The Bulwark Podcast - Amanda Carpenter: The Authoritarian Playbook

Episode Date: January 19, 2024

Donald Trump has been making extreme promises on the campaign trail. And unlike in 2016, this time he has a team drawing up the plans for implementing them. Amanda Carpenter joins Charlie Sykes to explain how Trump would follow through on his most anti-democratic pledges in a second term. show notes: Report from Amanda and Protect Democracy PDF version

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October is the season for wearing masks and costumes, but some of us feel like we wear a mask and hide more often than we want to. At work, in social settings, around our family. Therapy can help you learn to accept all parts of yourself, so you can stop hiding and take off the mask. Because masks should be for Halloween fun, not for your emotions. Whether you're navigating workplace stresses, complex relationships, or family dynamics, therapy is a great tool for facing your fears and finding

a way to overcome them. If you're thinking of starting therapy but you're afraid of what you might uncover, give BetterHelp a try. It's entirely online, designed to be convenient, flexible, and suited to your schedule. Just fill out a brief questionnaire to get matched with a licensed therapist, and switch therapists at any time for no additional charge. Take off the mask with BetterHelp. Visit BetterHelp.com today to get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelp, H-E-L-P, dot com. Welcome to the Bulwark podcast. I'm Charlie Sykes. It is Friday and look who is back with us, our colleague and good friend, Amanda Carpenter. Amanda, welcome back to the Bulwark. It is so good to be back, Charlie. I should just mention, I mean, Amanda is a writer and editor at Protect Democracy,

which is out with this massive new report about the authoritarian playbook. And man, I have to say it is chilling, but it is important. That's why I devoted my Morning Shots newsletter. It's one of those things where if you don't read it today, you need to download it, print it out, put it in your file, because this is one of those deep And so truly building a consensus document on what the threats are to really focus on by Trump 2.0 administration is harder than you think. I would say the biggest task is sort of separating, as we know, as you know, Charlie, and dealing with tracking Trump since 2015, he says a lot of stuff. And there's always this tendency of like, right, what do you focus on? And so I really tried to drill it down to this is what he's promising on the campaign trail, you know, stuff from his mouth, but then also walking through the powers

he could draw upon as president to make them real policy and then going through the plans being developed by all these outside groups to help them do it. So you can't dismiss these things. There are issues that will really fundamentally change what it means to live in America for everyone. So like you said, it's a big read, download it. It's also available through our new newsletter. If you can keep it.org, you can subscribe because that's how we want to keep this communication going about these issues. So thank you. Thank you.

Thank you for highlighting that in your newsletter. Really, really appreciate it. I know that your readers and our listeners are, of course, very, very savvy. But that title, of course, is Benjamin Franklin's quote. He comes out of the Constitutional Convention. A woman runs up to him and says, what have you given us, Dr. Franklin? And he says, a republic if you can keep it. And those words really resonate.

What I really thought was valuable about this report is there's right now a kind of an anti-anti-Trump backlash, the kind of like, calm down, everybody. It's not going to be that bad. You people are hysterical. And it is interesting watching it play out. You know, you have critics say, Donald Trump would be an authoritarian dictator. And then Donald Trump says, yes, I would be an authoritarian dictator. And you have critics, you know, on Republicans and, you know, the National Review folks who go, you people are just hysterical. You're completely hysterical. And we're like, wait, two things. This is what he is explicitly saying. And look at the infrastructure that he has. And I think that you do two things in this report that are important. You lay out what he has said, what his powers would be, but also what's different this time around. There is an infrastructure. There are groups, there are allies who are putting together plans right now for him to do these things. So, you know, for anybody that doubts that Trump 2.0 is fundamentally worse

than Trump 1.0, this is one of those moments because you can kind of see the, you know, we've talked about this, this pivot, this predictable pivot of Republicans and people who go, well, okay, he's terrible and he's awful, but he's not that bad. And we have to support him because it's a binary choice. And so there is this sort of the National Review, Ross Douthat kind of like, people, everybody take a chill pill. We've survived before. And your report really does drill down on that failure of imagination. How bad could it be, right? And it could be very, very bad. Sometimes when you write something, you kind of have some people in your head, you're sort of directing it to. And it's the same model of person. They keep kind of presenting

themselves. The most recent big one, which really kind of surprised me, which it takes a lot to surprise me, was George Will. I don't know if you remember a couple of weeks ago, the beginning of his column, he had this like really snide introduction talking about how over-caffeinated pro-democracy Cassandras should, you know, take notice there's already an authoritarian in the White House. George Will. Yeah. Saying this, doing this both side stuff. And then you also have the comments from the Wall Street Journal editorial board saying, you know, essentially Trump is bad, but our system is strong enough to contain him. And what we do in this report is we walk through how all the constraints that existed previously will be blown through again and again by a Trump 2.0. And the biggest reason for this is it sort of emanates from this growing body of thought on the conservative pseudo legal movement because, you know, it's not correct, but it's there and it's mature.

And they're laying the groundwork for this massive expansion of Article One powers. This isn't just sort of the power for a president to make war and protect us from, you know, foreign enemies. It's saying essentially he can do whatever he wants, and he will do that through all these federal agencies, and he'll be able to install loyalists. You get the Schedule F stuff that report only to the president. They don't have to respect their own oath of office. Whatever the president says, they are constitutionally obligated to do. And so then you get the rationale for not only unlimited pardon power, but for Trump to totally take over the Department of Justice and direct investigations against his enemies. Because

even someone like Ron DeSantis isn't saying in papers now, we don't believe in this idea of independence at any federal agencies, including the Justice Department. And that is not how the rule of law has operated. It's not how the Department of law has operated. It's not how the Department of Justice has operated. It's not the way conservatives, yes, right. Also that. But they are willing to throw that all out the window across the federal government. So not only the Department of Justice, but the FCC, where they can install some loyalists who can just rip broadcasting licenses from outlets they don't like. And this will play out not just in the White House. And that's what I want this report to communicate at every agency in a way

that will change our everyday lives. Yeah, well, let's drill down because the details are really compelling here. You know, the report looks at three things here, the promises, the powers, and the plans. And this is what is sobering. We'll get to the, it's not all doom and gloom a little bit later, but let's just walk through this authoritarian playbook. You start off with pardons to license lawbreaking, directing investigations against critics and rivals, regulatory retaliation, federal law enforcement overreach, domestic employment of the military. Okay. That's, that's like just the menu. Those are the top lines. So let's talk about each one in order. And again, none of this stuff is a secret. I mean, this is the part that I think is

mind blowing. Donald Trump is explicitly saying he's going to do these things. His allies are saying he can do these things. And as you point out, he might be able to do these things. I take it even more seriously because I know someone has scripted it for him. Not only is he saying it, is he believing it? These are the parts where he stays on script. Right. I've read all these papers. I've read every page of the Heritage 2025 document. I've listened to all his speeches. The parts where he goes on script and reads- Thank you. Thank you for taking one for the team. Very specifically about things like invoking the Alien Enemies Act.

That's when he's on script. That's not him riffing. And so that tells me, okay, they are very serious about this because not only has someone put those words in his mouth, he's into it. Okay, this is a really important point because this is completely different than 2016, where he was riffing, making stuff up. He had no idea what the powers were. He really didn't expect he was going to be president. He didn't staff up for it. This is a completely different scenario. So let's start with the pardons, not just the abuse of the pardon power, but the pardons to licensed lawbreaking. Talk to me about that. Yeah. And so the biggest thing in the news right now is Trump tweeting, bleeding, posting, whatever, in the middle of the night about how he has full immunity to do whatever he

wants. And that's a legal argument he's making in court, may or may not work. Should he become president, however, and has the pardon power, he has full immunity, right? All he has to do is grant it to himself. And he's hinted several times saying, I have the power to do this. But not only does it apply to him, and this is what people really need to drill down on. It's not just about his potential crimes. Look at how he's dangled pardons to the January 6th rioters.

If you look at the thing that he posted, which I'm going to read it, yes, there's this stuff about immunity, but then it goes on further down. Example, you can't stop police from doing the job of strong and effective crime prevention because you want to guard against the occasional rogue cop or bad apple. What does he mean by that? He also talks about indemnifying law enforcement who do bad apple things on the campaign trail. He talks about how he thinks law enforcement should shoot shoplifters immediately on site as soon as they leave a store. He's not only interested

in protecting himself. He is interested in power. Okay. And then you see this. It's not like he hasn't abused the pardon power is something that's going to happen in the future. He didn't in his first administration. I call them, you know, henchmen pardons, the pardons that he gave for his allies who pursued lawbreaking to advance his goals, like a Paul Manafort, like a Steve Bannon, like a Dinesh D'Souza. I mean, it's not a mistake that every person who stonewalled the Mueller investigation, regardless of what you think about how that panned out, the people who stonewalled the Mueller investigation got pardons. The people who did not, did not. Sure. I mean, this was central to his obstruction of justice, right? The point you're making is, you know, he's made it clear that he might use this pardon power for police officers,

for members of the military who commit war crimes. He's in fact already done that. There were suggestions in his first term that he's told the border agents that, you know, if you break the law in keeping illegal immigrants out, don't worry about it because I will pardon you. Now think about this, what this could possibly mean for, you know, changing the political dynamic of the country. And the reality is that, I'm sorry to say this, but one of the flaws in the Constitution is that pardon power is pretty much unlimited. You know, if you have a cop that puts his knee on somebody and kills them and the president comes around and if, you know, if he pardoned Derek Chauvin, Chauvin would be out. He does have the power to do this. Yeah. And you look at how, you know, the conservative movement

has rallied around a person like a Kyle Rittenittenhouse you know there is this sort of celebration of violence that's been happening and it's no see you know it kind of baffles me that the pardons for the people convicted of war crimes essentially that wasn't a bigger deal i mean that is really right i agree with chilling stuff and he posted you know online that i mean just mocking the system, essentially saying we trained these people to be killers and we're surprised they're killers. It was an insult to members of the military that you are killing machines. And, you know, you have members of the military say, no, I mean, that's, that's not our only role. I mean, yes, you know, we, you know, we kill people and we break things. Yes, that's part of it, but that is not the whole thing.

And you don't understand honor our obligation to obey the laws of war. Remember in his first campaign, he said he was going to order the military to go kill the family members of suspected terrorists. And people said, well, that would be a war crime. And he said, well, if I'm the president, they will do what I say. Well, maybe they will, or maybe they won't. But part of it will be you do what I say. And if it does break the law, don't worry about it because I'll wipe it away. Yeah. And so this is why in the report, there's sort of a logical flow and why I think you have to start with pardon power, because once a president can render himself and his allies for whatever purpose above the law, then a lot of the rest of the system goes away pretty

easily. I mean, they're really laser focused on taking over DHS to have essentially a force at their disposal. There's a lot of forces available at the Department of Homeland Security already. He's talked very specifically about moving a lot of the forces under ICE in CBP for deportation purposes to do Operation Wetback 2.0. But once he has that power and says, you guys get a free pass to do anything as long as it's in pursuit of my agenda, it's not hard to imagine how things get really scary. Okay, so number two, directing investigations against critics and rivals. Again,

nothing subtle, nothing secret about all of this. You know, it's interesting how Republicans say that, you know, Joe Biden has weaponized the justice system against Republicans and conservatives. You know, talk about projection, because in fact, that's exactly what Donald Trump is talking about doing. So let's talk about, you know, using the Department of Justice to go after political opponents and critics, something that he talks about all the time. It was actually difficult to narrow down the list of people he's singled out to be targeted. By name, I mean the ones that he accuses of treason. He throws around treason like nobody's

business. You speak out against him as treason, and then you get, I guess, a DOJ investigation, somebody knocking at your door. But the thing that it doesn't get remarked upon as much as it should, the people at the top of his list are people who work for him. They happen to, I don't know, uphold their constitutional obligations and speak out against him. Those are the people he really singles out the most, the Bill Bars, the Millies, the John Kellys. And they blow a whistle on him. And it's like, he's just saying this. And even they don't have the temerity to turn around now. I mean, they do in some respects, like a Bill Barr say,

this is absolutely a red line. If he starts targeting people for unjustified, unmerited reasons, it's not just against a Bill Barr personally, that is a dismantling of what the Department of Justice was designed to do. And so he talks about all the time and it's just one of those things. It's like, oh yeah, he's just saying that again. Why do you think he wouldn't do it with a, I don't know, we could go through the games of who his attorney general might be, but he's certainly, certainly going to pick someone willing to do it. And just, I mean, parenthetically, I think that if anyone thinks that the Republican Senate would in fact serve as a guardrail or a bulwark against, you know, that sort of thing,

no, they're not. I think we've seen that over and over again. But again, this is something, as you point out in the report, his allies are making plans to eliminate DOJ's traditional prosecutorial independence. But the key word there is traditional, because a lot of this is norms. And this is kind of the scary thing. I think we found out in the first, you know, term, you know, how much of this was based on the honor system, that the founding fathers really thought that, you know, only honorable men would sit in that and that there were these checks and balances. But the fact is that if Donald Trump says, I am ordering the Department of Justice to go and investigate and maybe indict, say, Charlie Sykes or Amanda Carpenter.

The only thing that stops that from actually happening would be individuals in that department who would, you know, people would say, well, they would never tolerate that. That would destroy the character. They would all resign. They would resign en masse. I'm guessing that Donald Trump and Steve Bannon, you know, and Attorney General Stephen Miller would just say, fine, good, don't let the door hit you on the way out, because those are our norms. So the president

can order the criminal investigation of anyone, right? I mean, all that prevents that is the conscience of the individual members of the Department of Justice, and they can quit, but it could happen is what I'm saying. Yeah, absolutely. And then the other argument you run into is that, okay, well, let's say if you did it, you would have a strong legal argument and you would make this a go away in the first motion or whatever, as if that makes it okay. I mean, you look at the people who have been targeted by the president, it destroys their lives. Even if you're 100% right, even if you have every constitutional legal argument on your side in the world, the fact that you even have to contemplate going through

the emotional abuse, having to consult lawyers, talking to your family, upping personal security, and these aren't things that we have to imagine. It happens to people who work for him at a very low level. I'm thinking of like Olivia Troy, like someone who gets targeted for speaking out and doesn't have the security of, say, a former four-star general or something like that. It doesn't take much. It doesn't have to be true to ruin people's lives.

This is a really, really important point because, you know, just try to, and again, this is the failure of imagination. I know people who've gone through this sort of thing. You get a knock on the door, you know, before dawn, you know, there are armed people, you know, with Klieg lights around your house. They come in, they seize every computer in your house. They seize all of your phones. They basically, you know, tell your children, they have to sit in the bedroom, you know, and then you are, you know, perhaps even arrest or not. We don't know. First of all, you have to deal with that. Then you have to go out and you have to hire a

lawyer and this will be a lawyer at your expense. So hundreds of thousands of dollars later, you may get your computers, your telephones back, but you don't get back that sense of safety, of inviability. We're talking about all these swatting incidents that are going on, you know, with your harassment. I know, that's terrifying. Well, but this is exactly what we're talking about. We're talking about, you know, the federal government swatting political enemies under the color of law.

Now, federal judges, I think, would throw this out. There might be sanctions, but the damage is done. Absolutely. Landlord telling you to just put on another sweater when your apartment is below 21 degrees? Are they suggesting you can just put a bucket under a leak in your ceiling? That's not good enough. Your Toronto apartment should be safe and well-maintained. If it isn't, and your landlord isn't responding to maintenance requests, RentSafeTO can help. Learn more at toronto.ca slash RentSafeTO. Let's move on to number three. Now, these are, I think, people I've thought about.

The other things in the report are like, wow, okay, I had not given this a lot of up. Regulatory retaliation. You're right. In addition to steering prosecutorial discretion via the Department of Justice, Trump has vowed openly to consolidate and wield federal regulatory power to reward political loyalty and punish his critics, particularly DeSantis, thought that he could seize the Republican nomination by using the power of the state to go after corporate critics, to use the power of the government to go after Walt Disney. Trump has made no secret of what he would do. So give me some sense of what you mean by regulatory retaliation. Yeah. So once he, you know, as we discussed, Pierce's idea of any independence gets his loyalists installed across the government. Those people have a lot of regulatory power and it is not always exercised in the way like Congress passes a law. There's a lot of discretion, right? So most broadcast people, they apply for licenses. They have to get renewed. Sometimes they're on like vague standards of whether you're in good standing.

Those could be revoked. And that is something Trump has really honed in on. He's talked specifically about revoking licenses for MSNBC, CNN. I got to tell you, I was on with Chris Hayes maybe a few weeks ago. And this was coming up because he was making the threat again. And Chris, who I admire and really like a lot, because he was making the threat again. And Chris, who I admire and really like a lot, he said,

I'm not worried. You know, he can come after me, bring it. And I just thought back and I wish I would have said it at the time. Chris Hayes will be okay. MSNBC probably be okay. I mean, I don't know.

They could get the license revoked, but they have good lawyers and they can go fight the battle because they have the resources to fight that. And they would probably win. I'm not going to guarantee it because I'm not a regulatory legal expert. But what kind of chilling effect does that have for all the small papers who are already struggling to get by, who don't have a defamation lawyer on staff or counsel they can ask for a headline? They just kind of say, you know, a defamation lawyer on staff or counsel, they can ask for a headline. They just kind of say, you know what? I really don't want the president to come after me. Let's just change this headline a little bit. These threats have a chilling effect in themselves. And it's not only

confined to the media, although I think that's the easiest one to understand. But when he was president, you'll probably remember that he was threatening to, you know, up the postage rates to target Jeff Bezos because of his ownership of the Washington Post. There's a lot of little things like that. Right. Ultimately didn't happen, but they did order an investigation. See, I think the media is actually the most protected because of the First Amendment and because they would be able to fight back. It is your average business. And, you know, if you spend much time around business

executives or around C-suites, you know that they are risk averse when it comes to pissing off the government because they have to deal with the IRS. They have to deal with the SEC. They have to deal with the FTC, all of those webs of regulation. And by the way, this is something for our listeners, conservatives have always been warning about excessive government control and regulation because in the wrong hands, it could be used in the way that I think we need to fear right now. So when you have somebody like, you know, Jamie Dimon saying, well, maybe Trump isn't so bad and everything, you know, in the back of his mind, he might be thinking, what could a really hostile Trump administration do to my business? And for a lot of these guys, the great fear they have of

Donald Trump is not what he would do to democracy, not what he would do to the culture, but what he would do to their bottom line. And if they believe that criticizing him or opposing him would hurt their bottom line, they will fall into line. And I think the willingness of Trump to do that is obvious, but also, and I think you make this clear, the willingness of the Republican Party and his allies to go along with it. This is what's new here. I mean, it used to be that Nixon could sit around on tape, talk about, hey, how can we screw these guys? Can we have an IRS investigation? And it's just in the room with his buddies, but I don't think Republicans in the Senate back then would have ever gone along with this. That's different now. Yeah, and you mentioned

Ron DeSantis targeting Disney. That was an eye-opening moment. Another eye-opening moment was when Georgia Republicans decided to go after MLB, Coca-Cola, Delta Airlines, because they were signaling support for voting rights. And we can disagree about how that bill was messaged. But the idea that Republicans are far more willing to go after companies and target them in really punitive ways. They're talking about taking away, I believe, Delta Airlines jet fuel tax exemption as punishment. You know, these really tricky needling ways that have a big effect on their bottom line. And a lot of executives, you're right.

They're going to say we need to stay on their good side. Send some lobbyists there. You know, tell them we're not going to cross them. All this happens very quietly and, you know, overtly with people like Jamie Dimon saying, you know what, I can do business with this guy. Well, if a federal government goes rogue like this, it does have the ability to destroy many of these businesses and affect these industries. Okay. So number three, federal law enforcement overreach. Okay. And you cite Trump's declaration that immigration is, quote, poisoning the blood of our country and describe that as a grim foreshadowing of how he will invoke the Alien Enemies Act,

which is a wartime provision dating back to 1798. Actually, didn't even know that was on the books anymore. Once Trump has that power, he's expressed his will to expand the footprint of federal law enforcement to police cities and shut down lawful protests. What are we talking about there? Because I don't know anything about the Aliens Enemy Act. So, I mean, picture Lafayette Square. In any city, he feels like protests might need to be shut down. In any city where he feels like immigration might be out of hand. And he wants to set in the forces to sweep them up, like Operation Wetback 2.0, which he's also talked very specifically about. The talk about the Alien Enemies Act, that is one where I was

listening and looking at the papers and said, oh, I doubt Donald Trump is combing through the federal code of papers to see what I can do. This was some nerd at Heritage who's been drilling in this for a long time saying, you know what? I could use that law to essentially declare we need an act of war and take control of any federal forces and send them to do whatever we like. And I think this is primarily, he talks a lot about how immigration is an act of invasion coming across the borders. He uses the word invasion specifically all the time. I don't think that is a coincidence because when you look at the language of the Alien Enemies Act, it allows a president to call up forces to put down

something like an invasion. Well, how does this relate to the Insurrection Act? Because he's talked about invoking the Insurrection Act. Would these be like bookends of each other that give him this incredible power that we, I guess we've been naive enough to think would not be abused in this particular way, but these laws are on the books. Yeah. And so this is the way that I've separated it, although it all does go hand in hand. So you talk about forces available to Donald Trump through the Department of Homeland Security. Those are federal law enforcement forces. You're thinking like, you know, your CBP, your ICE agents, people who are deputized to carry out federal law, and they have a lot of resources there. And he's talked

specifically about housing them all under ICE so that he can deploy them for immigration purposes. And that is the lens that I think he will abuse his powers at the Department of Homeland Security. And then in this other bucket, you have the military available through the Department of Defense. That is when he can call up the military to police the streets. And that is the Insurrection Act. And that is essentially, you know, I mentioned Lafayette Square before, because I think visually that helps people see what's going to happen. But it's a distinction between federal law enforcement, DHS, the military policing the streets through DOD.

So let's talk about that because, you know, in the report, it says a central hallmark of American democracy is the U.S. military not be used against American citizens. But Trump plans, and he's been very explicit about it, I think, to abuse the Insurrection Act, order military forces to quash dissent and target vulnerable communities. And again, this is something that if it was just Trump, you could think, well, you know, there will still be guardrails. But I think this is something that's also been internalized, that if you create a crisis, if you create this mood, the things are absolutely out of control, then why not send the military to defend law and order in the cities? He has the legal power to do this, right? The legal power is available to him. I mean, even Mark Esper said, yeah, essentially, if he invokes it, he can do this. And so what people should also understand, even though I have it broken down into these

categories of DHS and DOD and federal law enforcement and military, what we saw in Lafayette Square, it was all jumbled up together. You had protesters being seen by people who didn't have badges. It took weeks for people to figure out who was actually deploying the tear gas and who was doing the rubber bullets and who is buzzing the airplanes overhead. When this kind of stuff goes down, it is a chaotic mess. You may not know who is arresting you. You don't know what rights you have. If someone hurts you, there might not be a badge. How do you report it when you can't clearly explain what happened? And that's what is another thing that made Lafayette Square so dangerous.

And there's still been no proper accountability for that. I mean, the fact that he abused the law to send in forces to the streets above the will of the DC mayor. I think most people thought like, oh, the governors just send him the troops and it was fine, everything was kosher. Yes, that's something we should worry about too,

because in any of these scenarios, I think it's very likely like an Abbott or DeSantis would be more than happy to lend Trump some National Guard forces. But they've used this loophole that allowed for these joint activities to happen under like a training model. That was not a training model whatsoever. No, not at all. And again, no accountability. And that is just amazing to me because it laid the groundwork for, I think, January 6th security lapses and other things whose people were worried, upset about what Trump might or might not do. And none of this has been resolved.

All right. So your report also raises something that I think that a lot of folks are going to think is a little bit far-fetched because of our failure of imagination. I mean, I can certainly imagine, you know, the smart kids in the anti-anti-Trump world just really rolling their eyes, you know, about the over-caffeinated hysteria here. I know, the Cassandras. Oh, that still breaks my heart. But then I'm used to that now.

Your report considers Trump's repeated flirtation with staying in office beyond a second term. And you write, when viewed in the context of the authoritarian playbook and the actions of Trump-like figures around the globe, this threat becomes hard to ignore. Seriously? Okay, so under our constitution, he would not be eligible to stay in office. No one has ever stayed in office beyond the constitution. So talk to me about what stayed in office beyond the Constitution. So talk to me about what you warn about in the report. How could he do that? Well, I mean, we've seen other leaders in other countries just change the Constitution. That's one way to do it. Another way to do it is just stay.

That's unlikely to happen here, though, right? You know, I'm not going to box myself in by a failure of imagination and i say this isn't something that's clearly laid out but he talks about it an awful lot and sometimes he's joking about it but i've learned to take these jokes about serious things somewhat seriously and the fact he keeps bringing it up and saying oh well we all have four years and beyond or wouldn't it be nice like jiangping he gets to stay in office forever. That'd seem kind of cool. I think you can't dismiss it. And so while he may not have a plan to operationally say, this is how I stay in power forever, and it's supported by all these agencies,

and I do put this in a different category, he keeps flirting with the idea. And given how he's pushed the limits on every other issue, we shouldn't throw it away. I'm trying to imagine the scenario in which that would happen. There would probably be some declaration of an emergency, some sort of a crisis that he would say would require this. Look, I mean, you know, overshadowing all this is the fact that Donald Trump has explicitly said that we need to terminate certain provisions of the Constitution to restore him to power.

This is somebody that has flirted with that. So if he believed that certain elements of the Constitution should be terminated to return him to power now, why would he not call for terminating or suspending certain elements of the Constitution to keep him in power at the end of another term? Again, this is the failure of imagination. We'll say it's worth bringing up and just reminding everyone again, what he tried to do in December 2020 is get the Department of Justice to weigh in on the election,

declare it somewhat fraudulent, run some fake investigation to find whatever findings he wanted to declare him the winner. And so if I'm just imagining here, could Justice Department declare the election illegal and maybe we'll just run it again in eight years? Something like that? This is the kind of thing that the initial reactions will know that and they go, wait.

It did happen. He actually came this close to this happening. So let's imagine that he had gotten Jeff Clark installed as attorney general. Let's imagine that all those people in the room who said we will resign, what if they had not been in the room? What if he had had his loyalists in the room? What if, in fact, they had all resigned? So keep in mind how everything that happened in and around January 6th was pretty horrible,

but it could have been so much worse in a, let's go back to the end of the second term. He has the power. He has the vice presidency. What if people did exactly what he wanted? What if he had a vice presidency like Vice President Elise Stefanik? And he says, I don't want you to do what Mike Pence did. I want you to throw out these electoral votes. I want to suspend this element of the Constitution. I want the Department of Justice to declare this provision to be null and void or this election to be null and void. Does anyone really imagine that he cannot find people who would be willing to say that for him? And again, I understand this is out on the ragged edge of speculation.

But if you would have told you or I that Trump would have done the things that he's already done, if we would have told somebody this back in 2016, people would have thought you were completely, you know, I'd completely lost your mind. Right. And yet he's not only done it, it has now become gospel and a litmus test in the Republican party. Yeah. Look at all the endorsements that were rolling in for him before Iowa. I think there was a hot minute where people were willing to say like, okay, maybe DeSantis can pull this out. We're going to give him some time to see if he can do it. And the writing was on the wall before Iowa. And they all put out their endorsements and Mike Lee just to get it out of the way and say, you know what, this is over. We're done with it. We're on board. And I think a lot of those endorsements did come early because they didn't want to keep getting asked, like, let's just make our statement now. He's going to have

all these legal troubles later. I can just say, you know, I said in January, I'm supporting him. Don't ask me again. Move on. We're all on board. Done. You were right. This is important now to make this pivot. This report is not all gloom and doom though. Although Trump's first term battered a constitutional guardrails in the lives of many Americans, our democracy ultimately survived. As your report explains, that was no accident, but the result of the courageous actions of a broad array of Americans and public leaders who stood up for our democracy. That work can provide both instruction and inspiration going forward. Okay, so you end with 10 recommendations to prepare to protect American democracy against unconstitutional and

authoritarian actions. I'll give you a summary here. Create pro-democracy coalitions before the crisis arrives. Take anti-democratic ideas and promises seriously. Don't brush them off. Keep a broad pro-democracy movement united against the acute big picture autocratic danger. Support Republicans that stand firm for democratic institutions, rally around nonpartisan independent public servants, uphold the rule of law in democratic institutions, and always repudiate violence. Protect the first targets and arrange how to advocate for the most vulnerable, evaluate security at the community, household, and personal level, work to protect free and

fair elections, and continue building the democracy of tomorrow. So give me your sense of how we're doing on that agenda. I agree with every single point there, but how are we doing? Yeah, well, first, I can't take credit for writing this whole report. We have a number of authors listed, and especially this part is really informed with the knowledge of our people who run our coalition groups, do a lot of outreach, and have been building this pro-democracy coalition in the trenches under the radar since 2016. And so these are really well-informed recommendations built on the successes that they have had and continue to have, but also the lessons that we see from coalitions, how they fracture

abroad under pressure from authoritarian leaders. And so what it really all boils down to, and I've been asked this along the way of building this report, is just like, well, what are your policy recommendations? There's all these things you outlined that are problems. What policies can you have to fix it? I just come back to, it's the people have to fix this. The people are the guardrails. The people are the ones who uphold the norms. And people have to fix this. The people are the guardrails.

The people are the ones who uphold the norms. And you have to keep this coalition together. It's hard, Charlie. We have a lot of new Democratic and progressive friends nowadays, too. Right. We disagree on things. Coalitions fracture really easily over little disagreements because they lose focus on the big things that matter. And so that's really,

you know, why I was so excited to work on this report because I think it's very hard to separate what are the big important things in the daily barrage of politics coming at you that is designed specifically to make you angry, sad, and upset with people who are your neighbors. And so you can't wait for the crisis to arrive to be like, okay, now we want to have a coalition. I can call these people for help in the advocacy world or the legal world or what have you. You have to have those relationships already made. And you also have to nurture them. It can't just be you call people for help in a time of need. You kind of have to nurture them. It can't just be you call people for help in a time of need. You kind of have to be in consistent communication of like, okay, these are the things

we're working on. Do you agree? Try to build some consensus. Because some of the things that I think are the biggest threats, maybe someone else doesn't. And you need to have a discussion about that. You know, I've been in active discussions with my PD colleagues here, because I have a very different perspective and work background than a lot of them. And it's like, well, I feel kind of weird about this issue. Let's talk about it. And then you find it takes some time. And then maybe to convince people like you really should look at this. I think this is a big deal because X, Y, Z. In doing that, when you have those kind of healthy discussions, you build the trust, right? The hard work is part of that process. And so- Yeah, that assumption of goodwill.

Yep. I actually remember one night over some bourbons with one of your colleagues, who I'm not going to name right now, who I love. What was really clear was we were at almost complete opposite ends of the ideological spectrum. We disagreed on a lot of policy issues, but we fundamentally shared an existential threat to the country. And so at the moment, we needed to work together. And what we had in common was at that moment, far more important than what divided us. But to your point about creating that sense of trust, also the sense of priorities, these things may matter, they may be important, okay? But right now, it's the analogy between the heart attack and cancer. You know, you have, you have things that are out there, but, but this is the heart attack. It's 911 and we can work together. And those conversations, those coalitions that you're talking about are immensely important because then they bring together people from different ends. I mean, the fact that,

that you have Nancy Pelosi and Liz Cheney working together on January 6th, the fact that she put, well, exactly. The fact that some of the most powerful voices criticizing Trump are not coming, you're not on MSNBC or on NPR or coming from the Democratic Party. They're coming from inside the House. They're coming from people who spent their whole lives as conservatives, as Republicans, and who are now sounding the alarm. I mean, the fact that you have, you know, conservative jurists like, you know, Judge Ludig, you know, who is talking about the danger that Donald Trump poses, you know, is far more important than having, you know, another editorial in The Nation. I'm not criticizing anybody. I'm just saying that, you know, this is a moment where that coalition is there. But as you point out, it's also very fragile. It is very fragile. And

there's always somebody that wants to throw a rock in the middle of it and say, well, you know, Amanda Carpenter favors school choice, or she like once wrote a piece about tax cuts. So we can never trust her or listen to her. I'm not nothing about you personally. Understand, we do disagree on these issues, but we have to have a coalition when it comes to standing up against this threat. We had the example earlier this week, and I don't want to make too much of it because it wasn't the biggest deal. But when the Joe Biden staffer took a dig at Asa Hutchinson, I forget what the exact language was, but Asa dropped out of the race and it was like, oh, he was in it. It was real snarky. It was kind of dumb, but that's the kind of stuff you can't do because sometimes the jokes and

asides like that cut deep. You know, I commend President Biden. I'm understanding he deployed another staffer to call Asa and Asa graciously accepted the apology, but you can't do stuff like that when you want to keep a coalition together, because then Asa says, well, you know what, I've been out here doing all this stuff. And the staffer said something, you know, is that really what they think of me? Because you're already getting dumped on, on your side. It wasn't a big deal, but just that little sprinkling of meanness is not necessary. And again, I'm glad they fixed it, but that's the kind of stuff you got to be real careful about to keep everyone swimming in the same direction in a happy,

enthusiastic way. So can I ask you to like take off your protect democracy hat and put on your pundit hat? Because I always love your pundit hat. In fact, in fact, you know, this is just a pillow here, but it kind of looks like those cheesehead I could I could have put on my cheesehead in anticipation of the Packers. Because you and I were sort of back to back on on cable television yesterday. And when you were at the Bulwark, you wrote very, very extensively about Ron DeSantis. I really wanted to get your thoughts on the incredible collapse, the humiliating collapse of Ron DeSantis, because you were writing pieces when he was the great hope of anti-anti-Trump, when you had Conservatism, Inc., you know, and the smart kids who were just

rallying around him and he had all these credentials and he was riding high and look at him now. So. Yeah, I was right. Was any part of you surprised about how utter the collapse was? No, but given the amount of money behind it, yeah. It's pretty amazing. i mean yeah i wrote a piece i think we i think i ended up placing it there orlando sentinel because i wanted it to be in florida right when he was first starting to pop and i forget exactly what the lead was but it's something about how he's just essentially trying to jump in front of the maga parade and pretend like he's leading it yeah and it was all just posturing and kind of figuring because he thought, well, if I just get this whole kind of conservative infrastructure behind me, then I win. Right, right.

No, it didn't work like that. And so it just always seemed very shallow. He's never willing to be his authentic self. And it kind of pains me. He had the makings to be a good governor on his own terms. Florida is an important state. I'll concede he won most of the argument on COVID, even though he did do the shutdowns and everything early on. And that's just a side debate. But Florida is an important state. He has a good conservation record. I think he's done a lot of things right. But he kind of threw that

all away just to be this MAGA stooge. And it's sad because he thought that was the way to win. Right. He had this substantive governing record, but he felt that he needed to throw that away and put on the MAGA mask and turn himself into this. It was just phony as shit. I mean, so, I mean, look, it's kind of easy, you know, in retrospect, he's a lousy candidate with a deeply flawed message, never really wanted to run against Donald Trump. Did not understand that there was already a leader of the MAGA parade and they were just going to throw him under the bus. But what a humiliating, and you know, he comes out of this,

I think worse off than almost any of the other candidates. Well, here's my question. Is he man enough to get spanked by Nikki Haley? Like, when does he drop out? Well, what do you think? Because he's going to get spanked by Nikki Haley. Like, when does he drop out? Well, what do you think? Because he's going to get spanked next week. I think it's going to hurt real bad when Nikki pulls ahead of him.

The margin will make a difference because now he has to think in terms of his legacy and actually being electable. And if Nikki just pulls way ahead of him, that is, I think that's going to kill him more than anything. So why is he still in the race, do you think? He doesn't know how to get out.

It is this really pathetic death mark. And part of it is he doesn't know how to get out, but he does know very clearly what his future is going to be, right? Which is going to be the Ted Cruz-like grovel. I mean, he's going to have to endure one humiliation after another. He's going to have to kiss the ring. Trump hasn't gone after Casey. So, right? Yeah. Not that it would make a difference.

No, but yeah, it won't be as groveling. No, I don't know. Hey, guess what? We get to look forward to seeing. Okay. So you were also asked about the VP stakes. I have not spent a lot of time on the VP stakes. The latest report,

which I think is probably accurate, is that Trump is really interested in Elise Stefanik because she's a killer. So talk to me about that. What do you think is happening? Yeah, I think she's a contender. She is so thirsty. You know, Chris Christie had that line in his concession speech about Republicans putting ambition ahead of leadership and like, ding, that's Elise Stefanik. There you go. Poster image of that phrase. But here's what I'm concerned about. Donald Trump, number one, he's going to drag out his VP selection, like some kind of like oddball MAGA beauty pageant. Well, what about her? What about her? Rater, tell me what you think.

You will play the media and the party like a violin on all of that, right? He's going to create a show like The Bachelor or something. Yep. And here's how they're all going to be auditioning. Who's going to be the best attack dog? And I think the way that Donald Trump will want to take the heat off himself a little bit, because quite frankly, people aren't excited for a Trump Biden matchup. But what MAG's would be really excited about? To see somebody go after Kamala Harris day after day after day. And I think they will relish the opportunity to have woman-on-woman violence in that respect. I think it will lead to a lot of sexist, racist, conspiratorial types of attacks on Kamala Harris. And it's going to be real tough. I think that is the sideshow everyone is waiting for. It's a matter of who is going to be the vice presidential deliverer of that show on the Republican side. And that's just going to be part of the spectacle that Trump brings alongside of the courtroom drama. I think you're exactly right about all of that.

But let's reverse engineer what Donald Trump wants from a vice president this time. What is going to be the number one quality that he has to have? And I think it is absolute loyalty and predictability and lack of independence. The vice president is the one person he cannot fire. And he learned that with Mike Pence. I mean, you know, we talk about how close we came on January. He doesn't want somebody that's going to surprise him like Mike Pence. He learned his lesson. He is burned. So he's going to want the absolute dependable loyalist, which I think rules out an awful lot of candidates. Also, because in a second term, in theory, he's a lame duck.

So the vice president becomes immediately, in theory, the heir apparent, which means they become an independent center of power, which he is not going to like. So I have said only half jokingly that if Trump really had his way, he'd appoint, you know, like Don Jr. Ivanky, like a dynasty. But I think he's going to be very reluctant to appoint anybody with an independent political base or any independent streak of mind, which is why I think the chances of him naming Nikki Haley are absolutely zero. There's no way, especially with some of the things she's saying, that he is going to name somebody like that. I think that Elise Stefanik is probably at the moment, the front runner. But the thing about Elise Stefanik is that she's not only an incredible attack dog, she's obviously shown a willingness to say and do anything, including mirroring his record. But I'm sure there's part of Donald Trump that looks at her and goes, yeah, I see right

through her. She used to not be able to say my name. This is a person driven by absolute opportunism and ambition. And therefore, can I actually trust her? So who does that leave? Yeah, I think she's in the mix. Regardless of who he has on his list, he's going to make that person prove it to him over a series of humiliations somehow during the tryout. But I think you're right about Nikki Haley. I've never sort of seen the scenario where she is angling to be vice president. She was UN ambassador. She got out early. If she was angling for that, she'd be angling for that. You know, I just want to say a couple words about Nikki Haley because I think a lot of the commentary on her is ridiculously

tough. Yes, she's sort of calculated. Yes, she's sort of conniving. She could have better answers on slavery questions and all that. But I watched her town hall with Jake Tapper last night. She went, I tuned off after an hour and a half because I had to get to bed. She held forth and she gave all the good conservative arguments on all the issues you could want. And there's some things that I'll nitpick with if we had more time. But she's the only one doing it right now. You know,

she's lasted longer than Chris Christie. Everybody put their money on Ron DeSantis and Tim Scott, who is never going to be the contender. And it just makes me sort of angry that she's always dismissed along the way. And I think a large part of it is because she doesn't really buy into the consultant class. She's had a small number of people I understand around her over the years. And it just is so weird to me that people are just dumping on her when she is the last man standing. And it's way behind. I understand that. But she's giving it a go. And so I give her some credit for that. And I hope after she doesn't win the nomination, she links arms with Liz Cheney. And then we go out and do tours about building a farm team for 2028 and later.

That would be great. Yeah, I don't think that's going to happen. I think that she's going to just break our heart. I agree with 80% of what you just said. But the fact is that she continues to disappoint. She can't comment on the fact that she's running against somebody who has been found liable to be a rapist. I mean, come on. Just one thing on that, and I know.

I know what I want her to say for me. I know. I also understand the second she does that, she gets pegged as a never-Trumper, anti-Trump candidate. That's all she answers questions on for the rest of her campaign. Like her campaign is sunk the second she takes that. And I don't think it's because she doesn't like have her views on that. But I think people in the political arena need to understand the second she makes herself that candidate, that's all she can talk about. And she gets to talk about nothing else. I want to be more supportive of her,

except that I do know, and I think this is where Chris Christie came down, that ultimately she's not up to this. She's going to get smoked and she's going to turn around and she's going to endorse Donald Trump. I don't know if she will. To be determined, she probably will. It'll break my heart like George Will broke your heart.

We all get our hearts broken continually, but I'm just saying my piece right now. My heart is not totally broken by George Will because I'm going to write that off as a lapse. There was just a lapse. We all have our lapses. It was in the lead. It was the whole piece. I know, I know, I know, I know, I know. It's just a lapse.

And we all have those moments because, you know, we've gone through this watching people turn into rhinoceroses, you know, the E. Nosco play that I played off of, you know, the invasion of the body snatchers. You know, I've gone through this long march. You have to for the last seven or eight years. And there's just, you know, I got to struggle for that little scrap of hope. Hey, we all got to have our little pieces to hang on to. You can have George Will for a little bit, give me Nikki Haley for a little bit, and then we'll all commiserate later. Oh my God. Okay, that's fair enough. Okay, so it is Amanda, the authoritarian playbook for 2025, how an authoritarian president will dismantle our

democracy and what we can do to protect it. I cannot stress enough how important this report is, how valuable it is, why you need to download it, print it out, keep it. This is going to be one of the most important documents this year, and hopefully not next year when you see it actually played out. Amanda, it is so good to see you again and talk with you again. We miss you very much. So thank you very much for this report. You bet.

And thank you for coming on the podcast again. Thank you. And thank you all for listening to this weekend's edition of the Bulwark Podcast. I'm Charlie Sykes. We will be back on Monday, and we'll do this all over again. The Bulwark Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper and engineered and edited by Jason Brown.