The Chaser Report - All Hail King Trump

Episode Date: July 3, 2024

Dom and Charles (yes, he's still here) unpack the new powers that have been given to the US President that effectively make him King. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Chaser Report is recorded on Gatigal Land. Striving for mediocrity in a world of excellence, this is The Chaser Report. Hello and welcome to The Chaser Report with Dom and Charles. Charles, you have done the worst job I have ever seen of leaving the podcast. You're still here. And I feel really guilty because lots of people emailed me after I announced that I was leaving to say, good luck, Godspeed. I hope you return one day.

Oh, you're so successful and good looking. Oh, I love you so much. Ooh, I just love you, Charles. But then I've returned. The you who emailed yourself as emails must be Australian please. No, look, Charles, it was. It was a sad moment. We hadn't planned

really for you to announce it on Friday. We've done a terrible job. But it's my, it's not my fault. It's Andrew and Chris's fault because they won't fucking do this podcast. They keep on getting better gigs. Yeah, or gigs anyway. Gigs, yeah.

But it is good news that you hear, Charles. That's one of the main presenters. Yeah, well, exactly. It's a good day to have an official position. Right, okay. So, yeah, because, and this is the thing, I just actually needed to inform you of something, Dom, which is that everything I do henceforth and retrospectively

is actually an official act, right? And so if I commit a crime, Dom, It's not because I'm a criminal. It's because I'm, it's just part of my role as the co-host of a successful Australian podcast. Right. And so therefore, I can't be held criminally responsible for anything that I do because it's not me doing it. It's the, it's the role that's making me do it, right? Right.

Yeah. And so that, and just by, you know, why I'm sure the listeners have no idea where I'm, I'm going with this. But just to give you the vibe of that is the thinking behind the Supreme Court in the US ruling that Trump is allowed to be a dictator, right? It is quite amazing, isn't it, that the six Republican appointees, including three of them, I think, Donald Trump personally appointed, have decided now that as Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in a minority opinion with, I figure, the other two liberals on the court, in every use

of official power, the president is now a king above the law. Charles, congratulations. Yes. On becoming king of the podcast. King of the podcast. But the interesting thing is here is, I think it's very, like, everyone's concentrating on the six people who voted in favor of essentially creating a dictator. Yeah.

Very few people are concentrating on what an idiotic decision it was for the three people who dissented, right? Because knowing that Trump was going to be a dictator and has the power to say, I don't know, assassinate dissenting Supreme Court justices, completely legally, they still decided to descend. Whereas I think the people who are on the fence, like, you know, the John Roberts, who, you know, is not a toady of Trump. Very shrewdly, I thought, you know, decided that the wind was blowing in the direction of, well, he's going to be a dictator anyway, whether I vote or not in favour of this. But I might as well vote in favour of it because I don't want to get a bit of, you know, Polonium in the underwear or, you know, Novichok on my face type thing. You know what I mean?

Okay, Your Majesty. Yeah, I mean, that's one way to put it. The three of them were fools. They're idiots. Yes. And particularly because you've got to remember that this stuff is after the fact. Like any lawsuit, it's years after the event happened. Yes.

So, you know, even if it had gone on the other. the way, Trump still would have killed them on day one. Yeah, exactly. Well, oh, I see what you're saying, is if they had, he's going to be a dictator. If they dissent, if they hadn't dissented, he still would have got rid of them. He still would have got rid of them anyway. But he would have fired them and it would take in years to have the legislation or kill

them or whatever he wanted to do. He would have purged them on day one. Charles, I think you've got it the wrong way around. I think this is an amazing victory. Everyone's been reporting as Donald Trump. Yes. They're completely wrong. Charles, this is the only thing that will save Joe Biden.

Biden. The Supreme Court, the six Republican judges have all decided that the president is effectively a king, can do anything that they want. Yes. Justice Roberts said to maybe complete a sentence in Biden's case. Oh, you can't win a debate. That's true. The king can't win a debate. But Robert's right. No, but he can decree that he won a debate. He can. He can decree he won a debate. And he can murder anyone who says otherwise. He can murder Donald Trump. Oh, I see. Okay. January next year

to kill Donald Trump to kill the Supreme Court justices any of them that he wants. Yes, because this is actually, because this is a whole thing that's been a problem with American democracy for quite a while now, which is the whole reason it's got into this trouble

is because there's no institutional renewal. The Supreme Court justices can just stay there until they die. So in some ways, coming up with this more, let's say, executive style of rule where you can just execute, people is

it's an executive It's an executive Yeah it's an executive style Yeah it's an execution style of rule You can just We can now have proper Young, Sprightly Very scared

Supreme Court justices Because the renewal doesn't have to Wait for the Senate to decide It's just like bam bam bam One mistake Yeah And you're dead That's how it works in a real

You know A real country child Afford thinking country wrong and you purge. And the thing is, if any of the senators don't like, you know, the Supreme Court justices that are proposed, the president can just kill the senators. Well, you don't need the Senate. You don't need any of them.

You just need one and it will be a man and one man. It does feel very much like one of those boring prequels in Star Wars. I feel like this is already, we've already seen this play out. You're right. That's exactly what happened. And you know what happened then, don't you? You remember what happened? They sold.

It was Jar Jaxe Binks, Charles. It was Jar Binks who proposed emergency powers be given to Chancellor Valorum, who, as we know, was really Darth Sidious, the Sith Lord. Yes, we know. Jajar Binks was to blame for all that. This is the Jar Jha Binks decision. In this scenario, who is Jajar Binks here? Is it sort of Rudy Giuliani?

I think it's somehow Mitch McConnell. I don't know. He's got a certain Jar Jajar about it. Yeah, yeah. He's certainly got the neck line of a Jojo Bing. Yes, indeed, the Jowels. But I'm just thinking, Charles, looking at this article in the New York Times, that they go back to Nixon.

Did you watch that movie, that wonderful movie, Frost Nixon, which is probably the interviews between David Frost and Richard Nixon. I actually saw it live on the West End when it was first premiered, yeah. Well done. As you do. Of course you did. You're the king. Do you remember the crucial moment, the key moment in that whole thing,

where Frost, by virtue of, you know, being a brilliant interviewer, manages to get Nixon to say, when the president does it, that means it isn't illegal. Yes. And everyone in the audience goes, oh, my goodness, he's deluded this fool. He thinks he's above the law. That is now a Supreme Court decision. Law of the land. Nixon is right.

Yes. And so do you think nowadays, now, what's going to happen is every time somebody uses Watergate as a sort of shorthand, you know, gate. Yeah. It means fully above board activity. Yes. Yeah. So, you know, if there's a sort of scandal, you know how every time you have a scandal,

like it could be, if there's a scandal over a fence, it would be fence gate or something. Yes. That'll actually mean, that'll mean, oh, a really above board decision that everyone. Nothing to see here. Nothing to see here, yes. Which is why, actually, just to divert into Australian politics for a second. the NACC that the Labor government set up, right, the National Anti-Corruption Commission, right, which has done, I think, nothing at all, right, on any scandal at all.

Certainly didn't do anything about Robo Debt. I think they may have even sort of called the PWC thing a bit of a nothing burger and there wouldn't be any consequences. Anyway, that just shows how ahead of its time that institution is. Because everyone was going, oh, well, hang on, we've got to investigate corruption. we've got to do something about all these criminal acts that being committed. And the NACC went, no, no, no. They sort of had the heads up.

They read the wind. And they went, and the Supreme Court is going to get rid of corruption by making it legal. So we don't have to worry about that anymore. We could probably save some money, just shut it down. That's right. That's right. And I think this means, is Albo the king or is Sam Moston the new governor general, the queen? Who's the one who's above prosecution?

Now, look, the Australian systems, it is very different. But, you know, if you want to read the legal text, which obviously the Supreme Court justices don't, but you'd have to say that it's the Governor General who gets the power, surely, over life and death. Which actually, I don't think is necessarily a bad scenario, frankly. Like, who would you prefer Alba or Sam Moston? Sam Mosten's very successful. Yeah.

Neither of those things is true of Alba. a report. Less news more often. I'm just looking at more detail of the justice. You know how Donald Trump's been criticizing the Biden administration saying that Joe Biden is the one who's got him prosecuted and it's lawfare and all this stuff? And he talks about the Biden investigation. Roberts also wrote that a president has absolutely every right to interfere with the Justice Department. Biden had this whole thing of, you know, Merrick Garland and the Attorney General

is independent. He can't get involved in prosecutions. Roberts changed it and said that the president can discuss investigations and prosecutions. They can just have trials of whoever they want. So the day that Trump gets in, not only can he just kill anyone in the street, if it's an official act, but he can send the Justice Department after anyone he wants. So you've got to ask yourself why, if you're a Supreme Court justice, job for life, not really beholden to anyone except for the people who buy URVs each year and send you on massive holidays.

But, you know, so there's a couple of corrupt ones. But why did the other ones vote in favour of something that so obviously destroys their own power? Like, if the president has this much power, then the Supreme Court can't rule him in, the judiciary can't rule him in. In fact, he's now got power over the judicial sort of ways of the Justice Department. And Congress clearly can't rein him in because they can just be a assassinate.

Like, doesn't it sort of collapse the whole system? It does. So why would you do that if you were part of the system? Well, this is the strange thing. He doesn't realize because he's a white man. He's not worried about being outside the system and being around. Oh, yeah, because he's never faced a consequence. It never faced a consequence.

Whereas by contrast, I want to quote Justice Sotomayor here, who says, you know, as a woman of color, he's quite familiar with the notion of the government rounding you up. Yeah. She said, you know, under this, because it's not just, they also found that kind of actions on the outer rim of a president's responsibility. So things that are not necessarily obviously part of what they're supposed to do. The onus is on the prosecution to prove

that they're not part of the president's job. And Saddamayor says it's impossible to do that. So this is now a king. She says, and I quote, nightmare scenarios, orders the Navy SEAL Team 6 to assassinate a political rival? Immune. Organises the military coup to hold onto power? Immune. Takes a bribe and exchange for a pardon. Immune, immune, immune. That's what she wrote.

And Chief Justice Roberts replied by writing, that's fear-mongering on the basis of extreme hypotheticals, as though Trump hadn't organized a coup to stay in power last time. On extreme non-hypothetical, on extreme actual things that happen. But also, isn't the Supreme Court's whole job to make sure that the laws, you know, if applied in the extreme, don't fuck up everything?

It's supposed to be a check and a balance. It's the strange thing about it, though. The whole nature of American politics, which is frustrating at times all, is that it's meant to, no one's meant to be able to do anything, right? The Congress stops the President doing anything. The President vetoes the Congress. Supreme Court stops them all. That's all done.

It's now a monarchy. It's an elected monarchy. It's an elected monarchy, although I imagine that Trump will, because I think Trump will change the Constitution. Like Putin's style, he's going to make it so that he can get a third term, right? That's on the cards. So the question now becomes, how does Australia sort of very politely, without enraging any, I don't know, assassins who happened to be president, how do they, how does Australia sort of quietly back out of the room going, you know, yeah, let's just agree to disagree and just sort of place a little bit more distance between itself and this sort of shit show of non-democracy? Like, if we're saying, oh, well, we shouldn't fully engage with China because, or we should, you know, keep our distance a little bit from China diplomatically because they're not a democracy, well, surely the same principle has to now apply it to America.

You could go down that path, Charles, but it's a dangerous path. The more sensible path for Australia is to lean into this because Donald Trump doesn't have much time for Australia. He likes dictators. He likes Putin. He likes Kim Jong-un. He likes Viktor. He likes all of it. We need to have a populist.

Oh, I see. Dictatorship. Yes. We need Sam Moston to stand up and be our Victor Orban or our Vladimir Putin. Or stand down and be replaced by Clive Palmer. Well, Ben Robert Smith, surely. The only way we could possibly get on. I think the powers of assassination should be given to Ben Robert Smith.

Like, if you're going to give it to one person. Like, that's, yeah. Let the purges begin. I feel like Clive Palmer would outsource. all his powers of assassination to China or something. Don't you think... Or worse, still, Tucker Carlson. Yeah, yeah.

I feel like... Ben Robert Smith, we need... Ben Robert Smith heading up the judiciary. Yep. Rounding people up, taking names. No! Democracy's done, Charles. No. We don't need to worry about it anymore.

No. No. I've worked out somebody even better. Because he's already got experienced being a dictator, dictator Dan. And he's not even doing anything anymore. No, he's got the... time.

Draft Daniel Andrews. Dictator Dan. Governor General and Prime Minister. Yeah. And president as well. Yeah. We don't have a president yet, but probably Donald Trump would prefer it if we did. And anyone, first day of his rule, anyone who goes out the five-kilometer zone, murdered.

As an official act. Murdered. Murder. Yeah. Victoria Police, they've always been tricky. Yeah, they've always been tricky. It's perfect. So on this day, democracy isn't the same as it was at the start of the week.

But on the bright side, all we have to do is lean in, lock up everybody. And we'll have peace in our time under the rule of, well, dictator Dan Andrews, and his one man in police force, Ben Roberts Smith. I love it. I love it. Charles, I don't think we should keep doing this podcast. Well, no, I'm thinking that, you know, you've got to shift with the wins, Dom. I think this should become a sort of, this should become a sort of mouthpiece, like a pravda.

Oh, the official state order? Yeah, yeah. I like it. I think just for our own safety, I think that might be a good shift in our... It's not so much satire as sort of like hearty support of our leadership. It's not political satire. It's enthusiastic agreement. Yeah.

And we won't point out the shortcomings. No, I'll go ahead. No. We'll point out the shortcomings of the critics of the government. Well, yeah, exactly. Let's turn our sights on independent journalists. They're the real troublemakers. They are, they are.

Good, all right. Well, we've found a new direction. I'm glad you didn't go away, Charles. Yeah. Long live King Trump. And look, it's not going to be King Albo. I think that's pretty clear. But whoever runs Australia, when this is all over,

dictator Dan, I've always admired your work. Oh, yeah. He's great. Yep. I'm going to go buy a North Face puffer jacket. Our gears from Road. We're part of the Oconiclass Network. I may be here tomorrow.

I probably will be, really. I think the borders are probably going to be closed. Vivala, revolutionion. There yeah.