Ben Wittes
Appearances
The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1008: Michael Weiss, Ben Smith, and Annie Karni: Radioactively Stupid
Ja, ich glaube Jeffrey hat einen stärkeren Impuls, sich zu nationalen Sicherheitskontrollen zu verlassen als viele Journalisten. Ich glaube nicht, dass er die Obligation hatte, diese Geheimnisse zu behalten, die ihm getestet wurden. Er fragte die Trump-Mitglieder, ob sie wirklich sicher sind, dass er es verlassen will. Denn sie waren da draußen, um ihn zu verlassen.
The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1008: Michael Weiss, Ben Smith, and Annie Karni: Radioactively Stupid
Sie haben ihn in eine Position gesetzt, in der sie ihn als Lüfter genannt haben. und sagte, dass das nicht wahr war und nicht geheim war. Also mussten sie ihn eigentlich einfach rauslassen. Und ich denke, dass das Steele-Dossier anders war. Es war authentisch, aber wir wussten nicht, ob es wahr war. Und die Debatte darüber war, was man mit einem solchen Dokument tun kann, wo jeder darüber spricht.
The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1008: Michael Weiss, Ben Smith, and Annie Karni: Radioactively Stupid
Es wird von der Regierung genutzt, es ist ein öffentliches Dokument, aber es enthält ein paar unverwahrte Angelegenheiten.
The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1008: Michael Weiss, Ben Smith, and Annie Karni: Radioactively Stupid
And actually, I do think there's a reasonable question to ask often when kind of quote-unquote national security secrets are declassified, national security officials warn of dire, dire consequences. So you do occasionally see really awful consequences, but more often you don't.
The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1008: Michael Weiss, Ben Smith, and Annie Karni: Radioactively Stupid
Ich meine, ich denke, Wikileaks ist ein wirklich interessanter Beispiel, wo es viele Warnungen gab, über die schrecklichen Dinge, die passieren würden, wenn diese Kabel geleakt werden. Und sie waren sehr disruptiv und schädlich für die amerikanische Macht und Prestige. Aber ich bin nicht sicher, ob es die Ich glaube, es ist nicht völlig klar, dass das nicht passiert ist, oder?
The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1008: Michael Weiss, Ben Smith, and Annie Karni: Radioactively Stupid
Ich meine, die Houthis-Freunde, die Russen, haben das vielleicht getan, wir wissen es einfach nicht.
The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1008: Michael Weiss, Ben Smith, and Annie Karni: Radioactively Stupid
Ja, der principale legalen Aspekt ist, dass niemand deinen oder meinen legalen Vorschlägen nehmen sollte.
The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1008: Michael Weiss, Ben Smith, and Annie Karni: Radioactively Stupid
Ja, ich meine, die Tradition in den USA, wie in den meisten Ländern, ist, dass Journalisten, die diese Informationen erhalten haben, in einer legitimen Art und Weise keine Regeln, keine vorherigen Regeln, keine Regeln gegen Publizierung. In Britannien, zum Beispiel, wird die Regierung diese Notizen an die Presse senden, dass man das nicht publizieren kann. Sie können das hier nicht machen.
The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1008: Michael Weiss, Ben Smith, and Annie Karni: Radioactively Stupid
Und ich hatte eine Erfahrung, die ich damals als BuzzFeed war, sehr inspirierend fand, in der wir eine Geschichte hatten, in der die CIA eine wirklich legitime Gefahr hatte, es ging um einen russischen Verletzten, eine wirklich legitime Gefahr, dass wir, wenn wir auf die Anwesenheit einer Person berichten, sie in physischen Gefahr stellen würden.
The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1008: Michael Weiss, Ben Smith, and Annie Karni: Radioactively Stupid
Und all Mike Pompeo could do was ask me and our investigations editor over for a cup of coffee and make the case to us. And that was it. And you're like, you know what, this is a pretty amazing country. We're the most powerful intelligence official in the world. All he can do is ask you politely. Like, that is a huge prerogative of the press. Something that we do, I think, take pretty seriously.
The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1008: Michael Weiss, Ben Smith, and Annie Karni: Radioactively Stupid
The Jeffrey takes, I think, extremely seriously. But all that said, I do think there's always been an element of the government... Ich denke, wenn man hört, wie die Trump-Folgen über die Presse sprechen, finde ich, dass das eine vernünftige Prediktion ist. Das ist etwas, worüber die Leute wirklich traurig sind.
The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1008: Michael Weiss, Ben Smith, and Annie Karni: Radioactively Stupid
Ich meine, es ist eine ungewöhnliche Situation, richtig? Ich meine, wo du ein paar klassifizierte Dokumente handelst. And an unusual thing about the United States, where you have no responsibility as a citizen to protect them, to be honest.
The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1008: Michael Weiss, Ben Smith, and Annie Karni: Radioactively Stupid
Honestly, I was thinking about that before coming on this show, and I was listening, as I often do in the morning, to Steve Bannon's War Room, which is where I heard you interview Goldberg. Oh, really? Because I didn't catch the bulwark yesterday.
The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1008: Michael Weiss, Ben Smith, and Annie Karni: Radioactively Stupid
Dave Weigel ist ein guter Reporter, der viele solche Sachen gesehen hat. Ich glaube, Bannon ist aufmerksam darauf, dass Populismus eine echte Sache war. Und er ist auch sehr beschäftigt mit dir. Ich bin sicher, dass er das aufschreibt und es auf seinem Show veröffentlicht.
The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1008: Michael Weiss, Ben Smith, and Annie Karni: Radioactively Stupid
Aber ich glaube, was das heißt, ist, dass es wirklich, ich meine, für all die Jahre und Jahre in unserer ganzen Karriere, in denen wir darüber gesprochen haben und in einem neuen Medien involviert waren, das aufgewachsen und Dinge verändert hat, es ist hier.
The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1008: Michael Weiss, Ben Smith, and Annie Karni: Radioactively Stupid
And I think when you look at the conflict between the Trump and the White House Press Corps, I mean, I do think it's very important that the press sort of retain prerogatives and not hand control of facts over to people in power. That said, Trump is not the reason that the White House Press Corps and the White House Correspondents Association is in real trouble.
The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1008: Michael Weiss, Ben Smith, and Annie Karni: Radioactively Stupid
It's because their organization has been dominated for nearly a century by these broadcast outlets that are no longer all that relevant and are being replaced by a Vielen Dank.
The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1008: Michael Weiss, Ben Smith, and Annie Karni: Radioactively Stupid
Untertitelung des ZDF, 2020
The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1008: Michael Weiss, Ben Smith, and Annie Karni: Radioactively Stupid
What is Pete Higgs saying about this person? This person is getting court-martialed. They're getting fired and they're getting prosecuted, no question.
The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1008: Michael Weiss, Ben Smith, and Annie Karni: Radioactively Stupid
Untertitelung des ZDF, 2020 Untertitelung des ZDF, 2020
The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1008: Michael Weiss, Ben Smith, and Annie Karni: Radioactively Stupid
Untertitelung. BR 2018
The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1008: Michael Weiss, Ben Smith, and Annie Karni: Radioactively Stupid
Untertitelung. BR 2018 Das war's für heute. Untertitelung des ZDF, 2020 Untertitelung des ZDF, 2020
The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1008: Michael Weiss, Ben Smith, and Annie Karni: Radioactively Stupid
Whether he did it deliberately. And that's the National Security Advisor.
The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1008: Michael Weiss, Ben Smith, and Annie Karni: Radioactively Stupid
It's probably easy to get compromised inside the Vatican.
The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1008: Michael Weiss, Ben Smith, and Annie Karni: Radioactively Stupid
Doing the Russians' work for them.
The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1003: Ben Wittes: Putin Makes A Fool of Trump, Again
And so the administration was extremely aggressive in how they dealt with Judge Bosberg's order over the weekend or on Friday.
The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1003: Ben Wittes: Putin Makes A Fool of Trump, Again
Well, you know, he ordered the planes to turn around and they ignored that. And there is going to be a contempt question as a result of that. He's been quite measured in not racing to... Ja. The administration responded by saying in court, you know, we can't give you that information. And he said, basically, is it classified? And they said, no, not really. Or they wouldn't say it was classified.
The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1003: Ben Wittes: Putin Makes A Fool of Trump, Again
And so the first thing that's going to happen here is he's going to try to find out what he can find out from them. And then he's going to hold it up against... his order and say, can this plausibly be said to be compliant with the order? I think the answer to that question is no.
The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1003: Ben Wittes: Putin Makes A Fool of Trump, Again
But then he may get tripped up along the way by the fact that it's not clear that he has jurisdiction over the matter in the first place. And so all of this is going to come to a head on Friday when there is a hearing scheduled. And I fear that So, some of these people have been deported. Yeah.
The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1003: Ben Wittes: Putin Makes A Fool of Trump, Again
kind of this natural inclination to kind of get a little excited when something absolutely terrible happens for this administration because you're kind of rooting against america do you have any issues with that that you're dealing with i actually struggle with this a lot because i am by inclination deeply deeply anti-leninist you know that whole maximize the contradictions thing i really don't believe in it i really think we should always
The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1003: Ben Wittes: Putin Makes A Fool of Trump, Again
They're not American citizens and they're no longer in U.S. custody.
The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1003: Ben Wittes: Putin Makes A Fool of Trump, Again
Well, so first of all, the named petitioners and plaintiffs are all still in the country. Got it. And Boasberg verified that. Okay. the other day. This again gets to this question of how the case is styled, right?
The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1003: Ben Wittes: Putin Makes A Fool of Trump, Again
If it's styled as a habeas case, we don't have custody of these people anymore unless you can make an argument that the Salvadorans are holding them for us, which I assume the plaintiffs will try to make because they're being paid. So could you make an argument that they're constructively in US custody? It's going to be tough.
The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1003: Ben Wittes: Putin Makes A Fool of Trump, Again
To the extent that the case is not a habeas case, but some other kind of case, the complaint throws in a lot of different claims. It's conceivable to me that there's a remedy. But I think the question of what this case is bears on that a lot. And because it was generated so quickly, it's actually hard to pin down precisely what the question is.
The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1003: Ben Wittes: Putin Makes A Fool of Trump, Again
Ja, also lassen wir es von verschiedenen Themenbereichen ausbrechen. Es gibt also keinen Zweifel, dass es viele sehr starke Statutoren gibt, die der Regierung viel Macht in der Immigration-Szene geben, besonders If somebody is not already in the United States, right, then you can deny them a visa. It's almost plenary.
The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1003: Ben Wittes: Putin Makes A Fool of Trump, Again
They've got a lot of power. So the flip side is that there are these statutes that give them so much power that it is actually hard to... square with other constitutional norms.
The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1003: Ben Wittes: Putin Makes A Fool of Trump, Again
Ich hoffe, dass wir falsch sind und dass das Land überlebt. Ich habe nicht für den Präsidenten gewählt und so weiter. Aber ich hoffe, dass ich jeden Grund hatte, dass ich Angst hatte, dass seine Regel falsch war und dass wir gut unter ihm arbeiten. And boy, do I not feel that right now.
The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1003: Ben Wittes: Putin Makes A Fool of Trump, Again
And the provision that says if the Secretary of State decides that you are a threat to US foreign policy, you know, they can throw you out of the country or revoke your lawful permanent residence status, you know, that's going to be a real question. And there's no doubt that the statutory law is strong on the executive branch's side.
The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1003: Ben Wittes: Putin Makes A Fool of Trump, Again
Other executives have been careful about how they use it, because it does rub up against certain due process and First Amendment norms. You have, as a lawful permanent resident, First Amendment rights, except that the government can revoke your lawful permanent resident status over it, right?
The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1003: Ben Wittes: Putin Makes A Fool of Trump, Again
There's a real conundrum there that successive administrations... You have First Amendment rights, caveat, caveat, caveat.
The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1003: Ben Wittes: Putin Makes A Fool of Trump, Again
Und, du weißt, das ist ein Problem, das eigentlich mit palästinensischen sympathischen oder manchmal Aktivisten aufgehoben ist. Ein Fall, der acht Männer in Los Angeles und der Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine unter diesem Statut war einer der ersten National Security Cases, die ich je in den 90ern geschrieben habe. Und so hat sich dieses Problem für eine lange Zeit umgesetzt.
The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1003: Ben Wittes: Putin Makes A Fool of Trump, Again
Es kam erst in den Kontext der Kommunisten in den 1950ern auf. Die meisten Regierungen haben damit zu tun, sehr vorsichtig mit dem Statut zu sein. Diese Regierungen, das ganze vorsichtige Ding, sie tun das nicht. Also werden wir es herausfinden. Nun, es gibt andere Immigration-relevanten Bedingungen, die ich glaube, sie sind nur furchtbar, wenn sie denken, sie werden nur gewinnen.
The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1003: Ben Wittes: Putin Makes A Fool of Trump, Again
So let's start with the birthright citizenship stuff. No judge anywhere in the country has sided with them in their reading of birthright citizenship. I don't think that's going to be different at the Supreme Court. You know, do they maybe have two votes for that? Sure. And if you roll the dice, well, could they get three? Yeah, I don't think they're getting five.
The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1003: Ben Wittes: Putin Makes A Fool of Trump, Again
I don't care how much chest-thumping they do about it. The Alien Enemies Act is more similar to that than to... Oh, really? The Alien Enemies Act, here's what it actually says. Whenever there is a declared war between the United States and any foreign nation or government... So that's the precondition for invoking the Alien Enemies Act. So Tell me, is there a declared war?
The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1003: Ben Wittes: Putin Makes A Fool of Trump, Again
Do we have a foreign government that has made a predatory incursion against the United States? I just don't see the preconditions of the statute having been even approached, let alone met. Now, I know you can issue an executive order. An executive order from this administration is really just a fancy word for press release that says... We're invoking the Alien Enemies Act, but in a U.S.
The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1003: Ben Wittes: Putin Makes A Fool of Trump, Again
At all. I feel like, bring it on. We deserve the punishment of Trump's rule. And we should feel it to the maximum extent possible. And I find myself rooting for bad things to happen, because... Das Schmerz ist wie ein Refiners Feuer und es schützt uns von Schmerzen.
The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1003: Ben Wittes: Putin Makes A Fool of Trump, Again
District Court or at the Supreme Court, you actually have to argue that the Alien Enemies Act lets you do this. And I don't see where you get the votes for that. So, look, have I been wrong about the Supreme Court? Well, and we've already had, we should say, like...
The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1003: Ben Wittes: Putin Makes A Fool of Trump, Again
We should all be appropriately cynical about the Supreme Court. But you shouldn't be overly cynical about it, right? It's not a body like Congress, where you can say, okay, Donald Trump says X and there are 220 Republicans, so 220 Republicans in the House are going to vote for X. It's not that simple. Law does matter still a bit.
The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1003: Ben Wittes: Putin Makes A Fool of Trump, Again
Right. So I would say they wouldn't be doing that if they didn't fear that the judges were actually likely to rule against them. And that, do I think that rhetoric is disgusting? Absolutely. But I also think it reflects the fact that they at least perceive the courts as a real impediment. And if you look at the courts behavior over the last,
The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1003: Ben Wittes: Putin Makes A Fool of Trump, Again
60 Tage, es war ein Entschädigung, vielleicht nicht so viel wie wir es möchten, aber es war, die Gerichte waren wahr.
The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1003: Ben Wittes: Putin Makes A Fool of Trump, Again
Und das Schmerzen auf das Körperpolitik wird die Sache sein, die Menschen erinnert, die Schmerzen, die wir verursacht haben, und wir beginnen, sie zu schützen. Und ich fühle mich wie eine Kombination von Lenin und einem südbaptistischen Precher.
The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1003: Ben Wittes: Putin Makes A Fool of Trump, Again
Okay, ein paar Dinge. Also das erste ist, ich denke, es ist interessant, dass Putin irgendein Ausstiegsfeuer mit Energieinfrastruktur starten will. Und das ist interessant, weil, du weißt, das ist ein Bereich, wo er ukrainische Powergrids schießt. That's energy infrastructure. Ukrainian hit Russian oil depots and refining capacity.
The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1003: Ben Wittes: Putin Makes A Fool of Trump, Again
And the Ukrainians have been actually quite effective at reducing Russia's capacity to produce oil, which is its most important export and funding mechanism. And so this is an area where the war is not reciprocal because the Russians are targeting Ukraine. ukrainischen zivilen Macht, während die Ukrainer die russische Kapazität betrachten, um Krieg zu machen.
The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1003: Ben Wittes: Putin Makes A Fool of Trump, Again
Aber es ist nicht komplett unvergleichbar, dass beide Seiten hier Verletzungen haben und beide Seiten. Und ich denke, es ist tatsächlich eine Reflexion der russischen Verletzungen auf der Energiefront, dass Putin hier anfangen möchte. Das gesagt, die größere Bildung ist, dass Putin einen Zaubersturz nicht wollen will.
The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1003: Ben Wittes: Putin Makes A Fool of Trump, Again
Und so steigert er und steigert und steigert die Zone der Zauberstürze, bis es im Grunde sagt, schau, ich werde die zivilistischen Kraftwerke stoppen und du stoppst meine Refinery. Das ist Putins Idee eines Zaubersturzes. Es ist beängstigend, dass die Vereinigten Staaten das als konstruktiv bezeichnen.
The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1003: Ben Wittes: Putin Makes A Fool of Trump, Again
Das ist wie, ich werde den Präsidenten der Vereinigten Staaten eine Stunde warten lassen und dann zu ihm Nein sagen und sagen, ja, meine Idee eines Zaubersturms ist, dass die Ukrainer meine Refinery für 30 Tage stoppen und dann werde ich, weißt du, Dinge öffnen und dass wir das verkaufen, als, weißt du, das war ein konstruktiver Anruf.
The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1003: Ben Wittes: Putin Makes A Fool of Trump, Again
I think the real question here is, at what point, if any, does Trump get impatient with this? Does he realize that he's being taken for a ride in a very North Korean kind of way? Or is he so committed for whatever reason to his pro-Putin sentiment that Putin can kind of in the long run make a fool of him the way he has done in the short run.
The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1003: Ben Wittes: Putin Makes A Fool of Trump, Again
And I fear the answer is the latter and hope very much that the answer is the former.
The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1003: Ben Wittes: Putin Makes A Fool of Trump, Again
I want to say I am genuinely agnostic about was der Grund ist. Ist es interpersönlich?
The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1003: Ben Wittes: Putin Makes A Fool of Trump, Again
Oder ist es nur so, dass Leute wie ich seit acht Jahren sagen haben, warum kowtowst du Putin? Und so hat er es so viele Male verdoppelt, dass es so ist, dass seine Antwort auf alles ist, Russland, Russland, Russland. How much of it is just a robotic response? I really don't know the answer.
The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1003: Ben Wittes: Putin Makes A Fool of Trump, Again
Eine der merkwürdigen Dinge an ihm ist, und man sieht das auch in dem originalen Zolenskys Telefonruf, dass er einen Weg hat, seine eigene Scheiße zu internalisieren. Und erinnere dich, es gab diese verrückte Rudy Giuliani-Konspirationstheorie, dass der DNC-Server irgendwie in der Ukraine endete.
The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1003: Ben Wittes: Putin Makes A Fool of Trump, Again
Crowdstrike. Du liest das Transkript von dem Telefonruf. Das erste, was er sagt, ist, dass Leute sagen, dass der Server von einer ukrainischen Firma kontrolliert wurde. Es war nicht nur so, dass er es auf irgendeinem Niveau genug glaubte, es mit dem Präsidenten der Ukraine zu erheben. Und ich denke, dass es auf irgendeinem Niveau von deinem eigenen Supply in dieser Sache gibt.
The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1003: Ben Wittes: Putin Makes A Fool of Trump, Again
Yeah, for whatever reason was meant to cover a lot of ground and it's a very rich territory, what it could imply.
The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1003: Ben Wittes: Putin Makes A Fool of Trump, Again
Okay, also zuerst einmal gibt es... Die Ukraine hat eine enorm komplizierte Beziehung mit den Vereinigten Staaten, weil sie super bewusst ist, dass... You know, the White House is spouting Kremlin propaganda. They are very, very sensitive to signs of rapprochement between Washington and Putin.
The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1003: Ben Wittes: Putin Makes A Fool of Trump, Again
And they are also super, super aware of the fact that they don't have obvious alternatives to the United States. Right. So if you're if you're Europe. You can say this is an opportunity for us to step up. Right. But nobody really knows how much Europe is going to be capable of stepping up. And their actual historical capacity to do it is, you know, it's not a story that's shrouded in glory.
The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1003: Ben Wittes: Putin Makes A Fool of Trump, Again
And there's a lot of mistrust between the Ukrainians and the Europeans. And so unlike Europe, Almost anybody else in the world who can shift in some ways. The Ukrainians are really, really dependent on continued US backing. And by the way, this plays out in the course of a war that they are actually fighting right now. There's nothing hypothetical about it.
The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1003: Ben Wittes: Putin Makes A Fool of Trump, Again
And so I would describe the reaction as a combination of Deep, deep betrayal. Sense of betrayal that is going to take a generation for us to deal with. You're quite correct that there was a sense of false hope, even Trump-Optimism, that was pervasive in Kyiv after the election, largely as a function of frustration with Joe Biden, who they thought of as very slow. Ja, richtig.
The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1003: Ben Wittes: Putin Makes A Fool of Trump, Again
We know that we're sinners. There's a redemptive quality to the pain.
The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1003: Ben Wittes: Putin Makes A Fool of Trump, Again
Cowboy, ein amerikanischer Cowboy. Genau, ein bisschen Verwirrung von Trump mit George W. Bush. Ja, richtig. Und dann gibt es auch, und das ist die Part, die einfach schmerzhaft ist, eine Verzweiflung. Und was zur Hölle werden wir jetzt tun? Weil es nicht so ist, als ob es einen offiziellen Platz gibt, um stattdessen zu kommen.
The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1003: Ben Wittes: Putin Makes A Fool of Trump, Again
Und die Ukrainer, weil sie viele Aspekte ihrer Geschichte haben, sind eine ziemlich stoische Kultur, die keinen Wert auf,
The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1003: Ben Wittes: Putin Makes A Fool of Trump, Again
emotional expressions of despair the rhetoric will all be we're gonna keep on fighting you know that sort of thing but there's a real there's a real sense of we are fucked and you know for a lot of them it's not just about lost territory it's about the future capacity of the country to Russia from destroying it.
The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1003: Ben Wittes: Putin Makes A Fool of Trump, Again
It's about family members who are in, you know, occupied territories of which, you know, it's 20% of the country. And so it's a very tragic situation that one of the interesting things about has been the rallying behind Zelensky. You know, he, two months ago, real politics had returned to Ukraine and there was a lot of criticism of Zelensky. Not now.
The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1003: Ben Wittes: Putin Makes A Fool of Trump, Again
Und du ermutigst einen demokratisch ausgewählten Bundeskanzler in der White House. Und du wirst etwas lernen, wie der Land hinter ihm ralliert. Und so gibt es viel Frieden in Zelensky. Und es gibt viel Sinn, dass ich ein domestischer politischer Gegner seines Halses bin. You can't treat my president that way. And so it's a very complicated set of feelings.
The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1003: Ben Wittes: Putin Makes A Fool of Trump, Again
And I would say the only you know, it's in some ways similar to the reaction in Canada.
The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1003: Ben Wittes: Putin Makes A Fool of Trump, Again
More intense, but also less intimate. And Canada doesn't have an ongoing shooting war that they're completely dependent on. But the sense of decoupling from something that has broken bad all of a sudden in ways and for reasons that you don't understand and that is weirdly directed at you
The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1003: Ben Wittes: Putin Makes A Fool of Trump, Again
Yeah, so I read that story in the New York Times this morning and I have to say I couldn't get through it.
The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1003: Ben Wittes: Putin Makes A Fool of Trump, Again
Like, I have no information to add this. So this is an issue that I've spent a lot of time on. A bunch of my projections at the Russian Embassy are about the stolen kids. And one of the many maddening things about... die russische Voll-Skala-Invasion, die Verbrechung von Kindern. Und, übrigens, sie sind nicht subtil darüber.
The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1003: Ben Wittes: Putin Makes A Fool of Trump, Again
Es gab eine Frau, die ein stolltes ukrainisches Kind hat, die darüber gesprochen hat, auf russischer TV mit Putin, dass sie, Sie wissen, sie konnten keine Kinder haben und sie hat dieses ukrainische Kind. Ich meine, es ist wirklich, es ist wirklich weich.
The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1003: Ben Wittes: Putin Makes A Fool of Trump, Again
And to have the US administration not merely not playing a constructive role, but dropping hints in news that we're going to recognize the Russian annexation of Crimea, which is a place where... The Russians engaged in a recent, you know, 1944 genocidal deportation of the entire Crimean Tatar population.
The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1003: Ben Wittes: Putin Makes A Fool of Trump, Again
The fact that we are contemplating recognizing the legitimacy of the Russian invasion of Crimea, that we are actively erasing the data that we helped collect on 20.000 ukrainische Kinder forcibly deported, stolen from their parents and deported to Russia. I mean, I just don't know how to talk about it except with stuttering anger and rage.
The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1003: Ben Wittes: Putin Makes A Fool of Trump, Again
It's just, there's nothing to be said for it other than that it is The administration is trying to make its own deals with Russia more palatable by erasing the evidence of their evil.
The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1003: Ben Wittes: Putin Makes A Fool of Trump, Again
All right, so what happened was Trump issued an executive order on Thursday or Friday, I can't remember which it was, that basically ordered USAGM, which is the parent organization of VOA, to shut down, except to the extent that it's statutorily required. VOA then put essentially all of its journalists on leave and then terminated them the next day. So VOA effectively doesn't exist anymore.
The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1003: Ben Wittes: Putin Makes A Fool of Trump, Again
This is mostly invisible to Americans because VOA doesn't broadcast to Americans. VOA broadcasts in 49 languages to 355 million people every week. All over the world in areas where good, honest news is difficult to come by. This is one of the great news organizations in the world.
The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1003: Ben Wittes: Putin Makes A Fool of Trump, Again
I have dealt extensively with their Eastern Europe language services, both their Russian and Ukrainian services because of my Russian Embassy protests. Aber alles, was ich jetzt sage, du bist interessiert in Kambodscha, du bist interessiert in... Es ist eine außergewöhnliche Operation, oder es war bis dieses Wochenende. Und warum machen wir das?
The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1003: Ben Wittes: Putin Makes A Fool of Trump, Again
Die Antwort ist, während der Zweiten Weltkrieg, tatsächlich ehrliche Nachrichten zu bekommen. into the ecosystems of occupied Europe was important. During the Cold War, getting news, most Ukrainians found out about Chernobyl because of Voice of America. To this day, Ukrainians in occupied parts of the country get their news from VOA.
The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1003: Ben Wittes: Putin Makes A Fool of Trump, Again
I think there were about 100 people in the Russian language service and about 40 in the Ukrainian language service. All of them are unemployed today. Play that out over whatever broadcasting in Swahili, broadcasting in French, broadcasting in Spanish. There are lots of people around the world that this is going to affect in terms of the quality of their information supply.
The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1003: Ben Wittes: Putin Makes A Fool of Trump, Again
And so you ask yourself the question, why would the administration do this? And the answer is actually completely simple, which is if you don't want to counter Russian disinformation, why would you have a news service that tells the truth? People might believe it, it's counterproductive.
The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1003: Ben Wittes: Putin Makes A Fool of Trump, Again
If you don't want to counter Chinese disinformation, why on earth would you have a news service that brought people honest news in Chinese? If you don't want to undermine autocracies in Iran or the Gulf, why on earth would you do serious news in Persian or Arabic?
The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1003: Ben Wittes: Putin Makes A Fool of Trump, Again
And this is an administration that wants to build entire edifices of foreign policy based on lies, as we were just discussing, erasing data about stolen Ukrainian children. If you're going to do that, it doesn't make sense to have a news service that's bringing people actively valuable information. But it is a profound, profound change from what Ronald Reagan sagte in 1982 oder 1983 in einem 40.
The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1003: Ben Wittes: Putin Makes A Fool of Trump, Again
Jahrhundertsgespräch bei VOA, wo er sagte, jetzt wie damals, die Wahrheit ist ein Waffen auf unserer Seite. Und Trump glaubt klar nicht daran. Und also... You erase data sets that reveal the truth and you also fire people whose job it is to reveal the truth. And, you know, if I sound emotional about this, I have a lot of friends who lost their jobs over this.
The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1003: Ben Wittes: Putin Makes A Fool of Trump, Again
And by the way, a bunch of them are going to have visa problems now as a result of it to link it to your immigration points.
The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1003: Ben Wittes: Putin Makes A Fool of Trump, Again
Okay, das ist ein guter Argument, wenn man das ganze technische Barrieren-Stuff, VPNs und so entfernt. Leute können Informationen bekommen. Wer produziert hohe Qualität News über die Vereinigten Staaten in Russland? Wer macht es in China? Wer macht es in Persien? In Farsi.
The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1003: Ben Wittes: Putin Makes A Fool of Trump, Again
Das ist der Punkt. Ja. Is somebody producing a product that is in their language useful to them? And by the way, VOA reports different things than the New York Times. Because if you're living in Cambodia, what you want from Radio Free Asia is not the same information. New York Times isn't doing stuff on Cambodian politics, right? And so, yes, it is true that information is...
The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1003: Ben Wittes: Putin Makes A Fool of Trump, Again
available to those who want to go out and get it. But it is not, you know, 355 million people are not gonna go get VPNs and do their own translations of the high quality information.
The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1003: Ben Wittes: Putin Makes A Fool of Trump, Again
Ja, es ist nicht nur VOA. Es ist Radio Marti, es ist Radio Free Asia, Radio Free Europe. Es sind ein ganzes paar verschiedene Organisationen. Und ja, es gibt diese Vorstellung, dass sie wie Cold War Relics sind. Erzähl das den Leuten, die sie hören. These are admired and valued sources of news all over the world.
The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1003: Ben Wittes: Putin Makes A Fool of Trump, Again
And it's because they don't have a domestic face that, sort of like USAID, they don't do things domestically. They do things overseas. They're an instrument of US soft power. And they're very important to the people who they're important to. And we just decided not to do it anymore.
The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1003: Ben Wittes: Putin Makes A Fool of Trump, Again
You know, the phrase, the full-scale situation, is of course a joke on the Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine. And the reference is the idea that, you know, if you talk to Ukrainians, the war has been going on since 2014, which is, by the way, right around the same time that the situation, i.e. Trump, arose in the United States. But then there was this acute moment in Ukraine, am 24.
The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1003: Ben Wittes: Putin Makes A Fool of Trump, Again
Februar 2022, als es eine Voll-Skala-Invasion wurde, als die Amerikaner und Europäer sagen, dass die Kriege begonnen haben. Wir hatten diese Situation schon lange, aber dann gab es diesen akuten Moment am 20. Januar, als wir mit der Voll-Skala-Situation begonnen haben.
The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1003: Ben Wittes: Putin Makes A Fool of Trump, Again
Und der Punkt, den ich in dieser Kolumne machen wollte, ist, dass einer der Gründe dafür ist, dass die Sache so überwältigend fühlt, is that each and every one of these major areas that you just identified would be an absolute revolution in American politics and policy all by itself. If all you had the last two months was a wholesale revolution in US foreign policy.
The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1003: Ben Wittes: Putin Makes A Fool of Trump, Again
That would be a dramatic earthquake of a change. If all you had was the turning of the power ministries into instruments of power against enemies and impunity of friends, that would feel revolutionary. If all you had was the war on the bureaucracy, that would feel revolutionary. You know, and to do all of this
The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1003: Ben Wittes: Putin Makes A Fool of Trump, Again
all at the same time, you know, it creates this sense of overwhelming, you know, it's like being hit with a tsunami and then with an earthquake and then with, you know, all right at the same time. And all of that makes it very, very difficult to assess in real time. How's it going? It feels awful. But is he winning? Or is he kind of supernova-ing?
The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1003: Ben Wittes: Putin Makes A Fool of Trump, Again
Is it more important that the economic data is pretty bad on this stuff? Or is it more important that he's successfully gotten rid of a gazillion public servants? And it's very hard to prioritize analytically and figure out was wirklich los ist, wie effektiv der judiciale Rückzug ist, zum Beispiel.
The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1003: Ben Wittes: Putin Makes A Fool of Trump, Again
Also, ich glaube, der Punkt, den ich in der Kolumne machen wollte, ist, wenn es überwältigend fühlt, ist es, weil es tatsächlich überwältigend ist und es eine Weile dauern wird, um es herauszufinden. Und versuche es jetzt nicht zu beurteilen, versuche nur, es durchzuführen.
The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1003: Ben Wittes: Putin Makes A Fool of Trump, Again
So, I guess what I would say is almost all the things that we focus on intensely for very good reasons. So let's consider the matter that you've been blowing steam out your ear about, the Venezuelan deportations, right? This has enormous consequences for the liberty of a bunch of individuals, some of whom are probably not gang members. And
The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1003: Ben Wittes: Putin Makes A Fool of Trump, Again
in the broad scheme of things is hugely important for the people in question. And ultimately, America has seen improper deportations without due process before and survived it reasonably intact.
The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1003: Ben Wittes: Putin Makes A Fool of Trump, Again
You know, some of the issues, the destruction of the bureaucracy is, you know, going to pull at people's heartstrings a little bit less, unless they know people who've been dismissed or agencies that have been destroyed.
The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1003: Ben Wittes: Putin Makes A Fool of Trump, Again
And yet, if you're talking about what the long-term consequences are, this is just enormously important stuff for the ability of, it's very hard to rebuild an agency that you've destroyed. And this one, honestly, I'm a little bit more encouraged by. It's not clear to me that he's made any real progress with the impoundment stuff.
The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1003: Ben Wittes: Putin Makes A Fool of Trump, Again
So I do think that's at the democratic tectonic level the most important question we're dealing with. It's the least important for human liberty and justice.
The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1003: Ben Wittes: Putin Makes A Fool of Trump, Again
So an impoundment is when congress appropriates money to do thing x and the president says I'm not doing thing x. I'm not spending that money. So this doesn't have consequences for human liberty. It's not a matter of justice or it's just a matter of whether congress is really a co-equal branch or not.
The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1003: Ben Wittes: Putin Makes A Fool of Trump, Again
And whether when Congress says we're giving appropriating money to do something, whether the president has to do it or whether the president really actually controls the other purse string. So it's a revolution in constitutional law. And the question is whether he's going to get away with it. And so far. There doesn't seem to be a lot of evidence that he's getting away with it.
The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1003: Ben Wittes: Putin Makes A Fool of Trump, Again
And so I do think that side of it is pretty encouraging, although very preliminary.
The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1003: Ben Wittes: Putin Makes A Fool of Trump, Again
All right. So John Roberts, first of all, is an extremely measured human being. He, you know, think of somebody who has been planning to be Chief Justice of the United States since he was nine or ten. He is enormously careful with what he says. And when he issues a statement like that, it is worth parsing every word of it and noting what he did say and what he didn't say.
The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1003: Ben Wittes: Putin Makes A Fool of Trump, Again
And so he says there are three things. The first is. talk about impeaching judges because you disagree with them is dangerous the second is if you disagree with a judge appeal it right as in send it up to me because you know he sits atop the appellate hierarchy and here you can split the analysis right you can say if you have a problem with judge boesberg Bring it to us and we'll fix it.
The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1003: Ben Wittes: Putin Makes A Fool of Trump, Again
Don't bring up this impeachment stuff. We're reasonable up here. If you got a problem with him, bring it to us. So that would be the cynical way to look at it. The other way to look at it is to note that John Roberts appointed Boesberg to be the Chief Judge of the FISA Court at one point. He's the Chief Judge of the D.C. District Court. This is a guy who... Roberts weiß.
The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1003: Ben Wittes: Putin Makes A Fool of Trump, Again
Yeah, the worse things get, the better it is for us. And so, you know, we're always have mixed feelings about doom and gloom, democracy-wise, because it's good for business.
The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1003: Ben Wittes: Putin Makes A Fool of Trump, Again
Und Roberts sagt hier, hey, du hast ein Problem mit einem DC-Zirkut-Distrikt-Gefängnis. Du hast ein Problem mit uns. Bring es an. Ich habe dieses Fall ziemlich nahe gefolgt. Ich habe das Gericht gesehen oder das Gericht gehört, das Boasberg am Montag hatte. Es gibt eine juristische Frage, ob dieses Fall vor Judge Boasberg überhaupt sein sollte.
The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1003: Ben Wittes: Putin Makes A Fool of Trump, Again
But this is a very measured and serious district judge. I think what Roberts is saying here is stop political attacks on district judges and particularly ones who are doing their jobs and trying to rule in hard cases under very difficult circumstances.
The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1003: Ben Wittes: Putin Makes A Fool of Trump, Again
Well, I think there's a deeper level of disagreement, which is that, you know, this was originally styled as a habeas case. Normally you bring a habeas case where the prisoner is being held, which in this case would be the Fifth Circuit down your way. But it was brought in the D.C. court The petitioners seem to have dropped the habeas component of it, but it's not clear to me what's left.
The Bulwark Podcast
Ben Wittes: Who the F*** Are You?
Can I just point out, though, that it's kind of insulting that they went after the Associated Press for this instead of the bulwark? It is. The Associated Press has merely not changed a style book. You are out there attacking them every day. You're insulting little Marco. I mean, you're doing so much more than the Associated Press.
The Bulwark Podcast
Ben Wittes: Who the F*** Are You?
Mr. Martin. You got the wrong target here. Stand with America against the bulwark, and particularly Tim.
The Bulwark Podcast
Ben Wittes: Who the F*** Are You?
So agreed. I also think there's an issue about the conference that you were at this weekend, which was infiltrated by Enrique Tarrio and the Proud Boys and later received a bomb threat that required the evacuation of the portions of the facility that...
The Bulwark Podcast
Ben Wittes: Who the F*** Are You?
Principles First was using, you know, you can get a long way in intimidating your political opponents merely by not investigating thoroughly things like bomb threats or efforts to intimidate people. And if you ask me, do I have confidence that... The FBI under Kash Patel and Dan Bagino will thoroughly investigate that bomb threat. And do I have confidence that the U.S.
The Bulwark Podcast
Ben Wittes: Who the F*** Are You?
Attorney's Office under Ed Martin will prosecute aggressively the results of that investigation should they turn up proof beyond a reasonable doubt of a particular perpetrator, the answer to both of those questions, unfortunately, is no. And that is how you build a climate of impunity in going after the perpetrator enemies of the president.
The Bulwark Podcast
Ben Wittes: Who the F*** Are You?
And this is a picture, the Corey Mills example may be an example of this, but the fact that you and I can't sit here and have confidence that the threats that were directed against you guys will be, and against Harry Dunn and the officers in particular, the fact that you can't have confidence of that and you would be a fool to have confidence of that is a
The Bulwark Podcast
Ben Wittes: Who the F*** Are You?
I think, more dramatic example because it actually affects political dissent.
The Bulwark Podcast
Ben Wittes: Who the F*** Are You?
And just to give, I mean, this is something that you know and you've experienced 50 times, but just to give your audience a sense of how it trickles down, I had a meeting yesterday with some foundation execs who are supporters of lawfare. And one of the questions they asked me as we talked about their support of lawfare was our physical security. Right.
The Bulwark Podcast
Ben Wittes: Who the F*** Are You?
And it's something that every organization that works in this space has had to think about. You can't just walk in off the street to the Bulwark's office in Washington. And as we budget for things, one of the things we have to think about is, what if... Somebody comes after us on some garbage congressional investigation, right? That's the political investigative harassment stuff.
The Bulwark Podcast
Ben Wittes: Who the F*** Are You?
But there's also, what if Enrique Tarrio shows up and tries to intimidate you? How do you as a small organization deal with that? And this is a very picturesque example. And part of the answer to the question historically is that Merrick Garland makes a speech about it and says, we are going after people who make threats, and then they do it.
The Bulwark Podcast
Ben Wittes: Who the F*** Are You?
You take away that protection and you become much more vulnerable to this sort of thing.
The Bulwark Podcast
Ben Wittes: Who the F*** Are You?
Yes, and there's a physical security element and there's also, you know, you and I both know people who've done advising for local election workers who've had, you know, had to raise tens of millions of dollars to pay legal bills because they're getting harassed by state attorneys general and congressional committees. And these are...
The Bulwark Podcast
Ben Wittes: Who the F*** Are You?
you know, costs of doing business now that, you know, for, you know, non-political work, let alone the sort of stuff that Principles First and you guys are doing, which is, you know, active political dissent.
The Bulwark Podcast
Ben Wittes: Who the F*** Are You?
Could they at least get the apostrophes right? Like the editor in me really bristles at this stuff.
The Bulwark Podcast
Ben Wittes: Who the F*** Are You?
Well, I would not say that the Patel thing didn't shake people up. The Patel thing happened in slow motion, and so people had a lot of time to get used to it. That's fair. It also coincided either accidentally or intentionally, depending on whether you think Kash Patel lied to the – Senate Judiciary Committee. Has he even denied that, actually? Has he denied that he lied? He's sort of denied it.
The Bulwark Podcast
Ben Wittes: Who the F*** Are You?
He said he had nothing to do with it. But he hasn't really denied it. And of course, he was protected from being asked questions about it. But it coincided with this incredible shakeup that happened at the Bureau where they started demanding that people report on themselves. And they fired a bunch of people. And so the Patel thing, to a certain extent –
The Bulwark Podcast
Ben Wittes: Who the F*** Are You?
I guess, faded into the background of the turmoil, right? It was like, oh, they're trying to destroy us. And one element of that is that they've put this crazy, unqualified person in charge. And The Bongino thing is different because it's not a Senate-confirmed position. I mean, you know more about him than I do.
The Bulwark Podcast
Ben Wittes: Who the F*** Are You?
One really, really important thing about Dan Bongino is that he is not a career FBI agent. And the deputy director of the FBI is always a career FBI agent. He is somebody who comes up through the system. Traditionally, in the FBI, there is one political appointee, and that is the director. And so the message that this sends is, well,
The Bulwark Podcast
Ben Wittes: Who the F*** Are You?
We're going to go through all your papers, figure out if you're a January 6th investigator. We're going to fire your traditional leadership, and we're going to install at the top a political apparatchik, and we're going to install, as you say, the day-to-day manager of the bureau, a crazed podcaster who's not a career FBI agent.
The Bulwark Podcast
Ben Wittes: Who the F*** Are You?
Okay, so the first point is you have to bifurcate your brain. If you are talking in politics, you do not have to take this stuff seriously, and you shouldn't take it seriously. And the right approach is mockery, derision, expressions of anger, you know, all the feels. But if you are us... and you're trying to track litigation over it.
The Bulwark Podcast
Ben Wittes: Who the F*** Are You?
And so it could not be more insulting, and it could not be more dangerous. Now, the part that people are talking about less, but that is, I think, even more concerning, is that they have removed the entire substrate leadership. And so not only does Kash Patel...
The Bulwark Podcast
Ben Wittes: Who the F*** Are You?
and Dan Bongino are kind of the one and two of the organization, but they're going to be able to fill all these assistant director positions, all these executive positions. They're, over time, going to be able to replace heads of field offices. And so you're going to see a very different FBI, and it is all subject to the oversight and management of Pam Bondi
The Bulwark Podcast
Ben Wittes: Who the F*** Are You?
and Emile Bovey and Todd Blanch, none of whom has behavior has inspired any kind of confidence. And so I think it's a, you know, this is the organization that most directly interacts with Americans on, you know, with guns, with guns and coercion. It's much more domestically dangerous if mishandled than, say, the Department of Defense. And, you know, it has arrest power.
The Bulwark Podcast
Ben Wittes: Who the F*** Are You?
I don't want to over-dramatize the danger because I don't want to be particularly dramatic, but it's kind of as serious as a heart attack.
The Bulwark Podcast
Ben Wittes: Who the F*** Are You?
I will say that there's one really encouraging thing that has happened at the FBI.
The Bulwark Podcast
Ben Wittes: Who the F*** Are You?
Which is that you actually do see a sort of sagebrush rebellion among what are called the special agents in charge, the people who run individual field offices, who are pushing back in ways that are mostly invisible, but they could not get people to self-report. And that was done...
The Bulwark Podcast
Ben Wittes: Who the F*** Are You?
with a lot of SAC encouragement, a lot of people, including the person who was made acting director, Mr. Driscoll, who had been a SAC for six days in Newark when he was accidentally elevated to run the FBI.
The Bulwark Podcast
Ben Wittes: Who the F*** Are You?
I mean, a lot of people have been really good because 70 years, 50 years of cultural reform at the FBI to create a rule of law, law enforcement agency at the federal level has actually worked, right? And you have whole... generations, it's really two whole generations, three sort of, who have grown up with the idea that there are things the FBI does not do, and there are things that it does do.
The Bulwark Podcast
Ben Wittes: Who the F*** Are You?
And that is not going to unplug right away. And And you're going to see a lot of people get fired. You're going to see a lot of people doing courageous things. And you're going to not see a lot of people doing courageous things, but you're going to hear whispers about it. And so I do think changing the culture of an organization for bad is actually pretty hard sometimes.
The Bulwark Podcast
Ben Wittes: Who the F*** Are You?
It can be done, but it has to be done over time. And the FBI has some pretty cool resistance to that that has developed over the years, which the left has never appreciated and never understood, but is very real.
The Bulwark Podcast
Ben Wittes: Who the F*** Are You?
You're trying to figure out what the pressure points are in which things can actually be stopped. We're not the people who are doing town halls. We're not making political ads, and God bless you guys for doing that stuff. That's not what we do. What we do is we try to give information to legal practitioners who are working in this space.
The Bulwark Podcast
Ben Wittes: Who the F*** Are You?
All of the above. So first of all, this is something that a lot of people who look at federal law enforcement really don't understand. We think like, oh, Danielle Sassoon and Hagan Scotton, these are Supreme Court clerks. You lose people like that, they're very hard to replace. With all due respect to the Supreme Court and to the Harvard and Yale law schools, they're actually easy to replace.
The Bulwark Podcast
Ben Wittes: Who the F*** Are You?
We churn out first-rate lawyers in giant batches every year, and if you get rid of a bunch of lawyers at the Justice Department, they're actually pretty replaceable. FBI agents are exquisitely crafted over time, right? There is no you know, Yale Law School and Harvard Law School and Stanford Law School that churns out FBI agents. There's Quantico. The classes are small every year.
The Bulwark Podcast
Ben Wittes: Who the F*** Are You?
And that's just the basic training. These are often people who have just exquisite training over time in really refined areas like, you know, art theft, which is a really important thing in money laundering. You need people who really understand the art market, who really understand forensic accounting, who really have good language skills in Chinese and Russian.
The Bulwark Podcast
Ben Wittes: Who the F*** Are You?
You show me a good counterintelligence agent, and I'll show you somebody who's been built over 20 years. And so when you take those senior managers, these are cumulatively centuries of experience that you're losing. It's very unlike, you know, I'm not diminishing firing people like, you know, at the Justice Department, We tend to be dismissive of it because they're just the cops.
The Bulwark Podcast
Ben Wittes: Who the F*** Are You?
They're actually the people whose expertise is really, really hard to replace. And the more complicated an investigation is, the more you look to that person really sculpted training of very individual agents. We have already lost an enormous amount of that. We're going to lose more over the next six months to a year, both because of firing. I had a you know, is stepping down.
The Bulwark Podcast
Ben Wittes: Who the F*** Are You?
And, you know, I asked why, and the person said, I just don't want to work for these people, you know, and that, that is not somebody who's going to get fired. Right.
The Bulwark Podcast
Ben Wittes: Who the F*** Are You?
Oh, you know, it's just another day in paradise. You know, every time you think you've hit bottom, you scratch and there's a Dan Bongino underneath. I mean, you know, I got to tell you, Tim, I've been ready for a lot of things. That one I was not ready for.
The Bulwark Podcast
Ben Wittes: Who the F*** Are You?
They want those people to quit. And one of the things that they're doing is they're putting people in a situation that they don't know if they're going to be fired. And so they basically, you know, in addition to the, I don't want to work for these people, it's, and they might fire me next week anyway. Right. So let's get a safe job. Yeah. But they might not. And these are people with families.
The Bulwark Podcast
Ben Wittes: Who the F*** Are You?
They're people who've expected to spend their careers in the Bureau. So, look, I think there's going to be a lot of turmoil. There is going to be loss of – there has already been a lot of loss of expertise and capacity. There is loss at the top. of management ability. Dan Bongino is not qualified to be the deputy director of the FBI, and his boss is not qualified to run the building.
The Bulwark Podcast
Ben Wittes: Who the F*** Are You?
And that means actually cutting through a lot of that stuff and talking about this in the language that people are going to have to talk about it in briefs challenging it, in briefs defending it. And it means taking the defenses seriously, including the 1952 cases, which you would quite reasonably be reacting to by saying, wait a minute, Elon Musk doesn't give a crap about what happened in 1952.
The Bulwark Podcast
Ben Wittes: Who the F*** Are You?
If you amalgamate that over the entire organization and say what is going to be the aggregate loss of effectiveness, it is going to be substantial. And I don't know how to sit here and tell you how substantial, but it matters that we have an FBI, have had an FBI that is very, very elite. And it will matter that we will now have an FBI that is much less elite.
The Bulwark Podcast
Ben Wittes: Who the F*** Are You?
All right. So I think you can lop group all the lawsuits about Trump executive actions into three broad categories, right? There are some others that are ancillary to it, but almost everything fits into three broad categories. One is he announces policies that people think are are illegal, and those policies are challenged. So the biggest of them, the most obvious, is the birthright citizenship.
The Bulwark Podcast
Ben Wittes: Who the F*** Are You?
The Constitution says if you're born in the United States, subject to the jurisdiction thereof, you get citizenship. Trump says, I interpret that to mean, no, you don't. And so some people sue. That's basket one. There's a bunch of these cases. This is by far the smallest basket. In some ways, the highest profile. The second category is the spending freezes.
The Bulwark Podcast
Ben Wittes: Who the F*** Are You?
Congress has said – you'll sometimes hear these called the impoundment cases. Congress has said, we're going to spend X amount of money on –
The Bulwark Podcast
Ben Wittes: Who the F*** Are You?
A, B, C, D, and the administration issues an executive order that says we're freezing money to A, B, C, and D. And people who are supposed to get money under A, B, C, and D, either USAID recipients or Medicare, Medicaid recipients in states or the states themselves, sue and say, no, you can't do that. Congress appropriated the money.
The Bulwark Podcast
Ben Wittes: Who the F*** Are You?
Third category of litigation, by far the largest, is Trump fires people who have some statutory protection against firing. And these are at very different levels of the executive branch. So at the highest level, they're the independent heads of federal agencies, right? He fires all the Democrats. who work for a federal agency.
The Bulwark Podcast
Ben Wittes: Who the F*** Are You?
There's also the Office of Special Counsel and the inspectors general, people who have- And the JAGs. Right, exactly. And then there's a different level, which is- all kinds of federal civil service level employees. So the Justice Department lawyers who were detailed to the special counsel's office to work for Jack Smith, they were all fired. The Justice Department junior lawyers
The Bulwark Podcast
Ben Wittes: Who the F*** Are You?
lawyers who worked on the January 6th cases. They were all fired by Ed Martin, by the way. And these are going to be very different categories of firings because these people have civil service protections. And so all of these
The Bulwark Podcast
Ben Wittes: Who the F*** Are You?
present different variations of the same big question, which is how much constitutional authority does the president have to control appointments and firings within the executive branch? And generally speaking, the higher level you go,
The Bulwark Podcast
Ben Wittes: Who the F*** Are You?
The closer somebody is to the head of an agency, the more power the president is going to have, and the less power Congress is going to have to put limitations on that. But Trump has been so aggressive that he's reached down to the literally junior attorney's level at the Justice Department.
The Bulwark Podcast
Ben Wittes: Who the F*** Are You?
And I think you just have to be able to hold multiple ideas in your head at the same time. We're trying to talk in the language that the district judges are hearing this stuff in because we're trying to provide a resource that's useful to people who are engaged in or following in detail those litigations.
The Bulwark Podcast
Ben Wittes: Who the F*** Are You?
Well, but again, Elon doesn't formally exist, right? Right.
The Bulwark Podcast
Ben Wittes: Who the F*** Are You?
And so individual forest rangers, individual Justice Department lawyers.
The Bulwark Podcast
Ben Wittes: Who the F*** Are You?
And so there's going to be a hundred of these litigations. There's already a million of them. But each one will present a different question. Can you fire an FBI manager because he's politically unreliable? Can you fire a forest ranger because he's probationary? And though he didn't do anything wrong, you're just getting rid of all the probationary employees, right?
The Bulwark Podcast
Ben Wittes: Who the F*** Are You?
because, you know, Jags are kind of the wimp shit people and we want to run a warrior culture here, right?
The Bulwark Podcast
Ben Wittes: Who the F*** Are You?
If you're a JAG, you've probably said no to somebody at some point, and we're pro-war crimes now. Can you fire all the people who've done Russian disinformation from all the relevant agencies? because now we're pro-Putin, right? These are all different iterations of a common question.
The Bulwark Podcast
Ben Wittes: Who the F*** Are You?
And I think the answer is going to be the Supreme Court is going to take very different views depending on what level people are, the reasons for the firing, and also how bad the record is. And the good news is...
The Bulwark Podcast
Ben Wittes: Who the F*** Are You?
honestly, they have been so blunderbuss about it that they have created, in many of these instances, terrible records for themselves that are going to be very hard for them to litigate, even in front of a friendly Supreme Court.
The Bulwark Podcast
Ben Wittes: Who the F*** Are You?
Oh, and oh, it's so much worse than that, Tim. I know you're being sarcastic, but you're actually understating the matter a lot because they're going to lose a lot of these cases. And by the time they lose them, these people will have gotten other jobs. So what they're eventually going to end up doing is having to pay back wages for a large number of people for doing no work.
The Bulwark Podcast
Ben Wittes: Who the F*** Are You?
Because the forest ranger is going to go get a job in eco-management from the— Firefighting.
The Bulwark Podcast
Ben Wittes: Who the F*** Are You?
Yeah. And the Justice Department lawyers, Justice Department lawyers are pretty expensive, by the way. They're going to all end up eventually at law firms.
The Bulwark Podcast
Ben Wittes: Who the F*** Are You?
So you're not going to save... You can say, oh, look how much money we've saved in wages we're not going to spend. You're going to spend them, and you're going to spend the money defending the lawsuits, which, by the way, you fired some of the lawyers who were going to do. So how is the Justice Department is going to have... they're quite short-staffed now in the civil defense area.
The Bulwark Podcast
Ben Wittes: Who the F*** Are You?
So it's pretty stupid as a way of saving money. There are ways to downsize the federal government, some of which are not crazy, that are money-saving. But if you just fire people randomly, that does not save money.
The Bulwark Podcast
Ben Wittes: Who the F*** Are You?
Well, we started this project about a year ago, and I asked Tyler and Nastia to host it. The idea was that the United States and Ukraine have a 30-year relationship of trying to deal with Russia and a history of misunderstandings and seeing the matter sometimes dramatically and sometimes in subtly different ways. And we thought...
The Bulwark Podcast
Ben Wittes: Who the F*** Are You?
partly at the time, not because of the presence of Trump, but partly because Republicans were souring in Congress on support for Ukraine, and because the Biden administration and the Ukrainians were so at odds over how weapons should be used, that there was just a real value in telling the story of this relationship.
The Bulwark Podcast
Ben Wittes: Who the F*** Are You?
And of course, that became much more urgent in the fall when the Trump administration made clear that they were, first of all, going to come to power again, but secondly, that their hatred of Ukraine had not abated.
The Bulwark Podcast
Ben Wittes: Who the F*** Are You?
it is inevitably the space we end up in. And I do not begrudge anybody who says, wait a minute, that's not the space I want to be in. I want to be in the space of primal scream therapy, you know, and I'm offering anybody who wants like, For the people who want primal scream therapy, I actually... Lawfare is not probably the best place for that.
The Bulwark Podcast
Ben Wittes: Who the F*** Are You?
I mean, I think the entire history of US-Ukrainian relations until a week ago can be summarized in the theme of Two partners, each imperfect, and we've talked about the U.S. failures, but we haven't talked about, which we also cover, the Ukrainian follies, which are non-trivial, and which we devote several episodes to. Two parties who are both imperfect, both...
The Bulwark Podcast
Ben Wittes: Who the F*** Are You?
groping for a way to work together to manage a threat from Russia. And mostly... doing so successfully with big failures. Then last week, that changed, and the United States switched sides. How decisively it switched sides is going to play out over the next year, but we fundamentally changed the nature of the relationship to one that is
The Bulwark Podcast
Ben Wittes: Who the F*** Are You?
imperialistic, extractive, and cooperative with the totalitarian regime that we had been previously trying to help Ukraine keep at bay. And I think the tale of that decision is going to be very long. It's going to be very tragic. And I don't think we should understate it. And so I think what happened in this podcast is we told the story.
The Bulwark Podcast
Ben Wittes: Who the F*** Are You?
We've done six plus episodes that are all leading up to this decision. And there is a final chapter of it that is yet to be written. And that is whether Trump will be meaningfully rebuffed in this effort to rewrite the relationship from one of partners to adversaries or whether he will accomplish that. And I think it's one of the big things other than dismantling the U.S.
The Bulwark Podcast
Ben Wittes: Who the F*** Are You?
But if you want to understand... So my colleague Anna Bauer has been on a whimsical one-woman quest to identify who the actual administrator of the doge is. And this is a really... It should be like who's the head of a federal agency is something we typically know, but the Justice Department hasn't been able to answer questions about this.
The Bulwark Podcast
Ben Wittes: Who the F*** Are You?
federal government that he has tried to effectuate in his first month in office.
The Bulwark Podcast
Ben Wittes: Who the F*** Are You?
I was about to come to it, Colleen Kohler-Catelli. Yesterday, there was a hearing in which Colleen Kohler-Catelli, who is an extremely fine district judge in Washington, basically said this question really matters because there's all kinds of things that presume – that there is such a thing as a doge, right?
The Bulwark Podcast
Ben Wittes: Who the F*** Are You?
And it has a head and we can evaluate that head under whether that's a legitimate thing under the appointments clause. Well, if we don't know who it is, you can't do any of that. And so our role is to ask the nerdy questions that the courts are going to end up having to ask and wanting to ask and which things are going to turn on. And look, that's not for everybody.
The Bulwark Podcast
Ben Wittes: Who the F*** Are You?
And for those, I don't know if the bat endless screaming is still on Twitter, but it's a, you know, a little bot that whatever you tweet at it, it tweets back. And for those who want that, you know, that's not lawfare. I love endless screaming. I appreciate that.
The Bulwark Podcast
Ben Wittes: Who the F*** Are You?
I'm just, you know, when you're falling down a well, it always feels like, not that I've fallen down a well before, but it always feels like you're about to hit the bottom and then you realize there is no bottom. It just goes down into the center of the earth. And there is Dan Pongino waiting for you.
The Bulwark Podcast
Ben Wittes: Who the F*** Are You?
That is part of what it comes down to. So, general rule of thumb, that if you are the White House, generally, the executive office of the president, a lot of it, for a lot of purposes, is exempt from FOIA. It's also exempt from a law called the FACA, which is the Federal Advisory. Committee Act.
The Bulwark Podcast
Ben Wittes: Who the F*** Are You?
If you set up an advisory committee in the Department of Homeland Security, I was on such an advisory committee. It has to follow certain rules. It has to have minutes of meetings, et cetera. If you're just the president's chief of staff, you don't have to do any of that stuff. So there's a lot of that.
The Bulwark Podcast
Ben Wittes: Who the F*** Are You?
But there's another factor, which is, I think, what Judge Kohler-Catelli was getting to, which is something deeper, which is You know, if you're the Doge, whatever that may be, and you're sending around orders to the federal government... then you are actually wielding executive power. You're not merely an advisor to the president, like the chief of staff whispering in the president's ear.
The Bulwark Podcast
Ben Wittes: Who the F*** Are You?
You're not allowed to wield certain executive power without being nominated by the president with the advice and consent of the Senate. And so one question is what level of transparency there is. Another level is You know, pardon me for putting it this way. It's the who the fuck are you question, right? You're not the Secretary of Defense. You're not the Secretary of Homeland Security.
The Bulwark Podcast
Ben Wittes: Who the F*** Are You?
You're not the Secretary of State. Who are you to you are not the boss of me. Right. Who are you dismantling USAID or taking apart? Maybe the answer is the formal answer I think has to be is he's not doing any of that. He's actually merely whispering in the president's ear and the president is doing that. But then you have this little problem.
The Bulwark Podcast
Ben Wittes: Who the F*** Are You?
which is, what about these emails, which we all know probably exist, where he actually is doing things, or the little monkeys under him are... big balls or whatever his name is, is actually wielding executive power, is ordering people to do things. And so there's this question what the formal structure is by which a bunch of outsiders show up and wield the executive power of the United States.
The Bulwark Podcast
Ben Wittes: Who the F*** Are You?
And so, one question is all the transparency stuff. But another question is... Who the heck is the Doge people who vetoed that, and what authority do they have to do that, and where does it come from? This is the Secretary of State who ordered something, and it's vetoed by Big Balls or whatever his name is, right? Where does that authority come from?
The Bulwark Podcast
Ben Wittes: Who the F*** Are You?
The point is the same. I just kind of use the name Big Balls to refer to all of them.
The Bulwark Podcast
Ben Wittes: Who the F*** Are You?
I actually think it's Other Doge Monkey Erasure is what it is.
The Bulwark Podcast
Ben Wittes: Who the F*** Are You?
No, look, it's a serious question, and there's a reason why a federal judge is focused on it, and it is our job to spot those questions. And so, you know, Anna spent last week being the person who was shouting about this, like, I'm sorry, we have a federal agency closing down the federal government, and the United States Justice Department can't even answer the question, who runs it?
The Bulwark Podcast
Ben Wittes: Who the F*** Are You?
And so, yeah, is that nerdy? Yeah, it's really nerdy. That's what we do.
The Bulwark Podcast
Ben Wittes: Who the F*** Are You?
Are we doing like it's like, okay, stop from the... You can if you want.
The Bulwark Podcast
Ben Wittes: Who the F*** Are You?
I think listeners might need to know why the AP is not an America First organization, and that is because it refuses to change its style book to call the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America. And I want to side with Mr. Martin on this, because what does the First Amendment mean to
The Bulwark Podcast
Ben Wittes: Who the F*** Are You?
when it says freedom of the press, if not the freedom of the press to follow the direction and threats of the president. And the president wants us to call it the Gulf of America. And these lame shit reporters are refusing to do that. And I just think that that's why we have a U.S. attorney's office, Tim, so that he can represent the president in his coercive threats.
The Bulwark Podcast
Ben Wittes: Who the F*** Are You?
You know, I appreciated, you know, you and Ezra Klein saying that things must be really bad if you were listening to the Lawfare podcast again. A lot of people took a break from us for four years. And, you know, I understand that there were happier times. But when things really, really suck, we're there to hold your hand.
The Bulwark Podcast
Ben Wittes: Who the F*** Are You?
By the way, this man is the acting U.S. attorney. He was recently nominated to be the permanent U.S. attorney. after threatening multiple members of Congress with investigations for making threats. And I am, of course, speaking sarcastically when I praise him.