Trump is siccing the thought police on the Smithsonian, he's got an FBI task force set up to protect Elon's car company, and he's turning random tattoos into gang insignia—unless they're on Pete Hegseth. Meanwhile, Greenlanders did not come to play, Elise Stefanik gets benched, the DOJ won't do its real job, and next week's elections are making Republicans nervous. Plus, courage is contagious—make them come after everybody. Amanda Carpenter joins Tim Miller for the weekend pod. Amanda Carpenter joins Tim Miller for the weekend pod. show notes "Hands Off" demonstrations on April 5 Protect Democracy's "If You Can Keep It" newsletter Tim and JVL on JD and Usha Vance's Greenland trip MTG lashing out at a British reporter Tim's playlist
Chapter 1: What are the Hands Off America rallies about?
Hallo und willkommen zu The Bulwark Podcast. Ich bin euer Host Tim Miller. Eine Sache, bevor wir zu unserem All-Caps-Guest kommen. Ich habe von einigen Leuten gehört, dass es ein bisschen ein Verständnis gibt, über ein Konvo, das ich und Love It haben am Ende des Pods gestern. Ich möchte nur klarstellen. Ich habe gesagt, dass es diese Hands-Off-America-Rallye gibt, die am 5. April stattfindet.
I brought that up at the very end after a pod that was pretty emotionally draining. We were talking in the context of this disconnect between the intensity of our alarm and anger and sadness with what was out there in the world. I heard from some folks that seemed to interpret that as dismissiveness about these rallies. I just wanted to be super clear that that is not what I intended.
The opposite, actually. I want to make sure we'll put a link to the list of the gatherings in the show notes. If you feel called to go, I encourage you to do so. I hope to see a lot of people out on April 5th. And I think that my point yesterday is, you know, this is kind of an incubator. This thing is going to take time. We're not seeing the initial emotional reaction that we saw in 2017.
And that is disappointing, but you got to start somewhere. So there you go. April 5th, Hands Off America rallies. All right. Our guest today is a former colleague. She's a writer and editor at Protect Democracy. She's a co-author of the authoritarian playbook for 2025 and a contributor to Protect Democracy's If You Can Keep It sub stack. It's Amanda Carpenter. How you doing, girl?
Chapter 2: What are Amanda Carpenter's thoughts on recent political events?
Hey, I'm, you know, and it feels weird to say I'm doing great. I'm doing okay. We're here. It's Friday. I felt like I had to wake up and just like preparing for this, like just take a few deep cleansing breaths because there's so much going on. But I am, if there's anybody to get into it with.
Ich bin froh, mit dir hier zu sein.
Ja, we get sometimes these tips at our work for like self-care, how to take care of yourself. You're such a lib now. You're getting self-care tips. Well, no, I took up running a couple years ago. It's like, you know, like that takes a lot of boxes off from me. You get out in the sunshine, you get time away from the screen. Like it takes care of a lot of things in one.
Actually, my husband does yoga. I don't do yoga. It's kind of funny. I'm like, that's your thing. I'm just going out on the trails. But, you know, everybody, everybody get outside is what I'm saying.
Yeah, get outside, get some vitamin D. Go to a rally, take a run. Go to a crawfish boil. That's what I'll be doing this weekend. I have my note for beginning the podcast with Protect Democracy, Amanda Potpourri. I mean, there's so many threats to democracy out there that I don't want to be in charge of what the biggest threat is, where the doomsday clock is the closest to midnight.
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Chapter 3: Why is free speech under threat in America?
So I want to let you... Go first. You tell me. What are you guys monitoring that has you the most alarmed out of all the bullshit that's out there?
I would say I don't want to speak for the group. I'm here speaking for myself. But right now, I mean, honestly, the most urgent thing that is in your face, on tape, easiest to see and understand are the people being nabbed out the streets without any due process. And thank Thank you, Tim.
You have been on this in a way that, you know, you humanize it, put a lens on it, talk about this person that got shipped off to El Salvador. And this is deliberately a complex issue that Trump chose to divide the pro-democracy coalition. You know, like I see these many debates happening. You know, is this an immigration issue? Is it a speech issue? How about it's just a basic issue? Sure.
But as a basic thing, we have to know the reason people are being picked up. And if Marco Rubio wants to get up and say, well, actually there's two with this one tough student. You know, I'm really lasered in on this because right now there's two different explanations coming from this administration, right? Like you had the spokesperson come out and say, well, something, something terrorism.
Und dann hat Marco Rubio eine Kamera in seinem Gesicht und hat gesagt, wenn du ein Student-Aktivist-Lunatik bist, werden wir deine Visa überwachen und wir werden nach Hunderten von dir kommen. Was ist das? Ist es Terrorismus oder wir mögen nicht, was du sagst? Weil wenn es Terrorismus ist und das ist wirklich, worauf sie sich bewegen, um viele Dinge zu tun, erzähl mir, was sie getan hat.
If there is this terroristic threat on campuses, I need to know exactly what she did that you're tracking so that we can stop this from happening in other places. But if this is like you just don't like that she showed up at a protest, you didn't like her out bed, you didn't like the tattoo that somebody had, then say that. Because I need to know
Wir alle haben das Recht zu wissen, welche Tattoos okay sind. Welche Wörter sind okay zu sagen, sonst wirst du aus Louisiana oder El Salvador oder irgendeinem anderen legalen Black Hole, wo niemand die Regeln kennt.
Yeah, I have a couple of thoughts on this. Number one, just as a free speech principle, I would be against what Marco was saying.
Yesterday in his press conference, it's like, look, if you apply for a visa and you put on your visa that you're just here to go to school and you come here and what you're really here to do is organize people and protest against the government, then we have a right to revoke your visa. I think I'd be against that in any context, but it at least is a defensible argument.
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Chapter 4: How are law firms responding to political pressures?
We always knew that there was going to be mistakes made in any amount of deportation raids, things that they did. I think some of this is that they're just not getting the numbers they wanted, and so they need to go after easy targets.
For sure.
But when you think about, I don't want to get super dark here, but what the possibility of AI being sicked on social media and tracking people's pictures and getting things wrong... Das ist wirklich ein Potenzial, um aus der Kontrolle zu springen. Und so, wie du weißt, nur das Ding mit den Tattoos, das scheint so offensichtlich. Viele Leute haben Tattoos, richtig? Was ist erlaubt?
Was wird jetzt als Gang-Sign verfehlt? Was ist die Liste der approved Content? Ja, genau.
Ich glaube, das ist ein guter Punkt, weil es scheint, glaube ich, ziemlich offensichtlich ist, dass es eine Außengruppe gibt, die dem Staatssekretär eine Liste von Leuten gibt, die schlechte Dinge gemacht haben. Ich verstehe nicht, wie sie jemanden wie Ozturk, diese randomen Op-Ed-Signer, holen.
Well, I do think she's easy. Like, I'm just gonna do this perspective as a woman here. Like, she's an easy person to pick up off the street, right? Unless you were prepared for that moment. And again, like, maybe she threw smoke bombs into a window. I don't know what she did, but this is part of the problem, is that they're keeping us in this, like, dark room with no facts, no information.
But she's an easy pickup, right? And they're gonna go after easy targets.
Sie sind. Und ich glaube, mein Punkt ist, dass das die Beta-Version ist. Aber wenn die State Torrent eine Liste von einem Anti-Palästinensischen, Anti-Humansischen, was auch immer, was auch immer, was auch immer, was auch immer, was auch immer, was auch immer, was auch immer, was auch immer, was auch immer, was auch immer,
We saw this with some of the groups that were putting the names and faces of people engaged in DEI in the government before Trump came into office. There's lots of lists that have been made. And so just like people often ask, like, how bad is it? How close to authoritarianism are we? And you want to say like, OK, like we still have room to fight.
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Chapter 5: What is the significance of the Greenland visit?
Ja, im Minimum versucht jeder, vorsichtig zu denken über die Umgebung, zu wissen, was nach Januar 6 passiert ist, zu wissen, was die Bedrohungen sind, die einfach ständig da sind. Ich meine, es ist nur dieser Geräusch von der Exekutiven Ordnung jeden Tag. Haben wir Exekutiven Ordnungen jeden Abend, die Individuen auf einem persönlichen oder organisationalen Niveau konzentrieren?
Ich meine, sie fliegen runter. And using the executive orders to target individuals in this way or as a means of leverage to extract a political price is an insane new form of executive abuse. And we don't even have a terminology for it yet.
Well, here's the latest. Let's go to the latest executive order from last night. Trump is targeting the Smithsonian and the zoo. For programs that advance divisive narratives and improper ideology.
Wolfsbandas! Wolfsbandas!
What was the zoo doing?
I don't even know.
I assume this is like they had Pride Night at the National Zoo or something and they've got to cancel that now.
Transpenguins.
Yeah, well, sure, maybe we honored the gay penguins, you know, from Antango Makes Three. That is a crazy, like, just phrase. Improper ideology. Like, it's silly and it's laughable, but it's like, look, the president is saying to a museum, I will punish you if you advance an improper ideology.
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