Tangle - The Sunday Podcast: Isaac and Ari talk about Aaron Bushnell, ask Mark Joseph Stern about SCOTUS, and chat about the new Dune movie.

Episode Date: March 3, 2024

On this week's episode: Isaac and Ari discuss Aaron Bushnell and the politics of language, chat with special guest Mark Joseph Stern about SCOTUS's decision to hear Trump's challenge to his immunity, look forward to the new Dune movie, and as always, air their weekly grievances. You can⁠⁠⁠ subscribe to Tangle by clicking here⁠⁠⁠ or drop something⁠⁠⁠ in our tip jar by clicking here.⁠⁠⁠ Today’s clickables: Aaron Bushnell (6:28), SCOTUS Order (22:08), Interview with Mark Joseph Stern (26:18), The Airing of Grievances (47:58).The response to our ⁠⁠⁠first-ever Tangle Live event⁠⁠⁠ was better than we could have imagined and we're excited to announce we're running it back on ⁠⁠⁠Wednesday, April 17th in New York City!⁠⁠⁠ We'll be gathering the Tangle community at The Loft at City Winery for a conversation between special guests about the 2024 election moderated by founder Isaac Saul with an audience Q&A afterwards. Choose Seated General Admission tickets or VIP Tickets that include a post show meet- and- greet, Tangle merch, and the best seats in the house. ⁠⁠⁠Grab your tickets⁠⁠⁠ fast as this show is sure to sell out!Buy your tickets⁠⁠⁠ here⁠⁠⁠.Our podcast is written by Isaac Saul and edited and engineered by Zosha Warpeha. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet 75. Our newsletter is edited by Managing Editor Ari Weitzman, Will Kaback, Bailey Saul, Sean Brady, and produced in conjunction with Tangle’s social media manager Magdalena Bokowa, who also created our logo.--- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/tanglenews/message Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. Breaking news happens anywhere, anytime. Police have warned the protesters repeatedly, get back. CBC News brings the story to you as it happens. Hundreds of wildfires are burning. Be the first to know what's going on and what that means for you and for Canadians. This situation has changed very quickly.

Helping make sense of the world when it matters most. Stay in the know. CBC News. The flu remains a serious disease. Last season, over 102,000 influenza cases have been reported across Canada, which is nearly double the historic average of 52,000 cases. What can you do this flu season? Talk to

your pharmacist or doctor about getting a flu shot. Consider FluCellVax Quad and help protect yourself from the flu. It's the first cell-based flu vaccine authorized in Canada for ages six months and older, and it may be available for free in your province. Side effects and allergic reactions can occur, and 100% protection is not guaranteed. Learn more at flucellvax.ca. From executive producer Isaac Saul, this is Tangle. Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening, and welcome to the Tangle Podcast, the place you get views from across the political spectrum, some independent thinking, and a little bit of my take. I'm your host, Isaac Saul, here with my co-host Ari Weitzman. How are you doing, Ari? I am not matching your energy today at all. I am so excited about the day about what I'm doing for

leap day. And I know that you've got a very good grievance cooked up for us at the end of the show. So you're a little bit on the other end of the mood spectrum. And I think I'm probably going to annoy you a little bit. I am not in a good mood today. I'm in a foul mood. That's definitely true. What are your leap day plans? What are you doing? I have my expectations all the way up. My hopes are way up for Dune part two tonight. Going to go see... Is that coming out tonight? Leap day special premiere, seven o'clock, Essex Junction, Vermont. Going to be there with some of our new friends, I'm sure,

who are fully on the Dune hype train and the Dune buggy with us. Going to go crazy. Very excited. Wow. Dude, I am so excited for that movie, actually. I did not realize that was here. Is that like it's coming out for real now, or this is just like a one night showing and then it gets released in a month or something? That's a good question. I think that it's coming out March 1st. I think this is just the day before premiere. That is unbelievably good news. I might go see that this weekend now. I just reread the book recently and forgot how awesome it was. It's amazing. And the first movie was great. First movie was great. I've watched it five times, I think. The most recent time I watched it was my favorite time. I think I'm still liking it and picking up things from it. Herbert wrote one of

the best sci-fi books of all time with Dune. Villeneuve's adaptation is one of the best film adaptations of a sci-fi movie ever. I am really thrilled about how the first movie turned out. I think it was great that they broke it out into two pieces. He's saying that he's planning on doing a third to do the sequel, Dune Messiah, afterwards, which should be really interesting too. And I'm going to try to see how many subtle Dune quotes I can slip into the episode. Yeah, I agree with pretty much all of those things. I don't know if you know this. I was a TA for a sci-fi literature class in college. No, I didn't know that. And we did not read Dune in that class,

but I would agree with you that it's one of the great sci-fi books of all time. Also, an incredible film adaptation. So, wow, Dune fan club. I had no idea. I didn't even know you cared about Dune. We're here. But we're here. Yeah, I think I'm not even going to get into my personal connections to it because they're a little too nerdy.

I think a lot of the people who listen to this podcast are affable nerds. I mean that in a very positive way. I consider myself an affable nerd in a lot of ways. But I think going on about why I love Dune so much personally might be a little bit over the line for a politics podcast. But how would you describe the book? Like if you were just to give your quick pitch, this is what Dune is about to somebody who's never read it.

How would you describe it i would describe it as a sort of futuristic tale about the colonization of a planet in an environment that is extremely resource scarce and all of like the complications and implications that come with that that's involves battles epic fights and plot lines and love stories but also i think like a very poignant commentary about just resources yeah really to me or kind of like the central thing. I think it's a story about research resource management. It's a story about politics at large scale, about power balances and dynamics. I also think at its heart, it's a story about a coming of age story about a young man going on an adventure with his mom in the desert, where they meet people who were conditioned to see her as bringing the Messiah

to them. And also he gradually learns to see the future. But otherwise, generally your mother-to-son adventure story that you don't actually get a lot of. That is true. I never really thought of the mother-to-son element of it. I guess that is kind of unique. All right, people are probably bored by this by now. Anyway, this is not a podcast about Dune and sci-fi, despite what you might be thinking. There is a ton of politics to talk about today, a ton of political news to talk about. We're going to have Mark Joseph Stern dropping into the studio here in a minute. For those of you who read or listen to Tangle or came to our live event in Philly, you know Mark.

He is a biting, progressive commentator, I would say, on the Supreme Court and the law. And he's going to drop by to talk a little bit about the Supreme Court's decision to hear Donald Trump's challenge to his immunity. So we're very interested to chat with him. That'll be like, you know, core part of the show today and probably take up most of the time. It's just a little bit of a conversation with him about what's going on. Before we get there, though, I mean, there's so much to talk about from this week. And by the time this comes out on Sunday, we'll have already published tomorrow's newsletter and podcast in which I, even though I'm, I know

this is going to be out by then, I still feel like I'm giving some kind of spoiler, even though I'm like speaking in the future, but, um, I'm going to be writing about the Zionist case for a ceasefire in Gaza from my perspective, which I am predicting will get a lot of different reactions. I'm a little bit nervous about it, but I feel strongly about it and confident in my position. So I'm excited to share that. The one thing that I think has sort of been dominating a little bit of our conversations this week in the Tangle Slack and certainly on social media and in our inbox in responses to our newsletter from yesterday has been the stuff about Aaron Bushnell, which makes me want to talk a little bit more about it. And ironically, actually, Mark is not coming on to talk about

this, has sort of stepped on the landmine a little bit himself. I mean, he posted something very similar to what I said, which was basically that we should not glorify or valorize suicide and got basically dogpiled on Twitter. I mean, I had a lot of people share what he, his point, but mostly got dogpiled on Twitter for it. And, you know, I am a little bit miffed at the response in some ways, but also kind of expected it. And I guess if you've been out of the loop this week or not been paying attention, I mean, the short story is that this 25-year-old active duty member of the Air Force named Aaron Bushnell lit himself on fire in a self-immolation in front of the Israeli embassy. And he did it explicitly as a protest

against the United States' role in what's happening in Gaza. He said, you know, free Palestine were his last words before he died. He basically said that he won't be complicit in a genocide. Interestingly, there's been kind of criticism of the media coverage from two different angles. He basically said that he won in the video, or that they are basically slandering him by, you know, suggesting with their reporting that maybe he had mental health issues or, you know, he was radicalized after growing up in this religious cult when he was a kid and, you know, digging up posts he's made on social media, some of them that maybe don't look so savory and all this stuff.

And then there's my criticism, which is that a lot of people, I don't think in the mainstream media, but I think on social media have been basically glorifying what is a suicide. And I think that's really scary. And, you know, I think we can talk about it in realistic terms about it being a suicide without diminishing or ignoring the message that he was trying to communicate. But I don't know if everybody agrees with that. I don't know if the framing of his action as a suicide is something that everybody who supports his message would say is a neutral statement.

I think they would say that description itself is something that diminishes the act. I'll first say that I don't think there's a whole lot of space between our opinions here, but I do think I can see that point. I don't know that I agree with it, but I think that's a challenge to the framework that you will hear. Totally. I mean, what you're saying is true. A lot of people wrote in or responded to what I said and basically said, Aaron didn't commit suicide. Stop stop saying that, you know, which is really frustrating for me, I have to say. I mean, because like there's a tone, I think, to the response that was effectively I am redefining suicide or I'm redefining what he did as a suicide when it's clear what he did was an act of protest.

And what I've just started saying to people is the Merriam-Webster's dictionary definition of suicide is the act or an instance of taking one's own life voluntarily or intentionally. That's what he did. There's a word for it. We should use the word. I don't think I'm wrong for calling it a suicide. I think you could argue maybe it's reductive to say it is only a suicide and nothing more, which is not what I'm doing. But like, I also think naming it is important. And that's been part of what's been really frustrating to like the people who are upset with my position, I think. I do think that it is important. I know a lot of these debates when we get into terminology

feel cold and semantic. But I do think terminology is political. I think language is political. I think a lot of people agree with that statement and arguing over these terms and where the boundary of their definitions lie is a negotiation of identity and power in a way, which is what politics is. So I think us having the discussion about what we mean by suicide does imply some politics. And in this case, I think it's a little simple to see. And I don't mean this as a slight or an insult, but I think it's plain to see the motivation is if I'm a person who supports Bushnell's, his act, if I support his viewpoint, then I don't want to associate that action with something that I see as negative. It's pretty simple to

understand that motivation. And then to rationalize later, since I equate suicide as exclusively an act of destruction as a negative thing, taking one's own life, don't want to bring that baggage into this other area where I'm saying I support a free Palestine. I don't want those two things to be the same or to exist in the same action. But they can. It does remind me a little bit, I don't want to open the Pandora's box too much, but it reminds me a little bit of a discussion we were having last week about the definition of pornography, where you and I were maybe disagreeing a little bit about how a person that you interviewed, Buck Angel, who is in the porn industry, wanted to remove the term child pornography and say

instead it is child sexual abuse material because children can't possibly consent to a sexual act, which I agree with. They can't. Therefore, any material of a sexual nature involving a child is abusive. But at the same time, I don't think that means it's not pornography. I think if it's material intended for the user's, the viewer's sexual enjoyment, that's pornography. And trying to remove the things that you don't like from the thing that you think is okay, I think is a political act to try to define terms in a way

that you're comfortable with that support your causes. But I think it's okay to acknowledge that sometimes things overlap in ways that maybe make you uncomfortable, but it doesn't mean that we should be inventing new terms to deal with that discomfort. Right. I appreciate that kind of framework. I guess some of the other responses that I've gotten that are maybe worth addressing are two responses came in from, I would say, like over four or five people each. And they were communicating in different ways, but they're effectively, I think, the same thing. One of them was basically, is this what you would say about like these Kwanduk, I don't know exactly how to pronounce the name, the famous monk who protested the Vietnam War and the slaughter of Buddhists? And more generally, is this how you would frame self-immolation from these famous Buddhist monks of history? I think there's a lot of things that are kind of wrong with that challenge. First of all, it's sort of like the gotcha question. I mean, I see it in all

the comments and people respond to the emails and I had a few people message it to me directly. And I guess the short answer is there's a massive distinction in my mind between a lifelong practicing Buddhist doing something that is attached to his religion. Like there is this, there is a whole theory behind the idea of self-immolation in Buddhism that like the body is not attached to the spirit and you can let it go and all this stuff. But also that story, the story of, you know, self-immolation spreading among Buddhist monks, I think actually buttresses my point, self-immolation spreading among Buddhist monks, I think actually buttresses my point, which is that this inspires copycats and in many cases is actually not a very effective mode of protest. A lot of the self-immolations that we know of, but there are, you know, this one very famous one,

but there's been thousands throughout history, many of which most people have probably never really heard of and haven't been very effective at advancing the cause that they were purportedly for. And the copycats still exist today as evidenced by Bushnell. So I think I have way more questions about the mental state and this this is not like I'm I think Aaron could have totally been perfectly, you know, his motivations pristine, his mental state perfect, yada, yada, yada. I'm not I'm not I'm not slandering him saying he had a mental illness or he was suicidal, any of those things. I'm just saying I don't know what his mental state was. I don't know what his mental state was. Whereas in some of these historic cases of these Buddhist monks and stuff, they have a lifetime of commitment to this cause. They have a lifetime of commitment to this religion. And I actually understand the kind of religious and political

connotations that are attached to what they were doing in a way where maybe you can mount a better defense for their actions. it's still a suicide. I would still call that somebody committing suicide. So that doesn't really change the language I would use. Maybe I think about it a little more quote unquote favorably, but ultimately my position isn't that different for them actually. It's that it's still dangerous to glorify that. And it's still going to inspire more people to do the same. And so like, I view them differently. But my conclusion actually is the same, which is that I still don't think this is something

that should be, you know, celebrated. And then the other one is people just saying, like comparing Aaron to soldiers who are getting killed in action, which I got, we got a lot of. A lot of different people said this. I've seen that point made. Yeah. Would you not call a soldier who was killed overseas in a war a hero? If you would call him a hero, then why is it OK to die for like some unjust war as an active duty member of the military, but not die for, you know, this cause or whatever? and enlist for whatever reason, people go to the army for all different kinds of reasons, serve in the military for all different kinds of reasons, who maybe thinks like,

oh, I have like a 1% chance of ever being deployed. And even if I do a 1% chance of actually dying and being killed in action or whatever, and that person going to war and actually dying and then deciding whether we want to valorize or honor them or frame them as a hero based on how they acted in war versus someone who's intentionally choosing to take their own life. Those are just two totally different things. And I think it's bizarre that people are intent on conflating them or putting them on equal footing.

I don't view them as the same. I think they're very different. And all of this for me just comes from a concern about not spreading this action and not seeing more people do it when I don't, you know, even if I thought it was a realistically, even if I thought it was realistically going to be a strong form of protest that had wide reaching impacts, which I don't think it's going to be. But even if I did think that, I still would not support it. And I would not make it sound like some heroic, brave, courageous thing, which is how a lot of people have been describing it from

my friends to Cornel West, whoever else. And I don't think it, I don't think what he did was courageous and I don't think it was particularly, I mean, there's some courage in doing what he did, sure, but I don't think it should be celebrated as courageous or heroic. I think it's a tragedy and I think it's compounding a tragedy that's in Gaza and I think it'll be compounded even worse

if more people do what he did because they see him being celebrated. And I think to the second point that you're addressing, that actually does sort of buy into what the argument that you're pushing back against is saying. So I don't want to fog that up too much and say this act is the same as serving in the military. I don't think that's quite the exact point. I think that gets a little foggy. I think the closer point is that the way that we describe this action as not being courageous or valorous is out of step with somebody who served in the armed forces and then died, saying that their death is courageous or valorous just because of the method in which they died. So that's something that I think is a little bit of a stronger point. I do think that it is fair to say, it's fair, I think, to make the criticism

if somebody serves in the military for any one of the number of reasons that you were describing, number of reasons that you were describing goes and dies in service, that it is possible for us to say this death could have been tragic and this death could have been preventable. And this is something we should mourn rather than hold up and celebrate and valorize. And it's fair to make that criticism for any death of a service member. But I think that it is also at the same time, not something that addresses this point. Like I think if you can say, yeah, I agree with you, we shouldn't say by definition, every death in the line of duty is something that is heroic and not tragic. If we can try to set that up as a spectrum, I know they're not quite a spectrum. But I know plenty of veterans would say that the loss of their fellow soldiers isn't something that they take as a noble act,

but something that's preventable and stressful and something that they would fight against. Then if you own that point, then I think it's okay to say this is something that is stressful and preventable and something we should fight against. Bush does that, that is. Yeah. All right. I appreciate some space to air this stuff. I mean, I'm starting to feel a little talked out on it, but at the same time, I do want to encourage people to share their thoughts. And we say it always on every show, but you can reach us, Isaac, I-S-A-A-C at retangle.com. If you want to make a kind of counter case, I can't promise I'm going to respond, but I want to try and remain as open-minded on this as possible. Before Mark gets here, I do want to pivot into some of the breaking news we got yesterday

and sort of set the table for the conversation we're about to have with Mark. Again, if you're not familiar with Mark Joseph Stern's work, he is a commentator at slate.com. He is definitely ideological, but he is, in my opinion, one of the best, if not the best, writers on the left covering the Supreme Court in the sense that I think he has always very illuminating and challenging thoughts. And we wanted to bring him on to kind of get his perspective and reaction to what just happened, which on Wednesday, the Supreme Court agreed to decide whether former President Donald Trump can be tried on criminal charges that he conspired to overturn

the results of the 2020 election. They released an unsigned order. It was one page. It was very, very short. They ordered a federal appeals court to continue to keep on hold its ruling, rejecting Trump's claims of immunity from prosecution. And they fast-tracked the case for oral arguments in late April. A lot of people on the left are very upset about this, including Mark, which you're about to hear, I think mostly because this really could be a get-out-of-jail-free card, literally, for Trump. I think the odds of a trial concluding before Election Day just went down precipitously. You know, I've written about Trump's argument before.

I think it is farcical that what he did fell into the purview of his, you know, his duties as president. I don't think he is immune from prosecution here. I think the court is ultimately going to find that he is not immune from prosecution. I think the opinion is going to be overwhelming. But the timing of it could make all of that relatively moot. So that's kind of where things are at right now. I don't know anything to add to that. What was your reaction to this after all of our coverage? I mean, we did a lot of writing about what we expected to happen here. Well, first, I just want to echo what you're saying about Mark. I think he's absolutely whip smart. He is ideologically, philosophically consistent with the things that he says and the viewpoints he holds. And he's really good at

describing his thoughts, which is something that's also really hard. And I think we'll be able to hear and appreciate when we have him on. So I'm really eager to get his point of view on this, I think more so than describe mine. But I do agree. I think the immunity argument is flawed. I think it will be not too difficult for the justices of the court to be able to say that the actions that he's being accused of did not fall under the execution of the oath of the office of president. I think there's plenty of space to make that argument. But I do think that the ramifications of this court case coming in April mean that the other federal indictments against Trump that are waiting for this question to be resolved

are then going to be pushed back. And the logistics of having all of those court cases, or just the federal election interference one, I think is the one that's being held up by the immunity argument. The implication of this case being pushed back till now, the Supreme Court case in April, means that special prosecutor Jack Smith's case against Trump for federal election interference. It doesn't look like there's a way that that gets resolved before November. That's the big logistical challenge. I don't know. The thing I want to hear from Mark is maybe we're wrong about that. Maybe there's a path in Georgia for the Georgia election interference case to be resolved before then. But I know that the standard way of interpreting this is that it does not look likely that happens.

all right without further ado mark joseph stern from slate mark thanks so much for coming on the show i appreciate it thanks so much for having me on all right so ari and i were talking you're the you're the scotus expert here now on the on the pod and it occurred to us that we don't really totally understand how the decision to even take this case up is made, especially when it's an unsigned opinion like this. So I'm wondering if maybe you could just start by talking a little bit about what we know about this process and what we can kind of infer about how the court made the choice to hear this case. about how the court made the choice to hear this case? Yeah.

So, you know, typically when a case reaches the Supreme Court, the justices discuss it at conference and votes on whether to take it up. And there's something called the rule of four, which just means that it takes four justices, four votes to take up a case. It's called granting cert. You know, we can usually count heads and try to guess who voted to take up a case. When the court refuses to take up a case, sometimes a justice will write a dissenting opinion saying, hey, we really should have taken this up and here's why. But that only happens in a relatively small fraction of cases. This is a little bit different because what happened here is that Donald Trump

went to the Supreme Court and asked for an emergency stay. And he didn't really actually ask the Supreme Court even to take up the case as an appeal. He just said, I want you to jump in and freeze the lower court's opinion and keep my January 6th trial on hold, basically indefinitely. And that complicates things a little bit because while it takes four votes to hear a case, it takes five votes to grant a stay. Granting a stay just means freezing everything. We can infer that there were some deliberations behind the scenes. Maybe there were some justices who wanted to turn away this request. Maybe there were some justices who thought we really need to take it and hear it now. And what the court ended up doing was treating this request as a regular old appeal and taking up the case while keeping all of the lower court decisions frozen.

That is just a fancy way of saying it was probably five votes to both freeze the lower court decisions and to take up the case. Because otherwise, if there were five votes for the other position, I think the court just would have denied everything and let the trial move forward. I get the argument that this is good for Trump. I think it's pretty self-evident any delay, which this will result in, is good for him because he gets close to the election. He gets elected. He can kind of call the dogs off at the Justice Department. But I'm curious what you make of the argument that it's good that SCOTUS chimes in here. From my perspective, I guess one of the things that I think about is for the country as a

whole, it almost feels like it'd be better if we get to hear them say, no, you're not immune, which I think is what they should say. And there's, you know, a strong majority or it's a unanimous vote or something like that. And we have that versus not chiming in at all, which I think creates some other kind of complications. And I know that's sort of a political lens, but I'm curious what you think about that. So I agree that it's good to have the Supreme Court deliver the last word on issues of national importance as a rule. I'll add here, as you indicated, like Trump's legal argument is really terrible. This idea that the Constitution grants absolute immunity to presidents no matter what they do in office, you know, even if they order SEAL Team 6 to execute their opponent in the

upcoming election, that they have this immunity. It just isn't there. I encourage people to sit down and read the Constitution and try to find it. There are parts of the Constitution that grant immunity. Senators and members of Congress cannot be punished in any way for anything they say on the floor. That's called the Speech and Debate Clause. There are some other examples.

Nothing about the president and immunity from prosecution after he leaves office. This is just made up. You know, I think it's still good for SCOTUS to have the last word, but SCOTUS could have stepped in so much earlier. You know, Jack Smith, the special counsel prosecuting Donald Trump in this case, he asked SCOTUS to weigh in in December and said, look, we know that you're probably going to want to decide this. So like, why don't you just take it up now and decide it? And SCOTUS refused, sent the case down, allowed it to remain with the lower court, the D.C. Circuit in this case.

The D.C. Circuit issues its opinion in early February. Jack Smith goes back to SCOTUS and he says, okay, if you really need to hear this, please do it quickly. Instead, SCOTUS sits on his request for more than two weeks and then issues a one-page order scheduling oral arguments around two months from now. That is a full month longer than the court waited to schedule arguments in the ballot removal case out of Colorado. So I take your overarching point, but if you look at how this process played out, it really does look like at every juncture, the Supreme Court waited significantly longer than it

needed to, to make these decisions that teed up the case for review. Which I think leads directly to a follow-up that I was wondering about, which is simply, why do you think that is? So in December, if the court could have taken up the case and that he didn't then, and then when special counsel Smith came to them again in January pleading for them to pick it up sooner and they continued to delay, What do you think the most likely reason for them to delay was? So first we can just do the cynical possibility here, which is the justices, or at least a majority of them, are trying to help Trump. You know, that is... Charles Yu's award-winning book, Interior Chinatown, follows the story of Willis Wu, a background character trapped in a police procedural who dreams about a world beyond Chinatown. When he inadvertently becomes a witness to a crime, Willis begins to unravel

a criminal web, his family's buried history, and what it feels like to be in the spotlight. Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. The flu remains a serious disease. Last season, over 102,000 influenza cases have been reported is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. the flu. It's the first cell-based flu vaccine authorized in Canada for ages six months and older, and it may be available for free in your province. Side effects and allergic reactions can occur and 100% protection is not guaranteed. Learn more at flucellvax.ca. Kind of what it looks like. I find it difficult to believe the alternative possibilities. I find it difficult to believe the alternative possibilities. You know, I don't think that the justices just sat down and said, we're in the tank for Trump and we need to help him avoid trial. But it looks like to frame it most generously to the justices, they don't think that the need for a trial before the election should matter to them. They don't think that the timing should matter to them. They don't think it's any of their business whether Jack

Smith can squeeze in a trial before November, before Trump possibly takes back the presidency and makes these charges go away. Maybe they think that's none of their business and they are just treating this like a normal case. And again, I think if we sort of apply this very, very generous lens, then you would say, well, the court is acting like a court and putting itself above politics and refusing to accept that this is an emergency just because Jack Smith, who is ultimately operating under the authority of Joe Biden, wants to push this case to trial and get a verdict before November. That's the best case scenario. And that's all well and good.

But the problem is, if you look at what the Supreme Court does consider to be an emergency and what the Supreme Court does expedite in order to decide very, very quickly, it seems to be a lot of stuff that requires their intervention to help Donald Trump. So, you know, the most obvious example here is this ballot removal case, right? December, the Colorado Supreme Court removes Trump from the ballot. Early January, SCOTUS comes in, schedules arguments for early February, one month's time, really compressed schedule, and they'll probably issue a decision within the next few weeks.

Here, the court delayed for months, really, before taking up the case and then scheduled arguments for two months down the road and probably won't give a decision until the end of June. And if you look at those two cases side by side, you kind of have to ask, well, what's the difference? And it seems like the biggest difference is that, you know, in one case, hurrying up will help Trump. And in the other case, hurrying up will hurt Trump. And they only decided to really hurry up when it would help him. I'm curious to talk a little bit about the timeline because you're scratching at that a bit, but we haven't

totally fleshed it out. In this piece that you publish in Slate today, you made the case that this is pretty much turning into a slam dunk for Trump in the sense that it's really, really hard to imagine the case. His January 6th trial with regards to the Justice Department and Special Counsel Jack Smith being completed before election day. Can you explain why that is? Because I think for a lot of people, they might hear this and think, okay, well, the Supreme Board's going to hear this case in April. They'll make a decision in a month or two after that. And then we'll have the whole summer and the fall for the trial to happen and us to get a verdict. The first problem is that the trial court is entirely frozen right now and cannot move forward on any front while this appeal is at

the Supreme Court. So normally in this sort of run up to a trial, you'd have all of these negotiations, you'd have discovery, you know, figuring out the witnesses like, you know, then you'd have Wadir picking the jurors, all this stuff that you have to do before the trial actually commences. And the judge, Judge Tanya Chutkin, who is conducting the trial, she has said, and I think this is right, that the parties will need about three months to prepare for the trial once it can start to move forward again. So if the court rules in favor of Jack Smith, if the court allows the trial to move forward, that lifts the pause and that sets like a three-month timer. So let's say they issue their decision at the end of June. Three months goes through July to August to the end of September. The trial itself will probably take about three months, September to October, October to November. Now we're looking at late 2024 after the November election for a verdict in that trial. Now you could play with the numbers. You can imagine maybe the decision comes down a little earlier. Maybe Chutkan tries to compress the timeline. Even then, you're looking at, at best, a verdict by the presidential election in November.

That's cutting it very close. And in fact, the underlying problem here is that the Justice Department has this rule, the 60-day rule, that it doesn't take any action that could affect the outcome of an election within 60 days of that election. So even if in, say, September, Chutkan is ready to move this trial forward, she's like, all right, let's call the jury. Let's get things started. The 60-day rule kicks in, and Merrick Garland, the attorney general, will probably call Jack Smith into his office and say, hey, everything now has to be put

on pause until after the election. That's helpful to get into sense for that timing. And I have a two-part follow-up, I think, based on that. So the first is, if we're going to try to imagine the frame that you gave us of why we think the justices are acting the way they are as delaying the way they are and setting the timeline that they've been setting, maybe trying to analyze that not as we're helping Trump and analyze that as we are trying to ideologically defend against any prosecution of an executive. Maybe that could be a slightly more optimistic way of reading that ideologically. So the first part is trying to get your response to that interpretation. And the second is related, which is to be your own devil's advocate. What would you say is the best argument against ruling that there's no immunity for Trump in this case?

So let me just sort of fold those into two, because I think it's a really interesting question. And there's maybe a clue of the answer in the order that the Supreme Court did end up handing down. So recall that Trump's argument is that basically he's entitled to absolute immunity for everything he did while in office. Even though now he's out of office, he can't face any criminal charges for what he did up until January know, up until January 20th, 2021. Well, the Supreme Court didn't frame the question that way when it decided to take up the case. It did not talk about absolute immunity. It only talked about presidential immunity.

And it specifically talked about official acts, which raises the possibility that the court's going to see a distinction between the president, say, legitimately wielding his power under the Constitution in questionable ways versus the president sort of freelancing on his own, acting not very much like a president, but like someone who's trying to steal an election and trying to draw a line between those two things. So an example is, you know, Donald Trump meddled with his Justice Department in order to try to bring a kind of election denier to the top of the agency, right? He wanted this guy, Jeff Clark, to lead the Justice Department. He wanted to fire a bunch of people to put him there.

Well, we usually consider that kind of thing to be presidential power, right? If the president wants to fire his attorney general or whatever, we usually say, okay, he can do that. And even if his motives are questionable, we usually don't think of that as something that can trigger criminal prosecution. But on the other hand, Donald Trump also got on the phone with the Georgia Secretary of State and asked him to throw out or discover thousands of ballots that would flip the results of Georgia for him and against Joe Biden. That is not something that we think of as a core constitutional power of a president. That is a guy trying to run for re-election, interfering with a legitimate state vote count in order to overthrow the actual results. And so I think there is a possibility, this is a generous reading, I'm maybe sort of playing devil's advocate here, as you said, but I think there is a possibility that what the

justices want to do is think about this case very carefully and issue a decision that draws a bright line between those two things and say, look, if it's within a president's power, he can't be charged, even if he might have had some bad reasons for doing it. But if it's not a president doing what presidents do, if it's all this weird stuff that Trump did on the side to try to overturn the election, that could be prosecuted. All that stuff was in the indictment that Jack Smith brought. So I think there's a chance that the Supreme Court might want to take a scalpel to the indictment, cut out a few of the acts that arguably fall within presidential power and allow the trial to move forward on everything else. I guess given all that and taking the devil's advocate view alongside with, I think, what maybe is more your gut or your instinct, I'm curious for your best read based on what we

know about these justices and their jurisprudence in past cases on how they might actually come down here. I mean, in some ways, you know, I'm hopeful, if not optimistic, that there's going to be a really strong ruling that is, you know, 728190, whatever, that says these acts as defined by the things that are very clearly outside the typical duties of a president are not immune from criminal prosecution, that would be a great outcome. In my opinion, I've written a lot about that. Do you think there's a chance something like that happens? Or I guess, where do you see them landing, you know, even taking into account that maybe

you're a little bit suspicious about how they've handled the timing on this case? I think that will happen. I think that ultimately, when the Supreme Court hands down this opinion, possibly at the end of June, I think there will be a lopsided vote against Trump's theory of immunity. Now, again, maybe there will be some surgical removal of a few of the acts that Jack Smith cited because the court will say, look, we're getting too far into a president's constitutional duties. But beside that, I do think the court will basically greenlight this prosecution, basically greenlight this trial to move forward.

And that's because, again, like I think that the justices ultimately, even if they have some bias toward Trump, they have to recognize that this is a frivolous legal theory that Trump has raised. This idea of absolute immunity is just fundamentally frivolous. That's probably why, again, they didn't even talk about absolute immunity and taking up the case. So yeah, I think the court's going to rule against Trump, and I think that's going to be great, and I think it will be seen as a victory for the rule of law. But then it's going to be late June, and everyone's going to be great. And I think it will be seen as a victory for the rule of law. But then it's going to be late June and everyone's going to look at their watches and their calendars and realize, oh, actually, this might be a kind of Pyrrhic victory because Trump could still win reelection, make these charges go away and make this decision effectively meaningless. meaningless. All right, Mark Joseph Stern, thank you so much for giving us some of your time.

Before we get out of here, if people want to keep up with your work or follow some of your writing, where's the best place for them to do that? At Slate and also on the website formerly known as Twitter at MJS underscore DC. Thanks so much for giving us some of your day, Mark. I really appreciate it. Thank you. Always great to hear from you, Mark. All right. Well, you know, Mark Joseph Stern delivers, man. I mean, I think that's the reason we have people like him on is he can articulate both sides of the argument, which I really appreciate whether I agree with him on stuff or not. I think it's always a sign of somebody who's intellectually honest if they can actually articulate the opposition's point of view in a really sophisticated way. I think we could talk to Mark for another hour and still have a lot of stuff to talk about. I

agree with you. I think it's great to hear him present his thought process in the way that he struggles through thinking of point and counterpoint. I do wish that we maybe got a little bit of a sense from him about the Georgia case, because that's something we touched on a little bit. We were focusing mostly on the federal election interference case and the way this ruling affects that. Yeah, I wonder if there's anything that you would maybe add about that, or if you want to put on your Mark Joseph Stern hat, what you think he'd say. I honestly don't know after just listening to him break down his view on the Jack Smith case. I imagine he feels like the Georgia case is still a big threat to Trump and that Fannie Willis is not going to get thrown off it.

I think that's been a view that's widely held by a lot of people who are kind of experts on the left is, you know, she made a mistake and she damaged the trial by, you know, hurting her own reputation and making it look like her office was a clown show. But the case is probably going to go on. It's just from a political perspective, she did a lot of damage. In fact, I'm pretty sure I saw him tweet that at some point. So, She did a lot of damage. In fact, I'm pretty sure I saw him tweet that at some point. So, you know, I feel pretty confident about that. But encouraging, I guess, to hear him say at least he thinks there's going to be impeached. I think that would be a really good thing to happen for the country. Take Trump out of it completely. I just I want that to happen. So I'm I was encouraged by the fact that he at least feels like that that's likely because he's a person who's very skeptical of the political biases of the people on the court right now, to say the least. So him knowing that and still making that statement with conviction, I think is optimistic for those of us who are looking for a ruling that limits the argument of total presidential immunity. All right, we're coming up on time here.

So I think it's time to get into our weekly airing of The Grievances. The airing of Grievances. Would you believe when I was 18, I had a silver dollar collection? All right, let's do it. I'll go first because I had a decent week. I feel like I'm not too upset by stuff. Like we alluded to at the top of the call, you've got something on your mind and we'll give you space to end with. The only thing that I think I would complain about is the recent inflation

numbers. I know that sounds like work and we're bringing job talk into the stuff we're talking about when we're not supposed to be talking about job talk. But I unfortunately happen to be a person who's also subject to market forces. My wife and I are trying to build a house right now. And that depends on us getting a loan for our construction project, which will then be folded into a mortgage. And we, of course, are tied to the mortgage rate we get, which is tied to the federal interest rate, which is tied to inflation. So reading through the tea leaves, it looks like the numbers we got were just a skosh higher than what expectations were from market analysts, which isn't terrible. It's fine. It's mostly okay. Inflation's generally been under control. We're

not getting anything against that narrative, but anything that means that banks aren't going to be cutting their mortgage rates sooner means that I'm going to be paying more for my house. And I just want to complain a little bit about what a percentage here or a half percent of mortgage rate would mean. So let me just give you, I'm going to pull up the mortgage rate calculator that I made for this process. And it's not that hard to do. It's a pretty easy formula.

If we're to get an 8% mortgage on a $550,000 loan, what do you think the monthly mortgage payment would be for a 30-year mortgage? 8%, $550,000, 30-year mortgage. I would say $2,400. Oh, that'd be nice. No, $4,000. Wow. Do you want to guess how much of that is principal and how much is interest for the first month? I have no idea. $380 to principal. The rest is interest. $3,700 of interest payments off the bat with an 8% mortgage. If the mortgage rate comes down a little bit, if we're able to get a 7% mortgage, our monthly payment drops by $300 from $4,000 to $3,700. And the

amount that we pay in principle essentially doubles right away. It's $840 instead of $340 immediately. So these little swings are things that we are watching. I've never been a more intent market watcher in my life. And I'm just really hoping that we can maybe sneak in and not have to pay an unconscionable amount of our monthly income to an interest rate. It's very painful. Yeah, you're gonna have to recuse yourself from coverage of the inflation rates entangle now. Well, I don't know, because we got accused a little bit of not feeling the economy and being shielded from the problems of everyday working people. And I think it's good to have somebody like me telling you what us working people are feeling. That could be my grievance.

Yeah, I don't even want to get into it. email that basically saying we're we're us are out of touch with the the common folk in america um because you know of how lucrative being a journalist or whatever is and you know we don't we don't happen to know anybody who lives on fixed income or retirement or in poverty or to be fair to that email writer like we all say stuff without really thinking it they recanted in the response i think is what you told me but i get you send an emotional email it was still like kind of a dumb thing to say yeah it did annoy me okay this is like my magnum opus of grievances i think because it's and it's totally way less important than what you're talking about. Well, that's kind of the spirit of this. So let the spice flow, Isaac.

Okay. The W key on my MacBook stopped working. When? I would say three months ago, mid-December, maybe. Three months ago. Yeah. Three months ago. Unbelievable. That is the story in a sentence. The W key on my keyboard stopped working, but it has turned into the biggest fiasco. Okay. First of all, W's are everywhere. So this sucked.

It was like an immediate annoying thing because I'm a writer and I need my keyboard to properly function to write. So what I did in the beginning, which was totally insane, is I just started copying and pasting W. So I would, you know, command V anytime I wanted to type a W. And so I was running Tangle doing this, writing, you know, 4,000 words every day with no functioning W key. And, you know, I have this note on my phone that's up on my MacBook. That's just a lowercase W and a capital W. Oftentimes I'm pulling the Ws from articles where I'm reading or whatever, just like grabbing a quick W and then dropping it into the doc to work on it.

So lowercase W is way more common than uppercase Ws, which, you know, super annoying. If I needed to start a sentence with a W, which happens or have a last name with a W, which also happens a lot, you know, white and things like that. Like White House. Yeah. White House. Just horrible, terrible experience. So I know what you're thinking. Well, why didn't you just buy a keyboard to, you know, attach to the computer and then the keyboard works? Great idea. Didn't think of that for like the first six weeks. So my bad for sure. But also I travel a lot. I'm often mobile. Having an external keyboard is not a thing that is like totally easy or convenient to do when you're on a plane or when you're working from home or whatever. Anyway, my W key is not working.

So I go do the rational thing, which is I take my computer to a computer repair place. It turns out that on these new MacBooks, I have a 2021 MacBook Pro. They have this thing. I have a 2021 MacBook Pro. They have this thing. This is like the Apple, you know, cartel is you can't just fix a W key. First of all, I should say, I went on YouTube before I took it to a repair place. I watched a YouTube video on how to pop the W key off and, you know, basically like clean it out and then put it back on.

I did all this crazy, insane, intricate stuff with like a toothpick and a credit card and like a pocket knife. And I got the key off, cleaned it, replaced it, put it back on. It worked for like an hour. Then it stopped working. Then I take it to this computer repair guy and he says, listen, you can't just replace the W key. The way Apple makes these keyboards now, everything's connected on a circuit. So you have to replace the entire keyboard. And I'm like, that is unbelievably annoying and inconvenient. But OK, like, how much does that cost? 200 bucks for the keyboard, 50 bucks for the labor.

It'll take me an hour to do it, whatever, 250 bucks. I'm like, OK, now I'm angry. I can't believe I'm spending $250 to replace the W key. But whatever, I'm just going to accept that and then do it. So I tell the guy I want him to fix it. So he orders the new keyboard. So now I'm attached to this computer repairman because he spent the money to buy the keyboard.

And then I'm trying to get it done before I go on that trip to Bolivia because I was going to be in Bolivia and I needed my keyboard to work because I was going to be working and writing and doing all this stuff remote while I was there. Well, the week before I'm supposed to go, I'm calling this guy and I'm just getting failed calls. Like the call to his shop is not working. So I'm like, well, this sucks. I'm leaving messages. I'm not hearing

from you. The keyboard's supposed to be there. He told me he was going to call me when the keyboard arrived, whatever. So I leave, I go to Bolivia, I come back, I do all this stuff, doing my copy and paste command V to get Ws, which is insane. And something that editors are also experiencing with you. Right. I'm like highlighting stuff in Google Docs saying, can you please put a W here or whatever? So then I get back from Bolivia and I can't get a hold of this computer repair guy for like a month, like four weeks. I can't get a hold of this guy. I'm leaving him messages, whatever I don't hear back from him. And I know he has the keyboard that I'm on the hook for because he bought it. So I'm like trying to wait for him. In the meantime, I get the keyboard for my office.

So when I'm at the office, I have an external keyboard, whatever. Finally, one day I called the guy and he picks up and he's like, hey, I'm so sorry. You know, I had this weird thing at the office. I have an external keyboard, whatever. Finally, one day I called the guy and he picks up and he's like, Hey, I'm so sorry. You know, I had this weird thing at the store where the phone here wasn't accepting calls from outside, like the 215 area code, which is the Philadelphia area code. Very cool for a business. Very cool. Not totally sure if I bought it, whatever, but I have a 267 area code, also a Philly area code. Apparently it wasn't working. So I go take the keyboard in to finally get a fix because the guy's there. And he's like, yeah, it's going to take an hour. And it's like a Friday.

I take it in around noon. And my Fridays are like the most valuable, like 12 to 6 is one of the most valuable times of my entire week because there's no newsletter to do. So I have this like five hour block of just open time to catch up on all the work that I haven't done all week because I've been writing and then like go into the weekend with like a clean slate and like, okay, I'm good. I'm caught up. I've got all my tasks that I needed. It takes five hours for this guy to repair the keyboard. I'm calling him, you know, I call him at the hour and a half mark. Hey, any update? Oh, sorry. People have been coming in the store. It's really busy. My bad. Come

by in 30 minutes. So I walk 15 minutes to the store in 30 minutes. I get there. The keyboard's not ready. He's like, I'm sorry. I keep getting interrupted. Can you come back in like 30, 45 minutes? And I'm like, well, I just walked here to get here. So could you just call me when it's done in 30 minutes? And then I'll be sure. Yeah, sure. Two hours go by. Don't hear anything from call him. Apologize again. Sorry, I'm getting interrupted. Yada, yada, yada. Come in 20 minutes. It'll be done. I'm just putting the case back on. I'm like, all right. So I walked down to the store again. I get there. My keyboard, the whole computer is just open. There's like a million screws everywhere. He's like, I'm sorry. Somebody came in right after I got off the phone with you. So I sit there like an asshole watching the guy.

He puts together his computer, puts together my computer. There's like a million Mac screws. All in all, it's like a five hour job. So now it's five o'clock on a Friday. I've lost this whole period of work. I'm like super frustrated and stressed. Like now I'm going to have to work tomorrow on Saturday. My one day off, I'm usually like take off totally from on Shabbat, Friday, Saturday night.

So I get back to the office, open up the computer and immediately the fan on the computer just starts like go hot, like going as loud as I've ever heard it. And I'm like, what the hell is going on? I'm like, I turn it off. I reset it. I can't get it to stop. I call the guy. I'm like, Hey, the fans like going nuts. He's like, Oh yeah, I'm sorry. You're going to have

to bring it back to calibrate the fan with the new batteries that come with the circuit for the keyboard. And I'm like, what are you talking about? Like, I'm not what like, like at this point, I'm like, this has taken two months to get this fixed five hours today. Like, and he's like, yeah, bring it in tomorrow. It'll take 30 minutes. I'm like, okay. So I bring the computer in the next day. Breaking news doesn't take 30 minutes. It takes like close to two hours. I'm sitting in a car reading while he does it. It turns to 1230. I call him. He's still not close. I'm like, all right. I walked to a brewery across the street and get a beer to take the edge off. I'm like so frustrated at this point. I go back in, get the computer. And he's like, listen, I couldn't get the hardware like correction to work where the

computer's recognizing the new circuit and the new batteries. So instead he downloaded this software where I can control the fans on the computer. So anytime they start humming, I go into like this little software tool that's operating in the background. So now this software tool is like dragging my computer basically to a complete stop. I can't open more than like four tabs without my entire computer freezing. We just did this podcast interview and there were like five moments in the interview where Riverside completely froze and I couldn't hear what Mark was saying. And we just had to wait. Like I had to wait for him to come back. Like I missed half of the interview because

my computer's freezing because there's software is running in the background. So now I have my W key, which is great, but I don't have a computer that's functioning. And that is currently where things are at. And it is Thursday. And now I have to decide if I want to take the computer back and get him to put in the old batteries and make it so it's like there's a hardware fix, but that's going to take some time. And then hopefully the software is not necessary. And it's like, all this is because my W key didn't work on my computer. And so that is my grievance this week. It is unbelievably annoying. One of the most annoying things I think has ever happened to me.

And now I have a computer that's just slow as hell. And I can't really do my work the way I want to at all. A very Pyrrhic W then for you. That's a joke some people will get, I'm sure. But I... Not funny. Sorry. Like I told you at the beginning, I'm in a very good mood.

So you're gonna have to take that on the chin. But that is absolutely unbelievable, that whole story. I think it might be worth sending an email to our lawyer telling them that you called Apple a cartel on a podcast, but hopefully that'll be fine. I guess now you just destroy it, burn it, right? Like he who has the power to destroy a thing, that is who has the real power over it.

So maybe you can demonstrate that to Apple by burning it to the ground and getting a new. Yeah. I have no idea what I'm going to do except keep complaining about it. If anybody has a working Mac book, they want to send to Isaac, just reach out.

What was that email again? Isaac, I S A A C at retangle.com. I S A A C. That's right. All right. We got to get out of here. I'll see you guys tomorrow. Well, you'll hear fromC. That's right. All right. We got to get out of here. I'll see you guys tomorrow. Well,

you'll hear from me. It's confusing. We're operating in a weird timescape. We'll be back. Timescales are challenging. Just watch Dune. It breaks it all down for you. All right. Goodbye. Our podcast is written by me, Isaac Saul, and edited by Zosia Warpea. Our script is edited by Sean Brady, Ari Weitzman, and Bailey Saul. Shout out to our interns, Audrey Moorhead and Watkins Kelly, and our social media manager, Magdalena Bokova, who created our podcast logo. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet75.

For more from Tangle, check out our website at www.tangle.com. We'll be right back. to unravel a criminal web, his family's buried history, and what it feels like to be in the spotlight. Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. The flu remains a serious disease. Last season, over 102,000 influenza cases have been reported across Canada, which is nearly double the historic average of 52,000 cases. What can you do this flu season? Talk to your pharmacist or doctor about getting a flu shot. Consider FluCellVax Quad and help protect yourself from the flu. It's the first cell-based flu vaccine authorized in Canada for ages six months and older, and it may be available for free in your province. Side effects and allergic reactions can occur, and 100% protection is not guaranteed. Learn more at flucellvax.ca.