The Democratic Party was made for different times, when rules were followed. But to preserve the basic power of Congress, and to prove that the Constitution is worth the paper it's printed on, the troublemakers in the Dem caucus have to get busy fighting over tariffs and a looming budget deal. Besides, Trump's strongest hand is performative outbursts—making threats and pretending he got something in return. Plus, Elon is giving away America's greatness, the EU should call Trump's bluff, and the Democrats should quit chasing donations from the social media companies that broke our democracy. Former congressman Tom Malinowski joins Tim Miller. show notes: Tom's Bulwark piece on how the Democrats should fight
Chapter 1: Who is Tom Malinowski and what are his views on Trump?
Hello and welcome to the Bullard Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. Delighted to be here today with Tom Malinowski, Representative of Jersey's 7th Congressional District from 2019 to 2023. He was Assistant Secretary of State during the Obama administration, concentrating on democracy and human rights. And he wrote for us last week, five things Dems must do to fight Trump now.
Want to talk about all of it. So welcome to the pod. How you doing, Congressman? I'm great. Everything's so wonderful. Is that right? What do you go by as a former congressman? You just want to be Tom? Do you want to be sir? Do you want to do sir? Your Excellency. Your Excellency? Just Tom's fine, yeah. We'll try out a couple different ones and see how it goes. All right.
You know, I don't know that we're going to be doing democracy and human rights anymore at the State Department. So we're going to get to that and we're going to get to your recommendations. But Donald Trump did an interview last night on Fox. There was a lot of typical nonsense about, you know, election fraud and Greenland and whatever.
But there was a substantive policy exchange that I wanted to get your take on. Here's Trump talking about his plans for what's happening in Ukraine.
Chapter 2: What are Trump's plans for Ukraine and how does Tom Malinowski respond?
I want to have our money secured because we're spending hundreds of billions of dollars. And, you know, they may make a deal. They may not make a deal. They may be Russian someday or they may not be Russian someday. But we're going to have all this money in there. And I say I want it back. And I told them that I want the equivalent, like five hundred billion dollars worth of rare earth.
And they've essentially agreed to do that.
They might be Russian someday. It's an interesting thing to say about an ally. What do you think about that? Yeah, I don't know where to start.
There's so much shitty stuff going on right now. I actually think I'm less depressed about Ukraine than I am about a lot of other things.
Okay.
Because... Do we have to rank? Yeah, well, it's a low bar. I mean, what he just said was insane on about five different levels, but we can work with it. Zelensky and the Ukrainians are smart. I think they've made the best of this situation. And there are actually a couple of smart people that Trump has hired, including General Keith Kellogg, to run this Ukraine negotiation.
And, you know, the answer on rare earth minerals is that they're mostly in Eastern Ukraine and the parts Ukraine that the Russians have occupied. So you want American companies in there, which the Ukrainians would be delighted to allow helping to mine rare earth minerals. Well, the Ukraine's got to control that territory, not Russia. Putin's not going to give us access to anything.
And then the stuff about giving us our money back, right? Obviously, that's just nonsense. Most of the money we've spent has been spent in the United States. So you're going to have to ask American companies and American workers to give the money back, which is just nonsense that he doesn't understand. But there is at least a decent shot
that we're going to get to a point where the Russians say what I think the Russians are going to say in response to Trump's peace initiatives. They're going to tell him to go fuck himself. And then the real question is, what does Trump do at that point? Does he double down on pressure on Russia because he's pissed at Putin for giving him the back of his hand?
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Chapter 3: How does the global perception of the U.S. change under Trump's leadership?
But even then, like I would go to places like Egypt and Egypt, Syria and all over the world. And people would scream at me about what's your president doing? You're losing your moral authority. And then the next question was, can we get a grant from USAID? And can you introduce me to somebody in Don Rumsfeld's office? Because we really need America's help.
Because we're the only provider of that thing that people all around the world desperately need. So, yeah, we get rid of Trump in four years. A lot of people are going to be angry at us. There'll be a lot of questions about whether we can be trusted for the long term. But we can absolutely rebuild the supply for what good people around the world will continue to demand.
I guess I can say this having been a Bush supporter during that time. I do think that, I mean, clearly there were ramifications in our relationships, particularly with the Muslim world, like for those actions over the longterm, maybe it didn't mean the end of them dealing with us. All right. Maybe I was being a little apple, you know, a little extreme, but it certainly had an impact.
And I'm just curious, like what of all the, I mean, you know, who knows how everything will shake out with USAID, et cetera, but, with the legal challenges. What do you see as the biggest short to medium term ramifications of what's happening?
Yeah, USAID is a very practical ramification because there's material support that we're providing to good people around the world fighting for democracy and against corruption. All the stuff that China hates when we do, we're going to stop doing. doing it as much. We'll see what happens with USAID, obviously.
But I think the biggest ramification is just that the voice of the president of the United States is no longer going to be projecting the values that people find so attractive about the United States. He's going to sound very much like the leader of China, very much like the leader of Russia.
He's going to be talking about global politics as if it's just a mercantile imperialistic competition over resources and power in which bigger countries crush smaller countries and we're no different from anybody else. And that, again, that squanders the main comparative advantage that we have with our adversaries.
The main reason why anybody would want to be our ally, would want to follow us, would want to do anything to help us.
are you hearing from, I'm sure you are like hearing from people that you were working with counterparties during the Obama administration. I mean, do you have any sense for how, how bad on, on the ground reality is at the moment?
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Chapter 4: What strategies should Democrats use to challenge Trump's policies?
So eventually, you know, he'll probably win that confrontation. But it either puts Republicans on the record against him, which is politically useful, or it forces them to hold their nose and vote for something that's going to hurt their constituents badly, and they will be punished for that.
Speaking of dweebs in a good way, is there a person in the Democratic caucus that is particularly attuned to these sorts of strategies? Like, who's our parliamentarian troublemaker over there among your former colleagues?
Yeah.
who is brilliant and creative and understands that, just like Trump understands, you have to keep going forward, forward, forward. You've got to keep the initiative and define the terms of the debate every single day.
Jim McGovern, who may not be quite as well known, but he's the ranking Democrat on the Rules Committee, and absolutely, I think, would be not just a master of these rules, but willing to use them in creative and aggressive ways. Most Democrats are a little bit more cautious. I mean, you know, you've gotten to know a lot of Democrats the last few years. We tend to think through things a lot.
We weigh the pros and cons of everything endlessly. We obviously want to make sure everything we do is legal and that's good. We over-interpret polls. We've got consultants who say you should only take on issues that are already popular and only oppose things that are already unpopular. Be very careful. And if we keep going that way, Trump will have made 60 decisions before we even make one.
And we have to understand the kind of fight we're in. We actually need to learn some things from him. He is very good, I think, at psychological warfare. And Democrats are not.
So there was one forcing these votes in Congress to this point about Democrats being too agreeable. There's an upcoming... big opportunity here with government funding, which runs out in mid-March sometimes. They might play some games with us and move it around a little bit. But essentially, sometime in the next couple months, there'll be government shutdown and debt limit cliffs.
You wrote that they should not give Johnson a single vote on funding without certain assurances. Talk about how you think they should handle the upcoming budget.
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Chapter 5: How should Democrats approach the upcoming budget and potential government shutdown?
They're still hoping against hope that maybe we can find a way to get to Marco Rubio. He's a good guy. We've known him for many years or somebody else, or we can find a donor who can talk to Trump at some fundraiser. And convince them, spare us, maybe go after everyone else, but spare our wonderful program to feed children in this African country.
And some of the big democracy promoting institutions like the National Democratic Institute, National Endowment for Democracy, International Republican Institute that are doing work with democracy campaigners, anti-corruption activists all around the world. They've also been laying low. They're worried if we file a suit, we're going to war against the Trump administration.
And so they're all frozen. They're furloughing their staff. Their work is not happening. People are suffering as a result. And I completely get why they're afraid. If you're running an organization like that, you also have an obligation to your employees. You want to keep them employed for the next four years. But if they were suing, they would be winning and their funds would be unfrozen.
And I think we're at a time where I would want to see every single organization that spends U.S. money in support of U.S. interests and values around the world to band together right now and to file a joint lawsuit and to do it together. So that's why I stress that.
I agree with that. And particularly, I just would say one point is that Catholic Relief Services, those organizations are actually going to be more sympathetic. Yeah, I agree. Really, and have a better impact.
But they haven't done it yet. So the other side of this, though, is that we shouldn't over-rely on the courts. I think we're going to win a lot of victories. I think most judges, even Trump judges, are going to uphold the law. But I could see a point where this gets to the Supreme Court.
And I could see some justices saying, you know, we got a dispute here between the executive branch and the legislative branch. You guys are big boys. Work it out. Congress, you have the power of the purse under the Constitution. If you think the president is usurping his authority. You're supposed to use the power of the purse, just as we were discussing, right? March 14th.
Don't come to us to resolve your little dispute. There's a lot of precedent for the Supreme Court kind of backing away and forcing the branches to use their powers to fight it out. At the end of the day, I think this may all come back to the Congress and the Democrats in the House. Are you willing to use the power of the purse to preserve the power of the purse?
How do you think that that then plays out? Because I think that if Congress actually voted on this stuff, there would, you know, I think be a lot of opposition to some of the various things that we've seen as far as the spending freezes are concerned. But... The path of inertia from the speaker and the Senate majority leader would be just kind of let Trump and Elon do what they want.
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