The Problem With Jon Stewart - All the President’s Tools

Episode Date: July 24, 2025

As Trump's pressure campaigns target universities, media outlets, and private companies, Jon is joined by former US Attorney Preet Bharara, host of "Stay Tuned with Preet," and Dan Pfeiffer, co-host of "Pod Save America" and author of "Message Box." Together, they examine the tools available to presidents to coerce independent institutions, explore the loopholes in our democratic guardrails that enable such pressure, and consider whether a future Democratic administration could—or should—repair the vulnerabilities Trump is exploiting or use them for its own purposes. This podcast episode is brought to you by: SMALLS - For a limited time only, get 60% off your first order PLUS free shipping when you head to https://Smalls.com/tws. MINT MOBILE - New customers get a 3-months Unlimited wireless plan for just $15 a month when you go to https://www.mintmobile.com/TWS. Follow The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart on social media for more:  > YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@weeklyshowpodcast > Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/weeklyshowpodcast> TikTok: https://tiktok.com/@weeklyshowpodcast  > X: https://x.com/weeklyshowpod   > BlueSky: https://bsky.app/profile/theweeklyshowpodcast.com Host/Executive Producer – Jon Stewart Executive Producer – James Dixon Executive Producer – Chris McShane Executive Producer – Caity Gray Lead Producer – Lauren Walker Producer – Brittany Mehmedovic  Video Editor & Engineer – Rob Vitolo Audio Editor & Engineer – Nicole Boyce Researcher & Associate Producer – Gillian Spear Music by Hansdle Hsu Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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on your cashed admissible at Canadian Tire, sport-exper, and the equiper. The conditions apply, visit avionrewardewards.com, bar-obliq, FR, bar-Oblick, Triangle for more of detail. everybody welcome to the weekly show it is july 23rd on a wednesday it's coming out on a thursday and

let me just begin with what a fucking week uh this this i'm i can't even get into the uh late show daily show of it all uh watch stevens from monday watch hours from monday i think you'll get a sense of of of how we're feeling and and just how ten you is this moment oddly enough uh the episode today is about levers of power and coercion from the government and how they use their power to manipulate and to get what they want and to force people and to the authoritarian tendencies. And it's hard to even focus on it with, I mean, every day now is a new. There was another Epstein drop box, you know, your iPhone bringing out memories of us. there's another it's them it's epstein and trump at a wedding now there's all these photos it's

them dancing there's you know video of them getting matching tattoos and eating spaghetti like lady in the tramp like their relationship the the fucking weirdness of it all and god thank god social media wasn't around in those times we'd be we'd be watching on a lot loop on CNN and MSNBC the the TikToks that Epstein and Trump make in Cabo with beauty pageant contestants. Like, they very clearly dug each other in a deep, Starsky and Hutch kind of a way until whatever happened. And all his attempts at, you know, as each new video and photo drop comes out, he gets more unhinted. there should be firing squads for NPR hosts.

You know, he's just losing his fucking mind. And there's nothing that can distract from any of this unless Hunter Biden decides to go out and drop a three-hour mixtape of his nuttiness, which is what he did, the gift that gives him giving, which he said. He goes, oh, my dad had a bad debate, but he was on Ambien. And I'm like, that doesn't make it better, dude. Like, it calls into question the decision making of the whole team. Dad, you got the most important night of your life.

You got to be sharp. Here's a couple of quailudes to take the edge off so that you're ready to really rock that fucking thing. And he goes, what was the thing he said? He said something crazy. He goes, oh, he was talking about the deportations and how angry is about him. He goes, if I'm president, in two or three or whatever years, I'm going to call them up and go, I'm invading you unless you give those people back. And I'm just like, Hunter, dig the hypothetical. But I don't think it's going to be

a worry for you. That's going to be the thing that happens. So, but the main thing is still the main thing. I mean, Donald Trump using every arm of the federal government to intimidate and bully and and push things in his direction and the general compliance that appears to be at the root of all of his power, this fight against him through all legal and ethical means, has to be, has to be turned up, as they would say on spinal tap, to 11. All of these institutions have to fight back. To get to that conversation, actually I think our guests today are going to be incredible. apropos to discuss what that sort of coercion looked like in the past, how it has changed, what are the various things. So let's get to them now.

First of all, I'm delighted to welcome our guests for the program today. Preet Barra, who is the former U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, a podcast host, stay tuned with Preet. He was appointed by Obama in 2009. He was fired by one Donald Trump in 2017. We've got Dan Pfeiffer co-host of Potsay of America. He's an author. He's got Message Box, which is a newsletter about political strategy. And he was a senior advisor to Obama for strategy and communications, 2013 to 2015. Gentlemen, welcome to the podcast. Good to be here.

Thanks for having us. I am excited to talk about, I feel like the two of you represent good insight into this world of political retribution, how presidents use the leverage of their office and the varieties of, let's call them for the time being independent agencies that exist, or formally independent agencies that exist within the executive, how is that discussed? Dan, I think you've probably got a really good sense of how that's discussed behind the scenes. Pre, I think you've got probably a really good sense of how those wishes are executed and what are the guardrails that exist around there. So I guess I want to start with, Dan, you've been in these meetings in the Oval Office.

How explicit are presidents about their wishes to, I don't want to use the word punish, but exert influence on the institutions that may think, they don't care for whether it be the press or conservative or liberal institutions. What are those conversations like? Well, I mean, you're very careful, right? Because prior to Trump, there was a real set of guardrails that even if you had the worst instincts, if you wanted to exert influence, you wouldn't exert retribution, there were a set of things that would prevent you from doing that, right?

One is just a general good faith belief in democracy and the rule of law. Does that ever come up in the office to people go like, hey, man. I don't know if this is good for democracy. We've got a good faith, respect. Well, I think it's just, it was for a long time, naturally assumed, no more. But then the other thing is the agencies really were independent. Like I just can't emphasize this enough that they take the Department of Justice, where Pete knows a lot about, is as a person who had a political portfolio in the White House,

I was never allowed to be in communication with anyone. in the Department of Justice on any sort of law enforcement matter. I would learn. Not allowed. Not allowed, right? The only people in the White House who could talk to the Department of Justice on a law enforcement matter was the White House counsel. And they were usually on the receiving end of information.

Like, I would find out, I was in charge of the president's communications for six years, I would find out about a major Department of Justice announcement five minutes before it happened. And that, sometimes that was good news, like an arrest, terrorist plot foiled, you know, a settlement in a, you know, some sort of large consumer litigation, something like that. And sometimes it was like really bad news, like the appointment of a special counsel to look into a leak investigation. But you would find out five minutes before. And that was a line that no one, everyone believe you should never cross.

Right. The president believed it. It did. It did. And did. And pre, maybe you can speak to this because I remember, and this is in the Bush years, you know, they had guys like Jack Goldschmidt who would be working on. briefs that would allow them to do the things that they wanted to do. Clearly, there were

dictates, and I imagine the Obama administration did it too, to their Justice Department, where they would get their lawyers to try and draw up justifications for political moves that they wanted to do. Is it your understanding that that's how that works? Yeah, I mean, it depends on what the issue is and was. I'm not sure it was Jack Goldsmith, but you know, you have an office of legal counsel within the Department of Justice that writes opinions on what is or is not lawful, advisable, whatever. There were the so-called famous notorious torture memos that were written by John U. and others in the Bush administration.

And then there are people who will say, just to be fair, on the other side of the coin, that, you know, when Barack Obama, President Obama decided to engage in drone strikes against an American citizen who had turned into a terrorist, was that really justify, justifiable or not, presidents rely on those kinds of things. But just further to what Dan was saying about the allowance of political figures to talk to folks in the Justice Department, there were guidelines about that.

And when we say before Trump, it was different, it wasn't different all the way back to the beginning of the republic. It was different going back to Nixon. There was a guy named Nixon. I'm not familiar. Who invented, who invented. You're talking about Mojo Nixon? Look, it's always left to the immigrants.

To teach the people who have been here longer about their political history. Sure. And so a lot of these guidelines that Dan is talking about came into existence because of Nixon's overreach and because of Nixon's unlawful activities and the unlawful activities of the people around him, there were serious guidelines with respect to what a Justice Department official could or could not take in terms of a call from a political official. Those are not there anymore. They're gone.

Another thing that we may get to just to put a point on it is, as you mentioned, I was the U.S. Attorney in the Southern District for a long time. Hired a lot of people there. One of the people I hired into that office was a very, very able lawyer, exemplary assistant U.S. attorney named Maureen Comey. She shares a last name with the former FBI director, someone who the President of the United States despises with a white-hot passion. I believe that her firing was unlawful and remains unlawful because she has civil service. Unlawful because the executive is not allowed to exercise hiring and firing over the district attorney's offices? Why unlawful? The president of the United States has absolute ability, as he did in my case, to fire me, to fire cabinet officials, to fire political appointees. We have civil service protections. And you can like them or not like them, but they've existed for a long time. The Trump folks like to call that the deep state. They have their own deep state.

and you could repeal those laws if you want, but the interesting thing about the firing of Maureen Comey, which I believe happened because her last name is Comey. Sure. And not because of some dereliction of duty with respect to Jeffrey Epstein or anyone else. The only justification they gave was Article 2. Article 2 is the article that relates to the presidential...

Well, that's the justification for everything. For everything, Article 2. That means you can do anything you want no matter what. I hope that she takes legal action. But the idea that you can reach into, you know, far-flung bureaucracies and pinpoint individuals, notwithstanding legal protections and process that's accorded to them, because you don't like their name or because you don't like their father, or because you got pressure from the right, the hard right folks who say fire this person is not right.

Well, so when you got fired, when you got fired, because you're in the same office. And, but I was a political appointee confirmed by the Senate. I was totally subject to being fired at will. So political appointees are at will. Totally. Service employees have to follow certain procedures. And if those procedures aren't followed, then that is unlawful. Yeah. Believe me, there's some people I may have wanted to fire. It was a U.S. attorney. But I observe what the legal parameters were. And you can't do that without process. But this gets us into this weird cycle. And this is the thing that I want to talk about.

So, Dan, you're in the office and the president of the United States decides, I'm not crazy about the way this one federal prosecutor's office is running things. I would like to get rid of these two particular federal prosecutors. They are not political appointees, but I would like to do that. Isn't there a process where they say, great, let me talk to our counsel, see if they can draw up justifications? Another, isn't this a bit of an oraboros that we're talking about? You know, we all want to talk about what the guardrails exist here. But isn't the United States bureaucracy complex enough that you can basically justify loopholes in almost any process to do whatever it is that you want to do? And isn't that how presidents often accomplish that?

Is that your experience, Dan? Well, I think it goes to motivation matters a lot here. Right. So what is the reason why you're doing? It's like the way this conversation would go in the White House, if when I was there at least is the White House counsel would, be sitting on the couch in the Oval Office. Two seats ever for me, and they would say, you can't do that. Talk about the couch, pillows on the couch.

What do we, is it tastefully appointed? Are there feet up on the Ottoman? What do we deal on it? Now I think the couch may be fully gold in the White House, but it was a, I think was a nice stripe when I worked there. Do we have dishes with M&Ms and nuts that are sitting on the table? Does J.D. Vance have access to that couch now? Settle down.

Very on brand for Obama. It was a bowl of apples in the Oval Office. Oh, okay. I don't think Michelle Obama was letting us put M&Ms in the, all right. All right. Get America moving. But the White House counsel would say, you can't do that and here's why. And the president could theoretically, like I was never part of any conversation. We wanted to fire random prosecutors in the middle offices.

That wasn't a thing you worried about. He would say, well, what about this? And then the lawyer would push back and say, and even if you could justify, you could find a way to justify some sort of reason. You could create some cause for said firing or whatever else. there would be concern about blowback for doing it, right? But that's political, political or legal blowback? Both, both, right?

So you, like, the test in any, the president has all this power until a court says you don't have it anymore. And so are you going to do this? You're going to try to fire these two people. They're going to take all this political blowback from the senators from said, you know, who are from that district where these prosecutors are from. And then is a court going to stop you? So you took the blowback for firing them.

But then a court says they had to have to go back to work on Monday. And so you have gotten all the downside and none of the upside. So it's a cost-benefit analysis. Yeah. Look, folks, I don't know where you're getting your comfort during these difficult times. But I'm telling you, man, the good comfort is this, cuddling up on the couch with your cat. Now, I don't have a cat, but it does sound pretty nice right now. I have had cats.

And they will, contrary to their reputation, cuddle you pretty hard. It's a pretty swell afternoon respite. But this podcast is sponsored by Smalls. Smalls cat food is protein-packed recipes made with preservative-free ingredients you'd find in your fridge. And it's delivered right to your door. That's why Cats.com named Smalls, their best overall cat food. Cats.com. That's where cats go when they're looking for information.

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My cat was always so-so with her usual food, but she is very enthusiastic about smalls. Her breath is much better. And she poops much less frequently, and it does not smell disgusting like it used to. As someone who had cats, Elizabeth C. I feel you so deeply. I had the litter box in the closet where I kept my clothes. I'm not smart. What are you waiting for? Give your cat the food they deserve for a limited time only

because you are a weekly show listener. You get 60% off your first Smalls order plus free shipping when you had to Smalls.com backslash TWS.S. That's 60% off when you had to Smalls.com backslash TWS. Plus free shipping. Again, smalls.com backslash TWS. But like Preet, I'll give you an example of what I'm talking about. Isn't there something that's a bit akin to doctor shopping for pills with lawyer shopping? That, and I'll use the example of the election in 2020, you know, the White House counsel sits with President Trump and says, yeah, you lost and you're not allowed to go through and get that. and then he says, is there another lawyer that can get me a justification for why we can challenge?

You know, isn't that a process that they all go through to lawyer shop to finally get to somebody who will say, actually, the vice president can just deny the certification and throw this whole thing into the House of Representatives? Yeah, look, I'm going back to that guy Nixon again. Right. He kept trying to get somebody to do the dirty deed of firing a top official. You're talking about John Mitchell when he was going in? Yeah. Yeah.

And they either do it or they got fired. Now, that was sufficient blowback politically and legally that, you know, he was undone and he had to leave office. And we established all these guardrails in place of that. Companies do it too. You want to do a thing. It's on the line. Or maybe it's over the line and you just want someone to justify it for you. It's not a new thing in American law or American politics or American business.

But there are degrees. There are degrees of this. Right, right. So we're talking about degrees of this. I think so. And look, I'll give you another example of something, just going back to my expertise. In the last couple of days, not everyone may be following this, there was, here's a woman, a personal lawyer to Donald Trump who, I believe, completely and utterly unqualified. You're talking about Emil, Emil, Boeve. Well, I'm actually talking about Alina Habo. We can talk about him in a moment. Okay, okay. I'm sorry. It's a long list. There are a lot of them. All right. Tell me about this one. Not Judge Jean-Penier-Piro, right? Yes, yes. No. Oh, my. my goodness. This is a three-hour show. The list goes on. Alina Habo was appointed to be the U.S. attorney in an interim basis in the District of New Jersey.

Significant district. Very important. I live here. Clean the whole place up. We're very law now. She could come after you. By operation of law, by statute, this is not a norm. By statute, her term ended at 120 days, which depending on how you count was either yesterday or will be the coming Friday. And under the statute, the judges in the district can decide. to appoint her or appoint someone else. And they didn't appoint her for, I think, clear reasons. And instead appointed her handpicked deputy, her number two. And you're like, okay, well, now we have

a legitimate district that's led by a legitimate person. You know what happened? They fired her. Pam Bondi, they fired the deputy who was handpicked by Alina Habba. So I don't know who becomes the United States attorney there. So that's not a norm. That's a law. And a similar thing happened in the Northern District of New York. The lead prosecutor in a very significant district, the judges didn't approve that person. So they designate under the law. So they have a runaround. They have a back end plan.

And they appointed him, I think, something like special counsel to the attorney general. And they don't have an actual U.S. attorney in the Northern District of New York. They have this guy who's the functional U.S. attorney in the Northern District of New York. So it's a pattern of behavior to put his own people anywhere no matter what the norms are. More importantly, no matter what the laws and statutes say, no matter what the judges say. So maybe the norm is partisan but competent. And this new norm is ideological and slightly insane. But Dan, I want to get to.

So like when we bring up, because I want to use the examples that we have in front of us with President Obama a little bit before we really move into Trump. Because I think there's a tendency here to think this is a brand new. Like you say, it's not a matter of degrees. This is brand new. So, Dan, they want to do a seemingly extrajudicial drone strike against somebody who is there. Or here's, you know what, maybe this is a better example, Dan. The IRS scandal that occurred during the Obama administration. So you have a situation where the IRS is allowing progressive, people with, you know, words like progressive or democratic, their organizations to pass through with the tax exempt status in a way that they are not allowing.

anything with the word Tea Party or conservative to pass through. So, and clearly to a point where it's not random. This is something that is occurring with purpose. How do you explain that? Is that a rogue bureaucrat within the IRS? Is that something that is discussed on a political level? How does that occur? Sure.

So in this situation, there's two important facts here. The first is this was a field office in Cincinnati with career bureaucrats that had never And deep state. I believe we call it deep state. The deep state, yes. And all the investigations showed there had never been contact between that office and anyone of any consequence in the Obama. So this was rogue. This really was rogue.

And then the second part is when you actually did the full investigation, there was a whole host of progressive terms. They were also flagging. And so it turned out to actually not be a, the scandal that people thought it actually was. Didn't that? I was, if I remember correctly, and I probably don't, because I'm old. It has been, it has been 11 years now, I think. Didn't they, but they, they paid millions of dollars in penalties. There was some, there was some, the IRS paid millions of dollars. Yes. There were there were, there were, there were, there were, there were, there, there, there, there, there, there, there, there, there, there, there, there, had a much wider thing. But either way, that it, like, the fear that someone could do that,

that is a very real fear. Like, this is, we get back to Nixon again. This is how you politicize the IRS. You have them audit your political opponents. This individual case was truly people no one had ever heard of working in an office in Cincinnati. And so that is like, it's not, that is like, that's the fear. Are those things discussed, Dan, in the office?

Like, does someone ever say, like, look, Trump is very clearly targeting tax exempt status for his enemy institutions. He's threatened it with Harvard. he's threatened their accreditation. He's threatened tax exempt status for a wide variety of organizations that that might oppose him. Is that ever something that is, what are the levers of coercion that are discussed in the Oval Office? And I don't mean, I mean the Oval Office metaphorically. Yeah, those sorts of things never discussed, right?

That is a bright red Watergate style red line. In a pre-Trump area, if you were thinking about the things that can end your presidency, it would be using the IRS to look at, to go audit, regulate, go after your political opponents. Like never once discussed, never thought of. If you brought it up in a meeting, you would never be invited to a meeting back again. You probably would be walking out the White House holding all of your possessions later that day. But they do use, I mean, they do go through, you know, Obama used the, I think it was the 1917 espionage act where they would go after, you know, they prosecuted more.

journalists under the espionage act. This is a great example of the problem that this is a great example of the independence of the Department of Justice right. These are a bunch of Bush era investigations. Most of them were in Bush era investigation. Not entirely. They were then continued. Nothing drove Barack Obama more insane than having to take all the blowback for these investigations. Like drove safe. But he could not. When he got the records from the AP for journal. He never saw him. Right. Like they never made it to the White House. And he never requested those records. No, never, never.

And nobody in the Oval Office ever said, no. There is a leak here and we need to investigate this leak. No, no. There's never and it would have, and I promise you if you had pulled the president's top advisors, they all would have just wanted these investigations to stop. Because we're all the ones, like they, in my office when I was the White House communication director, every reporter could walk in my office without just walk right in. and the amount of people who came in, they're very upset, rightfully upset about these investigations.

The way it did tremendous damage to the president's relationship with the press to the use of him as a president who wanted to, you know, protect the press, be transparent. But these were decisions made by career prosecutors in the Department of Justice without any contact with anyone in the White House. Dan, I may be naive. Maybe. We'll see. It strikes me as, as that seems hard to believe that political blowback is swore. whirling around the executive about espionage prosecutions on someone like James Rosen, and they're getting records from AP, and the White House is just sitting passively saying,

dear God, there's just nothing I can do here other than just suck it up. I would say I didn't sit in national security meetings. I can imagine that there is great concern within parts of the national security community, the intelligence community about the leaks of highly sensitive intelligence. I don't know what those conversations were like, but I can promise you from a political perspective. And for President Obama's perspective, this was a, and even talked about it afterwards about how, about these, the problems with these investigations and took steps in his second term to put guidance in place that would, that would protect journalists in these situations.

But even that, that's what I mean, like, that, that just strikes me as an incredibly passive executive in the way that Trump may be. But, Preet, what's your experience in that, you know, you're in the department of just. Is that in any way realistic that a president of status would not, if something is spiraling out of control within justice? Because they are, that is in the executive, that they wouldn't reach out through various channels and try and rectify this situation legally. It's hard to believe. It depends on what the thing is. So there's a range of things that the Department of Justice.

does or can do that a president would care about, right? And so at the one end of the spectrum that's totally legitimate, totally lawful, and I think no one would dispute, if crime rates are rising and the papers are reporting, we have a crime wave in these various cities, president of United States, whether it's Barack Obama, George Bush, or Donald Trump can call his attorney general and say, what are you doing? Can we surge prosecutors? Can we do some stuff? Can we change policies? can we enhance penalties? All of that is totally fair game and clear on the one end of the spectrum.

At the other end of the spectrum, a president of the United States calls up his attorney general or worse calls up, you know, the head of public corruption at the Southern District of New York and says, you know, I really hate Bill de Blasio. And I know you do too.

That MF's got to go. So can you help a brother out, and by the way, I'm the commander in chief and under Article 2, I can fire you? That's like probably the way, worst thing at the other, worse than the IRS, right? And in between, you have a lot of stuff, right? So if something is spiraling out of control and it can be, I think, assessed to be properly a policy issue, like what's the policy of the department on subpoenaing journalists?

Right. I think that's more legit. But if you call up and you say, listen. Well, that's why it's hard to believe that it's not a their best. Only subpoenaed the Wall Street Journal, but don't subpoena the New York Times. Then it's more like the other category I'm talking. about. So it's a judgment call, part of which is police not by statute or by judges, but by this other thing, blowback, which seems to be a little bit of a thing in the past, because blowback doesn't seem to matter to some people, including Donald Trump, so long as his MAGA base is in tow. But I guess, yeah, go ahead, Dan. I was going to say the thing I'd say about this is, in hindsight, given everything we've learned in the decade since, would there have been

so much blowback if the president, if Barack Obama had called Eric Holder and said, this is, this is, this is not worth it. You cannot subpoena journalists, stop these investigations. Would there have been huge blowback for that? Probably, I don't know, probably not. So clearly not. Trump is, Trump has gone much closer to the end of the spectrum. But the question is, like, here's why, like, and this is where lawyers are very cautious, particularly when they're advising presidents is, there's a slippery slope there. So one day it's don't subpoena James Rosen. The next day, don't subpoena this democratic donor who's under investigation, or this democratic politician who's under investigation,

or even worse than that, go subpoena this political opponent of ours. And so the lawyers are very careful about this slippery slow. If you care about these things. But it's hard to believe that the president himself wouldn't say these espionage investigations are unfairly targeting journalists, but I'm not going to call to find out because that's a pretty slippery slope for me.

And, you know, I hate Bill de Blasio. And I'm just going to use, I'm going to use DeBlasio for all that. But like in hindsight, should he have set that? That's a consensus position. Right. I guess, here's where I'm right. It's hard for me to believe that someone with the strength of a conviction that Barack Obama had, that he would sit back passively and watch something spiral.

I'll give you like just a stupid example. during the Obamacare rollout, my show did a like a little skit. We had Kathleen Sebelius. I remember this quite well. I was in the room of this app, but yes, yeah. Okay, so you remember. I have no recollection of it. Pre.

God bless you, you shouldn't. It's a tiny, it is a blip in the history, not just of this country, but in the human kind. Kathleen Sebelius came on, and my first question, I took out two laptops. And I gave her a laptop, and I had a laptop. and i said we're going to try two things uh i'm going to sit here and i'm going to try and download on lime wire every movie and song that has ever been written and on your computer you're going to try and log on to the obamacare website we're going to see who gets there first dumb bit but anyway that's sort of spiraled into kind of a long uh uh interview with subilius about if you believe that the

government has the opportunity to improve people's lives isn't job one kind of a technical competence i mean for god's sakes your your fundraising emails are 22nd century technology and yet this thing so anyway i get a call i can't remember how much later but it wasn't much later the president would like to talk to you in person and i have to go down to washington because you you The president of the United States calls you and says, hey, man, let's talk. And it was, I don't want to say terrifying because I didn't have the sense of Obama that, you know, that I would have with Trump. But it was intimidating. And you're standing in a room wearing a suit during the day, which for me as a stand-up comic is hive-inducing.

And you're, you know, you're in front of the Teddy Roosevelt picture, in front of the Coolidge, in front and you're surrounded by history and you go into the Oval Office and the President of the United States gives you shit and I'm not saying it's the same thing obviously in terms of but it is I can't look at it any other way than a form of intimidation or coercion now to his credit we got past it and like we had a much longer conversation that I thought was was fruitful. But Dan, isn't the point of that, in some respect, to get me to shut the fuck up? Well, I remember, the reason I remember that, even though it was, you know, what 12 years ago now is, I don't know how the president, I don't know, I mean, he's a big fan of yours. I don't remember

him watching the daily show on a daily basis, but. It was a tremendously hot show. Yes. It was a different air of television. Just turn it on. There it is, right? The apprentice, the daily show. Good old days. Sure. And he had two questions for me. One was, how do Kathleen Sebelius end up on your show?

And two, what was your phone number? I can answer the second one. The first one was a much harder question to get to the bottom of. All right, folks. It's summertime, clearly. And look, you want to have fun. You know what I'm talking about? You need a little bit of the cabbage to do that.

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C. MintMobile for details. All right. We're back. Dan. There's certainly no norm or historical precedent of a president not calls. a member of the media to talk to them. Yeah, yeah. And this all comes down to the question is, like,

I feel like we're sort of wrapped around the axle of these journals investigations. They're, like, incredibly serious. And in hindsight, in the real time, they were bad, they were wrong. The government should not do it. They should not have happened. Is there more the president could have done to stop them? I don't know. I know that there was, we took the idea that you don't tell the Department of Justice

how to, how to conduct investigations. Like, there is this idea as serious as these. are that the President of the States, in any investigation, telling them what to, telling the career prosecutors whom they should subpoena or not subpoena an investigation is a very, very bad precedent, right? Could he maybe have said like a public statement, like, you know, no journalist should be subpoenaed, which would have the same effect as the, as the private phone call, but would it be maybe more transparent? I don't know. What's your, what's your understanding of the reality of this?

Yeah, look, every president. wants good press, every president wants things to go his way. But again, there are degrees of this. Look, to stick up for Barack Obama for a moment in one regard. This is not, I'm only making the point that there are. No, no. Look, Lyndon Johnson, look, I was picking on Nixon. Lyndon Johnson was the master of putting the arm on people personally and otherwise.

As intimidating as it must have been to go to see Barack Obama, probably you're happy it was in LBJ. But, you know, all the U.S. attorneys were gathered early on in the Obama administration, the first term. And we had a photo op with the president. And we all went to the White House. We went to the one of the big rooms and waited there. And, you know, it sounds going to ask you guys for my phone number when you guys were in there. Oh, he had it. And he said a simple thing, right? And Patrick Fitzgerald was still, you know, one of the U.S. attorneys at the time. And And he says, you know, I hired all of you, but you don't work for me. You work for the American people and you act independently.

And that seemed quaint, whatever, until Trump shows up, Trump, from the White House podium, from the Oval Office on a regular basis, pronounces the guilt of political adversaries every freaking day. Sure. And- But here's the thing. So now, I think their view is, and this gets us now. to this new administration. Their view is there is no independence in the executive branch from the executive. But that is an opinion that is lawyer shopped. Yeah. That gets us back to

Goldsmith and you and the unitary executive and this idea that the executive is based on solely the whims of one man. And the Supreme Court has amplified that by grahammed. granting immunity to the executive. So, Preet, when we talk about these guardrails, haven't they been removed not just by Trump, but by the Department of Justice itself and the Supreme Court? No, I think you have a very good argument in favor of that position. You know, the only thing I guess we can be thankful for at least, and I mean this semi-ironically, is that they feel the need to at least paper a legal justice.

justification for it. Right. It's one of those things where you're like, no, I've got a Xanax prescription. Sure. Hold on. It's a tiny, it's a tiny, so for example, right? Right. In the case of the deportation of Mr. Obrego Garcia, right, to El Salvador, everyone

was talking about constitutional crisis. And the Supreme Court and other court said facilitate his return. And they like bullshitted around about what facilitate means. We don't know what that means. We'll get him a plane ticket if he shows up, you know, in an Uber. Right. At the end of the day, they did bring him back. Now, they filed criminal charges against him, but they brought him back.

And I don't mean to put too much store on like these fine distinctions, but maybe I'm overly lawyering it. They still do feel the need to have some justification for it. I disagree with the justification, but there are scholars who think it's true. There are members of the Supreme Court who think that's a viable theory. I think both as a matter of law and also as a matter of, like, do you want to live in a country? put aside the Constitution and do you want to live in a country where the executive of the country, the President of the United States, can pick and choose which individuals in different states

should be prosecuted and investigated by the federal government? You don't want to live in a country like that. I don't. But that's pretty, unfortunately, that's a political question. Yeah. And what we're seeing is there are an awful lot of people who want to live in that country as long as the people he's picking. Are the other guys?

Are the other guys? exactly and dan to that point politically when you watch it happen now i mean he faces no political blowback you talked about the political blowback in the thing and you see it when he's in trouble with epstein what's the first thing he does arrest baroque obama strip the accreditation as long as he's attacking the people his base hates they're fine with it and so when you see him doing what he's doing at at Harvard right what does what what recourse do they have that then to comply what what else can they do to an executive like that well i mean they can they can fight back right which they're and have and have one in court like they're like they obviously trump has the courts on a side of

a supreme court that is in his favor but the courts they'll throw it to some guy in texas that'll just Right, right. Sure. Yeah, the forum shop or whatever else. Yeah, yeah. A lot of the things they have done have been stopped by the courts, right, held out by the courts. And so there are limits here. What I think has become clear in like Madaglacius, the center left writer has the one said

that democracy is just a bunch of norms in a trench coat, which is something that Trump has really, that Trump is really exploited. Yeah. Is that a lot of the things. I think it's flashing us in a subway right now. That's exactly. Yeah, that trench coat is long gone. Yeah.

has exploited is that a lot of things that prevented you from doing certain things were not law. They were just ways in which everyone had done things before and this belief that there would be political blowback from not just the other party, but your party from the public and in particular from the media if you did those things. The world has changed so much. The Republican Party is so loyal to Trump. The courts are, you know, favorable enough to him. the media, the sort of traditional political media has been minimized and it's influence enough

that it doesn't matter in the same way, that he can get away with a lot of things that previous presidents thought they could not get away with. But to say he's not facing political accountability is to judge it only in the context of his base, right? Because the fact of the matter is he does have the lowest approval ratings of any president at this point in their term since being elected. Right. I mean, he's almost had that his entire political career. And he lost, right, and he lost the House in 2018. He lost the White House in the Senate in 2020. Oh, they've got a strategy for that too, Dan.

I don't know if you've heard. They've just decided to go in and be like, what if we gave ourselves five more seats in Texas? Right. Which gets to a question for Democrats about how you use power in this environment, but how they respond to that. Boy, that's a great one. Pre.

What for you, as you watch, so is it the taking away of funding for things that he disagrees with. Is it the threatening of tax exempt status? Is it the threatening of prosecution? Is it what for you is the most egregious then unguardrailed action that the Trump administration takes that in your mind, you just go, I can't even go back to Nixon on this one. Yeah. This is just, you know. So you know what it is? Yeah. It's actually not in my wheelhouse. It's the pro-measels policy of this administration. Oh, that's interesting. The, the, I mean, when I think about my, so I care about democracy. This is what I talk about. I'm a member of the legal profession. I was the United States attorney. I'm a rule of law guy. And I fight those battles. And maybe it's

because I don't understand medicine. But when I think about my kids and my family members and other people, what bothers me the most is the ruination of health care and the false debunking of what vaccines can and cannot do. And when I see these, the thing that freaks me out the most as an American are the measles numbers. Now, on the other side of the coin, I'm worried about all of it. Right. The weird thing about the legal strategy of these guys

is they lose a lot. Right. And they will be losing a lot from a person. Well, is that pre-because, you know, look, you can go on cable news and you can say anything and you can talk, and you're seeing that now in their conspiracy theory stuff, is it all false, you know, where's Ray Epps?

You know, remember before they got in there, Ray Epps was the Fed that made the, J-Sixers storm the capital. Well, now you're the feds. You're the FBI. You're all those guys. Why isn't that guy being prosecuted for doing that? Because he didn't. Because it was all bullshit. And but is it because courts force you, and this is what I think the press should be doing more of, to litigate courts at their best, litigate the parameters of our shared reality. Yeah. And is that why they fail so much in there? I think they fail because sometimes they overreaching positions.

So, for example, in my personal experience, I work at a law firm. My law firm, Wilmer Hale, is one of the four law firms who decided not to bend at the knee and fought. The law firms who fought back on these executive orders

are four for four in D.C. courts and it's going to go up for appeal. What was the purpose? Explain to me a little bit because I've heard about what is the justification? And Dan, I don't know if there were law firms

when you were there with Obama in this situation, but what's the just of going after a law firm that represented people that you don't like? Well, I think as the courts found, there isn't one. Right. There isn't one. Oh, okay.

In the same way that it makes no logical, legal, or pragmatic sense to cut off, you know, science research funding at Harvard because of anti-Semitism. It's just going after your nemesis. In my firm's case, we had the temerity to have emble. employed Bob Mueller, former FBI director and special counsel, who was gone from the firm. In the case of Perkins Cooey, is that why they went? Yeah. Do they say specifically?

They make a reference directly to the employment of Robert Mueller in the executive order and another person who still remains at the firm. What? Right. And what is the penalty for employing someone like that? Well, apparently, it's the intended penalty is a business death penalty. Because what you have, the point I was going to make was, even though they lose a lot, they still accomplish a lot because they have a chilling effect on other people and

on other firms, some of whom are not as strong, but some of whom are just making proper businesses. Look, when they argue falsely that the Constitution says something different about birthright citizenship, they know that lots of people are not going to rely on that provision of the Constitution when they come to the United States anymore. When they do things like question FBI agents and have them fill out a questionnaire and say, Did you have anything to do with January 6th? Maybe that's lawful. Maybe it's not.

Maybe it's proper. Maybe it's not. But what it does is it tells every other FBI agent going forward for all time during this administration, hey, I got this order to follow this lead or to subpoena this witness or to talk to this guy. I now have to think, is that in any way related to Donald Trump or to Melania or to Donald Trump? Because my life or my livelihood could be affected by that.

It's a process by which it doesn't matter if they're right or right. wrong so much as having the chilling effect that they want to have. Right. That's not a great thing. I don't know how much there is to be able to do about it. It's the tentacles, though. Dan, is that your feeling as well? It's the it's the tentacles and the effect of their action much more so than the, it's

almost the collateral damage. Yeah. That's exactly right. That their actions. Dan, you think in that too? Yeah, I agree with that. There's a, it creates a chilling effect, right? Like, I'm sure, you know, we're all in media and I'm sure everyone has gotten a very

aggressive defamation training about how, because now they're suing everyone for everything. I don't recall that. And it's, yeah, I'd call your lawyer then, but it's like, you know, and because in the sense is that if someone is watching you and they are going to make, and even if they can't win the case, they can get your case either to discovery, they can just make you pay a bunch of money and lawyer fees that, you know, and for media, it's like, this is Trump's suing and Selser for a poll, an incorrect poll in an election he won, right? Right. That's the Iowa pollster who said that he was doing worse than he was actually doing.

But still winning. But still winning. Yeah, that's exactly right. And like that could have bankrupted the newspaper there if that, they eventually dropped that suit. And that affects everyone. Like it affects, like every company now has to make a decision. Like we have just been through this with media companies. Like, is it worth, you know, should you just settle and maybe pay a price for it or the course of your business or not? Like you have talked about this a lot. And it does. And it does. Because some people will stand up. Wilmore Hill stood up. You know, folks in the media have stood up, but that everyone stands up, right? And you have to do that. And then now everyone in society is doing that cost-benefit analysis

of is this worth the potential blowback that I am going to get if I become targeted? And it's, by the way, it's not just about the people that are on the air. And we saw that ABC paid 15. CBS, we just saw paid 15 for nothing just to get that merger through. And by the way, the FCC chairman,

getting back to our guardrails, shit posts like Colbert and CBA. Like the FCC chair, the guy who's responsible for this is just out there like, yeah, motherfucker. How's my ass taste? It's like, I miss that one. That one I missed. I'm obviously paraphrasing at some level. But not by that much, honestly.

But I will say this. And I don't know if it occurs this way in the legal profession, but to the media profession, right, there's the effect of the people that are on the air now. but I can tell you this. And by the way, it predates Trump. Ron DeSantis suing Disney. I've been in those meetings where with executives who have said to me like, look, man, we don't want to get on their radar. So there are a lot of things that will never be made,

that you will never know about, that were killed in the bed before they had a chance. because of this chilling effect. So the irony is, as Donald Trump famously said, I've brought back free speech. He's done the opposite. And I don't know if that's something that does your law firm now, are there pre-discussions about clients that won't get protection?

Not even the clients that you have now or have had in the past or people there. Are there people who won't get hired? Yeah, look, I think there are people who, both in businesses and law firms, and I think it's okay to say this. You know, what Donald Trump does, is he exposed as people who have courage and fight in them and integrity and character from the people who don't. Sometimes over a lot of money, sometimes over a little bit of money, sometimes over employment,

sometimes about ambitions that they want to achieve within the government or outside the government. Yeah, no, it's a big problem. But the way to get after it, with respect to these law firms who have these executive orders imposed on them, which are just complete legal garbage. I mean, of all the things we've been talking about, among the most garbage documents we've seen are the law firm documents. You're a layperson, and you immediately understood that to be true, is to win and win and win and win. And win in the Supreme Court, which I think would send a signal that there are some things

that are so egregious and so crazy and so nuts and so unlawful that even this Supreme court will say the same. I don't know if that's going to be true about other things as well. And the lesson of all this is, or one of the lessons of all this is, if a president chooses to exercise all of his discretionary authority and power in a maximal way, and Congress doesn't give a shit, and also endorses a unitary executive theory in part that helps the executive, and the judicial branch, co-ectoral branch of government, also endorses this ever-empowering and enlarging executive, we're all in trouble. It's trouble. Look, you know, the holidays are over. Let's face facts. Christmas gifts, you got crushed. Why? Why do you have to buy a favorite?

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that are deterring people from taking action. But are we in an unusual time because of the abdication? He has the House. He has the Senate. and because he has such control over the base, is this really, are we moving into a new phase of the country? Or in your mind, are we in just sort of this weird eye that, you know, won't occur again? A hundred-year storm or something.

That depends on whether Trumpism or whatever Trumpism is survives Donald Trump. The weird quandary is, just further what I was saying a second ago, there was this opinion by the Supreme Court on birthright citizenship, which wasn't actually about birthright citizenship, it was about this technical issue of nationwide injunctions. Yeah, yeah. Right. And Amy Coney Barrett declared correctly a principle of law, right, which is contrary to how we think about checks and balances and and co-cical branches of government separation of powers.

She said the judiciary does not have a general oversight role of the executive. That's true. But the problem is, and then. then she said, you know, the solution to an imperial presidency is not an imperial judiciary. Well, that's all nice and wonderful in the, on the Supreme Court. Right, in the abstract. In the afternoon, the ivory tower. Her position.

It's like it's not our, like, you got, you elected that crazy guy. Right. And that our problem, call Congress. You'll have to deal with it. Well, it was like she said, the solution to an imperial presidency is class action lawsuit, that I can, I can give you relief for an individual, but I can't, you know, this guy, I can let eat at the segregated counter, but I can't let everybody. I can't let everybody do it. Who, you know, Dan, you didn't have, you guys had a United Congress, Obama's first two years,

yes? You had the house. We did. Is the temptation there when you're in that position to, to do what what Trump has done to some extent? Or were the, was Democratic Congress not as compliant? that they were so far from compliant. It was a very different Democratic Party. I mean, you sort of think about who made up. No, that sounds about right. Right. I mean, part of that's the nature of Democrats.

Part of it's just what the Democratic Party looked like in 2009. Like, we had two senators from Montana. We had a senator from Alaska, two senators from Arkansas, right, who had very different constituencies. I mean, it was a Democratic. Joe Manchin. You had Joe Manchin. I mean, Joe Manchin was one of our two senators from West Virginia at one point.

Yeah. He and Joe Manchin actually of the way we think about Joe Manchin today, there were like 15 Joe Manchin. People to the right of Joe Manchin on issues who were the Democratic Party. And there was also the Senate in Congress itself viewed itself differently back then. It was a much more of an institutional actor. You know, it was the Democratic chairman of the Finance Committee who would not let Tom Dashel become the Secretary of Health and Human Services because of a tax problem. Yeah, that's right. How clean is that?

Like, it's insane now. It was actually, frankly, he didn't pay withholding taxes to a green card holder? How dare you, sir? You can not be in government. And so it was just you could not have gotten away with that. Like, there was, you would face blowback from your own party for doing things like that. Like, the parties have changed, particularly the Republican Party, is obviously much more ideological, ideologically coherent than it was back then. And certainly the Democratic Party was back then.

but that was not, even if we had wanted to do any of the things Trump just talked about, our party would rebel, some large portion of our party would rebel in two seconds. So let's talk about that. Trump is in some ways a white hat, or I shouldn't say white hat, but a black hat hacker where he goes in and he's exposing these strange holes in our democracy, one of which is emergency powers. You know, you go in, if you look through our 250 years, you can find an emergency power that allows you to do almost anything through the executive,

as long as you can withstand, I guess, the political pressure. He's using now tax-exempt status. He's using funding polls. He's using the legal system. Isn't there a reverse engineering that can be done and aren't Republicans in any way concerned that he is handing a blueprint? Look, do you think the federal government only spends on liberal issues?

is there no fear that a Democrat gets in there and goes, oh, no more block grants for Medicaid to red states that are going to buy volleyball stadiums in Mississippi, like, I'm pulling that. Oh, tax exemption for that. Do we really think that Fox News or the Federalist Society or any of these other places don't get some benefit from the federal government or wouldn't face some peril from the federal government. Isn't he handing a pretty devastating playbook to the other side at some level? How are they going to fight that? I think he's met Democrats, so he's relatively confident that they're not going to do the same things. So try to think about, try to think about the example.

Like, imagine, so what would it, how would it, like, let's say the Democrat wanted to follow that playbook. Sure. So like, so on day one, Fox is kicked out of the White House press poll, like not involved in anymore. They invite Ponsave America and they, you know, whoever else is now in there, right? Forget about that. How about they threaten their licenses? Right. Well, that's the next thing, right?

Right. They threaten the license. The, you know, at some point, you know, Fox is going to want to sell, may want to sell its TV business because of this probate case. Is it, how is a Democratic, would a Democratic FCC handle that? He would shit post them. Right. Right. Like, but I sometimes, I struggle to, like, I have a very comprehensive.

conflicted set of emotions here because on one hand, I think one of the reasons why Democrats are in this position is we have too often believed power is simply a means to a policy end. And Republicans believe power, particularly under Trump, is an end in of itself. Right. And then when you have it, you should look to nurture it, grow it, use it because you believe passionately in your policy goals and you can only execute them if you have power. And the Democrats should be much more aggressive. They're doing both, by the way. I mean, they're not just power for power sake. They're executing enormous changes. But they view those decisions as helping them maintain power too, right?

It's not, there is. I don't know, man. I don't see how, like, removing NIH funding from cancer research somehow helps them maintain power. Yeah, that's a fair point. But all the, the targeting of all these institutions, like weakening institutional opponents. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, making the, making the media bend a knee to Trump, right, all those things.

but at the same time like if a democrat comes in and does all those things are we just on a downward spiral where we are just a where we become Russia right where it's just like where we are a like we sort of live in an oligarchy like there is a real danger in that and so as a democrat how do you think if you care about democracy and you care about the rule of law how do you view your responsibility when you come in to, you know, you don't want to like naively cling to norms as you're headed towards the iceberg. Right. But like what is the way in which you can more aggressively utilize power? One thing I think Democrats could do if they had power would be to take some of these norms

that Trump has run over and turn them into laws, right? If we had to try to actually like reinstate some of the guardrails that existed only through voluntary compliance and making give them legal teeth. I'm not even sure that he complies with legal. I don't think Trump complies with legalty. Pre, do you think that would be an effective counter? I don't. It depends on what the thing is.

And some things you can, some norms you can't legislate. So, for example, some you can. And even those, by the way, that I was thinking of just a second ago, are at risk. So the norm was for almost two centuries in this country that a president would serve two terms. Right? That's better for the country. It's better for democracy. It's better for the rule of law and everything else.

Washington set the precedent. Then FDR comes along. He's like, fuck it. I'm running four times. Right. And he runs four times. And then you know what we did, we changed the law. And even that, like, you know, solid black and white print in the Constitution, can't run again.

He's got lawyers, forum shop lawyers, making arguments like they are with birthright citizenship. You know, there's a loophole. He can serve a third term. So, you know, the law is a blunt instrument. And if you have somebody who is completely aimed at, you know, moral, power hungry, forum shopping, who has all executive power and a weak judiciary and a weak legislature and is sometimes bending the knee press, it's hard for the law to curtail the worst instincts of that person, which I know sounds very pessimistic, but I think

it's true. I think it sounds very realistic. I mean, I think, and look, we're five, six months in, man. Yeah. Like, he went from, I'm going to deport the worst to the worst to, like, who's that valedictorian at that high school. Like, it's all eroding really quickly. I'm a naturalized citizen and I'm like, oh, you know, we're not that far away from,

you know, 24 months in. And I don't think this is an overstatement, depending on how things go, where a naturalized citizen in this country has to be worried about saying something that they will say invokes an emergency power to denaturalize that person and go back to some other country. What are the things Democrats can do? Because the Republicans right now are basically solidifying structural advantages that are given by the Constitution that sort of empowers rural states in a way that infuses them with more power than they might. Now, if he, you know, you get two senators in Wyoming, same as in New York. So it's population-wise, you know, there are already structural advantages to

right now the Republican Party. There's more red states than there are. blue states there may not be the people may be around the same but uh aren't there things that democrats could do let's say it's not punitive in terms of we're going to take away the tax exempt status from this university or we're going to do uh and by the way like all this shit about the liberal universities and they're just pumping out liberals and you're like everybody on the supreme court that's like a hardline conservative went to Yale or Harvard like what the fuck are they even talking about. But aren't there things that are structural that Democrats can do in the same way that, look, in North Carolina, what do they do? As soon as the governor's a Democrat,

they're like, oh, the governor doesn't have power anymore. That's too bad. Look, you have to have the votes. So I think the most important thing is to get one or you have to have an executive. Do you need the votes or do you need an executive? Well, it depends on what the answer, the new answer, the question is of the first lady in whose White House, Dan served. And that is when they go low, we go what? Dan, go what? Dan, is there a new answer to that?

Yeah. This is a general life practice that serving Wells. I don't contradict Michelle Obama. But does she have to say, would she have the same answer today? I don't think, I'll let her speak for herself. But I think there are, if we had units, if Democrats had the House, the Senate, and the White House, like, what are some things you could do that would expand power and sort of help rebalance the scales? Or that would insulate, insulate them from the coercion and expansion of power on the other side on democratically. Like, I'm not even talking about like, well, let's just jam 30 liberals on the Supreme Court.

I'm talking about ways to combat what we're seeing. now. Right. But there's a paradigm. The problem is, even if Democrats are not going to be as extreme in asserting executive power as Trump, they like executive power when they have the executive. And it would seem weirdly self-defeating to finally get the White House and now, you know, think charitably about the future against immediate self-interest and do things that are good for the country so that not only the next president, but that president who finally has power as a Democrat after Trump would curtail his own powers. I don't know. see how that's sort of possible in the laws of the political universe that we live in.

Right. Dan, does that make sense? Yeah. I mean, like, it is like where Trump is the, the current end state of a sort of inexorable rise in executive power, right? That's been going with every previous president, every president has had more than the last, in part because Congress has sort of abdicated all of their responsibilities for oversight.

The, like, it's the entire idea of impeachment is now mathematically impossible. Right. So if you do not care. Impeachment, by the way, like, I think that's one of the things that Trump did. You know, that was always held out as kind of the, you know, nuclear weapon, if you will, of accountability for an executive. By Trump being impeached twice, what it showed itself to be is just another paper thin political process that really had no, that had no, oh, he was impeached twice. it almost felt like he got a speeding ticket. Like, it seems that impeachment is now even no longer a guardrail of accountability within the executive. Yeah, because even like I remember, I remember a conversation with the White House staff and President Obama during the middle of the debt ceiling crisis when we were about to, the United States is going to be able to payable's bill.

We default on our bills, we huge crisis. And one of the, one of the options is ridiculous it sounds is for the Treasury to, mint a coin, declare it worth a trillion dollars and say we have money. I remember the op-ed by Krookman. Yes. And the, you know, so it's all there. And what would happen? And one of the views is what would happen if you did it? And the idea is that the Republican Congress would impeach President Obama. And you'd say, well, the Senate is, you're not going to get half the Democratic senators to vote to convict him, but he would forever have that black mark. And the view is that would cripple his presidency going forward. Right. And, but clearly that's not the case. In fact,

Trump's numbers went up during the course of his impeachment proceeding the first time. Well, Bill Clinton, too. I mean, when they tried to impeach Bill Clinton, I think Clinton was the first one where you saw impeachment as, oh, this is a bit of a kind of a pomp and circumstance process that doesn't really have teeth and mean anything. It happened a second time, right? Donald Trump's political fortunes were on the wane, as I understand it, until one inflection point, his indictment by the Manhattan DA. That's when his fortune started rising again.

And so not only did he have two impeachments that he got through, four indictments and one set of convictions on 34 counts. So, you know, we talked about Reagan being Teflon. In some ways, and not to bring it back to the measles, but it did immunize him. To some extent, if you've been impeached twice and you've been convicted of felonies and you're still walking around. Well, now you have a certain herd immunity with MAGA that allows you to act with impunity on almost, look, even this Epstein thing, he's out there. My ratings are up four or five points. This is awesome. Yeah. Yeah. The math doesn't actually show that, but I mean, still, I'm not suggesting that that's true. I'm just suggesting that that's the way he goes out. So would you guys advocate at least, though,

a close reading for the Democrats of what this type of executive manipulation could mean to at least protecting in some ways minority rights in this country or any of those other things that need protecting? Yeah, I think hardball should be that should be in the in the playbook for Democrats in a way that it hasn't been before. Not to break the law, not to do egregious things, not to be cruel, not to, you know, take away people's rights. But we have seen at least, you know, a version of a blueprint of asserting very significant executive power to get your own agenda done.

I mean, I wouldn't, you know, I wouldn't advocate and I would repudiate efforts to mimic his overreach in the many of the ways that he's done so. But there's a lot of distance between what Democrats seem to be doing now and have done in the past and what Trump is doing. And somewhere in between that, I think, is an ethical but hardball approach to politics. But of course, I'm not the political expert, Dan is. But yeah, I 100% agree with that, right? Like we, like Trump has set a model that we can follow about just an incredibly aggressive use. The levels of coercion, the levels of power that you can use.

I think the question like here, I think the test case for the Democratic president starting in 2029 is like like you can do all these things like oh I I wanted. Look at Dan's optimism. Did I read? Well, I mean, we got to live with some, we got to live with some hope here. You say 3029? Yeah. Yeah.

Some century. By 3029, I think we're good. Right, right, right. Like we should obviously be incredibly aggressive. If there is an agency that's not doing what should be doing, we should feel, we We should try to reshape it in the way Trump has. We should use power to build back aggressively the things that Trump has taken apart, like USAID, right? Like just aggressively do that, push forward.

Be willing to lose in court if you can get a, if you can legitimately believe that there is a ground from which you should do it. Like the thing Trump really did because he's lost a lot is he got caught trying on a lot of things by his supporters. Right. Even if he didn't succeed in him, it looked like he was trying to do things. And you'd much rather be seen doing something. stuff than not doing stuff. Yes, we can, I think, is their motto. Isn't that Trump's motto? Somebody's motto.

It's definitely not, it's definitely not C. C. C. Pueirae. Isn't there a reason that Rahm Emanuel is gaining some traction? Because he's a little bit of a bellicose Democrat? I don't know in this. I mean, I think it's probably very early for anybody to have a russ. I think where I put a little bit of faith and it's probably misplaced is that as, as, as,

As these, as the actions that he's taken kind of accumulate in their audacity, I do think there's going to come a moment as we get closer to a possible change in power that some Republican institutions law firms pre that you might know that might go, hey, you know, they might do this shit to us. And maybe we need to be allied in some ways. with those that have been, you know, maybe you have Claremont College or Liberty University going, you know what? I'm seeing how they're going to destroy Harvard. And we're close enough to a shift in power that I might want to throw my hat in allyship. That's the question for Democrats is

Trump is aggressively going after all the institutional opponents to conservatism, right? The media, universities, law firms, would Democrats do that to the institutional opponents to progressives, right? Conservative media. Like, is, would a Democratic FCC chairman? I would think at this point, you have to. That has to be on the table because. But what about, what about Liberty University, right? Like, no, that's what I'm saying.

So wouldn't they stand up and go, oh, they're going to turn this shit on us? Why wouldn't they? Why wouldn't? Dan's earlier answer, Dan's earlier answer, which was, which was, because they've met Democrats. Well, I mean, the question, like, they don't believe it. They don't believe that.

They don't believe we will do that. You don't think Democrats could elect a vindictive prick? I don't know. I mean, really? I already mentioned Rahm Emanuel. That's why I mentioned him. And you, you poo-pooed it one minute ago. I was not poop-poo?

I mentioned Rom-A-Manuel. You might have other vindictive dicks that he thinks could win. I would never poo-poo for God's sake. The kind of worry is that the emulation of Trump is not going to be sort of the pragmatic and, you know, Nietzschean grab for power, but the trolling. You know, I don't know what people think of Gavin Newsom. He's sort of trolling as opposed to, you know. But I'm saying you can learn he has left a roadmap.

Yeah. For coercion and levers of power that, you know, is not going to go away. Yeah. Republicans have not read that portion of Article 2 of the Constitution. That says what goes around comes around. Right. I believe that was Madison when they would make fun of his hype. But it's a different thing.

Guys, I can't thank you now. Very, very interesting conversation. Preet Barra, former U.S. Attorney, SDNY podcast. Stay tuned with Preet. Dan Fiverr co. Host, a Potsave American author about political strategy. Guys, thank you very much for joining us. Great to be here.

Thanks so much. Appreciate it. Thanks, John. Bye, guys. So I guess I guess what it comes down to, the takeaway from the whole thing is the Democrats need a vindictive dick. I love the fact that Prude is like, I don't know, Rahm Emanuel's kind of a vindictive dick. I think he could do it. Yeah, he had that name real quick.

Right? Right at the top of it. Just off the top of my head. But it did still struck me. Like we're running through all the ways that he is coercing every like liberal progressive or things that he deems liberal progressive. And then you're like, so Democrats get to this? Like, I don't know, man. That seems like, I don't know.

Like, wouldn't people be mad? It's just like, what? Or have you met a Democrat? I liked that line. Right. Yeah, the Republicans are so unafraid of us turning any of the shit on them. But imagine if they do, the Republicans will be shocked beyond belief. Right.

No, it will be, how dare you? At long last, have you no decency. They will take to, I mean, there is no more. center. Remember Mike Johnson just that we all have to get to the the root of this Epstein conspiracy. There has to be full transparency. A day later, I'm very, I'm okay with the. Meanwhile, the DOJ is saying, oh, yeah, we're going to, we're going to talk to Galane Maxwell. Who in their right mind doesn't think that they're just going to go to Galane Maxwell and go, here's what we need you to do to get a pardon? Or here's, you like steak?

You like lobster? You want to eat it every night? We can't pardon you right now because it would look too fucked up. Yeah. But we need you to come out and go, they don't even know each other. Yeah.

I mean, for Mike Johnson, morality and transparency is telling your son what porn you're watching. Starts there and ends there. Jay and spirit. Sounds like you could be the vindictive dick we're looking for. Yeah. They never said it couldn't be a she.

Oh. And that is the Democratic twist. They'll never see it coming. A lady dick. A lady vindictive dick. Magnificent. Well, it was, it was, I thought, a very fun conversation. Brittany, what are the kids, what are the listeners thinking for us this week?

All righty. I'm sure they were, yes. John. They would start with John. Did they actually use my name in them? John? Sometimes, yes. Oh, all right.

This one they did. Mr. S? Senior Stewart. Oh, my good. Why do you think Trump isn't suing Elon for tweeting that Trump is in the Epstein files? I cannot for the life of me think why Trump wouldn't sue Elon for Trump is in the Epstein files.

Trump is so clearly all over the Epstein files that, I mean. He's trying to get back at him in other ways, too, like trying to get an different contractor for their Golden Dome. No, they went in and they were like, we're going to get rid all those SpaceX contracts. And they went in there like, actually, we can't.

There's no one else that launch a satellite that we can't use NASA because we cut their funding to the point where they are, you know, a non-functioning organization. Like, we're gutting

the very government that they would give us options. That's a good point. Right. And who led that charge in some respect? It's almost like the guy that we have to give all our money to. You just blew my mind, young lady.

Although Elon has not like, you know, he knows that those contracts are up. I do think they have a little bit of a China, like mutually assured destruction. Like I think they know enough about each other. Yeah. But he's been awfully quiet lately, don't you think? No question, I think. Yeah. But he still got his lovely social media platform, which is mecha-hitlering all over people's timelines. So it's still a very positive, net positive for humanity. Really exciting stuff. What else they got?

Not starting with John this time. Nice. Given the current state of politics, could a book like profiles encourage even be written today? first of all it could absolutely be written i think the problem with books is not if they can be written is if anybody's going to read them and i have no idea what profiles yeah i mean and by the way and to think that profiles encourage written by jet we have a tendency to lion eyes and with glossy haze look back and john f kennedy wrote that book that was not cynical at all his father who had no designs on making the pt captain uh the president like it

It's all a little bit of cynical craftsmanship, all those fucking those books that people, you know, that's one of the first steps to launching the campaign is the hagiography of all kinds of other. So yeah, it could definitely be written. Would anyone read it? And perhaps turned into a hot prestige series on Hulu. Yeah. All right.

Well, this is all, this is all lovely. I got to tell you, this episode has lifted my stuff. spirits in ways that this has been a unpleasant week. Yeah, I really appreciated those silver linings as thin as they were that they offered. No, it was nice because you do realize with all the power that they have, like, we fight, we curse, we laugh, but they still are just like, yeah, I think we're going to pressure them enough to take these people off the air and that person, or we're going to pressure them enough that that person won't ever get a chance to get on air. Like, that shit's real.

Yeah. And, and. I mean, Pritz Silverlining was like, at least they still feel like they need to have a justification. It's nice to read the memo sometimes. The one I've been telling myself is it doesn't come from a place of strength. Oh. I kind of like that, Lauren.

By the way, that is true. Yeah. You know, every dictatorship, those movements are not based on how powerful. they think they are. It's how fragile they are. You know. And ultimately, they are. Look, the thing about the United States and that whole rule of law thing is it has a stability to it that allows our economic progress and our political progress and our power in the world. And if you erode that stability, you really actually erode the secret sauce of why this country has done so well over all this time. And that's the irony of his entire operation. He's, he's, he's,

making us vulnerable, not great. But a fine, fine episode, as always, lead producer Lauren Walker, producer Brittany Mehmedevic, video editor and engineer Rob Vitola, audio editor and engineer, Nicole Boyce, researcher and associate producer Jillian Speer, executive producers, Chris McShane, Katie Gray. I can't thank you guys enough.

You rocked it. See you next week. The weekly show with John Stewart is a Comedy Central podcast. It's produced by Paramount Audio and Bus Boy Production. podcasts