Harry Litman [00:00:00]: Hi, guys. Harry here. Before we start, I just wanted to tell you a little bit more about the very cool things that we do week in, week out on patreon for subscribers, who we asked to pay five dollars a month or three dollars for students. So we post ad free episodes like other people do there. But the rest of what we post is not like what other people do. Not like outtakes are a little bit extra, but really full and complete topics with different scholars and the most authoritative people in the country on important topics in the news or just other interesting points. So over the next few weeks, there will be five count them five full discussions with authors of new important books. Anne Applebaum, Norm Eisen, John Dean, Jeff Toobin and David Litt. All of these will be on Patreon.com and will be a great way to find out about the books and also to hear in-depth discussions with the authors. So I urge you to go to Patreon/talkingfeds and just see what we have there. You don't even have to subscribe, but once you see the different postings, we think and hope you might be tempted to give it a go. All right. Thanks very much. And now this week's episode.
Harry Litman [00:01:33]: Welcome to Talking Feds, a roundtable that brings together prominent former federal officials and special guests for a dynamic discussion of the most important political and legal topics of the day. I'm Harry Litman. By the end of a week in which the virus numbers seem perhaps to be stabilizing, though, and horrendous rates that still top the world.It felt as if the wheels might be falling off civil society as a whole. The protests in Portland continued and then proliferated as federal agents stormed in uninvited, ostensibly to safeguard the Portland Post Office, only to engage in a series of over the top conduct toward the protesters that inflamed everyone. The weekend announcement that the feds were pulling out restored a relative calm. But the president and attorney general promised to take the Headbanging Act on the road to other cities governed by Democrats. Bill Barr appeared for a long delayed testimony in the House and left little doubt that under his stewardship, the Department of Justice's primary lookout is the interest of the president and the Republican Party. That there is effectively no check on this corruption of purpose and that he stands ready to pull the levers at his disposal to further the president's reelection. And the president trailing badly in the polls and firmly tagged, despite his best efforts with responsibility for the country's abysmal record with the virus floated the idea of delaying the election for the first time in the country's history, prompting a swift rebuke from Mitch McConnell and others who have spent the last three years in lockstep with him. What really brought the weak crashing down, though, was an economic report weeks end that showed that the U.S. economy contracted in the last quarter at the fastest rate in nearly a century. It was the worst quarter in the economy on record, and the three month plunge erased nearly five years of growth. With jobless benefits due to expire and no consensus among the two parties for extending them, the economy and the virus were braided together in a miserable lash with no cogent plan from the national government for either of them. And of course, August's arrival means that the fall is accelerating toward us. With school reopenings completely uncertain and an election pondering bedlam and new levels of ruthlessness from the president. To take stock of these developments and their social and political implications, we have an awesome panel assembled.
Harry Litman [00:03:59]: First, E.J. Dionne appearing for the first time on Talking Feds. He is a Hilman Award winning Washington Post columnist, as well as a senior Brookings fellow. He's authored eight books, most recently Code Red How Progressives and Moderates Can Unite to Save Our Country. So good to have you, E.J.. Thanks for being here.
EJ Dionne [00:04:19]: It is great to be with you. I've been a fan of yours for a long time, so it's nice to be here.
Harry Litman [00:04:24]: Thank you so much. Were former colleagues until recently. Second, Rick Wilson, a political consultant, turned political writer. Rick Wilson, a co-founder of the Lincoln Project, is one of the scariest man in America. Though a lifelong Republican, he was an early critic of President Trump, whom he now torments daily with astonishingly effective ads to the endless delight of Democrats and his former political adversaries who used to be scared to death of him. Since leaving politics, he's published two books Everything Trump Touches Dies and the recent Running Against the Devil and launched a terrific twice a week podcast, the New Abnormal. Which he bills accurately as blunt truth and dark humor for our world in chaos. Rick Wilson, thanks so much for joining us.
Rick Wilson [00:05:12]: Thanks, Harry. I appreciate being back.
Harry Litman [00:05:14]: And finally, we're honored to welcome also a returning guest to Talking Feds congressman Jamie Raskin. A member of Congress representing Maryland's 8th District, serves among other committees on the Judiciary Committee, where he has been a piercing intellect in a series of hearings involving the administration. Also a professor of law emeritus at American University in Washington College of Law and the author of dozens of law review articles and several books, including Washington Overruling Democracy: The Supreme Court versus the American People. Congressman Jamie Raskin, thank you very much for returning to Talking Keds.
Jamie Raskin [00:05:51]: Maybe it's totally my pleasure, Harry. I I'm delighted to be on with EJ and Rick too.
Harry Litman [00:05:55]: Great. All right. So let's dive in. Let's let's start toward the end of this tumultuous week with this tweet from the president floating the idea of moving the election. You know, he's been claiming for months, of course, the election's going to be rigged. But this was a giant step farther and suggested the possibility of delay. Let's start here. I was really struck by the quick rebuke of the Republican elite. McConnell, even Pence, Steve Calabrese. How do you account for that? Is it just that it was such a crazy, crazy idea because he's had plenty of them before? Or is it an indication of. Some daylight opening up generally between him and the Republicans in the Senate especially.
EJ Dionne [00:06:40]: I think we should ask the Rick Wilson comments on his own party.
Rick Wilson [00:06:44]: Well, I think that brief little blip came at a point where there's a lot of tension inside the caucus. They all recognize that Mitch McConnell, maybe minority leader next fall. They are all starting to wonder how far they can split off from Trump without triggering either a tweet storm on his part or Fox to go after them. And they're in a tough spot. There are some red lines, apparently, where even Trump's cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs approach to the Constitution leads them to at least mildly clutch their pearls forrow their brows and say things like, well, no, I think he was joking or I didn't read it or I'm late for lunch.
Harry Litman [00:07:22]: Well, I didn't read and I'm late for lunch was the normal answer. But this was actually are we're gonna actually have an election. I mean, it was a firm pushback. No?
Rick Wilson [00:07:31]: It really was, relatively speaking, practically a declaration of war compared to what they've done in the past. And I do think, though, that it also comes at a time where McConnell is under extraordinary pressure from his own members because they're off for the weekend now as the six hundred dollar a week unemployment benefit has expired. The economy is is in freefall and it has turned ugly.
Jamie Raskin [00:07:51]: Well, right. And so it's an unworkable idea that he can't accomplish on his own or certainly without the house and a deeply unpopular idea. And I think they wanted to nip it in the bud. What I was hearing from Republicans was that the whole thing was just distraction and diversion from the collapsing economy and the terrible news about the GDP going down one third.
Harry Litman [00:08:12]: Yeah. I mean, the tweet came a whole 15 minutes after so that I can see that hypothesis.
EJ Dionne [00:08:16]: My first sense was, my God, this is an outrage. My second sense was he wants us talking about anything except the crash and the GDP number. But I had a third thought, which is we should take it really seriously any way, because if this goes hand in hand with his talk about a mail ballot election being corrupt, and I think he is setting things up to say and I guess David Rothkopf made this point, he only wants the election to depend on counted ballots on Election Day. If those show him ahead, then every mail ballot that comes in after that is declared a fraudulent ballot. And he wants to set things up to cry fraud, even if he loses by a big margin. Now, I think that the Republicans I think Rick Wilson's right. I think there are little indications that they are starting to pull away from him. I loved Ben Sasse trying to be a right winger and an anti Trump at the same time by criticizing the relief bill, by saying that the Trumpers and the Democrats are competing to see who can be the bigger spender. That's a pretty neat trick to turn Trump into a big spending leftist. But I think that was an indicator of, you know, Republicans are looking at the same numbers everybody else is and saying, 'you know, this may be a time to have a little bit of independence from the guy.' But I found it heartening because maybe if indeed Trump does try to pretend that a big defeat is actually fraudulent, maybe the Republicans will actually say no for the long run. If they don't do it on principle, they'll at least say, no, we can't make this our fight. This is going to hurt us for a long time coming. [100.9s]
Harry Litman [00:09:58]: Yeah. And notice, by November 3rd, things might be really different. I mean, let's stick with this for a second, especially the Republicans who are in cycle who are up for election. They must be pressing on McConnell to say, you've got to cut me loose at some point. There's got to be a time where their home interests make them have to try to put some distance between them and the president, no? But if that's right, then if you think about some Election Day maneuver, you'll already have had a number of people who are not in lockstep with him and will be probably repelled by the idea.
Jamie Raskin [00:10:37]: The difficulty is there is still this what I refer to as FOMC, fear of mean tweets. And those difficulties of being terrified of Donald Trump turning his ire toward you. That shapes the behavior of every Republican elected official in D.C. No matter how loyal they think they are, they know in a hot second he can turn on them. If Lindsey Graham is so nervous that he's trying to stay as far under water as he can. So Donald Trump never gets mad at him. All these guys are driven by that piece of behavioral terror. [30.8s]
Jamie Raskin [00:11:08]: I mean, he's basically re-created, his extremely dysfunctional family on the Internet.
Harry Litman [00:11:15]: Exactly. Well, is that so, Rick, actually sticking with you? You said the tweet shows a frightened narcissist afraid of losing. That's pretty pungent in of itself. But can you unpack it a little? Why is that how you read the tweet?
Rick Wilson [00:11:30]: Donald Trump has always had a kind of feral cunning when it comes to politics.
Harry Litman [00:11:33]: Yeah.
Rick Wilson [00:11:34]: Because he knows how to read the mark. He knows how to run a con. And in this case, there's not a lot of daylight for him. He understands his electoral path is narrowing. And so because he's this reckless sort of day trading narcissist, his thought is, 'I'm going to throw something out there. Maybe if it's close on Election Day, I'll get a couple of governors on my side or I'll get a couple of state legislative bodies on my side who will cause enough chaos that I can, you know. We'll see what happens.' He'll try to play it out. And because of that, I think he feels trapped. I think he's looking for distractions. I think he knows the economy is sliding down to Great Depression levels or worse. And so the chaos level that he's trying to induce by those things, it's very Trump ish. But it's also certainly something that we're not going to be able to--You can't look away from it.
EJ Dionne [00:12:24]: First of all, I agree with that. And I think that if you want to descend into nightmare scenarios, you can imagine in some states, Republican legislatures saying, 'Well, we're not sure about these results, we'll just elect a slate of Republican and the electors.' That would be the extreme mess. But in terms of Republicans distancing themselves from Trump, they've got a problem. They've got what you might call the Dean Heller problem. Dean Heller, the senator from Nevada, where he was sort of embracing Trump, backing away from Trump, embracing Trump. And the problem with all of these vulnerable Republicans is they really do need some votes from voters who are going to vote against Trump if they're to have any chance of winning.
Harry Litman [00:13:07]: Right.
EJ Dionne [00:13:07]: ]But they also need the Trump base to turn out for them. And if they're too aggressive in courting the anti Trump vote, they're probably going to lose some of the Trump people as they move toward the Trump people. The middle of the road, voters who just can't stand Trump will say, all right, yeah, it's time to elect vote Democratic down the ballot just to get rid of all these guys, which is who the Lincoln Project has come to. So I think if you're a vulnerable Republican, you are in one of the most difficult places anybody's ever been in politics, given the nature of that Trump constituency and your need for it. [34.4s]
Rick Wilson [00:13:42]: Well, I'm just wondering if Trump has polarized the electorate in the culture so much that there really are very few people left in the middle, torn about anything. And whether the election really is about just figuring out how to mobilize voters, get them to figure out the rules in the particular state. Delivering the vote and then defending the election. It just seems to be very different from prior elections where there is some idea of kind of a mushy middle of voters that people are clamoring for.
EJ Dionne [00:14:12]: I agree with that. And there's more straight ticket voting now. If you look at 2016, the presidential race and the Senate races tended to go together. But for some of these folks, particularly people like Collins, Senator Collins in Maine or Cory Gardner, they're going to need some voters who are going to vote against Donald Trump to have a chance to win. That's why I think the odds are Democrats are going to take the Senate because there probably aren't enough of those voters. But their only path to victory is to pick off some Biden voters.
Rick Wilson [00:14:42]: Yeah, but to the extent the electorate now reproduces and reflects the psyche of Donald Trump, either you're with him or you're against him.
EJ Dionne [00:14:50]; Yeah.
Rick Wilson [00:14:50]: I mean, he really has polarized the type of country.
Harry Litman [00:14:53]: That is the beauty of the introduction here. I just want to say, of the Lincoln Project, which now has a counterweight. What should we say? FOLPC or the new commercial will come out.
EJ Dionne [00:15:06]: The Jefferson Davis project?
Harry Litman [00:15:10]: I want to stick with this election scenario, what E.J. raised, and I think he did obliquely as well. Congressman. I think the overwhelming majority of states do have it in place that ballots that are mailed before the election but received after the election won't be counted. And you add to it the chaos of the post office and the new installation of a Trump partisan at the post office. You have nightmarish possibilities. Is anyone thinking, Congressman, about some kind of legislative solution to this problem?
Jamie Raskin [00:15:45]: Yes. Well, the Republicans are not going to allow us any kind of legislative solution to the problems that they're busily creating in the electoral sphere. I mean, we originally asked for four billion dollars to make available to the Election Assistance Commission to the states for the purposes of updating, modernizing and going to vote by mail in the middle of the pandemic. And they wanted zero. And we settled at 10 percent of what we'd asked for, 400 million. And they continue to say we passed the Heroes Act and with the remainder of the 3.6 Billion in there. And the Republicans continue to say that the states are fine and they don't need any more money. So I don't know, they'll be able to join that. We are going to have definitely a number of hearings about the post office to get on top of that. And some people think that there is going to be a real effort to corrupt the post office, to slow the mails and to create chaos, and little were all Reichstag fires to justify Republican legislatures invoking some problem and saying, 'oh my God, it's it's such chaos. We're just going to either not send electors or we're going to send them in for Trump.' So either it's that or they at least want to create so much fear of problems that people don't vote or, you know, that they're afraid to use the mails.. And they say, well, we'll vote on Election Day and then we'll start hearing about massive outbreaks and how it's dangerous to go outside right before Election Day. So they're going to play the con. And our job is to try to bring as much fact and order to the situation as possible. So we will be doing hearings and oversight committee as soon as we get back in September.
EJ Dionne [00:17:14]: Yeah, I'm scared to death of Election Day voting. I have a theory that this whole war on mail ballots is also a bank shot, which is to try to keep people away from mail ballots so that you have long lines, crowded polling places on Election Day. Because if you took a couple of places where there was no bad will involved, we'll take Maryland's where Congressman Raskin and I live and DC. These weren't places trying to suppress the vote. And they had a hellish time dealing with a big mail ballot election because they weren't accustomed to big mail ballot elections. And putting aside any chicanery, just the fact that states are going to be dealing with something like they've never dealt with before is going to create problems on Election Day. Now, I think if there's any good news here is that the three big swing states, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, have relatively permissive absentee voter rules, basically make it easier to get absentee ballots. They all have Democratic governors, which could make a difference in their not playing these games. But I think even if you had a well-run election, a lot of states are going to have problems with mail. And I am really worried that we're not going to have enough polling places. The people who used to take care of this for us were elderly people, retired people. My late mother in law, a Democrat and her Republican best friend, worked their precinct every year. God bless. Older people don't want to go to work the polls this time. I'm hoping that high schools and AmeriCorps, if they'll let them do it and other groups will try to recruit young people so we can open up polling places.
Harry Litman [00:18:58]: Yeah, it's a great point. All right. So I think it really remains to be seen. Will he double down on this after the response he got from his own home team? Or will he move on to other distractions? For now, though, let's move to the thing that E.J. and others posited. What actually were the impetus for this crazy tweet of his, which is this indescribably bad economic report that came out at the end of the week. I don't follow it as closely as I should. Let me just start there. You might have expected some bad news, but this is stunningly bad news. The worst quarter, arguably in history, wiping out nearly five years of growth. Did people anticipate it was going to be that bad?
EJ Dionne [00:19:45]: I don't think it was shocking that it was really bad because this reflects the last quarter and we saw what the unemployment rates look like. You've got 20 to 30 million people out of work. So I don't think it was--I think the number was shocking, especially when you annualize it. It goes over 30 percent. [00:20:04]Here's my worry. Michael Strain, a economists at the American Enterprise Institute--He's a conservative, but no friend of Trump's--made the point that these numbers that for the last quarter were so bad that you might actually, even if the economy doesn't really recover that much, see some small rebound in the next quarter. And Michael argues that it'll be a fake rebound. But if there's anything with a plus sign in front of it, you know that Donald Trump is going to take it and pretend that we're out of it. To use his favorite word these days, only embers of problems. Now, I don't think voters who are unemployed are going to be persuaded by that. But I think it's going to be very interesting how the awfulness of this number affects the next number we're going to see before the election. [49.0s]
Harry Litman [00:20:54]: But we're gonna see it like ours virtually before the election. The end of October, no?
EJ Dionne [00:20:59]: Yeah, well, that's in time to spin it and not enough time to really go into it deeply.
Harry Litman [00:21:05]: To counter spin.
Rick Wilson [00:21:06]: Remember the harm that did to McCain in 2008. Because we were in the most chaotic moments of the financial crisis and his campaign was already staggering. And he was barely off the matt. And then that was the ballgame. I think that that long week where he said he was going to suspend the campaign was coming, as you were hearing that bear was going under. And I believe the report came.
EJ Dionne [00:21:27]: That was September. That week was killer. I think that's the week the election was lost.
Jamie Raskin [00:21:32]: Well, just going to say that [00:21:33]every week or two they come up with a new name because the Republicans will use it kind of halfheartedly for a day or two. So I can't remember if we're still in the great American comeback or we're in transition to greatness, which always reminds me of Jonestown. He'll give it some tag. But the public understands that this has been an absolute debacle, that we're on our knees, that he's brought us into the dungeon as a society and as an economy. And so I just don't see it making much of a difference, whether it's 30 percent or 25 percent or 40 percent. It makes a lot of difference in terms of the lives of the people. But I think that the vast majority of American people have made up their minds that Trump is a complete catastrophe for the republic. And that's why his whole political game plan is just repress the vote, suppress the vote, depress the vote however he can. And then see what kind of electoral machinations he can come up with and then play a game with pardons to see if he can avoid going to jail.
EJ Dionne [00:22:30]: I'd like to ask both you, Harry and Rick, what do you make of that? Because I agree with Congressman Raskin. There were elections in our lifetimes that went down to the wire and were contested all the way. And there were elections where you had a sense early on that voters had made a decision and it would take something enormous to shake them off that decision. And it feels to me this feels much more like one of those elections where voters came to a judgment already and that it will take something very big to push them back to Trump. Rick, is it your sense of things?
Rick Wilson [00:23:05]: Look, I think in the Electoral College map, it's a closer run race than it is on the national picture. And that's the only thing that matters in my world. But I do think that a lot of voters have just washed their hands of it. I think there are a good number of shy Biden voters out there who are former Republicans or Republican leaning independents. And we're doing a lot to study those folks right now and we're finding ways to identify them appropriately. But I think most Americans have made up their mind on Trump. This is a guy who now has approvals in the 30s. It finally broke that 40 percent barrier. Just the American silo's of our politics kept Barack Obama and Donald Trump both from ever quite going below 40 for long. Once in a while, I pitched down there. But now Trump has broken that barrier and the trend line is headed south. It's not a place where you want to be if you're an incumbent president with a terrible economy, with low approval ratings and skyhigh wrong direction numbers. So I think the decision's been made by most Americans.
Jamie Raskin [00:24:02]: I mean, I'm impressed, Rick, and tell me if I'm misreading it. But I'm interested how much the Lincoln Republicans are willing to call out all of Donald Trump's enablers and collaborators within the Republican Party. Because we could be headed for a landslide election that not just ousts Donald Trump, but conceivably destroys the Republican Party. And they certainly deserve to be destroyed for the way that they propped them up, because my colleagues in Congress, they don't act like a political party that discusses things and debates or they act like a religious cult. I mean, if he wakes up and he says the dictator of North Korea is our best friend, he's our best friend. If he wakes up and he says we're going to nuclear war against the dictator of North Korea, then we're going to nuclear war. And they've suspended all critical thought. I mean, they they should be selling flowers at Dulles Airport.
Rick Wilson [00:24:50]: Congressman, you're exactly on point. [00:24:52]When I wrote everything Trump Touches Dies in 2017. It's still not quite congealed into the cult we know today. It was still there were still a little bit of agita out there among Republicans or so a little bit of eh. Now even the ones who whisper about it in private are a much smaller percentage. And the ones who believe in him now are the true believers. There what I called the Trump hotties. These are the bomb vest guys. They would do whatever he tells them. And these people, they've built this little media bubble for themselves. They built this little social media bubble for themselves with a complete alternate reality. And it has all the definitional characteristics of a cult. He has all the definition critics of a cult leader. And I'm surprised that Dawn Shinrikyo isn't selling his bath water to these folks and making them wear robes awaiting for the comet to come. [47.6s]
EJ Dionne [00:25:40]: This will be interrupted by an ad for Hydroxy.
Rick Wilson [00:25:44]: Dr. Trump is a miracle elixir.
Harry Litman [00:25:47]: Yeah, well, and, you know, I just I'm no match for political savvy with anybody and podcast. But to just respond to E.J.. It certainly does have that feel because the cadre that Rick just recognize they're never going to go away. But it's just not not enough. Maybe, what, 60, 70 percent of the people that took him to the narrow victory before and those other 30 percent have redefined them. Suburban moms seem to be deserting him in droves. But it does feel that way to me. And, of course, I've been wrong in the past so often about Trump. But what strikes me as really killing for him is this one-two punch of the economy and the virus. I think a lot of people had the feeling that they would really take the blow to the economy and to normal life because that's what it would require to beat back the virus. But now here we are having taken an even bigger blow than we might have thought. And the virus is not going away. And as a parent of school children, we are hearing about the whole next school year being interrupted and the like. So we've endured the pain and we're nowhere. And that aspect of it probably both. But certainly the virus aspect of it rests completely with him. No one's going to think it anywhere but him. And that that makes it a referendum on a issue that I think he can't win.
Jamie Raskin [00:27:16]: Well, go the wild card player here, I think, is Vladimir Putin and Russian sabotage and foreign interference with the election.
Harry Litman [00:27:25]: Oy.
Jamie Raskin [00:27:25]: What's going to happen in terms of trying to conduct the election under COVID 19? I mean. Well, one of the encouraging parts of the response to Trump's tweet was people just saying, look, this is America. We had elections during World War Two and we had elections during the Civil War and we had elections in a Depression. And we can do this. And the spirit of those voters in Wisconsin was just inspiring beyond all get out. The way that they were on the streets for four or five hours with their masks on in bad weather. But they were just determined to vote. And the Democrats are not fooling around right now. And we've got all these independents. And then I think what Rick has done and what Lincoln Republicans have done is to validate and legitimate a lot of Republicans and I hear from them in my district coming forward and saying this is not what I served my country for. This is not what it means to me to be a veteran. And that veterans vote is really, I think, starting to turn against Trump after repeated provocations. I mean, you wouldn't think this stuff with John McCain would have been enough, but the policy betrayals and the stuff with Russia and the bounty on the heads of our soldiers in Afghanistan, I mean, that should be determinative of the election alone.
Rick Wilson [00:28:36]: Yeah. Look, we call Lincoln Republicans and independent leaning conservatives. They're still not going to be the majority of the Republican Party in this election. But this is a game of small numbers. And it's even as even Steve Bannon, the poet, sage and philosopher Steve Bannon, said, 'If the Lincoln Project peels off three or four percent of the vote in the swing states, Trump has done well.'.
Jamie Raskin [00:28:55]: That'll be remarkable. Three or four percent.
Rick Wilson [00:28:57]: Yeah, and we think that that is something we could get to.
EJ Dionne [00:29:00]: And it seems to be happening right now. If you look at the polls in the swing states that started to happen and you're almost at the point where if you can simply hold those voters, he's done. Trump's only real play in general is to attack the opponent viciously. And you saw that in the Republican primaries and you certainly saw that with Hillary Clinton. And I think his problem is that number one, Joe Biden is harder to attack because he is short of base numbers are better than Hillary Clinton's. I happen to like Hillary Clinton, but there were a lot of voters who didn't. And if you looked at voters who dislike both Trump and Clinton, they voted about 5-3 for Trump. They were the voters who decided the election. In this election because Trump is an incumbent and has a record and hasn't delivered for a lot of the voters she promised to deliver for, the voters who dislike Biden and Trump are voting for Biden. And unless he can reverse that, then even his patented go after the opponent, whether this stuff is true or not method, that method won't work this time because those voters have said, 'Yeah, I may not like Biden, but Trump is worse.'
Harry Litman [00:30:17]: That seems right to me. But also, it's just a referendum on Trump. It's unavoidable. I want to close this out with one quick question more on political results. Jobless benefits expire today and the Republicans, Democrats, and there's a big gap between them. Do the Republicans kind of have to cave on this? And quickly? It just seems to me that they're likely to get blamed if it remains like this. And does there not have to be a solution and fast for this problem?
Rick Wilson [00:30:46]: If they have any sense of self-preservation left andthat's an open question. If they have any sense of self-preservation left. They're going to realize that thirty two point five percent of Americans last month could not pay their rent or mortgage. And there is a tidal wave of foreclosures and evictions coming. I had a friend who's a hedge fund guy said to me, hey, you know, how many people were foreclosed in the big financial crash in 08, 09? I said, no, it was seven million, because our model right now is for 20.1 Million foreclosures to completion in the next 18 months. This is going to be the absolute permanent stain on a party that said we give more of a damn about Donald Trump than the American people. [37.7s]
Jamie Raskin [00:31:24]: But I agree totally with that. I mean, it has begun. This wave of foreclosures, of evictions. Are bankruptcies absolute economic misery. And there's so many state unemployment offices that are dysfunctional and people are already freaked out about that and not being able to see their kids. The new numbers, I think, put all kinds of pressure on McConnell to come over our way. Our 3 trillion dollar plan is not like a bargaining chip. This is a statement of what the need is in the country. And all the economists are with us on the Heroes Act now. So if they don't cave, then you know, they believe their election is really hopeless. Because what they're saying is they're not going to try to do anything to help anybody and they just want the economy to be completely in the gutter when Biden and the Democrats take over.
EJ Dionne [00:32:15]: I think the problem is that McConnell can't deliver his own people. When you look at this situation, the only number that Trump has that has been any good at all is on the economy. And one of the reasons he has had that okay economic number is because the Democrats really pumped up the number of the original relief acts, put a lot of money out there, gave a lot of money to unemployed people who spent it quickly because they had to and we didn't have as off--I mean, the result is very bad. But it would have been way worse without that stimulus. But a lot of Republicans didn't really like the first bill. It had to be broadened by the Democrats to get it through. And so, you know, I wrote a column this week saying Republicans really can't govern anymore. And I don't think McConnell can deliver. His conference is divided six ways from Sunday on this. And so it's really hard to negotiate with a side that is in complete chaos. Can McConnell, deliver enough members on anything to pass something. So I'm I'm more pessimistic about this than my colleagues. I hope for the sake of a lot of suffering people, I hope they're right. But I think it's very hard for the Republicans to get to the place where commonsense would say they ought to get.
Rick Wilson [00:33:36]: Absolutely.
Harry Litman [00:33:38]: All right. More to come. It's time now for our sidebar. And for the first time on Talking Feds, we're changing plans and rebroadcasting a previous sidebar. That's because it's an explainer from several months back that just goes to the heart of current news, namely Trump's proposal to push the election back. So in the explainer in this case is to our great good fortune Teller of Penn and Teller, who discusses here whether President Trump could cancel the November election. Penn and Teller, as most everyone knows, are the thinking person's magicians or I think I should say performers, because for over 40 years together, they've insisted on reminding us there's no such thing as magic. Only then to proceed to dazzle with their great chops and brilliant reconstructions of traditional magicians tricks. Teller, as everyone knows, is the silent partner in the act. So we are especially honored that he's agreed to break his silence to school us on this topic that is now in the headlines and taking on huge practical importance.
Teller [00:34:43]: Can Trump cancel the November election? As the Coronavirus spreads, several states have postponed their primary elections. But if the virus is still prevalent in the fall or returns after the summer, can the president cancel or postpone the federal elections? No. The president cannot directly cancel the elections. The Constitution requires direct election of representatives and senators and states that Congress sets the time and place and manner of congressional elections. Federal law sets the congressional elections on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November. This year, it's November 3rd. Only Congress can change this. The presidential election is slightly different. Remember, the president is chosen by electors. The Constitution requires only that each appoints electors in such a manner that the state legislature determines. For the last hundred and fifty years, every state has appointed its electors by holding an election. Federal law says this appointment happens on the same day as congressional elections. So only Congress can change the date of congressional elections and only the state legislatures can change the manner of selecting electors. But what if it becomes impossible to hold the election on November 3rd? Could Trump continue to be president then? No. The 20th Amendment states that the terms of president and vice president end at noon on January 20th. At 12:01 one January 20th, 2021 the current president and vice presidents terms end and individuals elected this year, even if that's Trump and Pence, begin their term. On January 3rd, 2021, the new Congress is sworn in. In the unlikely event that no state holds a federal election, there will be no representatives and no new senators sworn in on January 3rd. However, senators hold six year terms and 65 will continue their terms of office. 35 are Democrats or caucus with the Democrats and 30 are Republicans. The Senate president of this 65 person Senate would be Democratic leader Chuck Schumer, and the president, pro temporary, would be the longest serving member, Patrick Leahy. On January 6th the electoral votes are counted by the president of the Senate. If an individual receives the majority of the electoral votes, he or she is elected. If no one receives a majority of the electoral votes, the House of Representatives picks the president from among the top three electoral vote getters and the Senate picks the vice president from among the top two electoral vote getters. Since no state held a presidential election, no candidate would receive any electoral votes. There would be no names for the House and Senate to choose from. Nor any representatives to vote. Without a qualifying president or vice president elect, the Constitution directs Congress to determine the president. The Presidential Succession Act directs that the Speaker of the House shall become president. If there is no speaker of the House, which there couldn't be, since there would be no representatives, then the presidency devolves to President pro tempore of the Senate. Our scenario would therefore result in the first term of President Patrick Leahy. For Talking Feds, I'm Teller of Penn and Teller.
Harry Litman [00:38:18]: Thank you very much, Teller, for explaining to us once again, we'll hope we can absorb it fully this time and no need for a third seminar whether Trump can try to cancel the election. We have time for one more issue. And I'd like to talk about the testimony of the attorney general in the House Judiciary Committee. It was the first time in either of his tenures. He did not get a warm welcome. Out of the box the chair told him that he'd endangered Americans and violated their constitutional rights. I guess the first question is the tongue lashing that he got and some really good lines of questioning from Congressman Raskin and maybe Swallow and Jayapal. Does it add up to anything or was it pretty clear at the end of the day, there's no real check on the attorney general between now and November?
Jamie Raskin [00:39:12]: Well, I think we laid down the law that we were not going to let him get away with anything. We were going to hold him up to public exposure and ridicule for acting like a partisan sycophant and running dog for the president instead of like the lawyer for the American people and United States. And we called him on everything. I mean, we called him on Michael Flynn. We called him on the Roger Stone part. And we called him out for the obscene assault on two thousand nonviolent protesters in Lafayette Square, where he violated every one of six rights contained in the First Amendment.
Harry Litman [00:39:48]: Yeah. You had a really great back and forth, let me say. Though let me also ask, what strategy did you have going in and would you have done anything different now in retrospect? Because, you know, your exchange is a good example, Congressman. You mainly made points for people rather than trying to pin him with questions. Did you had you concluded that that's really the best one can hope for? And do you think you were right?
Jamie Raskin [00:40:10]: Well, this whole five minute thing is a real inscrutable mystery. There are different ways of thinking about it. And you've got to figure out in any particular context, are you going in to try to get information? And these people give no information. Are we going in to try to beat him in a debate? I don't think so, because he's a clever debater with an essentially fascistic soul and mind and heart. So my decision. And then we all tried to work together.
Harry Litman [00:40:39]: Oh, is that right? You carved it up.
Jamie Raskin [00:40:41]: Yeah. We sort of got into the habit of that during the impeachment so that everything is covered. And that you probably noticed that one person's questions kind of led to the next person's questions, like mine kind of bled into Pramilla Jayapal. I was assigned the part and I was happy to take this part of looking at the way that Attorney General Barr has helped to block COVID 19 response and block the development of a national plan. And how when extremist right wing protesters shut down the legislature in Michigan and called for the life of, exacted death threats against Governor Wittmer, that instead of going in to beat up the protesters the way that he did in Lafayette Square, he sent lawyers in to join their case against the public health orders. And then so I was really going after his attempt to blockade public health orders and bring down what the governors of Virginia and <ichigan had been doing. So, I mean, in my five minutes, I wanted to associate him with the COVID 19 nightmare. And he really didn't like. I take credit only for drawing first blood and irritating him so that he would really begin to talk about what he felt. And I thought that the next questioner, Pramilla Jayapal, did a fantastic job of nailing him on the demolition of people's civil rights and civil liberties.
Rick Wilson [00:41:58]: She really cooked him.
Harry Litman [00:42:00]: Yeah, man, she was so impressive. I'm starting to get angry. Oh, yeah. So what did you guys, E.J. and Rick, think? It's true there were occasional flashes where you could see people got under his skin. He was generally so sort of phlegmatic and soft spoken. But he broke a few times. I don't know what it exactly adds up to. Besides a very unpleasant five hours for Bill Barr, though.
EJ Dionne [00:42:27]: I think for me, the most important words in that hearing were meat and potatoes. If you remember that moment when he was trying to defend the outrageous miscarriage of justice in favor of Roger Stone, the political interference in the Roger Stone case, and was trying to say that the crimes that Stone was accused of, the crimes that he was accused of, were not serious. I mean, this is a guy who seemed to be a go between with the Russians against it to spread disinformation. And these aren't serious, but these are somehow sophisticated crimes whereas meat and potatoes crimes now, those are the crimes that we should worry about. And what it really sounded like is the kinds of crimes committed by people of color or lower income people or traditional crimes. Those are the crimes we go after. But if you're wearing a suit and tie, those crimes really are just exotic crimes that we shouldn't pay attention to. It reminded me of that great old Woody Guthrie line. Some rob you with a six gun, some with a fountain pen. To rob somebody with a six gun, that's crime. And if you rob somebody with a fountain pen, forget about it. We only go after meat and potatoes. And I thought that was very revealing. And also his real inability to answer the question, why are these protesters in Portland threats that are worthy of federal intervention? But guys who are pro Trump, who go into the Michigan legislature carrying guns, we shouldn't have to worry about those people? I think she really as a Congresswoman Jayapal really got him on that.
Rick Wilson [00:44:05]: Yeah. And I do think there's one thing about Bill Barr. He relies on a sort of protective camouflage of looking and sounding like a gray man, Washington apparatchik, and delivering things that are kind of a dull procedural way. He's the most dangerous man in the country, in my view. And he has the most reckless and profound disregard for anything except his extraordinarily expansive view of the executive powers of the president. And so I think there's a certain degree of pressure that he felt, which was unusual. And Congressman Raskin and Congresswoman Jayapal and others started to rattle him a little bit. And I thought it was very worthwhile.
EJ Dionne [00:44:44]: This isn't an establishment guy who will take care of the Justice Department. This is a naked partizan who's going to use his Justice Department in any way necessary. And I agree with Rick. I think he is a--it's genuinely scary to think of what he might do with Justice Department between now and Election Day.
Jamie Raskin [00:45:03]: I mean, Barr confiscated the Mueller report and then he deliberately misstated the contents of it, repeatedly. Prompting not one but two letters from Mueller saying, 'What in hell are you're doing? You're lying to the people.' But he's just belligerent and just barrels right through.
Harry Litman [00:45:20]: What is your take on this, by the way? He repeated in the hearing this rosy scenario of, oh, I just I could have been a grandpa having fun with my grandchildren. I didn't need any of this, etc.. And he comes in and obviously he is willing to completely trash what had been a pretty fine reputation. He's going to go down, as you know, John Mitchell. That's quite sort of self immolation that you don't normally see in people in public life.
EJ Dionne [00:45:51]: ]My read is that if you look at that Notre Dame speech and some of the other speeches he's given, he is like a lot of socially conservative Trump supporters who believe that the culture is being led down some dangerous, hellish path by liberals. And that owning the Libs and defeating the Libs is worth every bit of the tarnishing of his reputation. And it's worth supporting Donald Trump for. And I think it's a shame. I think it's terrible for the country, but I think that is the choice he's made. [35.2s] I'm curious what Rick thinks as somebody who knows his own party better than I do.
Rick Wilson [00:46:31]: I think we're in a spiral right now. In some ways, there was always gonna be this breaking point with both political parties in the immediate future. Where this nationalism on the GOP side was going to cause these stresses and this rising authoritarian strain that embodied by a guy like Barr was going to evetually. I mean look, Bill Barr is to the right of Dick Cheney on executive power. Let that sink in for a second. And has a guy who used to work for Dick Cheney, I can tell you, Bill Barr is to the right take on executive power, which is kind of a strange moment in our culture. But that's one of the things that led to Trump. This idea that in the in the minds of some Republicans, that you had to have an executive who was so overwhelmingly powerful and so overwhelmingly equipped to do whatever he could not accomplish legislatively or judicially, that you had to make those compromises. And I think that is an incredibly dangerous place for any party to be.
EJ Dionne [00:47:23]: Unless, of course, the president is Barack Obama, in which case executive orders on anything, including DACA, are somehow a vast overreach of executive power.
Rick Wilson [00:47:33]: Yeah. Well, look, I as a conservative, I think that we ought to use the process the founders intended, which is that the legislature would set the law and the courts would interpret said law and the executive would implement said law. I said this at the time, I think I wrote about this during DACA. I said, you know, Democrats are gleeful about this. This will come back to bite them someday. And I don't know who or when, but it will come back to bite them. And it did. And this is why abuse of power is is a danger.
EJ Dionne [00:48:04]: I salute all the work you're doing right now. I don't think DACA--President Bush also had executive orders on immigrants that allowed it legalized or quasi legalize the situation of a lot of immigrants. Nothing about DACA that Obama did compares to some of these abuses, period.
Rick Wilson [00:48:23]: Oh, no, I'm not even saying it was a comparable. Yeah.
Jamie Raskin [00:48:25]: No, neither did it open the door for anything that Trump has been doing on immigration, which has been completely lawless.
Jamie Raskin [00:48:31]: And that's that he's not even bother with executive orders on a lot of the immigration stuff. He's just using command and control.
Jamie Raskin [00:48:37]: But Rick's point, though, about the executive branch authoritarianism of the Republican Party is really important because this is what has defined Scalia going back to Rehnquist. And there's a really powerful impulse there to centralize as much power as possible for war making, national security state, the whole thing. And they viewed Obama as a blip. That was one of the reasons they wanted to do it illegitimate and invalidate his whole administration because they couldn't celebrate in exults executive power. Again, you know, and the same reason they impeached Bill Clinton and had to drive him out. But the standard, of course, is this whole thing about how presidential power is primary and shouldn't be questioned. I mean, there was a moment when Barr and I were really about to get into it. I don't know if you picked it up, but he said. 'Well, for someone who thinks that there is executive power overreach, you.' And then he didn't complete a sentence like he didn't want to go there because I'd been writing about this and about kind of what you were suggesting, Rick, which is we need a reassertion of the basic original constitutional position, which is that Congress is in Article one for a reason. It is the predominant and primary lawmaking branch of government. And the president's job is to be the commander in chief, not of the government or the country, but commander in chief of the army and Navy and the militias when called up into actual service. And then otherwise, the core of the job is to take care that the laws are faithfully executed. You know, and we've turned it so upside down where we've got a king and Trump goes around uncorrected. And undoubtedly egged on by Barr saying, I've got something called Article two, which allows me to do whatever I want. And Barr defends it.
Harry Litman [00:50:11]: And I think actually a corollary here, it's not just executive power, but a kind of fear and loathing of the legislature. And, you know, it's telling Rehnquist and Scalia had this job that was obscure to so many. But now we we know the importance of it. They head of the Office of Legal Counsel, and that's how Barr came to prominence as well. I do want to just underscore something E.J. said, because I do think it's a part of the puzzle. It's a little bit of a surprise. Barr sometimes seems an apparatchik or a kind of sophisticated actor. He can tell a joke, he has a sense of humor, but he really does have this side that the Notre Dame speech expressed. I used to work for him as you used to work for Cheney. And I'll tell a quick story, it's not talking out of school, which I wouldn't do anyway. But he was doing whatever he was doing in 91, all these things. And then there was the publication of the bombshell news that Woody Allen was taking up with his stepdaughter. And he said to justify it, something that had nothing to do with anything in the Department of Justice. The heart wants what the heart wants. And those seven words just weird dabar out and seemed to exemplify a whole kind of Sodom and Gomorrah aspect since the 60s of society. And he wrote a big speech about it and that that is really part of where he comes from.
Jamie Raskin [00:51:36]: Explain this to me and maybe you can I just ask E.J., because he might be able to put this together. How do you square that kind of ferocious religious fundamentalism, authoritarianism with the marriage with Donald Trump, who is the most licentious and predatory and sexually abusive and trespassing president you can imagine?
Rick Wilson [00:51:57]: He's a scoundrel, but he's their scoundrel.
EJ Dionne [00:51:59]: Right. A lot of evangelicals have talked about Cyrus of Persia. He's not really one of us, but he's on our side. And we have reached such a crisis point. You know, the pastor of the First Baptist Church in Dallas talked about this, that they were looking for a strong hand to push back against all of this corruption. This moral corruption that they perceive in this society. So they will tolerate a lot of behavior from Trump because they believe that pushing back against these cultural forces that they oppose. And by the way, a lot of these voters started voting to the right and for Republicans, starting with civil rights. That's also a piece of this story. But the moral side, they can just justify it because Trump has the right enemies in their view.
Jamie Raskin [00:52:46]: Well, but just forgive the thought, then. I mean, it leads to the conclusion that the people who describe themselves as the religious movement or the religious right in America are interested much less in virtue or religious principles than they are in power.
EJ Dionne [00:53:02]: But there's a fascinating poll. I think it was either pure PRI. I think it was PRI where the question was: does it president's personal behavior have a big effect on what kind of president he is? It was better worded than that, obviously. Before Trump showed up, evangelicals, white evangelicals overwhelmingly say yes, a president's personal behavior really mattered. After Trump showed up, the numbers flipped the other way. Trump has created a alas this corruption, I think, of an attitude toward the presidency. You know, in the first instance, they were thinking about Clinton. [36.7s]
Jamie Raskin [00:53:40]: But I'm talking about Trump's public behavior. Look at the assault on Lafayette Square. I mean, the Episcopal bishop of Washington denounced it. The Catholic bishop of Washington denounced it. The president of Episopalian church nationally denounced it. But you still have the right wing religion and they just turn a blind eye to them.
Rick Wilson [00:53:57]: Well, I can tell you, in 2015 and 16, we did tons of focus groups with with Republican voters trying to figure out a pathway to get them off of Trump. And we kept coming back to these evangelical voters who would say, 'Well, I know he's a sinner, but he's going to nominate judges.' And you cannot underestimate the judicial fetishism of the GOP. And I will tell you, and I've told everybody this, Trump's prospects in this race are contingent on Ruth Bader Ginsburg continued good health. And I hate saying it that way. It sounds really cold, but if this becomes a Supreme Court referendum fight, Republicans will be flocking back to him because that strain of judicial fetishism is so unbelievably powerful inside the party today. [41.0s]
Harry Litman [00:54:38]: Of all the ominous and terrifying thoughts that have been expressed today, I think we end with one and nothing. I think.
Rick Wilson [00:54:47]: Sunshine and rainbows.
Harry Litman [00:54:49]: All right. We have just a couple minutes left for our final feature. As Talking Feds listeners know five words or fewer where we take a question from a listener. And each of us has to answer in five words or fewer. Today's question is from Charlie Homans, who asks, Will the Durham report be delivered before the election?
EJ Dionne [00:55:13]: I say yes,.
Rick Wilson [00:55:15]: Yes. A fart in a hurricane.
Harry Litman [00:55:17]: Perfect. Five words.
Jaimie Raskin [00:55:18]: It will be pure propaganda.
Harry Litman [00:55:21]: Five words again. Unfortunately, yes.
Harry Litman [00:55:29]: There's been a great conversation. Thank you very much to E.J. Dionne, Rick Wilson and Congressman Jamie Raskin. And thank you very much, listeners, for tuning in to Talking Feds. If you like what you've heard. Please tell a friend to subscribe to us on Apple podcast or wherever they get their podcasts. And please take a moment to rate and review this podcast. You can follow us on Twitter @TalkingFedsPod to find out about future episodes and other fads related content. You can check this out on the Web talking Fed dot com or we have full episode transcripts. And you can look for our latest offerings on Patreon at Patreon.com/talkingfeds for add free versions of our regular episodes, but also discussions and even full episodes about special topics exclusively for supporters. So there's really a wealth of great stuff there. You can go look at it to see what they are and then decide if you'd like to subscribe. Submit your questions to questions@talkingFeds.Com. Whether it's for five words or fewer or general questions about the inner workings of the legal system for our sidebar segment.
Harry Litman [00:56:40]: Thanks for tuning in. And don't worry, as long as you need answers, the feds will keep talking. Talking Feds is produced by Jennifer Bassett and Rebecca Lowe Patin. Our editor is Justin. Wright. David Lieberman and Rosie Don Griffin are contributing writers, production assistantance by Ayo Osobamiro and Sam Trachtenberg, our consulting producer is Andrea Carla Michaels. Special thanks to Dan Drose for his great help on design and marketing. And of course, thanks very much to Teller for the second time for pouring water on the president's ideas about monkeying with the election. Finally, our gratitude, as always, to the amazing Philip Glass, who graciously lets us use his music. Talking Feds is a production of Deledio LLC. I'm Harry Litman. See you next time.
