The Munk Debates Podcast - Munk Members-Only Pod: Mar-a-Lago Raid – Fall Politics

Episode Date: August 12, 2022

Munk Members Podcast provides listeners with a focused, half-hour masterclass on the big issues, events and trends driving the news and current events. The show features Janice Gross Stein, the founding director of the Munk School of Global Affairs and bestselling author, in conversation with Rudyard Griffiths, Chair and moderator of the Munk Debates. This week’s Munk Members Podcast explores two stories in the news. First, the raid by FBI agents of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate to allegedly confiscate highly sensitive government documents, including possible information related to America’s nuclear weapons. Where is this investigation likely to go next? Could Trump be criminally charged? What would this mean for American politics, political culture and citizens’ perceptions of the impartiality of the exercise of the rule of law? Second, as Canada wraps up its “summer of discontent,” how are the major political parties positioning themselves to respond to a souring national mood? What role will inflation and higher interest rates play in exacerbating political divisions and competing visions of how to guide the country through a period of heightened economic uncertainty? Finally, Janice and Rudyard are challenging listeners to help them come up with a new name for this podcast. Send your suggestions to [e-mail]. Thank you in advance for your suggestions! This podcast is a project of the Munk Debates, a Canadian charitable organization dedicated to fostering civil and substantive public dialogue. More information at www.munkdebates.com.Become a Munk Donor ($50 annually) to get 72-hour advanced access to the full length editions of Friday Focus and Munk Dialogues. Go to www.munkdebates.com to sign up. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hi, Monk podcast listeners. The following is a sample of the Monk members-only podcast. To access the full-length edition of this episode and all of our regular Monk members-only podcasts, go to our website, www.W. Monk Debates.com and register for membership. Membership is free, and it's available for you right now at www.munkdebates.com. Hope you enjoy the program. Hello, Monk listeners. Rudyard Griffith here, your host and moderator. Welcome to this. our Friday monk members only podcast. This is our regular program where we dig into the big issues and ideas in the news, hopefully leaving you with some new analysis and insights. My guest, as always on

these programs, is Janice Gross Stein. She's a founding director of the Monk School of Global Affairs, internationally renowned scholar and author, and she's all ours for the next 30 minutes. Janet, it's great to be in dialogue with you. Today, what are we Friday? The 12th, the 3rd. It is not good news when you get to mid-August because the time is running out. It really is. The nights are getting a little bit cooler. You will feel that hint of it's not fall, but the climate changing, the earth rotating on its axis.

Not good news. Yeah. Well, just some news about this podcast, Janice, after almost 75 episodes, you and I have decided, you know what, it's time. to get a name, a proper name for the Monk members podcast. I mean, monk members podcast, it's a name, but it's, I don't know. It's, it doesn't, I think, rise to what we're trying to do with the show and, you know, having some fun and creating something, hopefully, that will kind of serve our audience, not just for the balance of this year, but let's hopefully,

as long as you're up for it, Janus, you know, some time to come. So I wanted to kind of put a challenge out there to help our help janice and me come up with an idea for the name for this podcast. If we choose your idea, I don't know, Jess, I was thinking we could dedicate an episode to a cause or issue related to the person who chooses the winning, winning name. So if you have a favorite charity, you want us to, to plug for you. If you have an, um, an issue. Maybe it's women in Afghanistan. We'll do a segment on on that topic. So a little incentive here for you to put on your thinking hats to fire up your gray matter and come up with a proper name, a compelling name for the monk members only podcast. Jess, what do you think makes for a

good podcast name? Well, let me just say this to all our listeners in full disclosure here. Roger and I went to this for a half an hour. and then look at what we'd come up with. It said, our listeners will do better than we did. What makes a great name, it's catchy. The words in the can't be too long.

Totally. There has to be a kind of music to the name. It's got to sound and be fun. And I think it's got to reflect both what we cover and the way we do. the tone of the conversation. So that's really what we're looking for. We did not succeed the two of us and turn to you now for help and inspiration. Yeah. So I would just stretch that short is critical because it's got to fit on that little tile on the Apple podcast store. So we're talking not a lot of

real estate there. So my idea of a worthy Canadian initiative was resolutely objected to by jazz. I'm just kidding. That was the famous. joke about a New York Times, you know, story about the most exciting thing to come out of Canada. What about, what about three or four words, in that, about in that territory and not long, multi-salab, short, snapping. Let's do it. You can send your suggestions right now over the weekend to podcast at Monk Debates with an S-M-M-U-N-K, not monks like the people in the monastery, M-N-K, Debateswith-N-S.com.

again, podcast at monkdebates.com. And we'll, uh, I hope Janice get this new name in place for September as we, uh, kick off, uh, the fall. So thank you again, listeners for your ideas and suggestions. We really look forward to seeing what you come up with. Okay, let's get on with the show. Topic number one, Janice has to be, um, U.S. politics. Uh, we have just seen a insane week of, of, of action on the part of, uh, uh, the attorney general of the United States. Uh, sanctioned raid. It's clear that Garland, the AG, officially formally approved this raid on Trump's Florida residence, Mar-a-Lago documents, 14-odd boxes taken out by FBI agents, a search warrant, which will be revealed. It sounds like publicly, possibly as early as later,

this afternoon, Friday by a judge unsealed on the request of the AG. Janice, some suggestion, this is where I want to go to you first. Some suggestion here, rumors appearing in the press on Friday, that there may have been sensitive information related somehow to either America's nuclear arsenal or the nuclear arsenals of America's allies and or opponents. How damaging, how serious, if that proves out to be true, how damaging or serious would that be as a security breach and maybe for the future reputation and political prospects of Donald J. Trump? You know, the story, the Washington Post leak that you've just described, Roger, that there were documents relating to nuclear programs. And as you said, it doesn't say whose programs.

makes intuitive sense because Garland and the FBI just took a huge risk here. There would have to be something that they are really worried about in order for them to take the political risk that they have taken. And let me just say that top secret documents, which is what these documents would be classified at the very highest level of security. which went into detail about anybody's nuclear program, whether it's the United States, equally likely, for example, how Iran, how far advanced Iran is. That's an obvious one, although he took this when he left office in 2021, January 2021.

So to some extent, those are already outdated. but no intelligence service in the world would want to trust the United States if presidents can walk away from the White House and keep in a locker fundamentally. That's where it was. It wasn't properly secured. Keep these documents in a locker where they were vulnerable to theft. If this is the order of magnitude that they're worried about, I understand. I'll be honest.

I was very concerned about the rate. I think it's enormously politically risky for the Justice Department and for the FBI. But given the order of magnitude of what might be in that box, you don't have a choice. What do you think, Janice, would be his rationale if it is nuclear codes or, I don't know, you know, stock. stockpile inventories of different weapons capabilities. Why would he, why would we keep that information? I know we're trying to get him to Donald Trump's mind. It's an easy thing to do on the best of days, but is it kind of like bragging rights?

Like, oh, let me show you, you know, what, what Iran, you know, is doing or has. Or is there something maybe more sinister here, Janice? I don't know, blackmailing other governments or. I just, I don't, I, I don't understand the rationale because he would know that he's taking a real risk here that these documents, other Sandy Berger, General Petraeus, you can go through a long list of senior U.S. officials who have, you know, looked at the prospect of jail time. Yeah. Because these laws are enforced. Like, it's no, it's no joke. And let's just say that what Sandy Berger did or David Petraeus did, much less.

serious and walking off with documents. Now, we're speculating here, because the only person knows the answer to this is Donald Trump. He's not going to tell us for sure. And by the way, let's just backtrack for one minute. Garland asked the court to unseal the indictment, but Donald Trump has a chance to object. And he's going to make that decision in the next 24 to 5. 48 hours. He can object now. That puts him in a political box. How ironic. I believe the latest news this morning is he's not objecting. He's not objecting because he just couldn't object. Because after renting and

railing that there was no cause, he simply, I got to unbox them in really here. So why did he do this? short of these dark, sinister theories of conspiracy and blackmail and double dealing, which are running wild right now, these documents could be attached to some correspondence he had either internally in the U.S. government, and he just took the file or with others, and he may worry that he doesn't look great in some. of these conversations. Because what strikes me about Donald Trump when anything else? Vanity. There's just megal maniacal narcissism and vanity there. And I would think that what he took out of the files is anything that he thinks would shed a poor life on him and his behavior. So it's almost as if there's a cover letter that he has said to somebody,

And right underneath it is the file that is driving the FBI crazy right now in the Justice Department. It could be as simple as that. And I mean, why wouldn't he just have destroyed all this stuff? I mean, he's shown no interest in the past regarding, you know, the sanctity of court documents, the preservation of evidence, it seems, and as other civil and commercial disputes. So to what extent could he have, you know, just simply paper shredded all this? I mean, why? I mean, maybe there's bigger penalties, I'm sure, maybe destroying material.

But how would you even prove if you destroyed it if you shredded it all and then flushed it down a toilet in Mar-a-Lago? Well, first of all, let's just make absolutely clear. He's not preserving these for history. This is not somebody who's saving the documents to go into a library. which he will then open up and give public access to scholars and historians as other presidents have done. That's not Donald Trump. Look, these documents are part of its system. That's how people knew they were missing because they're usually ordered and you generally know.

Agencies are careful to identify documents and when something's gone. if they're looking, they know they're missing. So shredding them pretty risky. But more to the point, once there was a subpoena, which there was, there was a subpoena. He could have returned them. And frankly, there wouldn't have been much of a penalty because he had revealed them. Nobody in the Justice Department was looking for this fight with Donald Trump. Because, as I said, so politically risky for them. We saw in the first three or four days. Now, rage is the only way to describe it among his supporters, how easy it was to whip them up into a frenzy. You know, Garland is now the subject of death threat after death threat after death threat. So in a sense,

this politicized the Justice Department in an already crazily over. overheated political climate in the United States. So he could have given them back. And I can assure you, and his lawyers told him give them back. I'm sure they did. But there is a part of Trump, and we see this now in the January 6th year,

he said his advisors were telling him, don't do this, don't do this, don't do this. There's a part of him that's just he blocks out. advice that he doesn't want to hear. So he's put himself really at risk now that he's, who would have expected? I certainly did not. I would have thought if Donald Trump and the, and the Justice Department were going to go at each other. He would have been over the January 6th hearings. I never thought that this is the one that would have blown up this way. Well, let's just play it a little bit where this could possibly go from here. I mean, the Republicans have shown a remarkable

proclivity to kind of defining Donald Trump's deviancy down. So whether it's grabbing women in the genitals, whether it's untold lies to the public, arguably every indication of allegedly lying under oath in a variety of different circumstances, all of the public, arguably, every indication of, this, each step, each point in that kind of journey of mendacity, we've thought the GOP, the grand old party would at some moment cut its losses and run from Trump. They still haven't done it. I mean, if this is at the end of the day, something to do with America's nuclear weapons security, is that finally the bridge to.

too far. I mean, it's unfathomable to think that, I don't know, just another rationalization. Not simply by Donald Trump, we could expect that, but by senior figures in the U.S. Congress who have consistently and regularly normalized, truly bizarre, dangerous, and arguably deeply harmful behavior to American society, democracy, and the very institutions that the these people inhabit. I think my intuition here, Rudyard, if this has to do with nuclear weapons, I think that's a bridge too far for the Republican Party,

for the Republican Senate in particular. Why do I see that? The context in which this is taking place has changed so dramatically from the time the Trump left office. One, there's a hot war going on between Russia and Ukraine, until we just lived through a nerve-wracking week in the Straits of Taiwan. And there is a sober realization right now that the United States faces two adversaries at the same time.

Frankly, it's a nightmare for any military planner, for anybody who thinks about security. United States is really stretched. It's stocks of weapons depleted simply by helping Ukraine. Just imagine if it finds it's having a very hot situation in the Straits of Taiwan in the near future. So anything that will touch on core national security, I think that will be a step too far. certainly for the Republican Senate in Washington, for the GOP, which made up party activists, there will be always a core of them

that will justify whatever he does. But this to me could be the game changer in the Republic. Not grabbing women, not lying about your business affairs, not any of that, but if it comes to core national security issues, If you look at the bipartisan consensus in Washington right now, and there is one, on Russia as a threat and China as a strategic threat, there's no party division on that in Washington. And anything that would put U.S. security at risk, I think there's no way in Mitch McConnell. I could go along with that.

Does this ultimately, though, Janice, just to wrap this segment, does it have to lead to Merrick Garland and. and the Justice Department pursuing a criminal case in order to convict Trump as a felon to thereby bar him forever running from office. In other words, are we eventually just going to have to go to the very end of the zombie movie where you think you've killed the zombie and then the zombie comes back and grabs your ankle

and then you really have to drive the stake through its heart? I guess I'm maybe just so cynical about American politics today that I think it may have to go to that length. And then just to think of the divisions, the rancor, that that is going to create because there's going to be a large segment, all those, you're talking tens of millions of Americans, according to recent polling, who believe the last election was stolen, who would buy into in a moment a conspiracy theory that all this was fake. all these documents were planted. He's criminally charged. Wow. Talk about a setup for 2024. I think it's the zombie scenario here to me is that he's charged criminally and convicted

because there's no precedent in the United States for charging for, first of all, raiding the home of an ex-pres. for charging. Like, you know, Nixon voluntarily resigned when the party told him he crossed the line. And what this does, Roger, it takes the United States to a whole new place of danger, frankly. I think we can all remember how when Trump led the chant, lock her up, we said, oh, my goodness, that's not what happens in institutionalized democratic society. you don't turn on a candidate or a former president or a former anybody and resort to the criminal

justice system to deal with your opponents. Now, that could happen in Brazil. It could happen in Venezuela, for sure. And we could go around the world. I talk about countries in which this happens, but it doesn't happen in well-institutionalized democracies. And when it does happen, no matter how merit it is. This is a tough argument to make the one I'm making right now, frankly, and I'm getting a lot of pushback. But when this happens, when you criminalize former political leaders, no matter how merit it is, the political system, the fundamentals of your democratic system are put at risk in because it won't be the last time that this happens. You start using the judicial system as a weapon in an all-out political struggle, which is not what we do in democracies.

There are limits to political struggles in democracies. You'll lose an election. Yeah, lose it with grace. You're miserable. Yeah, go home and you say, what am I done with the last four years in my life? But you lose it because you know that either you or your successor can come back and do it all over again. for the next election in relative personal safety. But I think what's different, Janice, this time in the United States, is that literally the rule of law at some level has broken down so that you have a bad actor in the sense of Trump who is flaunting repeatedly the rule of law.

So you're right, it sets up a horrible dynamic where the state as the entity with the exclusive license to define and implement and enforce the rule of law is forced to act. I think I worry in a sense, that's where that's actually how bad things are in the U.S. right now, that the rule of law is being challenged now in ways that are entirely new and destabilizing. And each action causes a reaction. And the danger here, Janice, is some kind of spiral. I mean, there was a man, unfortunately, who was shot and killed by FBI agents after he stormed an FBI field office, I believe it was in Iowa, this last 24 hours.

So, you know, the beginning signs of real violence now spilling out as the rule of law, the legitimacy of the state is fractured in the minds of, again, millions of Americans. I think that's why we should all worry right there. because this is a sign of a deep, deep, deep problems in U.S. democracy. The last time it experienced something like this, people go back to the U.S. Civil War, which was fought over slavery. But that, in a sense, was a more noble fight than what we're experiencing now. This is, as you say, a bad actor.

And let's just backtrack for one minute to close a loop here right there. You know, many people have argued that Garland should charge Donald Trump as a result of January 6th insurrection. And that the January 6th committee was providing enough evidence. It's always harder, though, because you have to have a smoking gun. And there was a, to me, awful risk that he would be. charged and they would fail to get a conviction because that's possible. Here, this is a straight up and down case. There was a subpoena. He didn't hand over the documents. He ignored the subpoena. And if those documents contain anything related to core national security issues, a judge will

have no choice, frankly, but to convict. So you get the conviction that bars him from politics through frankly the craziest possible decision that he makes crazy, not to hand over the documents, but you set U.S. politics on fire, frankly. We're going to continue to follow this closely on this soon-to-be-named podcast, a reminder to our listeners to participate, help Janice and me figure out what we're going to call the Monk members' podcast come September. You can do that by sending us an email right now to podcast at MySank. Moncdebates.com. We'll take a short break when we come back.

A little recap on Canadian politics, a kind of summer of discontent that's winding up. What does it herald for the autumn, for the fall? What are we going to see in terms of the contours of political debates in Canada? We'll have a preview for that, a preview of that for you right after this short break. You've been listening to a sample of the Monk members-only podcast. To access the rest of the episode, consider becoming a member. membership is free and available at www monk debates.com. Once you've joined as a member, go to your membership profile to access the rest of this episode and all of our monk members podcast.

Thanks for listening.