Harry Litman [00:00:03]: 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. We taped this episode Friday afternoon, and minutes after we ended there came the cataclysmic news that Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg had died. The development has set the country reeling; on the one hand, it brought home the magnificence of Ginsburg’s life and tenure. On the other, it made an already tumultuous social, legal and political landscape incalculably more complicated and critical. Our great guests from this week — Natasha Bertrand, Matt Miller, and Senator Al Franken — were good enough to return to the studio (or at least their laptops) on Sunday afternoon, some 36 hours after Justice Ginsburg’s death, to give us their initial thoughts about where this leaves the country.
I'll start with one thing. And that is, as with other huge breaking news, Talking Feds (this podcast) does a Talking Feds Now episode, and in fact, we’ve just produced and published a really moving and rich hour with three former clerks of the Justice that provides a portrait of her in all her human qualities. I think it's in the nature of things that the period of sort of sweet remembrance and Shivah, as it were, will be too short, as the pundits and parties move very quickly into the political implications for both parties emerging from Ginsburg’s loss. So let me ask everyone to talk about how things look on this Sunday morning, and what are the calculations, as you see them, beginning to take form in each party?
Natasha Bertrand [00:01:58]: It is a shame that we can't spend more time honoring her legacy.
Obviously she led an amazing life, really advanced women's rights and women's causes in a way that, that no one else has. And that deserves obviously a huge amount of recognition and hopefully at some point, we'll be able to honor that properly. But this is the craziest thing, honestly, that could happen in the 45 days leading up to the election politically It just throws everything into a tailspin, it raises the stakes. Like really, I mean, nothing else, it is going to create probably the most bitter fights that we've seen since the confirmation hearing of Brett Kavanaugh, and it's just going to be really, really ugly.
And we're already seeing some, some Republican senators coming out, like Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, saying that they don't think that there should be a vote on her replacement until after the November election. Some people are speculating that perhaps Mitch McConnell would want to wait until after the election to hold that vote, perhaps as leverage to get people to turn out.
But that seems pretty unlikely. He's already said that from nomination to confirmation, it usually takes about 25 days, there are about 45 days left. So, it seems like we're going to be gearing up for a huge, huge, huge political fight. It's going to be really, really divisive, and it's going to test a lot of the alliances that we've seen on the Hill, especially, with regard to Republican opponents of the president, folks like Mitt Romney, who have not been his most fervent supporters. So we'll see what happens, but it's, it's pretty much, again, one of the, one of the craziest curve balls that could have been thrown.
Al Franken [00:03:48]: I just want to say a couple of things about her. I was on judiciary and we were invited a couple of times to dinners at the Supreme Court and I got the, obviously this amazingly impressive person who, and it wasn't just women's rights. I mean, she was a warrior on so many things, including voting rights.
I love the thing on Shelby that she wrote the dissent. Where, as you know, that got rid of pre-clearance and that was chief justice Roberts wrote the majority opinion. And he said that they got rid of pre-clearance because supposedly it had taken care of the problem and it clearly hadn't.
And she said, this is like getting rid of your umbrella during a rainstorm because you weren't getting wet and that's, she was exactly right. And she was so brilliant, and her writing, such a hard worker. The one time it did meet her outside of there was, I went to a concert at the Kennedy center and she was there with Nina Totenberg, whose father was his famous string violinist or, and, and teacher of that.
And one of his students, his world-class violinists, had done a concert. And I went backstage afterwards to say hi, and I saw her and she was on her way to work. And this was at 10:00 PM. And Nina Totenberg said that she worked through the night, and she's at this point mid eighties, early to mid eighties, and just the unbelievable dedication and brilliance. I mean, also what she was writing up to the very end was so great. So she just, Oh my God, unbelievable. Giant.
And now I want to talk about how awful Mitch McConnell is, and how awful the Republicans in the Senate are. Before Harry Reed went nuclear, we had a session, like a secret or a closed meeting, a closed meeting in the old Senate chamber, and a number of us wanted to do a gang of 16, which they did in 2005, when Bush was president.
Democrats weren't voting through. So his judges, a lot of his judges and we made a compromise, and they created the gang of 16, which they agree it was Republicans and Democratic senators who agreed to let through reasonable nominees and maybe some not so reasonable, as long as the, just the nutcases weren't let through.
And it was Republicans and Democrats together did that. We, in that meeting, asked for that and they wouldn't do it. And that's why Harry had to go nuclear, but it wasn't conducive to that anyway, it was a closed meeting and I don't want to say who it was, but he said that a Southern Senator said, ‘in my state, we see president Obama as exotic.’ And that wasn't actually what the guy said. The Senator said, ‘we see him in our state as an alien, as an alien.’ We were dealing with a center that had changed since 2005. And I, in my mind, Mitch McConnell has destroyed the Senate and he has destroyed the court with what he did with America. And he may well destroy the presidency as well.
Matt Miller [00:07:00]: I think that's exactly right. And you know look, Mitch, McConnell's an obvious hypocrite, the standard that he set out in 2016, which is one that he made up out of thin air, is one he's going to flagrantly violate this time. No matter the flimsy justification he's offered to try to differentiate, this from them.
There is no difference other than raw political power. If you look to the next few months, it's very hard to see Democrats blocking the Republican Senate caucus from confirming a justice, whether before the election or after. They have to fight.
Leave nothing on the tape, and maybe they will peel off four Republican votes, but that'll be difficult. Look, McConnell has two seats more to work with, two votes more to work with than he did during the Kavanaugh confirmation, and you saw how he was able to confirm Kavanaugh, even with a thinner margin, he can lose Susan Collins.
He can lose Lisa Murkowski. He can lose even another Republican Senator and, and still get a justice through by having Mike Pence break a tie vote. There are two questions, one is, will it happen before the election or will it happen afterwards? And I think that will, that will depend on whether McConnell thinks he would have the votes before the election, and two, whether he decides the timing of the vote, which scenario offers him a greater political advantage in the election. Because as much as he wants to confirm a justice, he wants to preserve his majority. And my guess is that means a vote after, but I don't think we know that yet. I don't think he knows it yet. It would probably have to wait and see how things play out.
And to some extent, it'll depend on conversations with his caucus about where senators are. It would be a very tough vote for Susan Collins before the election, maybe a fatal vote. Not as tough a vote for her afterwards, but like I said, he doesn't necessarily need her vote. He could lose her and two others and be fine.
And then I think the other question is a bigger one, and that is not just what is McConnell going to do, but should Democrats win the presidency, and should they recapture the Senate, what are they going to do about it? Are they going to take this lying down? I think the, the lesson of the last few years is that for Republicans, the rules do not apply anymore. It’s not even that the rules don't apply anymore. There are no rules. There are no rules. It's if you can do it, if you can, can grab power, you'll grab it. Whatever you can get away with, you will do, and Democrats are going to have to decide whether they're willing to, to play just as hard.
And that means expanding the court. It means making DC and Puerto Rico States to change the representation in the Senate so a minority of voters in the country can't decide the majority of votes in the Senate. And it means playing as tough as Republicans have for years, because anything short of that is going to leave Democrats really unable to legislate.
I mean, everything is really on the table right now. It's not just Roe, think of any progressive legislation. Another justice on the Supreme court means the affordable care act gets struck down, and it means any progressive legislation Joe Biden and a Democratic Congress pass can be struck down by a super majority on the Supreme court. I mean, the stakes could not be higher.
Harry Litman [00:10:07]: Yeah. So it's an absolute steamroller on the court. I want to take a moment also, like Al, just to say that the justice who, if people knew her was a little bit diffident and even like seemingly shy or a very, I say this in high praise, but a very nerdy person, I just want to say was kind and thoughtful to me personally over the years in several junctures and that's not withstanding that I did not take a job from her that was offered, which might have seemed to put a permanent rift in.
This seems to me to have been sort of manna from heaven, the owner only possible manna from heaven for a flailing presidential campaign. There are ways of thinking about this. Everyone says both sides will be ginned up, but we know that he squeaked through in 2016 with over a quarter of his voters citing the Supreme court, where there was this pending nomination of Garland as the most important thing, is this actually the one factor that will make people forget about the ineptitude and mortal mishandling of the, of the virus?
Matt Miller [00:11:18]: I don't think so, Harry, I suspect that the, the voters who came home for him over the Supreme court in 2016 were people who had voted for Ted Cruz and other opponents in the primary who were hardcore Republicans that he needed, who were offended by him, that he needed to bring home. I think he's already brought those Republicans home and I think he has them. I don't think it plays a huge advantage. That said, offer a caveat that anyone that tells you exactly how this is going to play right now, I suspect needs to show a bit more humility.
Harry Litman [00:11:47]: I just want to push back for one second and serve it up to Al, cause you talk to Christian conservatives all the time or read about them. How can you support this guy given? And here comes the litany of sexual assaults and lies, et cetera. The first words out of their mouth are always the courts.
Al Franken [00:12:02]: And of course, that's why I do actually agree with Matt completely, which is they already were there on the court. This is why it was such a brilliant move for him to go, ‘I'm going to take it from the short list from the Federalist society and the heritage foundation,’ which of course Kavanaugh was on that short list. But look, I think Democrats now know how important, who didn't know then how important the Supreme court is, know now. because we had won on marriage.
We had won on Roe V. Wade. We had won those big fights. We had won on ACA, and now I think that there's a very, very different awareness by Americans, and Americans whose vote could possibly be influenced by the court, on the importance of the court. So, I think it's a different playing field than four years ago. I believe those people in ‘18 who went to the Democratic side, even more so will go to the Democratic side here, because they care about their healthcare.
Harry Litman [00:13:03]: Do you agree with Matt that this is not a huge impact on the presidential race itself?
Al Franken [00:13:08]: If anything, on healthcare, this is huge. Think about COVID, to get rid of the ACA during COVID, to get rid of protections of people with preexisting conditions during COVID?
That's, that's amazing. And, and then also to follow up on Matt, we have to, if we take the presidency and if we take the Senate, we have to expand the court, because otherwise, why would anyone ever in this country ever respect Democrats again? They will have stolen two seats. Merrick Garland. And you know, I was on judiciary then. There was no Biden rule. There was no Biden rule and, and during executive meeting, I read Biden's speech.
And Biden, at that time, that was at the end of a Supreme court term. And what he said was if someone resigns to create a space for a president who is running for reelection. You can't, can't do that. But if he nominates a moderate, or if he consults with us, then we will have hearings. Then we will confirm that person. And actually Obama did consult with Orrin Hatch, who said Merrick Garland would be great.
Harry Litman [00:14:17]: Yeah. Gave them a relatively moderate and older person.
Al Franken [00:14:20]: Yeah. And it was complete baloney and right now what Lindsey is doing is amazing. And let me tell you something about Lindsey.
Harry Litman [00:14:28]: This would be Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, yes?
Al Franken [00:14:30]: Yeah. They got something on Lindsey, and here it is, he is a compulsive shoplifter and they have video of him.
Harry Litman [00:14:36]: This is not a joke I think.
Al Franken [00:14:37]: They have video of him lifting a gravy boat from a Pottery Barn and the people of South Carolina, they're very Christian and they're very forgiving, and they'll forgive almost anything. But gravy is so important to the people of South Carolina. So, there's a reason that Lindsey has been very malleable.
Harry Litman [00:14:55]: No mess with our gravy and biscuits. Scoop impact on the presidential election itself?
Natasha Bertrand [00:14:59]: Yeah. So, I think that it's hard to say we really don't know which way this is going to swing, but I think that Trump already had the Supreme court voters, right? I mean, this is one of the most important things to Trump's evangelical base is filling the Supreme court with justices who are going to vote a certain way on abortion.
And most Trump supporters that you speak to in states, like there's a really great piece in Politico by Tim Alberta that I would recommend, he spoke to a ton of Trump voters in Wisconsin, who said that abortion was the reason, really, why they were voting for Trump, even though they don't necessarily like him or his rhetoric.
So they seem to already have the voters who are concerned about the judges and the courts and the Supreme court. But what this could do obviously is increase turnout among voters for Biden. But again, I think a lot of it depends on whether the vote is held before the election or after the election, if it's held before the election, could that actually depress turnout, I mean, among Democrats? Maybe not, because if the Democrats commit to expanding the Supreme court, then that might also be a motivating factor for Biden voters. But it could also be that they're so disillusioned that it could have the opposite impact. I mean, it just doesn't, it's really just so up in the air that it's hard to, hard to predict.
Harry Litman [00:16:1]: It's like predicting a hurricane or something, huh? It's such chaos involved.
Natasha Bertrand [00:16:23]: Absolutely. Yeah, it's just, it's just totally a wild card.
Harry Litman [00:16:26]: All right. How about a quick thought about the candidates he said already, it will be a woman and so the Tom Cottons, et cetera, have been eliminated. I, for my money, I think Judge Rushing, 38 years old is not very serious, but Judge Lagoa, Florida, Hispanic, there's a general competition with Republicans where they seem really in the hunt for expanded Hispanic voters who have largely been trending Democrat in recent years. And then of course the classic establishment candidate as it were, of the Federalist society, Coney Barrett. But any thoughts on her versus judge Lagoa?
Al Franken [00:17:03]: Well, Midwest Catholic, pro-life, I think that's a political aspect to it. And Biden will remind people that he's Catholic. I kind of tend to think she's the front runner.
Harry Litman [00:17:14]: Barret. Yeah. And we're supposed to hear that before the first debate, yes? I mean, we'll hear imminently.
Matt Miller [00:17:19]: I think that, I think that, I think Amy Coney Barrett is probably the front runner, who knows what he'll end up doing, but she seems — he's, he's looked at her before.
She seems to be, I'd just say probably the candidate he'd be the most comfortable with. I do think it will come before the first debate if for no other reason than the one way this does advantage Trump is he is desperate to have a conversation about anything other than the virus, even if it's a conversation that's a losing conversation.
You have, sometimes you'd rather argue about something you're losing on 55-45, than losing 65-35. I'm sure it'll come, it may come the day before the first debate to time it for maximum advantage. But that said, the virus is still with us. It will still be with us through the election.
As hot as this is right now, and it will continue to be hot. It's not the only thing that's going to be on the ballot.
Al Franken [00:18:03]: It also does affect COVID because it puts a focus bigger than ever on the ACA, which works.
Matt Miller [00:18:08]: We're recording an hour before Joe Biden's speech on Sunday. He's going to talk about this and maybe this is exactly what he's going to say, but he has such a simple message right now, which is if Donald Trump is allowed to pick this Supreme court nominee, 20 million Americans are going to lose their healthcare coverage.
And beyond that, every American is going to lose the right to buy insurance if they have a preexisting condition, do you really want to take that risk in the middle of a global pandemic? It is a simple message that doesn't just appeal to hardcore Democrats, that's a message that appeals to all sorts of voters, and it is imminently credible when you look at what's before the Supreme court.
Al Franken [00:18:46]: Yup.
Harry Litman [00:18:48]: All right, we'll end with a Five Words or Fewer, sent in by Harry Litman of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. And it is, when will the vote on Trump's nominee take place on the Senate floor?
Natasha Bertrand [00:19:05]: Before the election.
Al Franken [00:19:06]: After the election.
Matt Miller [00:19:10]: Late November, before Kelly sworn.
Al Franken [00:19:12]: Matt, you should have gone with ‘on the election.’
Matt Miller [00:19:15]: On election day, yeah.
Harry Litman [00:19:19]: Everything has been so improbable, how improbable would it be if you flip the coin and it lands on its side. Senator Franken, Matt and Natasha, thank you so much for returning on a weekend to give everyone out there, the very valuable impressions you have of this huge chapter that is just beginning.
Again, may Justice Ginsburg's memory be for a blessing. Shanah Tovah to all, and carry on.
Harry Litman [00:19:55]: Welcome to Talking Feds, a round table 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. Never has it felt so keenly that we are living in the world of Orwell's classic novel, 1984, a political dystopia in which the government has subsumed science, facts, truth itself to its own political ends.
No example was more glaring than the administration's nakedly political, anti-scientific management of the virus. We learned this week that advice posted on the website of the Center for Disease Control, one of the few remaining science driven, honest brokers in a government obsessed with helping Trump get reelected, in fact, was dropped there without CDC’s consent by political appointees of another agency. The advice saying that people without virus symptoms needn’t be tested, ran directly counter to the teaching of all epidemiologists and virologists in the country. After the hue and cry, the website was revised Friday morning.
Also earlier this week, a senior political official, since quickly scurried out of government on a medical leave of absence, claimed that government scientists are withholding effective COVID treatments to hurt Trump's reelection prospects. And meanwhile, in the real world, the U S death count was poised shortly to surpass 200,000, and there were 269,000 new cases of the virus this week alone.
Across the mall at the department of justice, the attorney general and no-holds-barred Trump champion William Barr let loose with his most radical comments yet, both formal and off the cuff. Barr, whose lack of support for the career professionals in the department has left the rank and file dismayed and demoralized, seemingly took it a step further, declaring a civil war against the professional staff that Trump has continually maligned, whom Barr analogized to bureaucratic moral busybodies. And Barr also this week offered a series of unglued opinions about Black Lives Matter, stay at home orders and the prospect of a Trump loss, which he opined would irrevocably commit the United States, “to the socialists path.”
These developments underscored a battle between two worldviews in this country: one driven by facts, science, sound policy, and one indifferent to those considerations, and driven solely by the president's prospects for reelection. And one way to state the perilous fork in the road we are at is the risk that the political world will penetrate the real world and conquer it just enough in November to deliver a second term to the president. Orwell in 1984, had a fit term for all of this: blackwhite, which he defined as applied to an opponent, It means the habit of claiming that black is white in contradiction of the plain facts. Applied to a party member, it means a loyal willingness to say, and even to believe that black is white when party discipline so demands.
To break down these assaults on fact and their implications for the election and American political life, we have a killer group of smarty pants commentators and returning guests to Talking Feds. They are Natasha Bertrand, AKA Scoop, the National Security Correspondent at Politico and a political analyst for NBC and MSNBC, previously a staff writer for the Atlantic. Bertrand has been among the leading writers covering the US intelligence community, and news surrounding the impeachment inquiry against Trump. Natasha, thank you very much as always for coming to Talking Feds.
Natasha Bertrand [00:23:59]: Thanks for having me.
Harry Litman [00:24:00]: Matt Miller next, a partner at Vianovo and the former Director of the Office of Public Affairs for the department of justice. He's a justice and security analyst for MSNBC, and he has worked in leadership positions in both the US House and Senate. Matt, as always welcome back.
Matt Miller [00:24:18]: As always, good to be here.
Harry Litman [00:24:20]: And finally, Al Franken, the estimable former Senator himself, Franken currently hosts the Al Franken podcast, one of the most popular podcasts on politics in the country. He served as Senator from Minnesota from 2009 to 2018, an improbable career shift from a previous stellar career as a writer, comedian and author, that no doubt left his Senate colleagues green with jealousy. Al do we call you Mr. Franken, Mr. Previous Senator. Welcome, under any guise, to Talking Feds.
Al Franken [00:24:55]: It would be Senator. Or Al. Or Senator Al.
Harry Litman [00:25:00]: Senator. Senator Franken, thank you. I still get to be Honorable from my 10 years as US attorney, which was, I think, in the previous millennium. Alright. Senator Franken, Natasha and Matt, let's jump in by talking about things stand with our attorney general. I want to take this in two parts, because he did some comments that are completely, you know, crazy off the cuff, too many cocktails stuff about sedition and civil liberties, but even his champions are, are pointing to the more formal vetted speech he gave at Hillsdale college a couple of days ago that's being taken as argument against all the criticism. So let's start there, that more formal speech, really, if you read it carefully, pilloried the career staff at the department of justice and he kind of has gone from not having their back to kind of knifing them in the back. Or am I over reading It? Does that, does the formal address actually seem to state an unprecedentedly harsh appraisal of the rank and file of the DOJ?
Matt Miller [00:26:11]: No, I don't think you're overstating it, some of his allies and aids came out after he gave the speech and after all the controversy erupted to say, he was just trying to give a speech kind of in the lines of one given years ago, by a previous attorney general attorney, Gerald Jackson, it's a famous speech. Every prosecutor at DOJ knows about it, about what the role of a prosecutor ought to be And, look, if he had given that speech without the context of his last year and a half as AG, I think it would have landed a lot differently because I think there is a role sometimes for a leader of an organization to come in and talk about where an organization has fallen down and where it doesn't do well enough.
And if DOJ is being too aggressive, what are some reforms that they could implement? But he doesn't give that speech free of context. He comes in and gives that speech after he's been criticized for intervening in the decisions made by career prosecutors. And so, I read that speech kind of as an attack on a strawman.
He was attacking this idea that career prosecutors' decisions are supposed to be unquestionable, unreviewable, and all of their authority comes from me, the attorney general. And you have to have political appointees reviewing their decisions because that's where you get accountability in a democratic system.
And that's all true, but what it ignores is no one has ever questioned his authority to review cases and make decisions. And, and I don't think career people typically, it's not like they're not used to getting overruled by political appointees. That happens in every administration, it happens all the time and when it happens for good faith reasons, they may not like it, but they kind of salute and move onto the next thing.
The problem is, Bill Barr's interventions always happened for one reason and it's one very obvious reason. His interventions happen to benefit the president either to reward the president's allies, his cronies, or to go after his political opponents. And so to pretend that this was just some speech about the role of the prosecutor, when it was very clear, it was a reaction to all the criticism he's gotten for his inappropriate interventions, I think was a bit disingenuous.
Natasha Bertrand [00:28:09]: It's also a bit of pre-emptive spin on his part because he, of course, is now being investigated by the inspector general of the justice department, over his decision to intervene in the Roger Stone case and recommend that they change the sentencing recommendation earlier this year. So this is another way to kind of preemptively get out ahead of that and say, well, I'm the boss essentially, and kind of a way that he did with the Mueller report, getting out ahead of the story and trying to spin it in the way that he wants the public to view it.
But I mean, it's remarkable because Bill Barr has been on a spate of recent appearances where he's been kind of campaigning almost for the president. I mean, I don't know whether I've spoken to anyone who can remember in their lifetime, people who are former DOJ folks, you know, anyone who could remember an attorney general being this outwardly political, especially ahead of an election.
He told someone at the Chicago Tribune that if Democrats are elected this November, then the country's going to veer into socialism, and that we’re at a fork in the road.
Harry Litman [00:29:11]: Irrevocably, not just a veer, we’re there. Yeah.
Natasha Bertrand [00:29:14]: Right. And that is just totally giving away the game there. Right? I mean, this is an attorney general who has only one master, and it's not the American people, it is the president.
Al Franken [00:29:26]: This is just bizarre, Harry, a little secret is that sometimes in preparation for this, there's a couple of emails back and forth to discuss what the topics were. And you mentioned in this about him maybe having a couple cocktails and you mentioned this quote is that, ‘other than slavery, which was a different kind of restraint, this is the greatest intrusion of civil liberties in American history.’ And that's basically the lockdown on COVID.
Harry Litman [00:29:52]: Right.
Al Franken [00:29:53]: So he's basically, I mean, this is the greatest intrusion on civil liberties in American history, not oh segregation, not Japanese Americans and internment camps. But saving people's lives and trying to check… and you know what you say, well, this is after a couple cocktails. I don't think so, because if that's the case, he's just drunk all the time.
Harry Litman [00:30:20]: Yeah. I mean, so zeroing in on that, what's he going to say? I mean first, this is with, with a few exceptions at the margins, not at all an incursion on civil liberties in the sense that it's all lawful and required. Maybe he has a rhetorical move planned of the exact same thing he did with spying, which is to say, well, yeah, it's an incur — I mean, it's justified, but it's an incursion. But then you would say, well, he must know that it's kind of alarmist because to return to Natasha's point, he's not simply promoting his reelection, but doing it exactly from Trump's only play here, which is to be alarmist about the prospect of Biden.
And then, and then just returning for a second to Matt, because I did categorize in some emails some kind of crazy stuff, which we will get to, but I think even the sober stuff, if I can use that term and to be clear, I have no idea of the drinking habits of William P. Barr Jr., but even that, if you read between the lines, was an assault, I think on the rank and file and to be especially nerdy here, I think it was galling in particular to try to invoke and now defend, as Matt has said, the speech by using Robert Jackson. Whose word in that speech is sort of held up all over the department, really as a matter of what professionals prudently do and not what politicians are supposed to do, but now yeah. Let's turn to some of the crazy stuff. So actually Matt, one of the things that were reported and seemed totally whacked out was, ‘hey, should we maybe go after mayor and former US attorney, Jenny Durkan, of Seattle in some respect?’ I had thought, hmm, sure sounds like misreported, but you think not, right? Do you think that that was actually a concrete suggestion to be clear only a political enemy of the left could embrace for a heartbeat?
Matt Miller [00:32:26]: Yeah, no, I don't think it was misreported look um, the DOJ came out and said that it wasn't true that they never considered charges against mayor Durkan, but they lie all the time.
Al Franken [00:32:35]: Here's my question. What are we talking about? Are we talking about sedition?
Harry Litman [00:32:39]: Well, there's two parts to this to one would actually be one US attorney said on the phone, he said, maybe we can get our first sedition.
That is like, you know like, really from planet bizarro. But there was other apparently concrete suggestion that we get her for something, maybe under 242, the civil rights statute for somehow failing to protect the good people of Seattle. And Matt, that’s what you heard?
Al Franken [00:33:04]: It’s insane. It’s insane.
Harry Litman [00:33:08]: We’re talking about layers of insanity. This might be about the ninth circle of insanity, what you got here Matt?
Matt Miller [00:33:13]: It's so insanity. And when DOJ came out and said that, no, we didn't consider this for Jenny Durkan, the mayor of Seattle who, by the way, is a former US attorney…
Harry Litman [00:33:20]: And really a fine one, I must say.
Matt Miller [00:33:21]: An excellent U S attorney, widely respected inside the department. They confirmed that they did consider charges or, or could explore charges against officials in Oregon.
Presumably mayor Wheeler, maybe the governor, God only knows. And, it was reported around the same time that they were pushing for charges of sedition against protesters, against violent protesters. And in fact, the deputy attorney general has now sent a memo openly encouraging people to consider those charges.
And I think it got a little bit mixed up. What I've been told is they weren't. They weren't suggesting that you would charge elected officials with sedition, but you might charge them with this civil rights charge that Harry mentioned that they've interfered with the police in some way, it's bonkers.
And by the way, not only is it bonkers, but one of the things that Barr railed against in his speech are all of the people who are trying to criminalize political differences. And so he criticized legal pundits, some of them former prosecutors, probably talking about you, Harry...
Harry Litman [00:34:14]: We do have a complicated relationship now.
Matt Miller [00:34:16]: Yeah, that's right. Who he sees on TV talking about such and such politician, you know, has done something unethically and it might be a crime when his own department was considering criminal charges against elected officials for what are clear policy differences, not criminal violations. I think it goes back to the thing about Barr is he is a Republican of sort of different sort than we've seen in elected office. He's not just a traditional conservative. He, to me is a kind of a like pre-revolutionary European conservative, that fuses kind of authoritarianism with conservative Catholicism in a way that is...
Harry Litman [00:34:54]: Yes, that’s a big part of it.
Matt Miller [00:34:55]: It's a brand of authoritarianism conservatism that we haven't seen much in America. When you fuse that with Trump's demand to have an attorney general who will prosecute his political opponents, it is I think extraordinarily dangerous.
Harry Litman [00:35:0]: This is an aspect that I hadn't taken full stock of. This is the world, the very, very narrow world in which he lives, in which basically everything that's happened since Vatican two or so, has just been hell in a hand basket kind of stuff.
And he believes that sort of deeply, I mean, one way to express some of these crazier views is he sees, or Trump sees kernels of things, antifa once was responsible for a, for a death in a protest. It was of the antifa guy who was hapless, but nevertheless, there's a teeny kernel where things go wrong, but they see it as these huge assaults on the stability of America and the American way. And it's that kind of distortion based on really antediluvian social views that is driving him in office much more than people, certainly me, took stock of in advance.
Al Franken [00:36:06]: Also we're just getting into, and this is something I want to talk about maybe later when we're talking about kind of their war on science. Which is, there's just two sets of truth now. And now you're hearing all over the place that left wing people are setting fires in the Northwest.
Harry Litman [00:36:26]: Antifa is?
Al Franken [00:36:28]: Yeah. All this stuff that's out there that's just made up. And is in their universe of information, and it is just frightening.
And when you have someone like the attorney general just giving credence to that kind of stuff. Which is, you know, that black lives matter is a terrorist group. I mean, that, that basically that kind of thing. And we know that there are right wing agitators who try to create mischief and make it look bad. I mean, we, we know that.
Harry Litman [00:3:01]: We know for a fact from the FBI it's the real problem. In fact, it's just a fact. As opposed to left wing agitation.
Al Franken [00:37:07]: Well, we had FBI director Ray testify that yes, there, they’re the much bigger problem, the right wing, and that antifa isn't an organized group, it’s an ideology, as he said, Q Anon is too. I mean, there's a difference.
Harry Litman [00:37:25]: I think we can all condemn them. And the question is, are they some huge social problem that should drive DOJ policy? Not just drive, but, but actually, cause this goes up on what Matt said, which is, so much in his speech is ironic, not just disingenuous because it characterizes what he has said. And this is an example.
Al Franken [00:37:43]: He said he's been pissed off since Vatican two. He's pissed off at Martin Luther.
Harry Litman [00:37:48]: No, no, no, but it's true. I mean, there's a sense in which the, the kind of self-reliance and departure from bigger authority of the whole Lutheran strain of Western civilization, that's the other tribe for him, right?
Al Franken [00:38:03]: Yup. Yup.
Natasha Bertrand [00:38:04]: It's not just Barr. I mean, Barr obviously is in a very powerful position. And he has ordered that he's trying to implement this system, whereby these left-wing agitators or Antifa, whatever you want to call them, are… federal charges are being brought against them for things that used to be handled at the state and local level.
So kind of trying to create this sense of panic and chaos and make them into this much bigger thing than they actually are, but it's not just Barr. It's also happening across government. I mean, just look at what happened at DHS. DHS has been trying to essentially alter its intelligence by saying that left wing groups pose a bigger threat than right wing groups, that Antifa is a bigger threat.
Chad Wolf was allegedly trying to get intelligence analysts to focus more on left-wing violence than right-wing violence in order to feed the president's narrative on certain things. So, it's kind of like everyone is feeding each other and it's kind of feeding into the same cycle of just reinforcing what the president wants to hear and his political agenda.
And there's a sense among people that I speak to that it's happening at agencies across the government, that all of this stuff, people are becoming disillusioned. They don't want to shake the boat. They don't want to come up with things that might upset the president, so they're not doing work as vigorously and it's this cycle that's just going on and on and on. And the fear obviously is that if Trump is reelected, then those institutions will just, the independence of them will just kind of erode entirely.
Harry Litman [00:39:36]: Is this political and career folks, Natasha? That you're talking to?
Natasha Bertrand [00:39:39]: Yeah. Yeah. This is both. So there's a lot of disillusionment, for example, inside the CIA, which is a story I'm working on now, there are tons of people at DHS who say that, for example, the Homeland threat assessment was altered multiple times. There are drafts of that on the internet now to basically water down assessments that were made by Intel analysts, because they didn't want to upset the president. Chris Ray, I mean the FBI director was attacked mercilessly by Trump on Twitter last night, because he was speaking bluntly about the threat posed by right wing groups and the threat posed by Russia and trying to undermine Joe Biden in the election. I mean, these are things that they're trying to avoid by not disagreeing with the president publicly, but ultimately, it's just a no-win situation.
Harry Litman [00:40:21]: What about Chris Ray? Look, we can close I think this topic here by amplifying what Natasha had to say.
I mean, he's guaranteed himself a Trump ouster if Trump wins, and he must have felt that it was very important to sound the alarm. He's a cautious guy, not by nature a rock the boat guy, but he must have really felt that there's a big danger out there that I've just got to somehow get the word out. If he was ready to take this kind of personal risk.
Al Franken [00:40:52]: He made it very clear in his testimony yesterday that these right wing groups are much, much more dangerous and organized and violent. And I'm surprised he's still there after that testimony in a way. Redfield, the CDC director testified about a number of things, including that the vaccine won't be widely available until at least the end of the second quarter, probably in the third quarter. And he also said that masks are a better protection, even than the vaccine, and in his press conference, Trump, on both of those counts said, I think he misunderstood the question. He said that, and you kind of go like, wow. Wow. Wow, really? Really? And, I don't understand why the white house press corps doesn't do more of like, questioning that kind of thing. Like you really think he didn't understand the question, what about, when will the vaccine be available, could the head of the CDC misunderstand? Is it, ugh.
Harry Litman [00:42:02]: Alright, that actually is the perfect transition to the next topic. Although on Talking Feds, we demarcate with the special sidebar feature, where we ask somebody to explain some of the terms and relationships that are foundational to events that are in the news, but not necessarily explained.
So, we're going to take up the very important, it sounds legal, oh, it is legalistic, but it's practically vital between States that count ballots as long as they're postmarked by election day and others that count them only if they're received by-election day, and hopefully delivered with dispatch by the US postal service.
And to explain this, we're very fortunate to have Anjelica Huston, known to all, but she is an American actress, director, producer, author, former model, and a kind of American aristocrat to people who like me idolized her father and her grandfather, and their really promethean role in the film industry. So she's got a long list of film credits, the Addams family, the Royal Tenenbaums, Pritzi’s Honor, many more, she's had an Academy award for best supporting actress, golden globe, and a star on the Hollywood walk of fame. And she will now explain to Talking Feds listeners the important distinction between when States will count mail in ballots.
Anjelica Huston [00:43:29]: Most voting procedures are set by state law, and so can vary in important ways from state to state. Critical examples this year especially the difference in mail deadlines state by state. Some states have postmarked-by deadlines. That means the vote counts as long as the ballot is postmarked on or before election day. In California for example, ballots count if they are postmarked by election day and arrive at the election office within 17 days after election day. And in New York, they count if they have a postmark by election day, and arrive at the election office within 7 days of the election. Many other states, however, have received-by deadlines. In those states, a ballot received after election day wont be counted, even if it was filled out and postmarked before. Florida is a good example: its law requires ballots to actually arrive at the election office by 7 PM on election day. Given variation in post office processing times, the two different kinds of law can always be pivotal, but this year they loom particularly important, given the need for many voters to rely on the mail because of the virus, and the grave concerns about the funding and effectiveness of the US Post Office. The bottom line is, if you intend to use the mail to vote, and there are other ways, like early voting or ballot drop boxes in states that have them, it is vital for you to inform yourself what kind of law your state has. Talking Feds has a link posted on the site providing the information for each state. For Talking Feds, I’m Anjelica Huston. Thank you, and please vote.
Harry Litman [00:46:24]: Thank you very much Anjelica Huston for that explanation, by the way, Anjelica is also a spokesperson for both PETA and the Humane Society, and the New York Times bestselling author of two memoirs, A Story Lately Told: Coming of Age in Ireland, London and New York, and Watch Me: A Memoir.
Alright, so the transition prefigured by the Senator to everything that's going to hell in a handbasket with the virus and the vaccine, but particularly the same historic propensity to create just this alternate reality and flog it mercilessly, facts and science notwithstanding. So, let's just zero in on the CDC again, here we have some stuff that is crazy loony, the stuff with Caputo, say, and his remarks that earned him a 60 day medical leave of absence. But, this is also the general MO, right?
I mean, we've learned. This week about ways in which really basic guidance on the CDC site was inserted there without CDC’s approval by political appointees at the HHS. Where does this leave, say American's trying to figure out whether they need to get tested say, if they don't have symptoms.
Al Franken [00:47:44]: Well, this is just so irresponsible. This is an assault on these agencies, I mean the FDA has been compromised by proving hydroxychloroquine as a treatment for COVID, and as it turns out, it's not effective at all and actually can kill you.And then the worst, I think the worst, was Trump saying that the FDA was infiltrated by the deep state. That's insane. These are career scientists. These are people that work for Republican administrations, Democratic administrations, the job of the head of these agencies, CDC, NIH, FDA, their job is to protect their scientists. This is about science, about evidence about, we figured out the earth was round, that there's gravity, and how much gravity. And because of that, we got to the moon. This is an assault on science and it's an assault on truth.
And there's a consequence for this. I had on my podcast Lori Garrett, who is an amazing authority on pandemics, on infectious diseases, and Andy Slavitt, the former head of CMS, Medicare and Medicaid. And what Laurie basically said is that no matter who wins, if Trump wins, we're not going to take a vaccine. I asked Lori, if there's a vaccine approved before the election, would you be poked with it? And she said, no. But if Biden wins, boy oh boy, first of all, there's a lot of anti-vaxxers within the Trump community, but that's a disaster. The whole point of vaccinating people is to get to a critical mass of people who can't get COVID, and so we can get control of this damn thing. And this has been just criminal, just criminal.
Matt Miller [00:49:36]: I think the senator’s getting at what I think, what will be one of the most long standing effects of Trump and Trumpism. Since he ran, he has tried to take out really any independent arbiter of the truth. I mean, you started with an Orwell quote, Harry, when we started this podcast and it's appropriate, because he has run assaults on the media, assaults on law enforcement, at the justice department and the FBI, had previously run attacked scientists over climate change and told his followers, ‘you don't have to believe any of these people, what you, you need to believe what you hear from me and not from them.’ And now it's, it's scientists that work at the CDC and the FDA and the long-term effects in all of these spheres will be, I think that a number of Americans lose faith in all of these institutions.
And I've thought a lot about it. We've talked about the justice department. What will happen on this podcast? What will happen to the justice department afterwards? I don't know what will happen to all of the Americans who have heard from Trump for four years that they can't trust the FBI.
And so, when the FBI comes and knocks on your door, do you cooperate in an investigation? If Joe Biden is president and a vaccine rolls out, and Trump from the sidelines is tweeting, ‘you can't trust Joe Biden and you can't trust these people at the FDA.’ He's doing it after years of undermining them from the inside, do people not take the vaccination? And, in some ways it is the culmination of a long term Republican party strategy. This happened, this started long before Trump, trying to discredit experts. And Trump is the sort of apotheosis of it. But I think the effects, we may get rid of Trump in November, but I think the effects of Trump and Trumpism are going to be with us for, for much, much longer.
Al Franken [00:51:11]: Matt is so right, this started a long time ago. There's a reason Rush Limbaugh got the presidential medal of freedom. Without Rush Limbaugh, there's probably no Trump. But what we have now in this country are two sets of information. There is no baseline of truth in this country, and that is a disaster and it started with Rush, and then Fox, and then the internet and Breitbart and all that disinformation. And it is, I don't know how we recover from this.
Harry Litman [00:51:42]: Yeah, I mean our whole enlightenment tradition is maybe at stake, y'know I don’t want to be too apocalyptic. Scoop, do you have any thoughts about the stakes here?
Natasha Bertrand [00:51:50]: Yeah, so I think that the Caputo situation is just so emblematic of Trump's blatant, just attempt to shift the narrative and just try to make things appear as they are not in reality. Caputo is, speaking of Roger Stone...
Harry Litman [00:52:06]: They’re buddies.
Natasha Bertrand [00:52:07]: Yes. A buddy of Roger Stone, who of course is disgraced, was convicted of lying about his contacts with the Russians and witness intimidation and Michael Caputo and Roger Stone go way back.
Michael Caputo was a Trump campaign advisor, has his own shady connections to Russia that got him in Mueller's crosshairs, and most importantly, he has zero experience in anything related to science or medicine. And Trump approached him directly and said, y’know I want you to fix this because he knew that he could not fix his already disastrous response to COVID.
So he said, okay, well, I'll just fix the way the public looks at it. Mike Caputo has long been one of the chief attack dogs for Trump. If you take a look at his Twitter account, which he has since actually deleted, but there’s screenshots. I mean, everything was just like rapidly defending Trump and attacking his, his opponents, including John Brennan, who he actually suggested would be executed for treason.
So this is the kind of person that the president wanted communicating their coronavirus strategy to the public, and he got his wish because Caputo was actually there for five months, which is so long, and was there during the most important moments of the coronavirus messaging and he installed loyalists with no experience in science or medicine into the public affairs office, he ordered a $250 million PR campaign to try to change the public affairs messaging coming out of CDC.
And, and he just completely altered reality. And now of course, it's all coming back to bite the administration because they were all lies, and this is someone who is clearly unhinged. So, I think that this is, the damage that's been done is, is pretty hard to turn back because the perception that the public now has is that this is all political. Michael Caputo made it very clear that everything is political, that the scientists were the deep state that we're trying to get the president, and he actually ordered scientific reports to be altered. And that, I mean, if you are a member of the public and you're like, Oh, well, like, scientists can just be asked to change things? Like, what does anything mean anyway? Then what are you going to trust? And so that's, the reputation has definitely been tarnished.
Harry Litman [00:54:21]: Yeah, I think this is a brilliant point, so it's not simply that Trump has discredited the entire kind of professional staff of this country for being, Barr called them, moral busybodies.
He's got a theory that's going to resonate in exactly the situation that Matt talked about. So, Caputo alleges, this is the thing that got him his medical leave, that the scientists were there actually trying to hurt Trump, to hurt his reelection by withholding effective treatments.
And he added to it by the way, somehow it worked out that if you carry guns, buy ammunition, ladies and gentlemen, because it's going to be hard to get.
I mean, it's this hardcore view that not only are there two, as Al says, kind of completely separate views of fact, and going back to Orwell, the ability to claim that black is white, but there's a reason which is this whole deep state, they're not just dunderheads, they are in it to try to hurt Trump.
And that means that later on, even if he is not elected, there'll be a ready argument just based on psychology that you can disbelieve everything because they are just in it to try to maliciously hurt our team, our guy, and that just doesn't go away.
That's not a question of ignorance. That's a question of an ongoing war that Trump on the sidelines, as you say, and the 30% or whatever of diehard Trump supporters will continue to wage.
Matt Miller [00:55:53]: Here's the crazy thing, Harry, Michael Caputo is an obvious crackpot, but are his views really that much different from the attorney generals? I mean, it is the same kind of brand of apocalyptic thinking that if Trump isn't elected, all of these terrible things are gonna happen to the country, is the same thought that there are people buried within this agency who aren't here to do the right thing, or haven't spent their whole careers trying to do the right thing for the country, but are here because they're trying to get the president. It is a slightly more crazy version of what Barr said and that we talked about in the first half of this podcast, it is from the same strand. It is the same kind of, you know, just, just paranoid conspiratorial thinking that is, it has infected the entire administration.
Harry Litman [00:56:33]: Yeah. It's got this marshal kind of end of days, feel too. He said, this is what he predicted, Caputo… Trump would win, but Biden wouldn't concede. And when Donald Trump refuses to stand down at the inauguration, the shooting will begin. You know, it really, it's not just crazy, but it's crazy in a way that points to sedition or insurrection or the end of enlightenment society, as Al says, not to put too fine a point on it.
Matt Miller [00:56:59]: Not very different from, from Barr saying that Democrats want a Roussaain revolution, it’s the same thing.
Harry Litman [00:57:04]: Right, right. Irrevocably. But Barr always has better words and he’s more well-read.
Al Franken [00:57:08]: Something significant happened this week, which was that Scientific American, for the first time in 175 years, endorsed a presidential candidate.
And it is because of this unbelievable attack on everything, but on science. I had Michael Lewis on the podcast very early on with his book, The Fifth Risk, and what he did was profile the transition. What happened during the transition. And like the first people came to the energy, from the Trump team to the energy department, all they wanted to know was who in the energy department had gone to a meeting about global warming. And right now, the West coast is burning. It is so dangerous. This is just a war on, it is a war on the enlightenment. I hate to be apocalyptic here…
Harry Litman [00:58:01]: It’s going around.
Al Franken [00:58:02]: But I think this is the second most important election of our lifetime, the most important one being the last one, but we blew it.
Harry Litman [00:58:10]: It's funny that the apocalyptic sentiment seemed to be on both sides, but yet, all this rhetoric, all the sort of two silos, truth and falsity all get filtered down to try to influence what, 3% of people in four different States. I mean, can the stakes of it or the rhetorical war make any difference to the actual most important election of our lives as the Senator says, are all of us just full of frustration and flailing for what is a sort of micro battle that we can hardly fathom?
Al Franken [00:58:49]: People are frustrated because they've had this day inside…
Harry Litman [00:58:52]: David Frum had this great point, I think, which is that his terrible ratings in September have something to do with, with the back to school thing and like, oh man, we have another year. Thank you, Mr. President.
Matt Miller [00:59:04]: I's that, and that, I think people are just exhausted of him.
You see it right in the TV ratings for some of his last appearances and you see it in his approval ratings, to at least make my last comment on a slightly optimistic note, for all the horrible things he's done in for, for as much as sometimes it seems like nothing matters. I think another way to look at it is that in fact, everything matters and there's a reason why even enjoying maybe the best economy of my lifetime, that he hadn't caused it, but he enjoyed it. Trump's approval rating was still never above 42 or 43%. And it is because all of these other authoritarian instincts.
His war on the truth, his refusal to behave appropriately as president. So, I'll end with that and hope that all of that does matter. And there's a bit of a reckoning coming in 45 days or so.
Al Franken [00:59:48]: My last word on this is that last time I was scared, and I'm scared again. First of all, the fact that we have this electoral college and Biden probably has to win by at least four points to win is scary. Secondly, Angelica was so great in her segment. She's a great actress, but that summary was maybe the best work she's ever done. It’s so scary. I mean, if they don't start counting them until the day they're in, which a lot of States do, he's going to declare victory. And Barr, I don't put it past them to do anything. And the police support Trump and Barr is the attorney general and they have federal troops that we've seen. I wish I could be so sure about this, and also you might remember the last one. So I just, point is I want everybody listening to become a poll worker.
Harry Litman [01:00:48]: I mean, this is a real difference with 2016, Matt and I have had a side conversation the last couple of days about, would Barr just go and pound ballots for example. And you know, in 2016, A, there was a little bit of a surreality, almost comedy aspect to it and be a kind of general expectation that oh, he wouldn't be that bad, would he?
And now what's been shown is, he's worse. I mean, really worse and redoubling at every turn. So, now I agree that whatever the stakes are and if you read the pollsters, it seems not that different from 2016, there's no leavening effect. It's just the biggest, most frightening stakes of our lifetime.
Natasha Bertrand [01:01:32]: I think Trump has more to lose this time, which also makes the stakes higher.
Harry Litman [01:01:36]: Well, go ahead. What do you mean by that?
Al Franken [01:01:38]: I want to ask Natasha about Russia, because we overlook that too. And Russia was a big player last time, people said, well, you know, the Russians are back. They never left. And Natasha, can I ask you what we know? And also maybe more importantly, don't know about Russian interference in this election.
Natasha Bertrand [01:02:00]: Yeah. I mean, it's, it's a big topic. I think we, we do know that they're trying to denigrate Joe Biden again in terms of denigrating the democratic opponent, the IC has said that, the FBI director just said that yesterday.
But it doesn't seem yet, I don't think we know the full extent of what they're doing or the organizations that they've hacked into and what they might be holding on to and tricks they might have up their sleeve for the waning days of the election. But. It seems like they're having a bit of a, less of an impact than they did in 2016, because people are more on their guard about disinformation and about foreign interference, which is a good thing.
And I think we're in this situation now where the ultimate threat, the bigger threat perhaps is coming from the president himself. I mean, just in terms of disinformation surrounding mail-in voting, for example, the Russians are now parroting the disinformation that he's putting out about mail-in voting.
So, the disinformation surrounding that actually has been like, leapfrogging off of what the president himself has been saying, trying to discredit the legitimacy of voting. So what do you do when it's not necessarily foreign interference, that might be the biggest problem, but, but Trump himself, I mean, that's, that's a huge question to grapple with as well, but I think we're better off than we were in 2016, for sure.
So are the tech companies, social media companies are more on guard. There's more collaboration going on between them and the Intel community. But there's certainly still a fear that there could be something like an October surprise type thing that no one sees coming. But again, I mean, it just seems like at this point the lies and the spin and the voter suppression efforts are really in earnest coming from Trump and his campaign.
Harry Litman [01:03:37]: You know, I am sorry to pile on Natasha, but I wanted to ask you to spin out a little bit what you meant about Trump's having more to lose this time.
Natasha Bertrand [01:03:45]: So, I think in 2016, he, he didn't think he was gonna win, right? He was just kind of doing it because he wanted to bolster his business. That's been pretty well documented by everyone that was surrounding him at that point that he just didn't really care.
He was shocked when he won, and it was like a big PR campaign. And Michael Cohen has said that, but this time around. he potentially has criminal exposure, you know, depending on who you ask, he could be indicted for whatever after he leaves office, particularly given the investigation going on in New York and to his organization. There are just a number of reasons why it's more important than him forever to hold onto power. Some people say, well, he might just fade off into oblivion and like, start his own Trump TV network, but I mean, Trump is not someone who's just going to admit failure and loss and then just move on quietly.
Even if he does concede the election quickly and without any chaos, it seems really unlikely that he's going to stay quiet. I think that he's trying to desperately, and the people around him frankly, are trying to desperately hang on to that power because they've seen what they can get away with over the last four years and how they can kind of reshape institutions to their liking. And I think they also recognize the potential exposure that they face if they're not protected by that higher office.
Al Franken [01:05:02]: Maybe I can put a final, just a coda on this, if Trump loses and he has to leave between November 3rd and January 20th, I just want to say to the joint chiefs that that will not be the time to take away the nuclear codes from him. That will be the time to give him the wrong code.
Harry Litman [01:05:23]: Alright, we have just a couple of minutes for our final feature of 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 comes from Adam Birnbaum, who asks, “Europe is apparently going through its second wave. When will our second wave be? Five Words or Fewer to all you future prognosticators.
Natasha Bertrand [01:05:51]: Probably during this flu season.
Matt Miller [01:05:54]: Now, as the temperature drops.
Al Franken [01:05:57]: Right after the first wave.
Natasha Bertrand [01:06:01]: That's good.
Harry Litman [01:06:02]: The worst time, when else?
Alright, thank you very much to Natasha Bertrand, Matt Miller, and Senator Al Franken. And thank you very much, listeners, for tuning into Talking Feds. If you like what you’ve heard, please tell a friend to subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, 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 Feds related content. And you can check us out on the web, talkingfeds.com , where we have full episode transcripts. You can also look to see our latest offerings on patreon.com/talkingfeds , where we post discussions about special topics exclusively for supporters. 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 segments. 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-Patton. Our editor is Justin Wright. David Lieberman and Rosie Dawn Griffin are our contributing writers. Production assistance by Matt McArdle. Our consulting producer is Andrea Carla Michaels. And our gratitude as always to the amazing Phillip Glass, who graciously lets us use his music. Talking Feds is a production of Dalito, LLC. I’m Harry Litman, see you next time.
