transcript

Speaker 1:
[00:10] Welcome to The Oath and The Office podcast. I'm John Fugelsang. It's so great to have you with us. And let us welcome the star of our show, the author of The Oath and The Office, that would be Brown University political science professor, Corey Brettschneider. Professor, it's good to see you. Welcome back.

Speaker 2:
[00:24] Thanks, John. I look forward to this discussion every week, even as the chaos and the threats to democracy increase. And we're gonna talk, of course, about the shadow docket and some amazing inside information that we finally have about this secret process. We'll explain this secret process and why it is a threat to democracy. And we'll also talk about our favorite Supreme Court justice. Well, not exactly, but somebody we certainly find interesting. That's Clarence Thomas and his speech that he gave. So it's gonna be an amazing show. And of course, we have Aaron Parnas, one of the best commentators, young commentators on politics today, really focused on breaking news. And one of the reasons I've been so eager to talk to him is whenever I talk to young people, by which I mean really people under 35, his name always comes up as somebody who's really doing a lot to keep people informed even in the midst of this messed up media ecosystem. So quite a show today.

Speaker 1:
[01:15] Well, I want to talk to you about this shadow docket business because I've learned a lot about this from you. And now the New York Times had this uncovered internal memos that reveal this shadow docket wasn't really an organic evolution. This thing was rushed. It was a strategic break from centuries of judicial restraint. John Roberts always says he wants the judges to be umpires, but it turns out, I think, Corey, he wants them to be the kind of umpires who call the game in the first inning and then go home. In just five days in 2016, this five-four conservative majority halted Barack Obama's clean power plan before any lower court could rule on it. They just put out a one-paragraph order with no explanation, and these memos show there was a real rush to predict the outcome of a case before it even got litigated. You're the one who taught us that this shadow docket was like a judicial uber eats. Your ruling has arrived, don't ask who made it. What exactly is the shadow docket, Corey? And how has its use changed in recent years?

Speaker 2:
[02:12] Well, I really want to lean into the uber eats analogy, because one of the things that people worry about with uber eats and other apps is that there are these shadow kitchens that you think you're ordering from a restaurant, but you're actually ordering from some strange kitchen on the seventh floor of a tenement somewhere, and the food isn't prepared as carefully as you might have thought in the restaurant you thought you were ordering from. That really is the shadow docket to get into it. What this is, first of all, let's start with what the law is. That might sound like a basic idea, but what the law is is judges making decisions based on prior cases, based on the text of the Constitution, based on the principles of the Constitution, and they write opinions. That's how we know. They're careful. They share opinions. They negotiate. They correct one another. It is a slow, deliberate, careful process. Even if we don't agree with what an opinion says, the fact that it exists is what makes it law. And the shadow docket is the opposite. It's what more formally is called emergency orders. It's the process by which the court will often, especially when it comes to actions by the executive branch, bypass that normal process of law and just make a decision. And our suspicion and our discussions about it, the shadow docket, it's often called the secret docket, is that it really isn't law, that it's just being done based on partisan politics. And certainly we can see the votes, even though we can't see the reasoning. That suggests it's partisan. And now that the New York Times has these amazing memos that were leaked, we don't know by who, but it gives us an insight into what's going on. That idea of John Roberts as any kind of umpire, like, I don't think so. It really shows not just his raw partisanship, because he's opposing Obama and defending Trump in these shadow docket decisions, but where his real passion lies, which looks like it's for the call industry, and I can say more about that. It's a lot of worry about cost of the call industry.

Speaker 1:
[04:06] That's what this article is really, really about. I mean, these internal documents show, yeah, there's disagreement between the conservative and liberal judges. But I mean, this is now being called the birth of the modern shadow docket, and Chief Justice Roberts, this aristocrat who cares so much about appearing unbiased, he really seems to have justified emergency intervention as necessary due to economic consequences. But it's one paragraph, there's no reasoning, okay? It's like a breakup text, it's not like a Supreme Court ruling. Elena Kagan warned this was unprecedented. No justice on either side mentioned climate change. The deciding vote came from Anthony Kennedy, who kind of treated this whole thing as a foregone conclusion. I mean, this moment didn't just block a policy, this created a new governing method, didn't it? I mean, these fast, opaque, high-impact rulings without any explanation. And this is now routine. This is shaping national policy. This has really helped this no-talent, racist reality show clown run roughshod over our laws.

Speaker 2:
[05:08] You know, I love, I get what the shadow docket is, is a kind of breakup text, that it's short and inappropriate and insensitive.

Speaker 1:
[05:17] That's what the ruling feels like. It feels like democracy is breaking up with me in a very short text.

Speaker 2:
[05:21] I just love that. I mean, I hope that becomes a famous line. We'll certainly promote that on the blue sky and the Twitter.

Speaker 1:
[05:28] Stop it. But is the shadow docket effectively like a second track of constitutional decision making?

Speaker 2:
[05:35] Yeah, I think it's even worse. I mean, that's why I'm so taken with the analogy, because what opinions do is they are the law, they give reasoning. The shadow docket isn't just a second track of constitutional law. It's not law. It's just raw power being exercised. What we've done so far, and now we can do something different now that we've seen actual memos that the justices have been sending to each other, including Roberts, really pushing to use this method. You know, there's an argument, I should say, whether this is for the first time. They've done things like this before, going back a few years before. And SCOTUS blog, for instance, has been criticizing the New York Times coverage for overstating it. But let me just say a bottom line, aside from all this inside baseball, it's a radical departure in huge cases. I mean, this is a major policy decision by the EPA that the court is pushing back on. There are major threats to democracy that the Trump administration is engaged in. And they're using this, I wouldn't even call it constitutional law, this raw power technique of the court to make these decisions. And again, during Biden, what the court was focused on was stopping these actions and using the shadow docket as a way of torpedoing a president. And Roberts in particular is in sense that a particular policy by the EPA is going to cost a lot of money to the coal industry. That's what we see him complaining about. He's not acting as an umpire. It's a kind of emotional frustration that you see in the memos. And now, and here's the partisanship, it's used to enable Trump again and again without any opinions, without any reasoning. And it's not this there was protest within the court. The liberal justices like Justice Kagan pushed back, really criticizing it as contrary to the way the court is supposed to operate. So there was recognition that this is a dangerous move by the court. And, you know, thankfully for the reporting of the New York Times, we now have an insight into what's really going on in this dangerous technique that the court is using to undermine now our democracy.

Speaker 1:
[07:31] And the vote really broke along ideological lines. I mean, that's not a surprise. We're kind of used to that in the Supreme Court. These justices are cast for their ideology, and they run around into a pantomime to pretend it's not that way. Occasionally, you get like a William Brennan or a David Souter, who winds up surprising people. But I mean, that's nothing new. You know, is the concern here more about not so much what the court decided, but how they decided it and announced it?

Speaker 2:
[07:56] Well, you know, the partisanship of the court, this is something that needs to be studied, but it seems obvious to me, it's jumping out. The partisanship decreases the more transparency there is. So you see justices breaking from their ideological, and in really important cases, the tariffs case is the most important recent case that we've talked about in depth. You know, three conservative justices switched sides. And we've seen that too, we're about to see it, I believe, in the birthright citizenship case, where conservative justices are going to vote to strike down birthright citizenship. We saw it in earlier cases involving gay and transgender rights, the Bostock case written by Justice Gorsuch. But on the shadow docket, where nobody's watching because there is no reasoning, there's nothing for commentators and journalists and academics to dig their teeth into, they're hidden and how are they going to act? They're going to act as politicians and so it just makes the partisanship all the worse.

Speaker 1:
[08:51] They're going to act as aristocrats, which is what I will always call them. These are aristocrats protecting aristocrats. These were the founders of the US who thought only white landowning males should be allowed to vote. This Supreme Court keeps that tradition alive. Obviously, they're aware of the legitimacy problem. I don't really think the court is concerned with it. I think they're more concerned that they got found out. But are there any reforms that could rein in the use of the shadow docket?

Speaker 2:
[09:19] Well, on the first point, what's interesting is Justice Roberts in these memos, and I think there's a memo too from Alito, they clearly are aware and concerned about the court's legitimacy, but in a just completely misguided way, they think the shadow docket's going to help them with that problem. And rather than doing what does make a court more legitimate, showing us their reasoning, showing us their work, the way Preet Bharara put it when he was on and going through in depth, the way we were reasoning through problems. I love that phrase. There's no work shown here. And that's what undermines legitimacy. In terms of what we can do about it, I think this is one of those areas where when you shine a light on it, it's embarrassing for the court. And because of what you're saying, they are concerned about legitimacy and this threatens their legitimacy. I hope, I think this might actually result in them doing less of it. And so let's just keep doing it. Let's look at this shadow docket, let's identify it, I have to give a shout out to a colleague of mine, I taught for a semester or a trimester at University of Chicago Law School and there's a conservative law professor, Will Bode, who's there, who I believe is the person who really kind of started writing about this and discovered it, shining a light on something that people weren't even noticing. So the Times report reveals when this started being used and has the memos, but it was quite possible, and this is kind of incredible, that people would have just thought, oh, this is some weird procedure that's going on in the shadow docket, wouldn't have realized how serious it is. So it's transparency that I think is going to back them down.

Speaker 1:
[10:47] All right, one more question on this. I mean, because should the court be required to provide written explanations when they give emergency rulings?

Speaker 2:
[10:56] Problem, yes. I mean, I think they should, but there's-

Speaker 1:
[10:58] We cover their health care, right? I mean, it's not asking too much.

Speaker 2:
[11:01] I mean, here's the problem, you know, when you're talking about the Supreme Court, and especially the Supreme Court after Marbury versus Madison, which has really declared itself the final interpreter of the Constitution. And even if Marbury didn't do it more recently, they've leaned into that idea that they say in the end what the Constitution is and what it means. And so the idea that you'd have legislation telling them how to operate internally, they'd almost certainly find it unconstitutional. I mean, an amendment, even that, the court, I think, regards separation of powers as sacrosanct. So we've got to come up with other techniques besides legislation to make things transparent.

Speaker 1:
[11:36] Clarence Thomas just gave a speech this week, Professor, where he railed about the Americans he despises. And he suggests that rights originate outside of government. This is, of course, Clarence Thomas saying that rights come from God, author of the Bible, a book that Clarence Thomas doesn't really follow when he gives out rulings. But he's saying that rights come from natural law or divine authority. In this century, I have many thoughts on this. But how does that basically compare to the Constitution's actual structure and enforcement of rights, Professor?

Speaker 2:
[12:09] You know, I listened to the speech and it's been criticized a lot. And I'm going to start maybe by differing from some of my fellow commentators and say what I think is good in it. I like the idea that he leans into the idea of Frederick Douglass as one of the most important interpreters of the Constitution. And I love, I would say, and share the idea of Frederick Douglass. And evidently, even Clarence Thomas, yes, this is going to surprise you and I'm going to get critical in a second. But I want to just say what I agree with, that you should use, and this is really Douglass's idea that I think Thomas is repeating, that you should use the Declaration of Independence and its proclamation of equality as the lens from which to understand the entire Constitution, that it's got a moral foundation. So all of that is straight Frederick Douglass, the hero of my book, The Presidents and the People. But here's where Thomas just goes off the rails and is really not doing what Douglass is doing. First thing is he has an idea that the principles of the Constitution and the Declaration come from God, and that somehow you can almost directly infer God's plan in all of this. And that just gets into the world of theocracy, not democracy. And then not surprisingly, what he thinks the framers were doing in using the Declaration, and he goes quickly to the 18th century framers, is to use it in order to curb democracy. He uses the phrase excessive democracy. That's what he's worried about. And that's not what Frederick Douglass was doing. He was using the idea of equality in order to further the idea of democracy. In fact, Douglass' most important argument is the preamble says, we the people, not we the white people. And Thomas is just ignoring all this. And finally, what Thomas is really about is just getting away from the idea that government has a role in making our lives better. And that's the extreme opposite of what Frederick Douglass thought. Douglass' huge contribution to America was to recognize that the Constitution needed to be clarified through amendments, the amendments that were passed, to guarantee equal protection of all persons nationally. And you need an active federal government to do that. You need a Department of Justice, which was created during the Grant Administration. You need national civil rights. Those are all the things that Thomas is trying to kill.

Speaker 1:
[14:19] Which is goofy why Clarence Thomas would invoke him, because Clarence Thomas' career is always siding with power over the less powerful, always siding with labor over management, always siding with polluters over the environment, always siding with the wealthy over the poor. And he references his upbringing under Jim Crow, right? And he argues government was the source of injustice, not rights. But at the same time, all of the key advances in civil rights didn't come from angels. They came from federal legislation and court decision. So I mean, it seems like he wants to hate the government for the bad things and then ignore the positive things that he also legislates against.

Speaker 2:
[14:57] I mean, if you think of the two most important pieces of legislation in the 20th century, the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act, they were attempts to make good on the promises of the 13th Amendment ending slavery, the 14th Amendment guaranteeing equal protection, and the 15th, albeit imperfectly, trying to guarantee a right to vote, regardless of race, at least for men. And, you know, Douglas was critical of that, actually, that it was too limited. But it requires active government to protect civil rights. And here Thomas is giving this speech about how government is bad and really corporations are great and that the idea of government itself is a danger. And that just, it doesn't, I can't even understand what he's talking about. I will say one interesting thing here, too, is he picks up, you know, in my book, The Presidents and the People, I talk about Woodrow Wilson as the first white nationalist president spreading white supremacy through the segregation, for instance, of the military and the federal government. And he also hates Wilson, so we share that. But when you start looking at what he's doing, Wilson was all about disparaging government's role in protecting civil liberties and civil rights, I should say, in particular. And yet he thinks he's an ally, you know, an opponent, sorry, of Woodrow Wilson. In some odd way, he's an ally.

Speaker 1:
[16:11] They actually love government. They hate democracy. That's kind of how it plays out.

Speaker 2:
[16:16] That's the theme. Basically, that could have been the title of his speech.

Speaker 1:
[16:19] Exactly right. That could have been the title of this party. We got to take a break. But when we come back, I want to ask you, what does it mean when a career prosecutor withdraws from a high-profile, politically sensitive revenge case investigation? Is that a bad sign for Donald Trump, Corey? Right back at a moment on The Oath and The Office. Welcome back to The Oath and The Office. I'm John Fugelsang, Professor Corey Brettschneider. Over in Florida, this federal prosecutor just walked away from the investigation, or I should say the hatchet job, into former CIA Director John Brennan, reportedly over concerns about the legal viability of the case. What a shock. This is good, right? What does it signal when a career prosecutor withdraws from a high-profile, politically sensitive investigation dictated by a president who wants revenge on his critics who used to run the damn CIA?

Speaker 2:
[17:13] We've had a lot of amazing episodes, but one that I'd really urge listeners to go back and listen to is the episode with Preet Bharara who was the US Attorney for the Southern District of New York, was fired by Trump, and we talk about this question of resignation and he makes the case. It's no longer a hard question. If you're being called by the Department of Justice to be involved at all with the prosecution of Trump's political enemies, you have to immediately resign. Maybe basically everyone should resign from this Department of Justice. It is so messed up what's going on. That's what you see increasingly. People who have had careers, have integrity, they're being asked to prosecute Trump's opponents. There really is one thing to do, which is to resign. This is a good sign for democracy. In the long run, it might help us because as people refuse to engage in these political prosecutions, the quality of the lawyers there gets less and less. In court, that doesn't play well. Judges get frustrated and it becomes transparent what's going on, which is that the Department of Justice has been taken over by this president in an attempt to try to destroy what? The integrity that was created after Nixon, the idea of any independence, and to turn it into a personal tool of the president. We talked about how the acting attorney general was the president's personal lawyer, and this is another example of it. But I don't want to lose the hope in this. We always look for the hope. And you have people of integrity saying, no, I'm not going along with this. I'll give up my career rather than partake in a political prosecution.

Speaker 1:
[18:43] Which is amazing. I mean, I'm curious, historically, how have institutions responded when legal professionals resist pressure from higher-ups like this?

Speaker 2:
[18:53] You know, I think there's always mixed performance. One of the things that I'm focused on is the analogy with the Nixon era. And one of the people in our textbooks that we often write about as a real hero is Leon Jaworski, who is true after the Saturday Night Massacre, when Trump fired Archibald Cox, who was looking into his criminal misdeeds and those of his cronies took over. And you know, for a long time, it was like, oh, look, this amazing hero, these great lawyers step in and they do great things. And what my research has shown is that we overestimate that, that in the case of Jaworski, the pressure to continue in large part was that brought by citizens, by the grand jury. So I don't know that I could just trust that all professionals are gonna do the right thing. I think it requires pressure from all of us. This lawyer did do the right thing in resigning. But we've really got to start, and we could use this podcast and other venues to say, you have an obligation as a lawyer to not simply evade the law, to not shut down the law, to not use the law as a weapon against the enemies of the president and the powerful. And so it's not gonna happen just by the norms of professionalization. And what I worry is without the ABA, which has been speaking out, I was proud to win the Silver Gaville Award from the ABA, partly because they have been doing what I'm saying, putting pressure on lawyers to not go along with this attempt to take over of our government. But it requires peer pressure, both from within the profession and from without. And so I'm glad to be doing this with you, John, every week.

Speaker 1:
[20:24] Well, before we hit the break, I got just one last thing I wanna ask you about. Jimmy Carter famously said the measure of a society is found in how they treat their weakest. And when you're thinking about the weakest people in this society, you think undocumented immigrants, you think poor people, you think transgender folks, you think prisoners. Let me focus on the last two. Because the Federal Appeals Court has opened the door for the Bureau of Prisons to start transferring transgender women prisoners into men's prisons under a new policy. The court said the evidence doesn't meet the threshold for cruel and unusual punishment. So bring on rape, which we essentially silently sanction and allow as part of our penal process. Corey, how have the courts historically interpreted the Eighth Amendment in prison conditions cases?

Speaker 2:
[21:14] Narrowly, and that's unfortunate, that there are a lot of conditions that in my mind certainly are cruel and unusual. And this is one of the areas of the Constitution that lays out a broad principle, and it should be used wherever abuse is being found. And I'm not hopeful that the Eighth Amendment will be used to stop this, if it's possible, and it's certainly worth litigating, but the court has simultaneously narrowed the meaning of the Eighth Amendment, and the cruelty of this administration has just increased. You would think, just to kind of narrow in on that idea of cruelty, that one of the things that you would want in a society is not to subject people to torture, not to subject them to possible death, sexual violence, and yet we know that this policy that the administration is pursuing could well result in all of these things. And so whether or not the Eighth Amendment is going to stop this, we as citizens have to just see cruelty where it exists and stop it.

Speaker 1:
[22:09] This ruling reflects a pretty clear shift on how courts are approaching gender identity claims under constitutional law, right?

Speaker 2:
[22:16] Well, I'm not sure. You know, you have this amazing moment where Justice Gorsuch, now it was specifically about employment and using Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, did something that I never would have imagined. I mean, I opposed his nomination and confirmation to the Supreme Court after discovering his PhD thesis in philosophy. He's the only Supreme Court justice with a PhD in philosophy. And in it, he compares, uses bestiality to disparage the idea of gay marriage and gay rights.

Speaker 1:
[22:46] What a shock. What a shock.

Speaker 2:
[22:48] But now here's the shock. When the court asked the question, is the 1964 Civil Rights Act and its ban on sex discrimination also protect gay and transgender people? You would think he'd say no way. And in fact, he wrote the opinion saying, yes, absolutely. What is discrimination against transgender people but a form of sex-based discrimination? So, you know, sometimes the court, and this is a monumental ruling, it isn't a by the way ruling, comes forward by using the analogy between gender and sex-based discrimination and thinking about transgender rights. And that was Gorsuch. And yet here the court is, well, we'll see what happens, but the administration certainly is pushing it in the extreme opposite direction.

Speaker 1:
[23:28] We got ahead of break, but really quick, are there any other constitutional provisions, equal protection, that could come into play with this?

Speaker 2:
[23:35] You know, I would think that we could try to use all of these areas to litigate. And, you know, it is, I don't want to say that equivalent unusual punishment is never used. There's a prison overcrowding case, for instance, and the more that we can reveal, and I think maybe the research will show this, that the court is intentionally or recklessly showing disregard for the lives of transgender people, the more the possibility of these cases being wanted comes out. And let's do that investigation and hope we prevail there.

Speaker 1:
[24:02] We got to take a quick break, but we'll be right back with Mr. Aaron Parnas. This is The Oath and The Office. Welcome back to The Oath and The Office. Professor Brettschneider, I'm very excited to welcome this next guest.

Speaker 2:
[24:19] What a pleasure to welcome Aaron Parnas to The Oath and The Office. Aaron has a law degree from George Washington Law School, and is one of the best people out there covering what's happening with this Trump assault on democracy.

Speaker 1:
[24:34] These all, can I just insert into your introduction to say this guy is one of the people redefining independent media at a time when corporate legacy media has shown it can't be valid. This guy has over 4 million followers on TikTok. Everyone should subscribe to the Parnas perspective on Substack. I mean, if you're tired of news that's filtered through a corporate lens, Aaron is doing vital work, and this is where young people are getting their news now. And it is, I dare say, a much more ethical source than some of the ones we grew up with.

Speaker 2:
[25:02] I was going to say, you beat me to the hyperbole, but yes, that is a lot of factual hyperbole. I was at dinner with family friends recently, and some people at the table were in their 30s. And when I mentioned that we had Aaron on, they listened to the podcast, but they really lit up. Like, this is the person that we need to hear from. And that actually is how I wanted to start, Aaron, that I think you've probably done more than anyone to break through the media ecosystem that has so much falsehood in it, so many lies, so much as we'll talk about in a future episode, anti-science. And yet you're able to cover what's happening without corporate backing, independent, as we are. So tell us, what is the way forward when it comes to the media ecosystem that we're in? So many people worry that with the demise of corporate media, that things are so fragmented, the truth can't win out, but you're out there battling every day to get the truth out. So what's your way forward and what do you have to say to the skeptics who think that our media environment is destroyed for the long term?

Speaker 3:
[26:04] Yeah. Well, first, thank you so much for having me on. I'm super excited to be here, be here with you guys. I mean, I think truly it goes back to one principle, and that's just kind of sticking to the facts. I'm a big believer that right now where media really lacks in this day and age is kind of this gray area between opinion and fact. And there has been so much opinion that has seeped into a lot of the media that we've seen on television, on radio and elsewhere. And I think media devoid of opinion, media focused on fact, just the truth, removed of hyperbole, now removed of AI and that click bait nonsense that we see everywhere. That is really kind of the path forward for media and that's the way to break through. I really think that there is, and it's funny, a lot of people come up to me and tell me, well, Aaron, I never thought what you do could be successful because all you do is you have your monotone voice and you just share the news. And I'm like, well, that is what a lot of people are looking for these days because just the news doesn't really exist in a lot of places unless you spend your day reading the wire in terms of the AP and Reuters as things come out. Otherwise, you're not going to get that on any cable TV show or even in print nowadays in many newspapers.

Speaker 1:
[27:12] But I don't think younger audiences are necessarily looking for neutrality, do you? I think they're looking for clarity and perspective.

Speaker 3:
[27:19] I mean, that might be part of it. I personally try to pride myself in staying as neutral as I can. Like I'll never tell you who to vote for or what position to take or whether to support something or not. It's not my responsibility. My responsibility is just to educate you and hopefully empower you with the tools that you need to then go and make whatever decision that may be.

Speaker 2:
[27:39] Aaron, how do you deal with the fact, and this is just something that I'm facing in the classroom too, where on the one hand you don't want to be partisan. On the other hand, as John's suggesting, I don't think you want to be neutral either. And I think a lot of my students are similar to a lot of the people who are watching and listening to you. But the worry is, and we pushed Jake Tapper on this too, I should say, into ultimately agreeing with us, but that if you're too neutral, the worry is that we might miss the story of the century, which is that Trump is really bringing an all out assault on democracy. Now, that might sound like an opinion, but I think that if you don't have that frame, you'd miss a lot of what's going on. So how do you combine that? I mean, I certainly appreciate what you're saying about fat-based reporting, but how do you deal with the frame of this episode, which is not just this episode, the podcast, to try to think about why this isn't business as usual?

Speaker 3:
[28:34] I think it's a bit of a loaded question, and I'll respond to them in two parts. I think the first part is it's important not to sanewash what we're seeing today. It's a term I use often. Just because Trump is president or the DOJ is what it is today doesn't mean that a president gets a free pass when he says, praise be to Allah on Easter. That is not normal, and saying that is not normal, in my opinion, is a neutral perspective because that is factual in that, no, it is not normal for a president to be posting the end of a civilization, threatening war crimes. That is not normal, and it's important that we not sanewash the times that we're in. I think to the second point is, saying that Donald Trump has launched an assault on our democracy, that is not a partisan opinion. That isn't an opinion at all, in my opinion, because he probably would admit that he has launched an assault on our form of democracy as we know it. He himself would say that, because he doesn't agree with where we are as a nation. So I think that that is true, and I think that he has launched an assault on our institutions, on both in government, but also in private institutions, colleges, etc. And I think that it's important to frame it in that way, which to me still is neutral. Because it is factual.

Speaker 1:
[29:49] Yeah, but I think in that sense, you're carrying on the Cronkite tradition. It's unreasonable to believe that journalists can be automatons with no opinions whatsoever, but you're guided by morality, and you're guided by the dictates of journalism. And I mean, you're reporting on all the growing concern among Trump advisors about his discipline, about his temperament. What you've been doing lately has been so fair. As a comedian whose job is to be biased, I so enjoy getting my information from you because you're not pulling the same racket I'm pulling. And we see figures like Tucker Carlson distancing themselves for whatever dubious reasons or apologizing for past support. I mean, from your reporting, Aaron, are insiders concerned about political liability? Are they concerned about national security implications? Or are they just looking at their own resumes and realizing that this is turning into the last scene of Scarface?

Speaker 3:
[30:40] Could I say all of the above? I mean, I think that it is all of the above. I mean, I think that there is genuine concern with where we are as a nation in terms of whether the president is fully fit and has the mental acuity to continue serving in his capacity as president. I think there are serious, a lot of people have serious questions about the president's discipline and whether or not he can stay on message, which we know he can't. And then yes, I think a lot of people in the White House went to the White House as you do in any new administration. You go there to get a box checked on your resume and then go into private practice and make a whole boatload of money. And I think a lot of people are looking for their exit strategy before it gets too crazy and before it gets to the point where they're so toxic that they won't be able to get hired. I believe we may be at that point already. But I think that a lot of people in this White House are looking for, okay, Trump is only going to be president for another three years, no matter how much he wants to stay on longer. What is my day after look like? Someone like Susie Wiles, I think, is right now thinking, okay, what is my day after look like? How do I profit off of this White House? And so that's another concern that a lot of folks have.

Speaker 2:
[31:44] Yeah, it sounds like your idea of neutrality is different, I would say, than sort of the New York Times journalist who tries to distinguish between the op-ed page and the front page. And you kind of have a conceptual idea within neutrality that can think about the law and think about democracy. I mean, let's get into some of the stories that I know that you're covering. And one of the ones that you have been talking about that is not getting nearly enough attention is this attempt by Donald Trump to really extort the IRS for a massive payment and payout. I mean, how do you tell us about that? What's happening there? How you cover it? And I think this might be an example of what we're talking about where some opinion is going to fit in to a factually story because it's hard to cover it without being outrage.

Speaker 3:
[32:30] No, listen, that story I think is one of the crazier stories you'll actually hear in any administration. I mean, for background, for those who don't know, Trump is actively suing the IRS and the Treasury Department, his own government, the government he controls, for $10 billion for what he says his tax returns were illegally released, I believe, to the New York Times. He and 42,000 other people had their tax returns illegally released by a whistleblower by someone in one of these agencies.

Speaker 1:
[32:58] One individual leaked it, so we all owe him $10 billion.

Speaker 3:
[33:02] Correct. Correct. And here's the thing, the leaking of his returns, that is illegal, for sure, and I think no one disputes that. But I think that the problem here, which a lot of people are recognizing, is that the president is suing his own administration to take money out of your pocket to put it into his pocket, right? And when you're in a typical lawsuit, you're going up against an adversary. You're not going up against a friend usually. Here he's going up against Todd Blanch, his personal criminal defense attorney, who's now the acting attorney general. Scott Besson, his treasury secretary. So the people he's negotiating with, the people he's trying to settle this lawsuit with are the same people that report directly to him. And if he doesn't, I mean, there could be a situation where if he doesn't get the favorable settlement, they could lose their jobs and no one can do anything about it. That is a raging conflict of interest.

Speaker 2:
[33:51] Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I also think of it, and I'm interested if you agree with this, that there's no way to really think about why he's able to do that without thinking about the assault on democracy, that Trump has expanded executive power, commanded loyalty over what used to be thought of as independent civil servants, and the IRS, for instance, is not supposed to do the bidding of the president. We've had presidents who have tried to control the IRS for their own purposes in the Nixon administration. So are you seeing that as a sort of trend more generally, this sort of theme that Trump's corruption and the massive amounts of it are connected to his expansion of executive power and demands for loyalty?

Speaker 3:
[34:30] I mean, I think that Trump, from the beginning, I mean, since 2017, he has believed in this kind of theory of government where the executive is the end-all be-all, that you can really do anything you want through the powers of the executive, that you don't need a function in Congress, that who cares what the judiciary really thinks or says, because ultimately I can do whatever I want, however I want it. He figures out how to get around any court ruling or most court rulings. He figures out how to get around a Congress that doesn't function. So yes, he fully believes that in the consolidation of the executive and making a very powerful unitary executive, but also no one should be surprised about this. This is what Project 2025 was written on, right? That was the basis of everything that they ran on, so it should come to no surprise that he's actually doing what he said he would do.

Speaker 1:
[35:16] But is this an example of using the government power to target your perceived enemies for revenge, or is this something more debased? Is it just a shakedown because he sees a chance to pocket 10 billion?

Speaker 3:
[35:28] No, I don't think he's going to pocket 10 billion.

Speaker 1:
[35:29] I don't think he is either, but I think that could be the intent.

Speaker 3:
[35:32] No, for sure that could be the intent. I mean, listen, I think at the end of the day, this is definitely him trying to use the levers of the executive to enrich himself. I will also say that something Trump likes to do, and we've seen this, especially the second term, it's kind of like a velociraptor testing a fence, right? He's trying to see where the vulnerabilities are in the federal government. And if he finds a vulnerability that he can ram through and bite through, he'll go through full force. But sometimes that fence is too strong or too electric, and he can't get through. So this is just another test of the fence.

Speaker 2:
[36:02] Another story you've been looking at, and one of the things that you do so well, Aaron, is cover the individuals that are in the midst of this administration and the supposed loyalists who are also at the same time deeply incompetent. And it's hard to think about that theme without thinking about Kash Patel, the FBI director, and the recent reporting that we've got there. So I mean, what's your sense of this? The Atlantic, of course, has the story about his drunkenness, his thinking that he was fired when he was unable to log in to his computer, possibly because he was inebriated or just paranoid. So what's your sense of where things stand with Patel and what this says, too, about Trump's demand for loyalty but also willingness to throw people under the bus when they don't serve him anymore?

Speaker 3:
[36:47] It's actually funny. The same day he thought he was fired, I actually had heard that he was fired. So I heard that earlier that day and then seeing this story kind of validate that, which was kind of interesting. But I think ultimately, number one, I think the Atlantic did a great job in its reporting and I think that anyone who questions the Atlantic's reporting should go back through the history of the Atlantic and see why there haven't been any successful defamation suits against the paper because it's a really good and well vetted piece. I think number two is it just shows that the big takeaway in all of this is not Kash Patel's alcoholism or the fact that he may be a threat to national security or whatever. I mean, all of that we already knew in a way. We saw the video of him with the men's Olympic hockey team. We had a sense. The real takeaway to me is that it doesn't actually matter what you do. You could still stay in the job. If an article like that came out against, say, a supermarket worker, that supermarket worker would be fired tomorrow, placed on administrative leave, suspended, whatever. But in the Trump administration, it doesn't even matter.

Speaker 1:
[37:50] You're exactly right.

Speaker 2:
[37:50] You think it's just loyalty, loyalty, loyalty. Obedience, not loyalty.

Speaker 1:
[37:54] It's obedience.

Speaker 2:
[37:55] Is there a point though where it just becomes embarrassing? We're looking at Pete Hegseth, for instance, and the incompetence and wealth. We could go on and on about Iran, but there's certainly a minimum the incompetence that he's showing there. Do you think Trump will, in these cases, have a moment where even when it comes to extreme loyalists, that he's had enough?

Speaker 3:
[38:15] Well, I would say, I would say I thought this may be enough for him on Kash Patel, honestly, because of the alcoholism part of it. Donald Trump, a lot of people don't know this, but he has been sober his entire life. He lost his brother to substance abuse. This is the issue that bothers him more than anything, is when someone close to him engages in substance abuse, he's never allowed his kids to touch alcohol or drugs. And so I would think that this would be, if anything, this would be the straw that broke the camel's back. And it may very well have, we may just not know about it yet. So we'll see.

Speaker 1:
[38:48] Yeah, my opinion on this has been that he's deliberately, for the second term, hires unqualified people because qualified people in the first term told him, you can't do that, sir, it's illegal. And by hiring flunkies, it allows him to lance them like a boil if things get too hot for him. Pam Bondi takes the blame for Epstein. She goes off. Kristi Noem will take the blame for the deaths of citizens. Pete Hegseth will get fired as soon as this war really makes Trump look bad and he needs to blame it on someone else. And it's the same for Patel. I don't think fucking up on this level is going to get him fired. But are you hearing about, through your sources, any pushback from within the FBI or intelligence community? Because that's the fascinating angle to me here. The career agents who are watching law enforcement fired by these henchmen and seeing what they're doing.

Speaker 3:
[39:34] Without a doubt. I mean, I think there's a ton of pushback within the FBI. But I think that there's this overwhelming fear within the FBI that they want to keep their jobs. They cannot keep their jobs if they come out against cash. So yes, there is a fear and they want to come out against him, but they just can't.

Speaker 2:
[39:50] I want to pull back a little, Aaron, and ask, are you seeing from your audience, many of whom are in their 20s and their 30s, of course, you're huge on TikTok and that younger audience is watching you there as well as your substack. Do people have a sense of, I mean, my worry, frankly, from teaching is that there isn't a sense of how abnormal this is, how dangerous to democracy. What we're facing is, what's your sense of the culture and in particular of young people's perceptions as they're watching your videos? Do they appreciate how dangerous this is? Do they think it's business as usual?

Speaker 3:
[40:23] Well, to me, it is business as usual, actually. I'm going to push back at the premise of your question.

Speaker 2:
[40:27] I mean, you might be one of the people that I was talking about.

Speaker 3:
[40:30] The reason why is because, so I'm 27 years old. First presidential election I remember was 2016. I don't remember the Obama years. I don't remember the Bush years. I was a child back then, I didn't care about politics. Most people my age were the same way. Almost everyone younger than me is the same way. The only thing we know is Trump won Biden, Trump too. And when you look at the worldview through, okay, all we know is Trump pretty much, then this is normal. The chaos is normal. The dysfunction is normal. So I would argue that we are in a time of normal. It's just a new normal and it's going to be, and it's better to adapt to the reality of what we're in rather than try to achieve something that will never get back.

Speaker 2:
[41:10] Do you think, I mean, when you take the broad, I'm 52, so I've seen more than that, but I'm also a student of history. And when I think of what is happening in this moment, it's not that we've never seen anything like this before. And in the Nixon era, if you go back, John Adams attacked democracy.

Speaker 1:
[41:27] This is nothing new, Corey. It's a continuation. This is the Clinton impeachment. This is the Iraq war. This is Gingrichism. This is, I mean, Aaron entered this thing in progress. Donald Trump, I agree with him. I think Donald Trump represents anything actually new, just a trashier hood ornament to the car.

Speaker 3:
[41:42] Well, I actually agree with John in the sense that like, policy-wise, none of it is new. I mean, we're in a war in the Middle East 20 years after we started a war in the Middle East, right? Like it's the same thing in the same playbook over and over again. It's just how it's being done. I think Trump having access to truth social and putting out truth social posts every hour of the day about crazy shit. And I mean, that is very different. We didn't have that 25 years ago. So I guess it's like the means by which it's being done rather than actually what is being done.

Speaker 2:
[42:11] Well, I guess I'll push back against both of you because the way I think of what's happening is that it is different in some fundamental ways that one, for instance, the lawlessness of the administration and the amount of theft that you're seeing through. You're absolutely right to say that he didn't invent the unitary executive, it dates back to the 1980s and the idea of this kind of consolidated power. But the idea of a president stealing this amount of money from the IRS, for instance, as you were just talking about. I mean, really, trying at least to steal billions, maybe he'll get something less than that. But that I haven't seen before. The use of social media and stock manipulation to try to make money, the use of The Office, really, to try to become a Putin-style billionaire, that we haven't seen before. And then I'll also talk about the civil servants within the government. As John was saying, that in the first administration, there was a kind of sense that there was civil service protection and that people saw themselves as temporarily occupying offices that they know they wouldn't always have. So you had the DOJ, it was a threat to democracy from Trump. You had the DOJ pushing back against his attempt to steal the election. They didn't go along with it. You had a vice president push back against that attempt in a way that you wouldn't see with JD Vance. And then when we go to previous administrations, Republican and Democrat, the lawlessness that we associate and that we've been talking about, no, I don't think that we've seen that. We've seen elements in the culture of this, but the theft and the threat to democracy in the sense of threatening elections themselves, the attempted coup of January 6th, all of that strikes me as quite different from what we've seen before. But I appreciate, Aaron, I mean, you are echoing what a lot of my students say, which is I've only seen this. And so I appreciate that within your lifetime, it might look normal, but it certainly isn't normal, I think. But I welcome your response.

Speaker 3:
[44:04] I mean, that's history for you, right? Like every time we have a new period in history, that new period is a new normal in a way, right? And this is just that new period in history, in my opinion. I don't know if we'll ever swing back to where we once were. I don't.

Speaker 2:
[44:16] Well, I mean, it's been a year since this administration. I guess I'd argue that's what's different. We didn't see this kind of lawlessness in Biden. We saw things I didn't like, like the pardon of his son. And in Trump 1, we certainly saw attempts to do what he's doing now. We saw pushback. So I guess I think what's important to see, and maybe this is also relevant to the earlier question that we were talking about, is the fundamentals of the rule of law and the way that actually has been part of the American system from the beginning, and that we're seeing it uniquely threatened. I guess I would want that to be part of any coverage of this administration's insane year.

Speaker 1:
[44:53] I'll jump on that. One of the areas where it's also different is this harassment and persecution of the press. I mean, what we're seeing now, Don Lemon goes to jail because he covered a non-violent protest. I mean, these legal threats are having a chilling effect on investigative reporting. And Aaron, I wanted to get your thoughts on that, as well as your thoughts on the return of the White House Correspondents' Dinner. We saw a ton of legacy journalists, including our pal Dan Rather, come out and say, you guys can't do this unless you're gonna challenge Trump to his face. I mean, how should journalists be navigating this? Is it time to play kissy face with this man who would lock them all up if he could?

Speaker 3:
[45:29] You know what I'm sick and tired of? I'm sick and tired of every single journalist in DC having Donald Trump's personal cell phone number and calling him up all day, and then putting out a tweet saying, Trump said all of these things that end up-

Speaker 1:
[45:39] Trump told me this.

Speaker 3:
[45:40] Right, and great, Trump is manipulating the market through you. Like, that is what's happening.

Speaker 1:
[45:45] Yeah, trading journalism for access.

Speaker 3:
[45:48] Exactly, and I think that-

Speaker 1:
[45:49] Proximity to power.

Speaker 3:
[45:50] Correct, I think that what Dan Rather did and those journalists did, signing onto that letter, I think is important. I think that the White House Correspondents' Dinner should not celebrate a president who denigrates the press. I think I'm even more upset. Brendan Carr was invited, the FCC Chairman, by Paramount to sit at their table. Pete Hegseth was invited by CBS News to sit at their table. This is not-

Speaker 1:
[46:13] Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[46:14] It's tough. It's tough to watch. I mean, but at the end of the day, people forget, and this is why, to me, independent media is so important, that big media companies need clicks and need headlines and needs access to make money, right? Without this access, many of them won't make the money, and so, they're trading access and eventually money for kissing up to Trump.

Speaker 1:
[46:36] Yeah, that's it.

Speaker 2:
[46:37] It's one of the things that you touched on, but I want to ask you about, because I also think it's part of what's unique is the sort of accusations of insider trading as announcements are coming. For instance, there's a worry that oil futures are being bet on based on inside information before Trump's announcements come about, like ceasefires or updates. Is that one of the stories that you're looking at?

Speaker 3:
[46:59] Yeah, for sure. I think no one really knows what's happening, and I think anyone who says they know is lying to you. I think it's been very fascinating to watch the fall of Axios through all of this to me, of that specific paper, because it's like, everything Trump or an Israeli official says is now news. They're moving, like Friday night, or Friday at 1 p.m., three hours before the markets close, we're moving closer to a ceasefire, great oil prices fall. Then Saturday morning, bomb the hell out of them. It's like, what are we doing?

Speaker 1:
[47:30] 13 tweets in an hour about how there's gonna be a ceasefire and there's not really a ceasefire.

Speaker 3:
[47:36] Correct.

Speaker 2:
[47:36] Yeah, I guess I would add that to my preaching about why this is not normal, that kind of inside manipulation of the markets, you know, I don't think we've seen anything like this kind of criminality from any president.

Speaker 1:
[47:48] I think a lot of people are having to learn how to understand what this particular brand new form of scandal is and how this is being done. And the Iranian government, the Iranian government is acting like an SEC whistleblower explaining to Americans exactly what's happening. That's how bizarre this is.

Speaker 3:
[48:04] 100%.

Speaker 1:
[48:06] But let me close on a positive note, Aaron, because I mean, we just saw the reports of more than 150 veterans protesting at the Capitol. That's the largest protest of veterans tied to this conflict. I'm curious, what does that do for your heart? As a person who, like Corey and I, have to stay marinating in this swamp all day, when you see protests like this beginning to break through to mainstream political discourse, I mean, what does it say about where the public opinion on this destructive conflict is heading?

Speaker 3:
[48:33] I mean, it just shows that it's pretty bad. It's pretty shitty for the White House, right? Like, I mean, I said it from the beginning, like if you're gonna bring America into war, you gotta prosecute the war, you gotta explain why we're going to war. Bush did it successfully. That's why he had a 90% approval rating on the war when he first started out, even if it was a BS reason for it. Trump started out at 40% because he thought he could just fit a square peg through a round hole. Didn't work.

Speaker 1:
[48:56] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[48:57] All right, on that note, we're out of time, but a pleasure, Aaron Parnas. Thanks for joining us.

Speaker 3:
[49:01] Thanks for your work.

Speaker 2:
[49:02] Thanks for speaking to young people.

Speaker 1:
[49:04] Thanks for speaking to old people, too. Everybody needs to subscribe to the Parnas perspective on Substack. You won't be sorry.

Speaker 2:
[49:11] Subscribe to the Parnas perspective, and great to talk to you, and thanks for joining us on The Oath and The Office.

Speaker 3:
[49:17] Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you.

Speaker 1:
[49:19] Thanks again, Aaron Parnas. Well, Corey, are you feeling more hopeful for the future of independent journalism after that?

Speaker 2:
[49:24] Well, I am thankful that there are people like Aaron out there trying to report this story and get it through to people, but it reinforced a worry that I have and a reason why I wanted to start this podcast, which is that there is a sense among young people, he said it in as plain a way as you can, that this is normal and it's not. As I tried to emphasize to him, we have to really see this threat to democracy for what it is and educate people about it and give the wider frame, because if we don't see it for the threat that it is, for the abnormal moment in American history that it is, we might not ever return and it might become what looks normal, might become prophecy, might become normal. That's really a worrisome idea, especially when you have a president who's not only commandeered the executive branch for his own purposes, but for his own criminal enrichment, that's the story of the year.

Speaker 1:
[50:13] And to me, it's just another lesson why it's so important for every member of our audience to try to be healthy, to try to get enough sleep, break a sweat, do cardio a few times a week, watch the partying, watch the alcohol, the drugs, the meat, the wheat, the dairy, stay healthy because you deserve to live long enough to see karma come for Kash Patel, Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth because, oh boy, it is coming. Professor, I want to thank you. We covered a lot of ground on the show this week. What is the best way for our listeners to follow you and your brilliance the other six days of the week?

Speaker 2:
[50:44] Well, our audience is growing so fast and it's because people are sharing it with one or two people. So just share it with somebody if you haven't, The Oath and The Office podcast. Be sure to subscribe, of course, if you haven't and to review us on Apple or wherever you get your podcast. There's also a YouTube channel if you want to watch us, just listen to us and The Oath and The Office substack.

Speaker 1:
[51:04] I want to thank everybody for joining us. I host the evening programming on SiriusXM progress, also the John Fugelsang podcast. My book is called Separation of Church and Hate. I want to thank Wendy and Beowulf and everyone who helps keep this monster train on the tracks. Corey, the ratings for this show, my God, the charts. I'm glad you're keeping it on track of all this. Everybody should follow our substack on our YouTube page as well. Professor, thank you so much for another packed episode. I have to go process all that I've learned. We'll see you guys next time on The Oath and The Office.