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Feb. 5, 2026 14:00-14:18 - CSPAN
17:58
Washington Journal Jonathan Turley
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Rage and Republic 00:12:59
The things that we do that we see in our office that are of immense benefit or that are long-term goals within the administration that will protect Jews and the world worldwide are something that's very, very tangible.
Maybe we won't all know about it, but I can rest easy knowing that the goals that we're setting out are going to be achieved.
Okay, on that positive note, let's bring this to an end.
Please join me in thanking the ambassador.
Thank you very much.
Really good.
Thank you very much.
And a live look from the White House where Press Secretary Caroline Levitz expected to speak to reporters shortly.
This comes as Republicans and Democrats continue to seek an agreement on how to reform the current immigration enforcement system before the Homeland Security Department runs out of money next Friday.
The press secretary could also face questions from reporters on the latest Labor Department numbers, showing U.S. job openings fell to 6.5 million in December, the lowest level since September 2020.
Also, today, the Trump administration and Russia have agreed to reestablish dialogue between senior military officials for the first time in more than four years, after the last nuclear arms control pact between the two countries expired after the most recent extension in 2021.
As we wait for the press secretary to begin the briefing, we're going to show an earlier discussion from our own Washington Journal.
Welcome back to Washington Journal.
We're joined by Jonathan Turley.
He's author of the book called Rage and the Republic.
He's a law professor at the George Washington University Law School and a Fox News contributor.
Welcome to the program.
Thank you.
Well, let's start with the title of your book.
The full title is Rage and the Republic, the unfinished story of the American Revolution.
What do you mean that it's unfinished?
Well, we're looking at challenges in the 21st century that we have never encountered before.
The first half of the book looks at what went into the creation of this unique republic and the personalities and events that came together.
It looks at two revolutions, the American Revolution, the French Revolution.
It follows largely the passage of Thomas Paine, who's one of only two people that played a significant role in both revolutions, the other being Lafayette.
And Paine is just an exceptionally interesting character.
But our revolution was created by these strong, brilliant personalities.
Paine was sort of the righteous rage of the American Revolution.
He knew what it would take to move a people to rebellion.
And then it was James Madison who understood what it would take to move a revolution to a republic.
He was sort of the pious logic of the revolution.
It was the combination of those two figures and others that created something unique.
Our revolution was the first Enlightenment revolution.
So the second half of the book asks, can that survive in the 21st century?
I look at robotics, AI, global governance systems.
These are challenges that we have not really faced, and certainly not the numbers of job losses that we are about to encounter in the coming years.
And the book is optimistic that we can.
We can actually thrive in that.
But it's going to require us to remember what got us here, why it is that we have the most successful, stable democracy in history, the oldest democracy in history.
And it goes back to that.
You still think it's stable, though?
Oh, I see.
Because I was getting the impression that you felt that there was some instability there and some question about the survival of the republic, if you will.
I think that you're right in the sense that I think it's a dangerous conceit that we have done so well for so long that that means that we have nothing to worry about.
Benjamin Franklin was right.
It's a republic for us to keep, that we have to keep it.
Every generation has to do that.
But we have the tools here in this unique system to survive what's coming.
I do raise questions about some of the same voices we heard back then, people who are suggesting that the U.S. Constitution is a failure, that we should scrap the Constitution.
Even the dean at Berkeley Law School said that the Constitution is failing.
I think that this is a dangerous time to have that crisis of faith because we're going to need those elements.
When you look at the trajectories of both the American and French revolutions, it is fascinating because I compare Philadelphia and Paris.
Violence was breaking out in both cities.
This is after the American Revolution.
And there were cannon in the street in Philadelphia.
They attacked the home of James Wilson.
It was called the Battle of Fort Wilson that I talked about in the book.
And yet, in the United States, it stopped.
And then in France, it became the reign of terror.
And the question is, why that difference?
Why did they take such different paths?
So you use the term in the book, democratic despotism.
Is that why?
I mean, first of all, that sounds like a contradiction.
Well, it's not my term, but you're absolutely right.
That is the framers were primarily, not exclusively, but they were primarily concerned about how democracies destroy themselves.
They didn't want the Athenian democracy.
You know, we often talk about the Athenian democracy, and its reviews are a little bit better than reality.
The Athenian democracy didn't last very long, and it ended up in tyranny.
So the framers were very aware of that.
They did not want what one framer called a mobocracy, where you have this direct democratic power that tears itself apart.
That's what happened in the French Revolution.
That's what makes Paine so interesting.
And is that what you're worried about for America?
Yes, that we have to be very careful about these voices saying we need to, a lot of the things they're objecting to are those precautions Madison put in, those things that operate as breaks upon passion in politics.
And Paine discovered that, because Paine did not like many of those precautions.
He wanted more direct democracy.
And when he went to the French Revolution, he advocated that, and it came damn near to killing him.
He came within 24 hours of being executed.
Let me tell people that they can call in if they would like to talk to Jonathan Turley, a professor, author, and Fox News contributor.
The numbers are biparty.
So Republicans are on 202-748-8001.
Democrats 202-748-8000.
And Independents 202-748-8002.
You can start calling in now.
Let's go back to this concept of the tyranny of the majority.
And is there really a fear of that in the United States given all those breaks that you talked about?
The Electoral College, the Senate, you know, the small states get to, just like the big states, the filibuster, the Supreme Court, they're there for life.
And that doesn't really represent the majority.
So how is that even a fear that we would get what you're calling the mobocracy or the tyranny of the majority?
Well, there's always that fear in any system that has a strong democratic element.
We're a republic, but we are democratically driven.
And it has the capacity to do that.
The book begins with a statement from a French writer in the French Revolution.
He said that a revolution like Saturn devours its own.
The same could be true about democracy.
It can devour itself if you don't have those restrictions.
What I raise in the book is that there's not only very significant economic challenges that I talk about in the book from robotics and AI, et cetera, but there are political challenges.
The very things that people are suggesting we need to do, the changes that are being advocated by many law professors, pundits, those are the very things you just mentioned.
That is, they're arguing for those things to be removed.
Those are the things that contributed to our stability.
And we have to keep in mind that history so that we don't replicate the wrong history.
I want to put up a quote from your book.
Again, the book's title is Rage and Republic.
This is what you said, quote, the chilling reality is that history has shown that a free people can willingly, even happily, surrender political and individual rights when the right conditions are present.
If American democracy is to survive in the 21st century, it must again break this cycle.
First, talk about what those individual rights are that you fear people will willingly give up.
Well, you know, I have a chapter in Rage and the Republic entitled Why Big, Fierce Rights Are Rare.
And it's actually a takeoff of a title of Why Big Fierce Animals Are Rare, a famous book that came out decades ago.
The fact is, it's very hard to sustain big, bold rights.
Like what?
Well, like freedom of speech, freedom of association.
That in any crisis, particularly ages of rage, we tend to immediately attack those rights, particularly freedom of speech.
And it's a reminder that these things take a lot of calories in a system to sustain.
To have a true free speech culture takes a lot of calories and a lot of tension.
But we need those.
When I said that this was the first Enlightenment revolution, Americans don't seem to really gauge how unique this was.
Europe was fascinated by the United States.
People have to recall that those Enlightenment writers had written decades earlier.
So this revolution was the first attempt to recognize a government based on those bold individual rights and as natural rights, not coming from the government but coming from God, coming from being human.
That was what was different.
So what are those right conditions where people would give up that right?
For instance, freedom of speech.
Well, it's rage, and we've seen this before.
My earlier book talked about ages of rage, and we're in one.
And rage is part of our history.
I mean, the fact is this country was born in rage.
The Boston Tea Party was rage.
But it's what happens when rage is unleashed.
You see it today in the faces of people on both sides, that rage is a strange thing.
It allows you to say things and do things you would not otherwise say or do, but it gives you a license.
And what people won't admit is that they like it and that they need it.
That's what we see in the streets.
There's always this danger that rage can overwhelm reason, that rage can become rebellion.
And you have to have a system that can handle that, but most importantly, you need a system that can vent those pressures.
That was the difference between Philadelphia and Paris.
The thing that stopped the violence in Philadelphia was the ratification of the U.S. Constitution.
It was not popular in Pennsylvania, barely passed in Pennsylvania.
And there were some fights after ratification occurred.
But it was an amazing transformation that occurred.
We continue to have problems, the whiskey rebellion, things like that.
But a transformation occurred when people realized that they had a place to go other than the streets to realize their interests.
And the Manisonian system worked in that sense.
Do you feel when you say that we are in an age of rage right now, and we need to get to calls because a lot of people want to talk to you.
Do you feel like people do have another outlet for that besides being on the streets?
In other words, do you feel that people do have Congress, for instance, which is what they're supposed to do, an influence policy?
Do people still have that influence?
Or has Congress become just another tool of the executive branch, as some critics would say?
Well, I don't see how you could look at what's happening on the Hill and say it's a tool of the executive branch.
The main complaint about Congress is that it's not doing enough.
Both sides complain about that.
But we're a divided country.
We're divided right down the middle.
I mean, and this has been a prolonged state of division.
We're right down the middle on divisions.
When that happens, our representatives are divided.
Congress does less.
That's not necessarily a bad thing, by the way, because if we're divided as a people, we tend to do less overall.
But I view what's happening on the Hill as difficult as for people to watch, and it's never pretty.
It does reflect our country.
Congress is divided as we are, and that means we fight over more in Congress.
Congressional Divisions Reflecting America 00:04:58
Let's talk to Mike.
Tampa, Florida, Republican, you're on the air, Mike.
Well, hello, and thank you.
It's great to talk to a national treasurer like Mr. Turley.
My question, I have a question.
It's sort of a hypothetical.
With the FBI and DNI Gabbard investigating Fulton County and with the revelation that 315,000 fraudulent votes were certified in Fulton County, what would happen if the 2020 election was found to be fraudulent or inegitimate?
What would happen to the judges, the laws, executive orders, the budgets, and the money distributed?
What would happen constitutionally?
Sure.
Well, Mike, that's a really good question, but the fact of the matter is that courts are unlikely to get that cat to walk backwards.
And so if there's evidence of a fraudulent election, and we have not seen that evidence, but if there were such a case, then the courts would likely keep the status quo.
You know, you wouldn't negate everything that Biden did or any other president that's now under a cloud if that were the case.
So the courts tend to be very incrementalist.
They tend to be very cautious.
A democratic system is sort of messy.
And that is sort of reflected in the fact that these are largely forward-looking remedies rather than retroactive remedies.
Ed in Florida, line for Democrats.
You're on the air, Ed?
Hi, Mr. Turley.
I'll tell you what I find most disturbing from someone as educated and as credible in many ways as yourself.
We may disagree on policies of President Trump, but the ability to, like you were just asked about, what if the election is proven not accurate?
I mean, you're contributing to the undermining of trust in the electoral process by not simply saying, well, that's been investigated, litigated, it's done, and President Trump is frankly incorrect when he makes these outrageous claims.
They're a degree below yelling fire in the theater as he, you know, and we could go on about self-dealing financials, due process denials.
I mean, there's so many things that you're much more expert than any of us on that you'll never even come close to the line of saying his hyperbole might be crossing into incredulity and downright maybe impeachable types of offenses.
Your comments on why the silence is deafening from you and so many Republican pundits.
Well, Ed, first of all, I'm not Republican, but I did say with the earlier caller that we have not seen evidence of that type of massive fraud in the election.
I said that in the coverage.
I've worked as legal analyst for NBC, for CBS, for BBC.
I'm now with Fox.
And it's true.
I try to confine my legal analysis to the legal question as to what is being shown and what's not.
And during the, for example, the 2020 election, I went on the air and said that we had not seen the evidence unfold.
But part of the key about trying to be a legal analyst is to be a neutral broker, to try to allow others to argue the political point and to try to offer some value as to what the legal issues are.
Now, on your last point, I'm afraid you've come to the wrong shop, brother, because as you may know, I'm sometimes called a free speech absolutist, but my earlier book was on free speech.
I don't believe that you can impeach a president for these types of statements.
And more importantly, the courts believe that.
And I think that that's another important thing to make clear in legal analysis.
One can have strong objections to President Trump.
And I have objected to aspects of President Trump's policies when he's right.
I've said that when I think he's wrong.
I've said that when focusing on these legal and policy issues.
But I do not believe that the president could ever be charged or impeached for what he said, for example.
Hello, everybody.
Wow.
We have a very packed room here today.
Thank you all so much for showing up and for joining.
I apologize for the delay.
The president and I were watching the press conference about the search for Savannah Guthrie's mother, which is just a heartbreaking situation.
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