariest, deepest part of the warrant is the espionageage,

but I don't want to forget the obstruction charge. What we got from reporting this weekend, and this is where I think others are in big trouble, is that the Trump lawyers had made representations to law enforcement, don't lie to law enforcement, to law enforcement, that everything had been scrubbed and that they had the FBI or the archives had all classified information just based on your timeline.

As people know, there has been an attempt to get a lot of this stuff back. And the archives thought they had everything. What we're looking at now is a realization that Trump, for reasons we don't know yet, retained just these documents. So just to review from here, the statute under the Espionage Act that's really important is about retaining national security information that could harm the U.S. or aid a foreign adversary. And it's this fear that he might have shared that information with people that he shouldn't have.

So it's not just having the information, but it's also sharing it with people that might have been caught under the surveillance footage, for example, that the FBI subpoenaed from Mar-a-Lago. Under obstruction, just to put some meat on the bones here, the New York Times reported that at least one lawyer for Trump signed a written statement in June asserting that all the material marked as classified and held in boxes in this Mar-a-Lago storage area

had been returned to the government. We now know that was incorrect because an inventory of the material taken from Mar-a-Lago showed all of these documents that were marked top-secret or super-top-secret, as we'll discuss, in a second. You wrote today that presidents are typically consumers of intelligence information, not collectors of intelligence information. Like, it seems like Trump is like going to the museum and he's treating it like a gift shop. Like, you know, he looks at the Mona Lisa.

That's nice. I'll take it. Like, hey, neat sarcophagus. Put it in the bag. So a part of this is that this is, we've never just had a situation like this where the president is taking home to a private residence a bunch of documents that. are classified, returning only some of them to the National Archive when they request it all back, allegedly lying to the FBI, the Department of Justice, about returning all of it, and then having this search and seizure. Like in the big picture here, like putting all of that

together, what is the kind of behavior that it is reasonable to think Trump is being investigated for by the FBI? What are they most concerned about? There, I just want to pick up on one point before I answer that, because I think that that is so key at this stage, just given some of the, as you said, the drama surrounding this, that at some stage, Donald Trump was willing to give up some documents. So that's why there's like this particular focus on these boxes and their security status and then what's in the inventory. So there's a range of possibilities when it comes to Donald Trump. And in some ways, I think the article today was trying to say, is just forget the range, right? In other words, just the act of it, the act of this recklessness

has national security implications because we have a reckless at best, a former president who's treating what really are the gems of national security, TSSCI being the classification a lot of people are hearing about, in a way in which he's either destroying them or publishing them. We just don't know yet. So, you know, there's a lot to Trump's personality. Are there personal things that then the classified stuff got whipped into? who we just don't know.

We've heard earlier in the week about nuclear information, nuclear secrets, which of course, or even nuclear inventory, which is, of course, something you just wouldn't want to share. So here's another example that I think it's important because I think we just use these words and we don't know what. So here's an example that I was thinking about. Like, okay, so there's the nuclear codes. I'm not worried about those. Those get changed all the time. So the former president's not going to have access to it.

But like there's, let's say that there was. was a classified inventory of our nuclear arsenal. And it was an honest inventory by the Pentagon. This happens all the time where they say, look, of the 10,000 warheads that we have, we actually only think about 7,200 or operational. I see these kinds, I saw these kinds of documents in government all the time. You don't want to advertise to everyone, enemy or ally, right? Because the allies also have a dependent status, that you're a little bit worried about 2,800 of those warheads. So this is like an example where it's not like everyone's going to die tomorrow, right, nuclear warheads, but it is like it's about our sort of long-term investments in our national security.

So even the nuclear issue, which got everyone worked up, maybe a little bit too much, could have implications for both our allies, confidence, and our capabilities. as we look at China and Taiwan, let alone Ukraine and Russia, but also our enemies. Right. My big picture fear, and again, I want to bracket this by saying this is utter speculation, and I'm doing my best here to separate that, which is speculation. And how could you not speculate, by the way? I mean, so this is speculation and it is not fact. But what do we know about Donald Trump? We know he's an incredibly consistent person. He's been who he is for the seven, eight decades of his life. We know that he's someone who loves to make money.

We know who's someone when even after he was elected president still use the office of the presidency in order to make a lot of money. Look at the dealings of his son-in-law and his family in parts of the world. Look at Trump Hotel. When you're a president who is offered all sorts of juicy pieces of information in the Oval Office, and now you finally lost the election and Congress has decided they're not going to overturn the results in Arizona and Georgia, and you have to leave office, you're looking around at all these juicy morsels, and what do you see as someone

who is fundamentally a businessman? You see the opportunity, it seems to me, to make money. So I'm not suggesting exactly how he's going to use any of these bits of information to make money, but these pieces of information are valuable. They are valuable, and it seems inevitable that someone might offer a certain thing of value in exchange for them.

And so that's what makes me particularly nervous about him holding these things in this trunk space off the pool area of Marilago. Right. And Derek, can I say you mentioned a point that I think people aren't picking up on. I mean, because I do think when we look at liability, how are we going to figure out what's in them?

Well, clearly, in my mind, clearly, speculation again. But it does appear that someone in Camp Trump is speaking or they have some access to information to know that this is happening. one of the vulnerabilities is also going to be how did stuff move from D.C. to Mara Lago. So there's a, you know, from point A to point B. Because the classified information when it's transported, it has to be transported in a certain way. And we have all sorts of rules and regulations around them. There's a group of people, presumably political people, who knew that those boxes were moving and whatever kind of capacity they were moving in. So I do think that the transatlantly, for issue is going to be an issue. How did those boxes get down, presumably, down to Marlauga, with their TSSCI status, which I think will be an issue in the future as well? So let's go back to things that we actually know for sure, rather than just my sort of random

historical personality test speculation. In addition to the warrant, we also have a partial manifest, a partial inventory of the items taken by the FBI in their search and seizure of Mar-a-Lago. We know that some of these items were classified top-secret, and that some of them were classified top-secret sensitive compartmentalized information, T-S-S-C-I. What is T-S-S-C-I? And what are the kind of documents that would be labeled T-S-C-I? So, once again, I'll try to do this layperson. So there's lots of secrets and classified information, just things that you don't want know. So the difference between TS and TSCI, of which I had been in government as a consumer of intelligence, I had been at the Department of Homeland Security, so I am just reading this stuff.

So T.S would tell me, for example, that there's fears of imminent attack by an al-Qaeda group in New York, and we're going to surge resources to try to prevent them. So someone like me in Homeland Security would know that or would want to know that in a leadership role. Okay, and also because there would be a surge of resources. What is TSSCI telling me? TSSC is telling me that Joe Schmoe, I'm just making up a name. The leader of the terrorist cell was last seen in New York City at XYZ talking to these four people.

All five of them are under surveillance. I mean, it would be the nitty, gritty details of what we knew. And then, you know, that's a counterterrorism investigation. That's where I come from. But you could think about this in terms of nuclear capabilities or in terms of, you know, what we don't know or know about foreign. and leaders and what they're doing in their spare time or not. I mean, all of these things are sort of the nitty-gritty details that show the extent of our knowledge and then the extent

of our ignorance, right? Because they will also say we have no idea where these five guys are and we're scared, you know, we're completely scared and we're searching for them. So knowing that, the TSSI can only be viewed at the top cert. Depending on the agency, some seem to be very careful. So TSSEI would only be seen in what's called a SCIF. So SCIF, the F stands for a facility. So you, just to give people a flavor of it, so you go into a room, you give up your phone because your phone would have access to, you know,

the outside world. You don't want to do that. You put your phone in, depending on the level, you might, you know, you'd have to go through a credential program or a fingerprinting, depending on how intense it is. The SCIF is literally a closet, you know, and they travel. By the way, skiffs travel.

So if I go abroad and need to have a skip, a skip will travel with me. The military will set it up background noise, white noise to keep the noise out. And something is presented, the documents about what that information is. So this is how serious it takes. And there's an entire apparatus that exists for the reading and consumption, as you described, the consumption of TSSCI. So just to say that it's that things are, you know, this narrative, there's all different narratives forming, but one is like that, you know, too much stuff is classified TSS. That could be true. This doesn't

seem to me to be a very good debate around. I mean, most of the time when we debate classification status, it's because there's a better countervailing interest like transparency or abuse that you want to expose. It's not because Trump wanted it. So, and these classifications are done by the classifying agency. So the CIA would do their intelligence side, let's say from DHS, we would do border stuff and generally is is chosen at different levels depending on the extent of it. And then the reader, so the reader, different readers will have access to different levels. So just to be clear how sensitive TSCI is, my boss, Janet Napolitano, a secretary of Homeland Security, would not get access to TSCI on everything because they wouldn't view her as relevant to say an action in

Afghanistan. So it's not like you, it's not like you as the individual carry TSSC capability. It depends on what the issue is. So in other words, this is much more sophisticated than a former president being able to say, well, I showed up at Mara Lago and declassified everything. Interesting. And so just to connect this back to the warrant, would the discovery of SCI documents be most relevant to the espionage act aspects of the warrant or the statute that bars the unlawful taking or destruction of government records?

I think the espionage at this stage because the TSSCI, I guess there was, what, four or five of, sorry, I'm forgetting how many boxes of TSSCI materials. And the inventory is very vague about sort of what quantity is in there.

To me, the TSSCI issue, while not a precondition for the espionage charge, as we know, because you can commit espionage without classified information, it seems to me to be the sort of most damning for a Trump defense because it's not just some generic espionage charges. Like, actually, he had access to a lot of stuff, and he was showing a person X, Y, or Z.

And to remind people, you know, the carelessness, obviously was in the White House, right? I mean, he showed the Russians information about Israelis these counterterrorism efforts so much so that the Israelis had to essentially withdraw human assets within some of the terrorist organizations because he just, you know, does he think it's cool or whatever it is? It's just his, once again, his recklessness at best. That's the best you can say about him so far.

Well, let's assume the best for whatever reason. Let's assume the best. You know, this is not the first time that Trump has played fast and loose with intelligence. as you just alluded to, he revealed information in 2017 about Israeli intelligence sources in Syria to Russia's defense leaders. And again, in the interest of just assuming the best about Donald Trump, he's just a blabbermouth.

He's just a guy who loves gossip. He came up in New York where gossip was a currency. And now he's got access to all this classified information, top secret information, SCI, so many acronyms, who can even keep count? So he just talks about it, right? And he sees an interesting piece of information and he wants to hold on to it.

And let's say that at the end of the day, the FBI ends up a little bit embarrassed because it turns out they did this search and seizure and Trump had a lot of information, but they couldn't really bring a significant charge against him and the substance of the papers that were taken out of Mara Lago proves insignificant. Let's assume all of that.

Why would it still pose a challenge to the U.S., in your opinion? Yeah, and it's a great setup because we have been sort of spinning around in circles trying to figure out the content. This is the point of the Atlantic piece today where I say in one line, you know, our brains. I'm as gossipy as the next person, so I am curious about why one of the documents

has to do with French president Marcant. But and what exactly are the details in there is I'm sure he's curious too. But we're spinning around trying to figure out the content as if the content is relevant to our national security. So in some ways, course it is, right? I mean, if he's giving away nuclear secrets, I don't need to make that case. But what I was trying to say is that there's something else going on that we should think

about so that we're not completely dependent on, you know, once again, the aha moment that every critic of Trump is constantly waiting for. Like this one, he's going to be in jail, which is to take a step back and say, okay, well, who's interested in our national security? So we are, of course, and so he may have threatened that. But there's two other parties. There's our allies and our enemies. So it's obvious reasons why our enemies like his recklessness. The Chinese can send a female spy there with malware, whatever she was trying to do a couple years ago to Mara Lago and get information. But there's a third party to think about in terms of our intelligence gathering capabilities, and that's our allies. Intelligence is not a singular nation phenomenon. And we, as I said,

we collect intelligence and then we consume it and we disseminate it. So the collection part of which again, I've never been a part of it, I've always been a consumer, is not just our human assets or our signal intelligence, all the wonky words that you hear. It's either given to us by other countries through bilateral effort. So the British may say, look, we're worried about this person or we're seeing this kind of activity or through actually formalized mechanisms in NATO, EU, and something called Five Eyes, which is a World War II legacy framework, which is a very serious intelligence sharing. framework. Those are all dependent on some sense of maturity by member nations that they will not willy-nilly exploit the intelligence resources or the intelligence gathering, let alone sources and methods of other of their allies. And I just, what I want to do in that article day is just to be like, I mean, we're constantly, we're the United States of America, but maybe we're not. But like we are, once were a mature nation in which these mechanisms were meant to protect allies together because information in a global, in a world with global threats has to be shared. And so that to not think about this information as about past classified materials but relevant today.

So this is where the Macron thing comes in. I don't want to, I mean, everyone's making speculation. But let's just say it is scurrilous materials. Let's just say that. And I don't know that, but let's just say that. So Trump is sharing that. So Macron just wins re-election. He's got a right-wing front on gaining ground in France.

He is a weird but nonetheless helpful partner in the war against Ukraine. We have NATO enlargement going on now, of which we need, a stabilized France. And we're going to start, we are going to start. a scandal. And once again, I'm making this up, but it's just the scenario that I worry about in France. This is like not how friends behave. So part of it is it's just the very existence of the papers creates a lack of confidence in our capabilities. Now, that's a lack of confidence in our capabilities. Now, that's a lack of confidence that these countries had in us during Trump. Biden rightsizes it, not just by having a pretty sophisticated team,

in our intelligence agencies, but by depriving Trump of the daily presidential briefing, which was a protocol, we did allow former presidents Biden said, no freaking way am I giving this guy new intelligence, which was the right thing to do. And that those things now, like Trump never goes away, that Trump's behavior continues to have present day challenges

about confidence, trust, maturity, sophistication, and secrets, secrets. I want to ask you a question about media analysis. I heard you on the Slate Political Gap Fest last week, and David Plotz, the host of that podcast, who's very smart, said he was afraid that this search and seizure would help Donald Trump. And that was reminiscent of a David Brooks column published in the New York Times that said that this event might be the single thing that reelects Donald Trump in 2024.

And I'm not sure I agree with those interpretations, but it is a reminder of this bizarre and important phenomenon of negative polarization, which is that attempts by the government and the news media to hold Donald Trump to account tend to incur a backlash among Donald Trump supporters that make him seem even more powerful than before he violated the alleged law or allegedly violated the law. what do you say to your liberal friends who are always trying to balance the need to apply national law fairly to all Americans, including ex-presidents? And this fear that any attempt to hold Donald Trump to the law is going to lead to his re-election. I always say this to my liberal friends.

You're not going to get a moment of clarity. You're just going to get a chiseling down, breaking down of this capturing. And I said in one of my lines for the Adelaus said, you know, we tend to, we both his enemies and we tend to view him as Voldemort, right? Like he says somehow he's untouchable. We can't say his name. Don't do that. That will get him really mad. And you know, Voldemort eventually did perish over the course of eight books, right?

So it may take a while, but we cannot possibly think that the strategy that his people will be whipped up no matter what. His people are whipped up by, you know, the word. you know, the words happy holidays, right? I mean, I like to say today, like, they actually overturn Roe v. Wade and they're still pissed off. Like, how does that happen? You know, like, I mean, it's like, they're never happy.

And so you have to take a step back. I think what is the goal here? The goal is to break the, for me, at least is to break the casualness by which violence that Trump is unleashed in this nation, you know, reigns as a democratic tool. And I do believe what happened at Mara Lago, is part of it, that it is about, about, you know, de-platforming him

from, you know, the most important information, whatever the content is, that America's intelligence agents have captured and collected for the sake of all of our benefit. I know that there are lots of Trump voters who are fundamentally decent people. I absolutely know that. to be a fact. But what concerns me is that we are nearing a point where there's this connection

between Trump and lawlessness and violence that's becoming utterly undeniable. So you take two different sequence of events. Trump loses the election. Then lawlessness. He encourages the state secretaries to violate the Constitution and overthrow the election. When that doesn't work, he encourages a mob to march on the Capitol with guns. Violence, right? So Trump, lawlessness, violence. Look again here. He loses the election. It's finally certified. What does he do?

He bends the law. He takes classified documents and documents that he definitely should still be in possession of and brings them to Mara Lago and misleads the FBI about their possession, right? That is the bending and breaking of the law. What happens after? Violence.

The FBI searches and seizes the documents and his followers threatened to kill the magistrate who approved the search. And this is the, this is like the unholy Trinity, right? the dark triad of Trump and lawlessness and violence that really scares me, that we've reached this really bizarre, dark equilibrium where laws can continue to be broken and people, moderates, are afraid to use the law to keep Trump from doing these things because they're afraid of violence.

That is not a stable democracy. That is something else. It isn't. And that's why it's, I mean, essentially important to ignore that. the hand-rigging by alleged moderate to worry that this is going to help, that any of these investigations are going to help Trump, you know, that you hear from David Brooks in the New York Times and others, that somehow this, you know, we've just made the next president, right?

So part of what we're looking at, because I totally agree with you that, that what we need to do is then think about this as sort of the largest and most public counterinsurgency campaign this country has ever waged and the only one domestically. And how do you think about counterterrorism or counterinsurgency? So there's there's there's two ways. So one is you have to show the organization, so Trump in particular, but the organization writ large as losing. So that is where things like these cases, this this sort of madness that he shows, you know, I think most people do get the nuclear issue and classified information. They don't like it.

The polling supporting the January 6th committee and some of their findings in what he was doing was exceptionally sort of anti-Trump behaviors. You have to isolate him in all sorts of ways, monetarily social media-wise. And that has happened. The other is that you have to provide an off-ramp for those who might be able in their minds to separate the violence from the ideology. right? So David French had a really good piece in the bulwark, which, you know, essentially he's saying, you just can't separate these things before. It's really important for conservatives to begin to acknowledge that violence is at the core of Trump's magazine. It's not the, it's not at the core of Trump's supporters. And then you give those supporters an off-ramp. So how do you do that? So the January 6th committee was doing it. It was, here are Republicans who are off-ramping. You do not want to be the last off-that off-ramp. And I think, There is evidence to suggest that's working because they keep talking about all sorts of people coming forward.

But you're also seeing other Republicans come forward talking about alternatives in the new year. I don't want to pretend. I don't want to be Pollyanna. She has tremendous influence. Look at Arizona on these primaries in the future of the Republican Party. But that doesn't go away by ignoring it. That does not go away by simply saying, well, we can't make him. angrier. There's no end to his potential to be angry, but there, so that you don't, you don't,

you don't even factor that in. What you factor in is, is, is success or failure. And how do I measure success as someone in the space? It's not him in a jumpsuit. I'm not, I could care less, honestly, at this stage, I care less of his job. It is whether, you know, he, he, he, he, he dies alone and Mar-a-law go rich with his grifters and his kids making money off of him of no, you know, he, he, he, he dies, he, he, he dies, he, he, he, he does, he does he does he relevance to the United States and its democracy. That, that to me is also success. Right. Yeah, him being carved out of power by proper enforcement of the law rather than hoping for this sort of, you know, liberal fantasy where he's marched out in the orange jumpsuit. My feeling here is, and this is the point where I go way past speculation, I'm just fully putting

on the pundit hat, I just feel like you apply the law without bias or fear. You apply the law because it's the law. And it doesn't matter that he's the ex-president. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter that he's kind of scary to a lot of liberals. The law is the law. Seek it and apply it. This idea that he's like Voldemort just seems completely insane to me. There's been three elections in which Donald Trump was a figure in American politics. The first, he lost the popular vote. The second, he got smashed in the midterms. And the third, he lost outright. There's this idea that he's Voldemort, but in fact, he serves as an extraordinary motivation to moderate liberal college-educated suburbanites to come out and vote for Democrats.

I agree with you. And I think people like David Brooks, like it's a very, you know, sort of annoying editorial. I have a book out about disaster management. And I was thinking the first chapter is called get your head around it. Right. In other words, the best way to deal with the crisis is actually accept that you're in it. And there's just this denial about what what Trump is doing to America. And in particular, this sort of natural extension of violence or from politics that we now. go from politics to violence, which he does quite naturally. And I just keep thinking, like, what is it going to take for people to realize? Like, this is, this is, you know, this is not just a fight for our lives, but it's a, it's a, this, it cannot maintain itself without confrontation, without us getting our head around it and saying violence is at the core, the threat of violence is at the core of Trump's strategy at this stage. And we need to bring it, you know, we need to, you know, and not be afraid of it. Yeah.

He represents the majority of a minority and laws are designed to protect a majority. Juliet, thank you so so much for doing this. I really appreciate it. Thank you so much, Derek Thompson. That was Plain English. Thanks very much to our producer, Devin Manzi. If you have any questions, comments, ideas for future episodes, please shoot us an email at plain English at Spotify.com.

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