59. Trump's War on Justice

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Hello and welcome to The Rest is Politics, U.S. I'm Katty Kay. And I'm Anthony Scaramucci. How's everybody? Good. We are, we're very excited because we're recording this live YouTube call-in event on Monday. And it's great to have our founding members along. You're calling in from everywhere. We're seeing people who are dialing in from Vienna, Austria, London, Warsaw, Madrid, Canada. We love our Canadians, even Switzerland. Love my compatriots there. So thanks for dialing in. If you've got questions, pop them in the chat. We'll keep an eye on those too and fold them into the conversation. We're going to be doing more of these live streams. And this episode, of course, will be public after we record. But if you want to watch live again next time, just sign up at therestispoliticsus.com.

And today we are going to talk about whether Donald Trump is going to ignore the courts. Judges, we've already seen this. We spoke about this last week. Judges are starting to push back against some of what Donald Trump is trying to do with Elon Musk in reorganizing the American government. But the question is starting to be raised about what happens if Trump refuses to comply with courts. And this has kind of come up because J.D. Vance has been tweeting about the courts and the judges and how much power they have. And then in the second half, we're going to talk about beyond the legal battles, what exactly is it that Donald Trump is trying to achieve? What is his vision for America? And we're going to dig a little bit into how he is trying to shape or reshape American culture.

So, Antony, let's kick off. And let's start with why this conversation has come up, because obviously there's been these lawsuits. You've got the three branches of government, the executive, the courts and Congress. Donald Trump is trying to do a huge amount. He's trying to expand his presidential powers. Congress seems to have rolled over like a puppy dog and doing whatever the president wants. The Democrats can't really do very much. So everyone is looking to the courts and the courts have started to step in. They've drafted their injunctions. They've put them out there. They're testing Donald Trump already. But J.D. Vance tweeted out something this weekend that kind of got everybody a little caught our attention, caught my attention, caught your attention and has started getting the legal community here talking.

So what did you think of what J.D. Vance tweeted? And do you think we have a sense of whether Donald Trump will obey the courts?

OK, so if you don't mind, I'm just going to step back for 30 seconds and go over what the checks and balances are in our society. So we have three separate but equal branches of government. And so if the executive branch, which Donald Trump is controlling as president, does things that are outside the purview or the authority of the executive branch, he can be checked by the legislative branch or by the court system. And so the most famous case on this was in 1803, where Justice Marshall in the Marbury versus Madison case said, no, you can't do that as the executive. That's not in the Constitution. And he rejected some executive powers that were coming actually from Thomas Jefferson.

And so that was the precedent that set up this very tough, very balanced system. If you're a constitutional scholar listening in, this is literally the first case that you learn about in constitutional law. And it's the case. Maybe J.D. Vance didn't learn that when he went to Yale.

Yeah, well, I'm pretty sure he did. We're going to talk about the conversion of J.D. Vance in a second. But what's so important about this case is this separating factor for America. If Justice Scalia was still alive, he would tell you that our Constitution is identical to so many other constitutions. The same language on human rights in North Korea or Russia or you pick a totalitarian regime as our Constitution. But what empowers our Constitution is the separation of powers and the blocking of a potential autocrat or authoritarian move. And Marbury versus Madison is a representation of that.

So people that celebrate Rome in the Republic of Rome, people that celebrate the democracy in Greece or the parliamentary system in the UK, look to this and say, OK, the United States has this figured out. They're going to block authoritative people. And so J.D. Vance is ripping up his degree from Yale Law School and he's saying that the courts can't do this and that we should, in fact, impeach the justices associated that are correctly interpreting the power that the executive has versus the judicial branch in blocking Donald Trump.

OK, so here's what J.D. Vance tweeted. I've got it up. I'm just going to read it. "If a judge tried to tell a general how to conduct a military operation, that would be illegal. Judges aren't allowed to control the executive's legitimate power." And then Trump this weekend also told reporters "no judge should frankly be allowed to make that kind of a decision. It's a disgrace." And I get why.

So what J.D. Vance seems to be saying is that the president has this power and it's not up to the judges to control what the president is doing now. In the past, I know that Joe Biden issued a whole load of executive orders that were overturned by courts, things regarding oil and gas drilling, a pause on oil and gas drilling, things regarding migration. He tried to have a vaccine mandate that was overturned by the courts. Barack Obama passed an executive order that said that the parents of children born in America, even if the parents were here illegally, if they were the parents of kids who are American citizens because of birthright being born in America, then they could stay in the country. That was overturned by the court.

So there is a history, right, of I think particularly recently of presidents pushing their executive power as far as they could and the courts coming and saying, no, you can't do that. But what is what is specifically and I heard George Conway, who's a conservative lawyer, I was on TV with him this morning and he's saying, listen, he thinks maybe he's being hyperbolic. It could get to a situation where some of the courts come back and they say, OK, Donald Trump, some of these executive orders, they're illegal. You have to stop. And Donald Trump just says, I'm ignoring that.

"Oh, and by the way, if you try and get the U.S. marshals to enforce this law, I'm just going to ignore it. Is do you is that do you read that? Because I don't read into J.D. Vance's tweet and I am not the lawyer on this podcast. You are the lawyer. Thank goodness. Yeah, I'm I only play one on this podcast because I never went to law school, but never practiced law. But but here's here's what I would say. I would say that what I'm worried about is this is in their plan. What I'm worried about that 900 page document you and I read over the summer, it's right there. Push the courts, force the courts, threaten the courts, call their bluff and then see if the courts can actually muscle up the necessary levers to enforce it. I guess there's a U.S. marshal going to descend upon the White House and block them or I don't know. I mean, if you're held in contempt of court, you can theoretically be arrested. Is that something they're going to do to Donald Trump? Well, that's presumably so he's bluffing because he'll say, I've got immunity, right, that the Supreme Court gave me immunity. And so he will go back to that immunity ruling from whatever it was a year ago to what the you and I spoke about. And he will say, I'm allowed to do this."

"So so so what is the power of the courts then in this circumstance? If Donald Trump were and if this is what J.D. Vance is hinting at, maybe he's just trolling us. Maybe J.D. Vance is just throwing this out to get everybody, you know, excited and an apoplectic. But if he were to say, I'm just going to ignore the courts have said that I have to reinstate USAID. I can't I can't you know, I can't get rid of USAID. Not not allowed to do that. Is he is he bluffing? You've been around Washington 25 years. You know, the people. I think J.D. Vance is a smart guy. I think sometimes with this administration, I mean, look, we're going to talk about this in the second half. What are they really trying to do? And is some of this just a fight? Is this some of this a cultural fight to inject into the system these discussions? Clearly, Donald Trump wants a lot of power. I mean, he spoke about this in his. Why does he admire Erdogan so much? Why does he admire Xi Jinping? Victor Orban, Victor Orban, he admires these. And he's often said, I wish that I could do what they can do."

"But is that the would he? And I've spoken to a couple of constitutional scholars about this, and I think they don't know even conservative constitutional scholars are looking at what happening and are wondering if it went to the Supreme Court and the Supreme Court ruled against him in any one of these things he's trying to do. Would he would he accept it? I don't know. So, I mean, I mean, so this is really what it boils down to. This is the most fascinating part of that case, Marbury versus Madison. Nobody could have enforced it. Justice Marshall really couldn't have enforced that. He wrote the decision. It's a brilliantly written decision about fairness and about how a society, a just society should work where nobody has any power. It's very consistent, the decision. But the Federalist Papers, it is consistent with the vision that the founders had. And so this is the big thing. It was 12 years after the enactment or sorry, 14 years after the enactment of the U.S. Constitution. And there it was. The actual Constitution met contact with the enemy and the Constitution held up. And this became the norm. You now have a president that's threatening the norms and he's sending out his vice president. And he's also using the president's language."

"OK, so who uses the word disaster? Who uses the word horrendous? Who uses the word disgrace? Those are Donald Trump words, right? He's got, I don't know, 150 words like that that he pops in every once in a while. Right. They're pouring over the border, Katty Kay, they're pouring over the border. These are the words that he uses. And now his minion, JD Vance, is using those very same words."

So so I would take it more seriously than the other people, because I know I know who these people are. I know I know what they're up against. So, you know, he he he he he studied Victor Orban's playbook, threatened the media, pushed the courts, you'll shove them back. They don't have as much power as what's been implied over the last 200 plus years. Push them back. Let's see what goes. Flex yourself and take more power.

There's a good op ed. I don't know if you've seen it by five Treasury secretaries. They did all serve under Democrats. And maybe it's a shame that they didn't manage to get the Treasury secretaries who served under George W. Bush. But five Treasury secretaries have come together to write an op ed saying that they do fear that what is happening in the Treasury with Elon Musk going into the payment system and trying to block payments to people who have done work on behalf of the federal government, whether it's doctors in Veterans Affairs hospitals or whether it is people who deliver child care services, for example, on behalf of the US government. And they say that they're making the point that not since Nixon has the Treasury been asked to halt payments that had already been agreed by Congress. The Supreme Court ruled against Nixon and he accepted the ruling. But their point is that this is the beginning, they say, of potentially of a constitutional crisis because Congress is not doing its job.

And look, this is an interesting nightlifter is put into the chat. And this is interesting. And whether there is a distinction here, he says, feels like this is a battle over a different aspect. The courts have the decision to say that a decision isn't within the presidential remit, not contradicting the decision. So is that, you know, Hamilton said this, the courts don't have force or will, they just have judgment. I mean, is it is it that under the American system, the courts can say, OK, it is our judgment that you have committed a crime or that this is against the law, Mr. President, but they don't actually have any force or will, apart from U.S. marshals knocking on the door of the White House. Well, that's that's the I mean, that's again, you know, the the country in 1803 made a decision that they didn't want tyranny. They examined other governmental structures, you know, we don't want this. So we're going to accept this as the norm. And then for several hundred years, we've accepted this. And so a lot of a lot of people wouldn't push back.

But remember this, you know, the courts ruled against Joe Biden on the executive order. To forgive the student loans. And then he went around the courts, Gatty Kay, and he did it anyway. So if the Democrats are sitting there screaming bloody murder that this is happening, they're contributing to it. OK, so there's there's hyperbole and there's hypocritical behavior on both sides. And so now what's that issue here, though, I think is more more problematic. And this is something Speaker Johnson knows. Representative Emmer knows this is, is there a system in place that is fair and judicious? You know, Mark Cuban brought this point up. Why not have a few Democratic controllers, former controllers, Republican former controllers, maybe one or two judges, Republican and Democrat, oversee the process of DOJ alongside of Elon Musk, make it as transparent as possible? I'm I'm for as an American citizen, I am for a process, a reconciliation process where we look through things and try to save the American people and taxpayers money. I'm not absolutely two trillion dollars worth of expenditures. But I'm what I what I'm fearing is if you do it wantonly and indiscriminately without a process, it's going to backfire. And I think it's going to cause more damage to the system than help to the system. And, OK, these are Silicon Valley guys that are multibillionaires. I get it. And so they they feel empowered.

You know, you get your you get your beer muscles on when you're worth several billion dollars and you think you can do whatever you want. But I'm telling you, that's very, very bad for the system. And it's very, very bad for the trust mechanisms that are in this system. I mean, a lot of people are already cynical enough. It's it it creates chaos. Right. And maybe that's part of it. Maybe they are deliberately trying to undermine confidence in government so that the American people don't want government and don't try to protect government and vote to have smaller government. And maybe that's part of it. And Ann Acklebam actually has written interestingly about that. Part of the process of sort of authoritarianization of a country is that you deliberately undermine confidence in the federal government.

One I'm going to give one. We're going to talk about culture in a second. But one quick, interesting anecdote, because it relates to what you're saying about things not working well. What's happening? One of the things that happened over the weekend was the National Institutes of Health again got in the Elon Musk's eyesight. And they are trying to cut a lot of the funding to the National Institutes of Health, which is where a lot of the research is done. And I spoke to a Democratic senator, Amy Klobuchar, this morning who said to me that her phone has been going off the hook. And one of the people who had called in was a woman whose niece is and is on a cancer trial program. So she's undergoing therapies that are part of a trial program. And there is the chance now that that cancer trial just gets canceled.

So that is the kind of it's it's a very heavy, clunky way to try and trim the government. I mean, the risk here is that by saying, OK, you can hand in your resignation, go and watch Netflix. What is it he said? You can watch Netflix and chill or something. Go where you are in the sunshine. Go on holiday to the Bahamas like Antony. I'm going to call you out. Anthony Scaramucci in the Bahamas. You can go on there. What happens if it's all of the age of the big with a big American TV? Exactly. You're very lucky. I can watch my streaming.

But, you know, it could be the best people are going to think, OK, I'll take the buyout as they always do, because I can get another job. Right. And it could. And people think that people who work for the federal government are sitting at home shoveling paper around. They are doctors and nurses and elderly caregivers and child caregivers and post people and people who fight fires in California. These are the people. And you're just saying, OK, you can take it that you will take a top, you know, 20 percent off the federal government. It's just it's not a sophisticated way to make the government work.

But just again, again, I think there's a gentleman in the chat here that's saying, isn't their goal to break the system? And Peter Grave, I think you're 100 percent right now. It is their goal to break the system. They don't like the system. They think those processes that I'm calling for are too sludgy. They think that the the system itself is unwieldy and they think that there's been bloatation and graft and corruption in the system in a bipartisan way that they want to strip down. They want to take a buzz saw to all of it. And again, yeah, they did. The problem with this caddy is some of the stuff that they're saying is actually true. Right. Some of the stuff they're saying is actually right. Budget has increased massively. And the question is about process. And so so ultimately, will people that don't have to accept process, they can launch rockets to Mars and they can put up satellite dishes and they update billions of dollars in venture capital and other things. Will they process.

Right. Because there's another person in our chat talking about Obama. I think Alan Walk is saying that Obama said he had citizens. Silicon Valley says they have customers. Well, remember, if you have citizens.

Mr. Walk is correct. If you have citizens, then they could be indigent. They could be handicapped. They could be people that need your help. It's a different relationship. If you have citizens, there's pathos, there's compassion, there's love that has to go into the process of public service. It's not just ruthlessness. And so this is a big, big issue for the United States right now.

Donald Trump meandering on the football field yesterday, half the crowd is booing him and calling him a traitor. Half the crowd is cheering him. And you can see the combustion engine of the whole thing. But then you could also see his personality. You know, he's there swimming like a shark, semi emotionless, semi detached from the whole thing. And if you listen to his Bret Baier interview, you'd say he's an angry guy. He's an angry old man and he wants retribution and he wants to push people and he doesn't like the system. He wants Victor Orban system more than he wants Thomas Jefferson system.

We are incapable of doing anything short or maybe it's just that the government is providing so much news for us at the moment. There is a lot to talk about. I'm pretty short. I'm pretty short. For those of you, my mother was capable of doing one thing short. That would be me, actually. But that's what I'm actually on. I'm actually on a phone book right now. I said nothing. I said nothing. For those of you listening, we're going to take a quick break. See you in a moment.

What I wanted to talk about, though, is there was a very interesting piece that, guys, you should all read that I thought was a very smart way of putting a framework around it, because we realize that there is so much going on here that it is a bit bewildering. And some of that is the aim. Some of the things they really are trying to change. And some of it is just a process of trying to overwhelm people with the amount of news to kind of scatter the opposition. But there's a piece by, it's a substat piece by Tyler Cohen about culture and the culture wars. And he is making the point that what Donald Trump is really trying to do with all of this is change the culture of America. And it's a quick read. It's worth your read. I sent it to you, Anthony. I don't know what you thought of it.

No, no, I read it. I thought it was a way of thinking that there is a kind of there is a sort of ideological agenda going on here. And in some ways, what he wants from the culture, I don't know that we know necessarily. Maybe he doesn't know, but he sort of wants this cultural shift and everything is around that.

What did you think of the piece that I sent?

No, I thought the piece was great. I guess when I got done reading the piece, I asked that question. What is what does he want from the culture? And so for me, it's Archie Bunker. Now, you didn't grow up in the United States, but do you know who Archie Bunker is?

Oh, is that a cartoon?

No, Archie Bunker is... I grew up with Archie cartoons.

Okay, so yeah, that's different. That's sort of a 1950s fun cartoon. But Archie Bunker for the Americans... I was reading them in the 1980s.

Yeah, well, I mean, it had long legs. I mean, it's still going on, Archie. In fact, I'm surprised they never made a movie about Archie. But this is a different type of Archie. This is a middle-aged, working-class Archie. Norman Lear created him in the 1970s, the early 70s. The show was called All in the Family. It was a situational comedy, and it was very racially charged. And Archie played a white Queens bigot. Okay, does that sound familiar? A white bigot from Queens. And the whole thing was ethnically charged, and it was mocking racism. And it was actually a very colorful, very highly rated television program in the 1970s. But it was also calling people out. It was calling them out for what they were actually doing to each other. And when I got done reading the piece that you shared to me, he wants to go back to Archie.

He wants to sit on the chair and talk to his wife, who's being subservient to him. And he wants the world to go back to Archie Bunker and us versus them. And he doesn't care. Like the NFL, Roger Goodell, who is a terrific guy. I never had a chance to meet him, but he's really one of the most successful executives in the world in terms of what he's done with the brand of the NFL.

He said something so beautifully over the weekend that I'll share with you guys. He was asked about the DEI, diversity, equity, and inclusion, and all the things that the NFL is doing to bring that in. And they said, well, Trump doesn't want that. He wants to end all that. How do you feel about that? And he just really said, there's just more talent. If you open the door to a wider aperture of people, there's just more talent for me to select from.

That's what Warren Buffett says. Why would you play with half a deck of cards? Right. Don't we want that? But your piece and where Trump is is he doesn't want that. He wants to go back. He doesn't like it. Remember in the 1970s, he got hit very hard with a discrimination case. He was not renting apartments. Him and his father were not renting apartments to African-Americans. Now, they settled the case, and he didn't have to pay a ridiculous fine, and he didn't have to get charged with a felony, which it was at that time. But that's Donald Trump.

That's why that movie, The Apprentice, I told you to watch The Apprentice. Yeah, it was so good. So that you can see what this guy really is. And then the irony is there's some things about him people like. Yeah, and like people, I mean, his approval ratings have never been as high as they are this week, right? He's at 53% or something. He never got that high during his first term, and there is a projection of energy.

And I think it's partly the sort of 1950s idea of who's in charge. That ties in with the whole bro culture. It is. But there's also with this kind of this projection of strength about America, that things have been overly feminized. You and I have spoken about this at length in the past. That also that it's the fight in itself, I think, is part of what appeals to him. And even if he's not going to win it, and even if the cultural debate is not with a specific vision of the culture he wants in mind, he's pushing the envelope every time.

And that is part of his cultural fight, right? Saying stuff that was unthinkable. I'm going to take Greenland. I mean, he really does seem to be saying I'm serious about making Canada the 51st state. Who knows whether that will go? But I think he likes the idea of being the person who shocks and getting away with being able to shock people. And that is also part of the cultural difference of winning the culture war is that the Libs were too polite. They were too careful about what they said.

And now we can say anything we want about women or about, you know, he said it last night. There was not a single white dancer in the Super Bowl halftime show and how shocking that was. And he's talked about white farmers in South Africa. There is a racial component to his attention at the moment. But it's also this idea of, you know, it's OK to shock people again. Now it's OK to stuff, say stuff that was not acceptable. And I think there's some of that going on, too, right?

So, yes. But let me just ask you this question, if you don't mind, because this ties back to one of our prior podcasts. I said to you when you were growing up, what did you think of America? And there were Republicans and Democrats running America. And just a reminder to Americans, the rest of the world thinks about America differently than we do as Americans. The rest of the world looks at America and says, OK, you know, it's a multilateral party-based system. There's a polyglot going on in there. They're going to get things right. They're going to make really good long-term strategic decisions for themselves and for the world.

"I mean, they used to think that about America. So my point is when we were acting like that, America was stronger and America was better. It's now like America is on its heels. Like Donald Trump thinks what he's doing is a forward-facing thing, but it isn't. Bullying and the bellicosity of rhetoric like that is actually a sign of weakness. It's not a sign of strength. It's a sign of insecurity. And so I want you to think of Reagan for a moment, Jimmy Carter. Pick the people that have been president in our lifetimes, Richard Nixon. Whatever was going on. George W. Bush, compassionate conservatism. George W. Bush. He made a lot of bad decisions in terms of the way we went into these wars and we didn't have fiscal responsibility. You would never hear that phrase, compassionate conservatism, now. No, no. But I'm saying to you, think about where America is at its best. America is at its best where we are reaching a consensus and a compromise. America is at its best where we're cohabitating on the North American continent with our trading partners. And, oh, by the way, if we have to right-size those trading deals to make it fairer for American workers, let's do it. But why do we have to flex and over-bully people? Moreover, the deal that's in place right now is the one that Trump negotiated and liked five years ago. So if you don't like it now, explain to the American people and the Canadian people and the Mexican people why you don't like it. And, again, there's always kernels of things. Trump has a point with the cartels. Trump has a point with the fentanyl in the country. He has a point with the rare mineral earths and the fact that the Arctic is melting and so these passages are opening up north of Greenland. But how about handling it the way the Americans that you grew up with that made you proud would handle it? How about handling it the way Eisenhower would handle it or Reagan? This sort of bullying nonsense is brutal. And, by the way, it doesn't help the country. It lowers our standing globally. I think that's the key point, and we should keep an eye on that. There are things that are happening right now that are actually going to make America weaker, not stronger, and we'll keep talking about that."

OK, there's a question from our producers popped into the chat for this live stream. It says, "how would you describe America in one word?" We're going to wrap up here, but I'm just going to give you a couple of them. Oh, no, this is just lost, confused, multicultural, doomed, divided, fearful, over frustrated. But OK, since we're wrapping up a couple of positive ones, still a great place. Yes, and promising always."

"Thank you so much, guys, for tuning into the live chat. Hope you enjoyed it. Yeah, that's it. We've already done way more than we were going to do. So this was going to be a short. Do you know what a short podcast is, Anthony? Have you ever heard of one of those? No, I mean, come on. You know, the Italians believe in opera. We believe in melodrama. I can't sing, but we want a lot of drama in this situation. OK. I can't sing either, so that's two of us. We'll see you guys for the regular podcast coming up. And thank you so much for tuning in today. Thank you."