The Art of the Deal guy gave a master class on how to get worked over by Putin: First, wait around for an hour like an obedient puppy only to have your ceasefire proposal summarily rejected. Then, watch the Kremlin issue a statement that flatly contradicts your claims of what transpired during the phone call on Ukraine. Will there ever be a point when Putin embarrasses Trump so much that he has to defend his manhood? Plus, the possible interpretations of John Roberts's rebuke of Trump, and the administration's sacrifice of even more U.S. power—by silencing the Voice of America. Ben Wittes joins Tim Miller. show notes Ben's Lawfare piece on Trump destroying the Voice of America Tim's and Sam's interview with Tim Mak on the Trump-Putin phone call NYT story on the possibly deleted data on kidnapped Ukrainian children (gifted)
Chapter 1: Who are the hosts and what is the focus of this episode?
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.
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.
So I can't ask you to assess it now? That's what you're telling me? I can't say, well Ben, what is the thing that you think has the biggest, longest term ramifications?
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
For people that's ears glaze over whenever I mention impoundment, can you just explain what you're referring to?
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Chapter 2: How does Ben Wittes view the current political climate?
So is there any remedy for those individuals in court? Like, are there any individual cases that could still come up? Or is this all more of a constitutional question at this point?
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?
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.
Right.
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.
Das ist so fucking just enraging.
So back to the Supreme Court.
There's an Axios story out this morning by our old colleague Marco Puto, talking about what the administration's strategy is here, to the extent they have a strategy. And essentially, the article states that they want to force these immigration cases up to the Supreme Court.
The Supreme Court has traditionally been somewhat reluctant to take on immigration cases for variety of reasons, but they want to force their hand. Trump Advisor says to Caputo, we have the law and we have the numbers on the court. We've always known this is where this all ends up.
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