Today, Explained - 47

Episode Date: January 20, 2025

The New Yorker’s Susan B. Glasser says Donald Trump’s second inauguration is very different from his first. Vox’s Ian Millhiser explains how the Supreme Court’s ruling on presidential immunity has changed executive power. This episode was produced by Hady Mawajdeh and Avishay Artsy, edited by Amina Al-Sadi, fact-checked by Laura Bullard, engineered by Andrea Kristinsdottir and Patrick Boyd, and hosted by Sean Rameswaram and Noel King. Transcript at vox.com/today-explained-podcast Support Today, Explained by becoming a Vox Member today: http://www.vox.com/members Salesmen on Independence Ave in Washington, DC hawking Confederate flags and flags celebrating the 47th president, Donald J. Trump, on his Inauguration Day 2025. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

It's Today Explained. I'm Newell King on the National Mall alongside... Hi, I'm Sean Rommersperm here in Washington, DC. It's Inauguration Day 2025 and Sean, it is cold! What do you see? I see negative 20-25 degrees. I see snow underfoot here on the grass we're standing on. I see the odd tourist taking a photo with a MAGA hat. I see the US Capitol. She's all dressed up. She's wearing US flags, ad hoc amphitheater. It looks ready for inauguration, but Noelle, I'm very concerned there seems to be no one here. We are among the very few people on the

National Mall at this time. Where is everybody? Not sure. We've got port-a-potties for everyone. Woodstock 99 levels of port levels of porta potti, but not enough people here to use them. I'm worried about the porta potties. Can we figure it out on today's show? Let's try and figure it out. What else are we doing? We're going to talk about how this year's inauguration is very, very different from

2016. Coming up. Calling all sellers, Salesforce is hiring account executives to join us on the cutting edge of technology. Here, innovation isn't a buzzword. It's a way of life. You'll be solving customer challenges faster with agents, winning with purpose, and showing the world what AI was meant to be. Let's create the agent-first future together. Head to salesforce.com slash careers to learn more. Hey, it's Andy Roddick and I'm not just a former tennis player. I am a tennis fan, a tennis nerd. I just can't stop watching it. I can't stop analyzing it. I can't stop talking about it to

anyone that will listen, which is why I started my podcast, Serve with Andy Roddick. Now a part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. On the show, we talk about everything from new up and coming players to the champions dominating the narrative to whatever's on my mind. This January is the Australian Open and you know I've got some thoughts. So tune in for our Australian Open coverage, find Serve wherever you get your podcasts or on our YouTube channel. Today explained, Noel King and I have made it through security to Constitution Avenue. People appear to be heading north, Noel.

We are heading with them. What's coming up on the show? Susan Glasser, reporter for The New Yorker, is going to tell us about how 2024 Avenue. People appear to be heading north, Noelle. We are heading with them. What's coming up on the show? Susan Glasser, reporter for The New Yorker, is going to tell us about how 2024 is very different from 2016. All right. You know, I've been to a lot of different inaugurations here in Washington, going back to Bill Clinton's. And, you know, 2016 was like nothing I've ever seen in Washington, D.C. It was almost like a sort of like an alien invasion. You know, the streets were deserted. Definitely

not the largest inauguration crowd ever in Washington. It was just nobody knew what to expect. It was Republicans as well as Democrats who not only didn't know what to expect, but had a profound sense of disruption and concern about it. Remember that Trump had been opposed by the vast majority of his own party in the Republican primaries in terms of the establishment types, the elected officials. And for many of those elected Republicans here in Washington, they viewed this correctly, I think, as a sort of a hostile takeover by an outsider of their own party. And remember the famous comment from George W. Bush, who was sitting on the platform and as well as former president for the Trump

first inauguration. He turned to Hillary Clinton, who was sitting next to him in her role as a former first lady, not in her role as the defeated opponent of Donald Trump. And he said to Hillary Clinton, that was some weird shit, referring to Donald Trump's famous American carnage inaugural address. This American carnage stops right here and stops right now. I was sitting there like just wow, couldn't believe it. George W. Bush says to me, well that was some weird shit.

Wow. So eight years ago, everything is eerie and what the heck is going to happen and the crowds are not out in the same way that you might expect. In 2025, who is coming out to support Donald Trump that wasn't there last time? Who is notable this year? Well, there is a big change. First of all, we can talk about the opposition to Trump or the lack thereof. And that's the other important point about 2016, right? Is that, you know, immediately a sort of resistance paradigm kicked in among Democrats, among

people who were upset and appalled and worried about Trump's victory. There was almost immediate sense that we, you know, we've got to resist this, we've got to stand up to this. There was the Women's March, as you'll recall, immediately after the Trump inauguration. More than a million Americans, women, men, children among them, sending a message to President Trump on the day after his inauguration, women leading marches across this country and really around the world, the size of the crowd, surprising even organizers. But this question...

It had huge participation here. And so there was a sense of action being taken, I would say. And you know, that this was something that, you know, could or would or would have to be gotten through for the next four years. And I think that that, for me, is the biggest difference now eight years later. Not only is there no such massive public kind of acts of resistance planned for the immediate aftermath of Trump's inauguration, you have Democrats still embroiled in a game of finger pointing and blame game

among themselves about why they lost the election. You have many business leaders and other types of people who would have established Republicans who would have considered Trump anathema back in 2016, who are not only openly supporting him but I think they've come to the conclusion that this is the new normal, not only of the Republican Party, but to a certain extent of the country, that Trumpism is not some one-off aberration, but an important factor for a long time to come in this country's politics. Tell us about the types of corporations.

So we hear that big business is getting behind Trump, at least symbolically, in this inauguration. What kinds of big business are we talking about and who represents them on Inauguration Day? Since Trump's election in November, you've seen many of America's corporate leaders, of many blue chip corporations, really, certainly ones that are not associated exclusively with Red America, chipping in, announcing $1 million contributions, either from the corporation or from the CEO personally or from both of them.

Mark Zuckerberg donated $1 million to Trump's inaugural committee. A day later, Jeff Bezos and OpenAI founder Sam Altman each donated a million bucks of their own. Other tech giants have too, including Google, Microsoft and Apple. Toyota joining other major auto companies like Ford and General Motors in making $1 million donation to President-elect Trump's inaugural fund. It's almost like it's a concerted message that's being sent to America's corporate elite, which is that if you don't pony up at least a million dollars for this inauguration, you do not have a seat

at the table in this future administration. You are an esteemed political reporter, so I don't know how much you've been paying attention to the cultural figures who are coming out for the inauguration, either to perform or celebrate. But do you have a sense, again, having seen this eight years ago, of who in the culture will be present and how that may differ from the way it was last time? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I certainly don't remember seeing, you know, the village people

reuniting to do, you know, covers of YMCA at inaugural halls eight years ago. That speaks again to the fact that eight years on, Trump has created almost a whole alternate, not just alternate facts, but a sort of an alternate MAGA celebrity universe in which he has his favorite music playlist at his rallies that are as readily identifiable, very quirky, very unique to him. It's not just the village people in YMCA, but he's playing opera hits at his rallies when he has gatherings at Mar-a-Lago and he's wielding the iPad himself to play the music. So, you know, there's a set of MAGA celebrities now to go along with a much more clearly defined MAGA political fan base that helped him win this election. Yeah, Carrie Underwood was the one who got me because Carrie Underwood is a popular country

singer who probably eight years ago would have benefited from not letting anyone know what her politics are and perhaps even not associating herself with someone like Donald Trump. Maybe next time I'll pray before he eats me. Yeah, I mean, of course, one of the other big political stories in my view in 2024 is the sort of normalizing and mainstreaming of Donald Trump.

And of course, he can take this too far. It's very important to note that, you know, this was not the overwhelming electoral victory or shift in the country that Trump and his supporters can often portray it as, right? In just a number sense, this was one of the closest presidential elections in the last hundred years. So, you know, that's important to note. But he's become just acceptable enough to a much larger chunk of the electorate than was the case in 2016. Let me ask you lastly, my co-host Sean and I are running around all day. You're going to be running around all day.

For people who don't live in Washington, D.C., but want to be able to take away something from what they see today, what do you urge people to keep an eye on? One of the things about Donald Trump is how much people tend to not really listen to what he's saying and to not really take him both seriously and literally. And I think if you listened to his inaugural address in 2016, you know, you really had some insight into the kind of disruption and the kind of negative political figure that Donald Trump would prove to be over the next four years. And this is a moment, I think, that should draw all of our scrutiny and understanding.

Who shows up? Which Donald Trump shows up? Susan Glasser of The New Yorker, thanks to her. Okay, thanks to the cold, I can't feel my hands. Noelle and I are on the parade route, Pennsylvania Avenue. It's about quarter to ten and it's like still more police than people. I don't think he's going to have a super populated parade, Noel. I'm worried. We have not found the crowd just yet.

Sean, what's coming up in the second half of the show? You'll be happy to hear our old friend Ian Millheiser is coming up. What did the Supreme Court do? They did something about six months ago, Noel, that might be very key to this Trump presidency. We're going to ask in all about it. Get groceries delivered across the GTA from real Canadian superstore with PC Express. Shop online for super prices and super savings. Try it today and get up to $75 in PC optimum points. Visit superstore.ca to get started.

["The First Day of Christmas"] Today's point is back. Noel, King, and I are at 7th and E, Northwest Washington, D.C. Noel, I think we're starting to figure out where these people are heading. We found the party, we found the crowd. It's not a huge crowd, but it's a crowd.

It's a crowd and they're going to Capitol One Arena. Noel, are the Wizards playing this afternoon? No Sean, there's an inauguration. It's happening in the arena? That's unprecedented. Of course, this president who's coming in, Noel, he loves to break with precedent. And the Supreme Court of ours might be setting him up to do a little bit more of that with their immunity decision from this past summer.

Remember summer, Noel? Anyway, Ian Millheiser is here to tell us all about it. Perfect. Perfect. The Supreme Court last July said that essentially Trump is allowed to commit crimes while he is president. It says that he is immune from prosecution for virtually any criminal act he commits using the powers of the presidency.

So there's going to be far fewer checks on Trump because there's a court that's extraordinarily sympathetic to him, and this court has already said to him that if he uses his office to engage in crimes, that's fine. Now, to be fair to the Supreme court of the United States, which I know you love being, they didn't say Donald Trump can commit crimes. They said the executive, the commander in chief, the president of the United States can commit crimes. In theory, in July of 2024, they were saying Joe Biden can go ahead and commit some crimes.

That's right. And then Joe Biden pardoned his son for committing crimes. No, that's unrelated. Sorry. What exactly did the Supreme Court say, Ian? Essentially, they divided the sorts of crimes that the president can commit into three boxes. So the first box is anything involving his constitutional authority as president. Okay. So like the power to veto, the power to pardon, anything that the constitution says that the president is allowed to do.

And there he basically has total immunity. That is a very scary box. A president would not be prohibited by statute from perjuring himself under oath about official matters, from corruptly altering, destroying, or concealing documents to prevent them from being used in an official proceeding, from suborning others to commit perjury,

from bribing witnesses or public officials. You know, one of the powers of the presidency is the commander-in-chief power. And, like, although the powers of the presidency is the commander in chief power. And like, although the dissent pointed out like, hey, wait a second, this opinion seems to say that Donald Trump could send the military to kill his enemies. If the president decides his rival is a corrupt person, and he orders the military or orders someone to assassinate him, is that within his official acts for which he can get immunity? It would depend on the hypothetical, but we can see that could well be an official act.

It could. The majority opinion did not repudiate that. Another power that the court said explicitly is one of the president's constitutional authorities is the ability to investigate and prosecute crimes, or investigate and prosecute wrongdoing. I think that the president could potentially order other agencies with investigative powers. So like, if he doesn't like something that I write or something that I say on Today Explained, he could potentially order the IRS to open a tax investigation into Vox Media,

and nothing can be done to him. By him. Um, so like things involving his official powers, if it fits within his constitutional powers, he has basically complete immunity and then if it fits with some other power that the president has, the court said he has what's called presumptive immunity. It's unlikely that anyone's going to bring a prosecution anyway because it would be such a pain to get over this, you know, this hurdle that the Supreme Court hasn't defined and then to win in a Supreme Court, which has already said that Donald Trump is allowed to do crimes.

Okay. So, essentially, the president has immunity to do the things that the Constitution says he can do, correct? Yes, and then he has pretty broad immunity as well for basically anything involving his presidential power. Okay. So like Congress passes a wall saying that the president has the power to decide what the tariffs should be. If like Donald Trump finds out that like

one of his enemies is importing bananas, and he imposes a bunch of tariffs on bananas in order to hurt this enemy, then like that would fall into that second box where it's not constitutional, but it's still a presidential power. And what the Supreme Court has said is that second box is it's not total nothing you can do immunity, but it basically is. It's what they call presumptive immunity. Okay, so total immunity on constitutional power, presumptive immunity on presidential power. Yeah. You said there are three boxes or buckets here. What's the third? The third bucket is any crime he commits not using the official powers of the presidency. Wow. And so like if you if he were to shoplift, if he were to cheat on his personal taxes,

maybe he wants to go like falsify some more records in order to cover up a payment he made to a porn star, like anything that he does that is a crime that you or I could commit, in theory, he could still be prosecuted for that. But there's two caveats to that. One is that the opinion also said that you can't use any evidence at trial that comes from things he did as president. So, like, if there's a meeting with a presidential aide where they're discussing a bunch of presidential stuff, and he also says, oh, by the way, I want you to help me cheat on my taxes you probably can't get

that presidential aid to testify against Donald Trump and then like the second caveat I'll just say to that point is the things that we're afraid of about Donald Trump aren't that he's going to commit normal crimes you know I mean I don't think that I'm gonna go out on the street and that Donald Trump is going to mug me what I'm afraid of and is that he is going to use the powers of the presidency to commit crimes. That is what makes him uniquely dangerous. And that is the area where the Supreme Court has said the president basically can do whatever the hell he wants. Jared Sussman Even in this era where we have a convicted felon becoming our president today, some of

the things you're saying probably sound outlandish to people, that Donald Trump is going to jail you, Ian Milhiser, personally, or perhaps order the military to execute his enemies. And yet, since this decision came down last summer, the president has been trying to use it in court, right? Can you tell us what's happened since July? Yeah, so two things have happened. First of all, I'll just say, I don't think it's very likely that the president is gonna personally try to jail me.

But he has said that he might try to jail someone like Liz Cheney, who's a former Republican congresswoman who spoke out against him. And Cheney was behind it. And so was Benny Thompson and everybody on that committee. For what they did, honestly, they should go to jail. I think Hillary is very weak. I think she's pathetic. I think she should be in jail for what she did with her emails

There's something wrong with Kamala And I just don't know what it is, but there is definitely something missing and you know what? Everybody knows it She should be impeached and prosecuted for her actions Where there are? Ambiguities is again She should be impeached and prosecuted for her actions. Where there are ambiguities is again what happens in that third bucket, what happens in that space where Trump is not using the powers of the presidency. So his actual conviction in New York, the specific crime he was convicted of there was falsifying business records in

his personal business in order to cover up the fact that he used his personal funds to pay hush money to a porn star before he was elected president. So nothing he did there has anything to do with, you know, his official actions as president. But during the trial, there were presidential aides who testified against him. I believe that there might have been some documents that were produced while he was president that were used against him. And he was just in the Supreme Court saying that his New York conviction should be thrown out because the whole trial was invalid because, you know, the presidential age testified and because there was evidence that was related to his presidency that was brought in at the

trial. The good news there is that five justices decided to basically kick the can down the road on that case. Like they didn't rule against Trump, they just said, we'll deal with this later. Four justices would have given him immunity. So like he already has four votes and he only needs five for the proposition that we should toss out his conviction for personal actions he took with his personal money using his personal business before he became president of the United States. Like that's how much sympathy for Donald Trump there is on this Supreme Court.

But does he have a point that some of this investigation involved the presidency? I mean, here's the thing. Like talking about this presidential immunity doctrine is a bit like asking like if your daughter's imaginary friend likes ice cream, you know, It's just something someone made up. The presidential immunity doctrine did not exist until July 1st of 2024.

It's just something that Sixth Republic of Justice has made up and they made it up recently. Why would the judiciary give the executive so much extra power? Doesn't the executive so much extra power? Doesn't the judiciary like its own power? Is it ceding power to the presidency? I mean, I think that the most sympathetic take I can offer on the Trump for United States decision is that there are six justices who have a very strong belief in a philosophy known as the theory

of the unitary executive, which says that essentially all powers that belong to the executive branch are situated to the president. Nothing can ever be done to limit the president's ability to exercise those powers. And so that explains why they said that the president is allowed to order the president's ability to exercise those powers. And so that explains why they said that the president is allowed to order the Justice Department to round up his enemies because Congress or the courts, if you believe in the unitary executive theory, aren't allowed to limit the president's control

over the prosecutorial process. I think it explains why they said, I mean, there's a whole bunch of language in their decision about, well if the president had to worry about being charged with the crime, he might do his job with less enthusiasm. He might be reluctant to do things because he'd be afraid of criminal charges. And I mean the response I have to that is that there were 46 other presidents, you know, and none of them committed crimes while in office or were,

or at least were charged with crimes while they were in office. Nixon is the one exception. And so, you know, it's just, it's a very poorly reasoned decision. And, you know, why did the Supreme Court say in the Dred Scott decision that black people are quote, beings of an inferior order? Why did they say in Korematsu that President Roosevelt was able to round up hundreds of thousands of Japanese Americans for the sin of having the wrong ancestor? Why did they say in Plessy v. Ferguson

that separate but equal is okay? Sometimes the justices reach decisions that I just cannot understand the value system behind it. I mean, I can tell you because I have studied this thing called the unitary executive what the theory is behind it, but I can't imagine how someone who has grown up in American schools and been taught American values can think that that decision is consistent with them. Ian Millheiser, Vox.com, Sean Romsfram and Noel King in line. In line with about 400 other people for the Capitol Arena, Sean.

We're going to see Kid Rock sing Ba-Wa-Tab-Ah. God bless America. He's going to do all the hits. Maybe we'll see Hany Mwagdi and Abhi Shai Artsy. They produced today's show. Maybe we'll see Amna Alsadi. Who edited? Maybe we'll see Laura Bol Alsadi. Who edited?

Maybe we'll see Laura Bowler? Laura Bowler? That's her up there! Oh my goodness, Andrea Christen's daughter, Patrick Boyd! The whole team's here! Four more years of Today Explained. Four more years.