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July 24, 2020 - The Muckrake Political Podcast
59:33
The Political Danger Of An Illegal Plan

Co-hosts Jared Yates Sexton and Nick Hauselman discuss the future of the Muckrake Podcast, the authoritarian nature of Donald Trump dispatching federal troops to U.S. cities, and welcome poli-sci professor Dr. Jason Neidleman to talk about the illegality of Trump's plan and the long term consequences. To subscribe to the Muckrake Podcast’s mailing list, send a note to muckrakepodcast@gmail.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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President Trump charging into more controversy, announcing just moments ago that despite protests from mayors and governors, he is going to send even more federal law enforcement agents into an American city, this time Chicago.
You know, I'm not even that old, and I'm old enough to remember when it was the right that was constantly warning us that there would be power grabs by federal agents.
But it's only under this president, and only when it comes to people speaking up in the movement for black lives, that we are suddenly seeing a willingness to use that kind of power by a president who won't even use federal powers to do things like make sure that we have more testing and personal protective equipment available to the American people.
Hey everybody, welcome to the Muckrake Podcast.
I'm your co-host Jared Yates-Dexton.
Here, as always, is my good friend and co-host Nick Halselman.
We have a full show.
We're going to welcome Dr. Jason Needleman, a poli-sci professor from the University of Laverne, to come in and talk about the legality or I would say illegality of the president of the United States sending in federal shock troops to cities around the country.
We're going to talk about that in depth.
But before we get to that, we need to have a conversation about the state of the show.
And that sounds a little ominous, but I'm excited.
How about you, Nick?
Oh, yeah.
I cannot wait to get this next segment of our show launched and offered to the people.
Yeah, so we're at a little bit of a crossroads moment with the podcast.
And before we even talk about this, we want to say thank you, because we could not have gotten to this point if it wasn't for you, the audience.
Your support your dedication, just even reaching out to us and the kind words have been incredibly appreciated.
And we're building a community here and it's so, so exciting.
And we kind of reached this point.
Nick and I have been talking.
We want to do some big things.
We've been going back and forth on, we want to do some feature length audio documentaries, the kind of things that you've probably heard on other podcasts, you know, multi-part, breaking down things and giving like incredible context and history and analysis.
We've got our first idea.
We're not going to talk about it yet, but we're very excited about it.
What are we thinking, like, three, four, five episodes?
What have we talked about?
It would be at least four, I would imagine, only because there's so much to mine from the idea, so yes.
But we're obsessive, so it'll end up being like 10 or 15 episodes.
Let's just be honest.
It'll grow.
And you know, we want to do this, and on top of that, you know, the conventions are next month.
They're in a couple weeks.
I don't know about Nick, but even if we weren't doing something for the podcast, I'd be watching every minute of it and champing at the bit to talk about it.
So we were talking about doing some nightly coverage of the convention, as well as some post-debate shows, election night coverage, just some on-the-spot stuff.
And we sort of had a decision to make.
You know, in order to grow the podcast, we had to make a decision.
And I'll just be frank, because, you know, I want to be honest with the audience.
I don't really want to hawk products.
I really don't.
I kind of feel like this podcast doesn't Doesn't work that way.
Yeah.
I mean, listen, I, you know, I'm not one to throw stones considering how much I do that on my other stuff, but I hear you.
It's not, there's definitely some soul killing that goes in when you whore yourself out.
Well, and here's the thing about it, like, I think there are certain places where you can do it, but it feels weird to be like, here's a mattress, now we're going to talk about, you know, an authoritarian presidency.
It feels weird to sort of do that.
So we don't want to do that.
We don't actually want to answer to any sort of corporate bosses.
And quite frankly, I mean, I don't know about Nick, because everyone loves Nick.
I've got some enemies out there.
I don't want to be vulnerable to my enemies, you know what I mean?
And to attacks by trolls and people trying to come after sponsors and stuff.
It just sounds like a headache.
So we've been talking and we've actually had a lot of people reach out to us, sending emails asking how they can help the show, where they can donate money or whatever.
So in August we're going to start a Patreon.
And we're going to continue to do the show for free.
You're going to get your Muckrake podcast.
But we're going to do some other stuff, too.
And Nick and I are pretty excited.
Nick, what have we talked about?
What are we talking about doing here?
Well, the first thing that you mentioned that got me way out of my chair was to talk about a movie.
Like once a month or so, we sit down and literally just pull apart a movie.
Now, here's the cool thing is there are podcasts like that already out there that will go over all your favorite movies from the 80s or whatnot.
But I think what we want to do is focus on movies that deal with politics.
And I think that's a real interesting thing that no one's done before.
So that's going to be really exciting to discuss how these movies have captured the context of the times and the historical context as well.
So it's going to be a really interesting deep dive.
I've had a screenwriting background, as do you, and a film theory, I guess, or film study background, teaching-wise.
So I think it's going to be a really great way to dive into some movies.
Yeah, and I think it's going to give us an opportunity, particularly because as this podcast grows, I think we're both enjoying it more and getting way more invested in it.
It's going to give us an opportunity to do some really cool things like the idea of dissecting movies that are either You know, openly political, or they have a political philosophy at the heart of them.
And on top of that, I think we can go back and forth and give some historical and political background on these things.
We've talked about having some Q&A shows where patrons can send in some questions, possibly even call-in shows, in the great tradition of political call-in shows, and just a bunch of exclusive content.
So we just want to say thank you for all the support so far.
We did a lot of soul-searching on how we wanted to do this, and we decided that we wanted to go the Patreon route.
So for anybody who is interested, we'd really, really, really appreciate you to drop us a line at muckrakepodcast at gmail.com.
If you send us a note over there, we will make sure that you'll be on our mailing list.
We'll let you know when the Patreon goes up, and we'll keep you up to date on the show and all of the stuff that we're doing.
But we're going to begin this in August.
We're going to start talking about it in earnest on August 1st.
And then we're going to, you know, like I said, during the conventions, we're going to be here every night after this thing is over, reacting in horror to the Republican National Convention, and hopefully having some hope for you after, you know, some of this madness.
So, and again, if you can, please send us an email at muckrakepodcast at gmail.com.
Yeah.
Alright, so with that out of the way, this is exciting stuff.
Let's talk about nightmarish stuff.
Although I am, and it's kind of a nightmare as well because if they actually do do this thing in person for the Republican side in Florida, I cannot wait to be watching this slo-mo to see the spittle flying through the air and wafting and seeing who walks into it and who might inhale it and find out, you know, it's gonna be like this is a brooder film.
I have to tell you, I am so much more looking forward to spending this Republican convention with you in the comfort of my own home and the safety of my home as opposed to being in Cleveland surrounded by the alt-right and Milo Yiannopoulos and Richard Spencer and basically the stormtroopers of the burgeoning Trump administration.
So I'm looking forward to that, and I'm really excited for this journey.
So thank you, everyone.
But now we have to talk about nightmarish stuff.
The Trump administration is sending federal troops to major cities all around the country.
They've now given it the name Operation Legend, which, I mean, I don't know if you have studied fascism at all.
It's all about legends and myths, and it's all about the idea of, like, legendary power and mythic power.
It's not like they're telling us what they're doing, but they're telling us what they're doing.
Nick, what are you making of this thing?
Well, let's not forget that Operation Legend is really named after a young kid who got killed in Kansas City.
So it's not even necessarily like the legend of Esmeralda or whatever we're talking about, but it is...
You know, we're going to need some more expertise to bring us into the constitutional implications of all these things.
But this is what we've been warning about, right?
This is the fascism that we've been talking about.
This is not the country club corruption anymore.
This is now organized, thought out, They scrutinized, because there is some notion that they're skirting the law and somehow finding a lane that they can maybe argue, but at least we're going to have some oversight into this as well.
I mean, there's Fourth Amendment issues.
It gets complicated.
Even Michael Horowitz, who was celebrated on the right as the inspector general who was going to have a bombshell and reveal how politically biased the Russian investigation was, I mean, there is nothing that has happened during the Trump presidency that tells me that anybody on the inside will hold these people accountable.
But nothing.
Absolutely nothing.
And I'm so glad that you put it this way.
into a couple of different things and how this is going down.
And now we're going to have to have bets in the over under on when he's going to get fired.
I mean, there is nothing that has happened during the Trump presidency that tells me that anybody on the inside will hold these people accountable.
But nothing, absolutely nothing.
And I'm so glad that you put it this way.
This is exactly what we've been warning about.
And I feel like there are so many people in America who unfortunately are very, very focused on maintaining the status quo and trying to tamp down any sort of fear of the Trump presidency and saying, Yeah, he's corrupt.
Yeah, he lies.
Yes, he's vulgar.
But, you know, he's not going to break the institutions.
He's not going to actually do these things.
Well, now we have troops in federal cities.
And what they're doing, right, is that they're grouping around federal buildings or federal monuments or whatever they're using for their excuses.
And they're saying, oh, we have a right to protect, you know, federal property.
They're playing games in the same way that we talked about the other day.
This is the Bush administration changing the ideas of terror.
This is the idea of changing the ideas of what is torture, who is an enemy combatant, who is a terrorist, who deserves rights, who doesn't.
This is it, people.
Like, it truly, truly is.
And I want to set the picture for everyone.
This is an authoritarian president who is underwater in the polls.
I mean, it's bad, right?
And by the way, we have to, at some point or another, nod towards the media, who has just fallen for the somber new tone.
They love the somber new tone, Nick.
They just eat it up, like so much home cooking.
They love every time that the president has a new tone.
He's underwater politically.
He's facing a potential avalanche loss in the presidential election, possibly prosecution from that, you know.
And he's embracing authoritarianism in full.
It's not even hidden anymore.
It's obvious.
And all of his little cronies and all the slimy little authoritarians who are underneath him, they're going full fascist.
And that's just the truth of the matter.
That's not even alarmist anymore.
That's just like actually reporting reality and truth.
Now I grew up in Chicago, so when he's been railing for all these years about how bad Chicago is and all the gun violence and all the murders, if you live in the city of Chicago it is pretty far away from where all that violence is happening.
It doesn't necessarily feel like it's the same place.
Now they're talking about, remember, the auspices of going in these cities were to protect federal buildings.
I guarantee you there ain't no federal buildings anywhere near where they intend to go in Chicago.
Now it sounds like the U.S.
Attorney of Illinois is somehow going to get involved as a mediator here to try and figure out how to make this thing work.
But I can tell you right now that, you know, these are tough neighborhoods, right?
These are very rough neighborhoods that I shudder to think what might happen if they try and, you know, march federal troops, I guess through the streets to do whatever they're going to do in a show of force.
Well, that's the question, right?
Because everything with Trump is a performance, right?
You know, he's always like, I'm going to do this.
And then he sort of does it, but he doesn't do it.
The question here.
Is whether or not he's promising to cut down on violence, right?
That's what he's promising.
The idea of sending federal troops into quote unquote tough neighborhoods in Chicago is untenable.
That doesn't work.
You know what I mean?
Like, imagine having to be President of the United States and come out and announce that X number of federal troops have been shot in a neighborhood in Chicago.
Imagine having to carry that around.
These troops are going to go into city centers, and they're going to go there to provoke protest, because there should be protest.
And then they're going to go in and they're going to level the protest in a show of force.
Now, whether or not they go after people or they try and, you know, try and quell violence or whatever they're saying, that's insane.
You know how you handle things in Chicago?
You know how you get rid of violence?
You throw some money at Chicago and social programs and you start taking care of education and you start taking care of housing.
That's how you actually take care of these things.
You don't roll a tank through the street and find out what happens.
So no, a lot of it's going to be a show, but God knows it's going to be an ugly show.
This is an excuse to crack some skulls.
It's an excuse for Trump who hid in a bunker, by the way, hid in a bunker like a coward to show force and to apparently have some wins as he's losing and everything else.
Well, here's how addled his brain is.
It's because if you look back at 1968, when it was in Chicago, they had incredible riots in Grant Park around the Democratic National Convention.
And when Nixon was screaming law and order, that really resonated.
People did not want to see cops beating the hippies and all sorts of unrest.
They did not want that.
And so Trump seems to want the images.
He seems to think that the images of the cops beating everybody will somehow whip up people.
Now, I'm willing to say that his base is his base, and that doesn't seem to move much, but I will be willing to say that it's not going to be 100% of his base that will approve of this.
And the weird thing is he's now having these commercials showing all these images that we've already seen of violence and of cops against the protesters.
And he's trying to say that that's what Joe Biden's America would look like.
How can you say that's what Joe Biden's America looks like when it really is your America that you're creating right now?
And here's the biggest issue.
First of all, if it's Trump's ideas, he is off.
We know that he doesn't function properly with his brain, but there's a legion of people that need to be involved to produce these videos and to egg him on and to like, you know, who believe what this is or whatever, or are helping him do this.
That is really the biggest problem that makes me really concerned, is that how many people are out there who really do believe and who have influence and power?
There is the question, and I wrote about this on The Muckrake this week already.
There are actual, legitimate, ideological fascists surrounding Trump.
Here's the thing, if you ask Trump to define fascism, he would fail.
He really doesn't understand it.
He intuitively gets it, right?
He understands instinctually what it is to be a fascist, right?
Because he operates that way.
The other people, the Tom Cottons, right?
The Tom Cottons, the Pompeos, the Bars, they really truly believe in the ideology of this, which is, you're the president, you need to seem strong.
And Trump's like, strong's good.
And you're like, yes, Mr. President, strong is good.
Yes, absolutely.
And then he's like, I have to seem strong.
Is this a winning gambit?
I don't know.
I don't think that he knows.
I don't think that anyone around him, if they know, but they are really, really ready to crack some skulls.
You know what I mean?
So like, for instance, you bring up Chicago, and we're both from the Midwest.
We both sort of understand the Midwest and the philosophy of it.
If you are not from Chicago, or Detroit, or Indianapolis, right, if you're not from one of the major city centers, you know that the people in the rural areas and the suburb areas really don't like those cities.
There's a lot of racism involved.
There's a lot of prejudice involved.
They look at it and they're like, oh, those are the cities where people of color live.
Well, but going in and sort of going after those people, it helps him with suburban voters.
It helps him with paranoid white voters.
It helps him with fascist voters.
Now, whether or not that's enough to get him over the hump, he doesn't know.
But guess what?
He has a losing hand.
And he's a gambler of a person, and he's willing to throw anything at the wall, particularly as people around him tell him he has to look strong and he has to do these things.
So you're exactly right.
There's different things happening.
There's a president who is a natural, instinctual authoritarian, and there are fascists who want this for the sake of fascism.
And when those things meet, it's like two different sort of pressure systems meeting and creating a perfect storm.
Now, the thing about these cities like Detroit and Chicago are they're very, very deeply segregated.
And they have a long history of that segregation.
So we can't pretend like, you know, you could argue, oh, they're just simply democratic cities, democratic run cities versus cities that have black people in them.
Because it's very segregated in a way that the areas that clearly he wants to go in is certainly in Chicago.
and Detroit are heavily African-American neighborhoods.
That's what the whistle is here.
And that's the issue here because remember, there might even be a notion of, okay, let's try and stop the violence, right?
We've been trying it this way for a long time.
What the hell have you got to lose all that stuff?
But we have laws.
We have laws in this country that you have to follow if you are going to try and do any of this kind of thing.
And if you're going to be unwelcomed by the governor, and by the mayor, and by the local electorate there, then you can't just send in troops like that.
And I know, okay, should we go over the times that we have?
I mean, we've seen that every once in a while.
It certainly isn't a noble cause like we're seeing now.
Well, what happens if there's a crisis, Nick, and it goes on for months and months and months?
What happens when there's an election to be held in the major urban centers that happen to be Democratic strongholds?
Do you think that he would try and do that where he's like, well, you can't have the elections in just those places, but hey, let's have them in the suburbs, no problem.
You think he would do that?
I don't think that he would announce it.
I think it would be a situation where it's like, yeah, go vote.
Like, your life depends on it.
So this is the whole thing.
He keeps creating scenarios.
And that's the thing.
He doesn't win every crisis he creates.
But the more crises that he creates, the more chance there is for him to win.
That's the whole point with Trump, is he's a gambler.
He just constantly tries things, and there's no master plan.
There's not like a chalkboard in the White House right now that's like, this and this and this and this, right?
But I'm telling you, he's not going to stop grasping at straws.
We've talked about this before, and we're really excited to have Dr. Needleman on here later to talk about the actual law and the policy here.
He's not thinking about that.
Like, Donald Trump isn't thinking about what the Constitution says or doesn't.
Do you think, okay, what are the odds you think that Donald Trump has read the Constitution?
Oh, absolutely less than zero.
Less than zero.
There's no chance possible that he did it.
And quite frankly, the Constitution doesn't matter if their people aren't going to enforce it.
So we're at that point.
And we're going to find out what the courts end up doing, and it's going to be a disaster.
And maybe it's going to be like the Muslim ban, where it starts off being ruled out, and then eventually we see what happens over time.
He's just throwing things at the wall, and if he's allowed to do it, that's what authoritarians do.
They just continue to destroy and destroy and destroy until there's nothing left to destroy anymore.
Or even worse than the Busnell ban, what if it was like the torture memos?
Because they were able to get away with that in some sort of legalese for a while, and guess who is advising them again?
I think we mentioned this in one of the other podcasts recently, but John Yoo is back.
These guys are freaking like, what are these zombies?
Whatever, zombies, whoever keeps coming back from the dead, Elijah.
These people come back and never die.
It's insane.
The Wolfowitz's and the Rumsfeld's and all these guys who continue to wreak havoc on our country.
He is now out there crafting the language that's going to somehow make what they think is legal or they give them a legal argument to sending these troops in.
And it's really frustrating, and it's also so clear.
We understand now why they're doing this.
They're doing it, like you said, they're doing this for the photo op of violence in the streets.
Civil war, basically.
And I don't know, it makes me really nervous and upset because in some of these places, it's... Like, here's the thing.
In the troubled areas of Chicago, there aren't protests, right?
These are generally gang shootings.
So it's not like they're going to be able, there's not people out in the streets that are going to be able to police or whatever.
So it's like, are we going to have images of them going door to door?
And busting in doors and doing the cops show looking thing?
Because I cannot see how that would be any better than what they're doing now anyway with regular law enforcement.
Well, and you're talking about Chicago, where, yes, there is an epidemic of violence, and everybody understands that Chicago has a problem, right?
They're not going to solve that problem.
They're not going to go in and actually stop the violence in Chicago, because it's a systemic problem.
You can't just go in and crack some skulls and suddenly the violence ends.
The other cities he keeps talking about- Oh, but you can do that in Afghanistan, though, right?
In Iraq?
That really works.
You can.
No, you absolutely can.
You can go in and extract people.
Which, by the way, isn't it funny, like you were saying about John Yoo, they've already started creating the words for it.
It's all linguistic wordplay, right?
I mean, what is it that Chad Fox was saying the other day?
Proactive arrests.
Right?
And there's rumors already that the NSA is starting to supply people with information about people who have either, oh my god, they might have sprayed some graffiti, or they might be near a protest.
And so all of a sudden you start having the machinery of government that starts actually predicting the people who have either maybe committed crimes or will commit crimes.
So all of a sudden what you just talked about is exactly where we're heading, which is preemptive arrest.
We're talking about breaking into people's homes, which by the way happened during the protest.
We had people who were, you had protesters who would come into their houses and you had police wanting to come inside in order to arrest people.
They were firing off gas canisters at people out on their porches and screaming at them to get inside.
What we're watching, and by the way, I'm so glad you brought up you and you brought up Rumsfeld and all these people.
These are people who have committed multiple wrongs to this country.
If there was any justice in this country after Nixon went out, there would have been people going to jail.
If there was any justice in this country after the Bush administration, people would have went to jail.
They were war criminals.
By the way, they weren't just war criminals.
They violated the U.S.
Constitution time and time and time again.
And what happens?
We talked about this on the podcast multiple times.
When you break the law and nothing happens to you, it sets a precedent and it just keeps happening.
This thing with Trump.
Is going to lead to more stuff after Trump.
So we need to realize that this stuff has to be stopped right now.
Right now.
It cannot be allowed to continue and grow.
I mean, that's as good as I was able to say it.
I mean, there's no question that we need to have somebody actually stand up to them and have the proper... Like, here's the thing.
There were double-digit investigations into Benghazi.
And I don't know exactly what's going on here because you would have thought in the time we've had that they would have done the same thing to the Republicans, the Democrats in Congress, and dragged these people into endless hearings to find out what's going on.
By the way, we're finally going to get Barr to appear.
We, meaning the Congress, is going to get Barr to appear next Wednesday.
Although, what's the odds on that of him actually showing up now?
Are they?
I mean, like, you say that, and like, in a working country, like, oh yes, set your watch.
Who knows?
And here's the thing about it.
Like, let's just, let's call it what it is, because again, we're asking people to invest in this show.
Let's give them some hard truths.
The Democratic Party has been afraid to play hardball.
They really have.
They've been totally afraid because the Republican Party goes out and they're like, the next five years are dedicated to investigating Benghazi.
And by the way, we're doing it to hurt Hillary Clinton.
Just know that.
We are lying to hurt Hillary Clinton.
And then the Democrats are like, well, we wouldn't want to be criticized for that, would we?
Meanwhile, Trump is rolling tanks into streets.
That's the whole point.
Like, will Bill Barr go?
I don't know.
If he says he won't, what happens?
Are they going to drag him out?
No, they're not going to do that.
They're just not, because they're not going to play hardball, and they're going to be run over by those tank treads.
That's just what's going to happen if they don't step up to the plate.
Yeah.
Now here's one thing about the Hillary thing is, you know, it's not said enough.
That basically what Trump got impeached for by trying to get dirt from Ukraine on Biden is basically what the Congress did to Hillary to drag her through that for those years to set her up for the election in 2016.
That's not said enough and that's clear what they were doing.
But here's another thing that I think is really interesting to me is that these so-called conservatives and Republicans or whatever you want to call them now because they probably need a different word.
They need a completely different name.
We can't really probably say it on a family show.
We probably can't.
But they're perfectly willing to support states' rights for things like abortion, right?
Gun control.
But all of a sudden... The big one, the Confederacy.
The Confederacy.
They're very up for supporting state rights in terms of the Confederacy.
That's what they want to support.
Yes, but then all of a sudden out of the blue They're like gonna be calling for federal troops in the streets away from the federal buildings that they're supposedly trying to stop getting graffitied I mean really here's the question like we saw some some fires being lit and I almost feel like we didn't see that before the federal people came in these troops came in so it's like They're the ones who are escalating this thing.
And, you know, is graffiti the cost of doing business?
Yeah, probably.
And here's the thing.
Here's my big thing.
This is what they should do.
Because we've got to talk about the mayor of Portland.
If you want the protests in Portland to stop, listen to them.
Listen to what they're saying, what they're demanding.
So I give kudos to the mayor of Portland for getting the shit tear gas out of him last night and amidst the crowd.
And it was, by the way, an interesting dichotomy toward the mayor of Minneapolis who tried to do the same kind of thing in the daytime and had to do a walk of shame.
I actually felt bad for the guy because you had to watch him walk through that entire sit-in that was there.
And it was really – it really was shameful. - He showed his ass there.
I mean, like, that's the thing.
It's like, he did not handle it well, but yes, he had to walk away in, like, total shame, and he will never probably get elected to anything again.
And he knew that every step he took, it was happening.
So, um, but I, you know, I do want to give kudos, because at least here's a guy, and it was a great shot where he was trying to talk on a bullhorn, and then they projected their demands right above his head on the wall, because it was like, I think at that moment, you're like, okay, well, what do they want then?
And, you know, the only sticky point these mayors are going to have to deal with is the defunding of the police.
That phrase, and how the crowd is desperate to have these guys say, I will defund the police, when they're probably never going to say that, is going to be the big issue here.
But the other demands that they have, like getting the federal troops out of the streets, is certainly a no-brainer and easy for the mayor to be like, let's get them out of here.
And he was mortified at the fact that they were using tear gas, because it's not legal the way they're using it.
So let's have a conversation about that.
And I think you just nailed it dead to the wall.
Why are they so afraid to say defund the police?
Who are they afraid that they're going to upset?
White people.
Yes.
They're afraid they're going to, they're afraid that they are going to upset white people who are afraid of the people of color in their city.
Because let me tell you something, if you are a mayor of a metropolitan area, defunding the police is the most amazing thing that you could possibly do.
You get your budget back.
Think about how much money you suddenly get on your desk and you get to give to social workers.
You get to give to infrastructure.
Oh, we don't have to have, I don't know, John Q officer out there in a paramilitary unit with a tank and a rocket launcher.
Oh, we can open up a daycare center.
That's incredible.
They're afraid that white people who are afraid of people of color are going to get upset and not vote for them.
And that goes back to what's going on with these troops.
There's not really a threat.
Crime is down.
Crime is way down.
And these cities that Trump is sending these troops into, they do not have crises.
There's no damage.
There's no uprisings.
Chicago has a problem, but it's completely unrelated to the Black Lives Matter thing or any protest.
It is a problem that Chicago's had for a long time.
If you want to talk about that, we can talk about that.
But he is saying that all these cities are out of control because they are majority black cities.
That's the problem.
He is appealing to those same people that a mayor is saying defund the police would scare because they are white supremacists and paranoid.
Do you want my conspiracy theory for why Trump has a hard-on for Chicago?
I don't even think that I want it.
I think our audience wants it.
Okay, here you go.
Remember that show he did on TV?
What was it called again?
Oh, yeah.
The Princess.
So they found the guy, the first guy who won it, and he ended up being part of the Trump Tower they built there, right?
And it was a mix between luxury condos and retail.
So do you know what he did?
He pre-sold all the condos in that building.
And when he realized how hot it became, remember this is before he was an asshole and they realized who he really was, that getting a condo in Trump Tower was a hot thing to buy.
So what he realized was, he goes, you know what, I didn't sell these for enough.
He canceled all of those pre-bought, you know, he'd get in now and get a good deal and then resold them for a lot higher price.
So I'm convinced, and that caused an uproar, to say the least, in Chicago.
I'm convinced that this is sort of one of the reasons why he's got Chicago on his brain all the time.
If you think that Trump sending in federal troops to places like Portland and Chicago and Philadelphia and Oakland, and by the way, eventually L.A. will end up on that list and probably San Francisco, which, by the way, do you notice that a lot of these are cities that have a lot by the way, do you notice that a lot of these are cities that have a lot of people of color in them and maybe have Isn't it weird that the troops might come in and sweep things up?
And what's that thing where there are places where people of color can live but then they get pushed out for white people?
That's right, gentrification.
This is a giant corporate project.
And by the way, we talk about Trump doing things intuitively.
Do you think there aren't developers who are meeting right now to talk about how to make money off of this?
Oh my god!
They're working through the night figuring out what streets are best for them to take over in order to put in their businesses or their high-rises or their new luxury apartment buildings.
It's absolutely about crushing them.
And let's get really real for a minute.
Are you ready?
Are you ready for this talk?
already happened and there's, you know, even somebody in Trump's own family that's taken advantage of these things where they have a designated areas in that they get all sorts of government handouts to build these really luxury apartments.
It is disgusting. - And let's get really real for a minute.
Are you ready?
Are you ready for this talk?
'Cause this is like, let's get down to the brass tax.
So let's say we defund the police in those cities, right?
We take their money from them and we give it to the community.
I wonder who would have to foot the bill for private security for their gentrified areas and their businesses and their high-rise apartments.
That's right!
The same people would have to pay for their own security and it's almost like their security is subsidized by the federal government and localities.
Isn't that weird how that plays out that they make money on both sides of this thing?
I don't know, Nick.
It just blows my mind.
It just blows my mind.
Well, then how about throw on top of that, that when you look at the death rates of COVID and who is dying the most, you start to wonder, OK, they're already started this whole clearing out of the country kind of thing, because people of color are so more represented in the death tolls than white people are.
So, you know, and remember we talked about that and how it affects the economy where now you can sweep out some of the people that had, you know, those low-paying jobs.
We'll just, you know, plug the other people in who didn't have those in and they'll make it seem like they got raises or whatnot.
It's a perfect storm like you said earlier.
And by the way, I don't think anybody, and this is to get in their mindset, I brought up the fact that they're having meetings about this right now.
They absolutely are in like conference rooms I think you and I would be happy to live in.
They're not going in there and they're like, let's kill people.
You know what I mean?
They're like, how can we profit off of this?
And then all of a sudden somebody in the room is like, oh, have you looked at the eviction numbers lately?
Right?
Because the pandemic has ruined the economy and people can't go to work and people are being evicted, which by the way, why would the government not want to help people who are being evicted out of their homes?
Because if they're evicted and homeless, doesn't their chance of getting COVID go up?
That's right.
It does.
So all of a sudden it's like, well, Yeah, I think bad things might happen to those people if they're evicted and they end up homeless, but that's not our problem.
Right?
But all of a sudden, those buildings are open, that building's open over there.
They're looking for advantages, but they're not talking about people dying.
They're talking about, oh, this is a bad situation.
They use euphemistic language, right?
Oh, this is going to be open suddenly, 90% of the people here, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
They're looking for a financial advantage, which is why Donald Trump is President of the United States.
Nobody has taken advantage of this stuff more than Donald Trump, who in the 1970s, made his nut in New York City by taking advantage of a fiscal downturn and human misery.
And he looked around New York and he saw the properties he wanted.
And he's like, oh, when the economy is bad, I'm buying that.
That's who he is.
It is the vulture capitalist in this country that have taken advantage of people and have got us in the situation we're in.
Well, I think with that, we now need to turn it over and get some deep-seated insight into the legalese and the constitutional ramifications of what's happening in these cities.
So stay tuned.
We'll be right back with everybody, with you and me, Jared, and Professor Jason Needleman of Luverne University.
So stay tuned.
Hey everybody, welcome back, and I am pleased to have on the show Jason Needleman, who's a professor of poli-sci at the University of La Verne, and we are really happy to get some more insights and deeper knowledge into the political and also the legal ramifications of what's going on with troops going into cities.
So, Professor Needleman, thank you for joining us.
Thanks for having me.
Let's talk a little about that because how much do we weigh on the scale between the political side and the legal side?
What really are we supposed to be focused on when we're looking at, you know, this crazy stuff that's happening with federal troops marching across our country?
Well, I appreciate you guys talking about the political as well as the legal because I think that's where we want to go first.
The Trump administration has a way of diverting attention away from what the real issue is Which is the threat that this poses to basic principles of republicanism and democracy.
And I think it's better for them if we're debating the particularities of the Insurrection Act or whatever it is that they're going to use as their kind of thin reed to justify what they're doing.
But the bigger question, before we get into the legal question, the bigger question is just what this means for our democracy.
And it is a major threat to basic democratic principles.
I posted on Facebook yesterday a couple lines from the Declaration of Independence, which lists the grievances justifying the separation from Britain, the Declaration of Independence from Britain, and a couple of them literally reference the use of military troops to do ordinary policing in American cities, or the usurpation of civil laws for the purpose of advancing some
interest of the kings.
And that's exactly what's happening here.
It's very close to what's happening here.
And so there's a couple of things that we should think about in terms of the politics of it.
And that is, first, I would say, look at the activity that's being policed here.
The most essential kind of democratic activity, petitioning the government, freedom of speech, freedom of assembly.
And then secondly, look at who's doing it.
It's federal troops.
One of our foundational principles in our system of government is that that kind of police work is reserved to cities and states.
So to see federal troops doing that work is really a violation of one of the most basic So, we talk a lot on this podcast about how we've reached this point, historically, the things that have led us here, as opposed to, you know, just an aberration of a moment, right?
that politically this is super serious and we should all be really engaged and really concerned about what comes next.
So we talk a lot on this podcast about how we've reached this point historically, the things that have led us here, as opposed to, you know, just an aberration of a moment, right?
Like the moments where like presidents have overextended their power or Maybe they've tried to finagle the law a little bit or try to expand their scope of influence.
As someone who knows this stuff down pat, for you, what is it like watching this occur in real time?
To see a president who is not only trying to expand power, but to do it so blatantly and so illegally.
What's it like for you?
What's that experience?
Well, the first thing I'd say is that that's right.
I think what you guys are perceiving is correct.
This is something very different from what we've seen in the past.
And what you'll see is there'll be justifications from some of the people on the right picking out particular incidents that maybe bear some passing resemblance to some of the things that we're seeing now.
But this is qualitatively distinct.
What we're seeing now is an assault on basic Republican principles.
And the main lesson, I think, for us, for political scientists, is your institutions won't protect you.
And this is the kind of thing that we have traditionally observed in foreign countries where we've tracked democratic decline.
And I think maybe implicitly imagined that it wouldn't happen here for whatever reason.
There was plenty of evidence to suggest that we shouldn't be complacent in that way.
But for whatever reason, we thought we were exempt.
We had these theories of American exceptionalism.
We thought maybe our Constitution was special and would protect us in some way.
But really, and I'm sure you guys have talked about this a lot, really what we're learning is our system was much more dependent on what we call norms than we thought it was.
And when you have a president who's willing to just blow through all of those norms, who's really indifferent to how he's going to be perceived by historians, by journalists, by the kind of verdict of history, then yeah, there's not much that the institutions can do to protect you from that.
So, you know, talking about the norms, and I think everyone's wringing their hands because they feel like they'll never, ever come back once you violate them and destroy them.
But I'm curious, do you have a laundry list in your mind of things, perhaps even laws that would need to be enacted to restore some of the norms that we had?
Yeah, I mean, this gets at my research.
I do a lot of work on Jean-Jacques Rousseau and his political theory.
And his argument is really that The institutions won't save you.
So he's an 18th century philosopher.
There's a lot of hope in the Enlightenment about designing institutions based on reason and protection of basic liberties.
And, you know, in the U.S., the checks and balances.
And his argument is all that stuff's great.
You should do all of it.
But the only thing that is going to protect you from tyranny is educated, virtuous, vigilant citizenry.
I look at this and in some ways I see it as kind of validating that political theory, which is that you can get your institutions just right.
You're still going to need to have a citizenry that's vigilant in the defense of liberty.
But yeah, I mean, I like H.R.
1, you know, if you want to get specific.
I like H.R.
1, some of the ways that they're looking to protect access to democracy.
And we definitely are going to need to look at the Insurrection Act, especially this amendment that was passed, I think it was 2016, that's really broad, that basically says anytime the president feels as though there is a rebellion, he or she can use troops to put down the rebellion.
And you can see how someone who has no respect for norms could invoke that to justify just about anything.
And if you look at the president's rhetoric, he is characterizing these Largely peaceful protests as, you know, rebellion or insurrection and the way it's worded now.
Yeah, I suppose you could get that through, you know, a court.
And so that would be something very specific that we probably want to look to change.
I'm so glad you brought up Rousseau.
I wish we had a couple hours just to talk.
We should do like a couple hour show on Rousseau.
But I've been thinking a lot lately about Rousseau, the idea of the social contract, but also like John Locke's idea that a king who is not providing for his people is at war with his people, which is one of the founding principles of our independence.
And I keep thinking about how this country has, and particularly the Trump administration, has just Stopped providing and protecting for the people.
I mean, they can do nothing for the pandemic.
They can do nothing for the economic crisis.
And when you look at a failing state, like you said, around the world, you see that authoritarians have nothing left to give but violence to suppress insurrections or people who are upset with how the government works.
I guess my question is this.
Through this new lens, realizing that this sort of a thing can take place in America, Is it a moment of fear?
Is it a moment of rage?
Like, how do you feel looking at these systems crumbling underneath somebody who acts in bad faith?
On the first point, so Locke sets out these kind of minimal standards that any legitimate sovereign must meet in order to preserve legitimacy, and failure to do so justifies rebellion by the people.
And I would say our experience, and I wouldn't just limit this to Trump, I would limit this to all of his enablers, so the Republicans in Congress as well.
I would say we passed that point quite a long time ago, so much so that when we have new violations of that basic compact, that basic social contract, we almost don't attend to them the way that we should.
So I think this latest one is a very good example of that, where we really need to take seriously the deployment of federal troops to perform An ordinary law enforcement function.
But in some ways we can't because there have been so many of these kinds of things preceding this that we just, I don't know, it's kind of, we already assume that Trump has violated the social compact so we don't muster enough of a response when he does it yet again.
To answer the rest of your question, the second part of your question, I think everyone is kind of stuck in a holding pattern where they're waiting for the election.
We've tried just about everything.
We've done mass protests.
We tried impeachment.
Now we've got the election.
If the election goes for the Republicans and if Trump is reelected, I don't know, yeah, then you start to see mass mobilization even beyond what we saw in 2016.
We're getting, I think, a good sense of what it could be with some of these Portland protests where they've now reached the point, I don't know if you guys have seen some of this footage, but they've now reached the point where they'll They'll tolerate the tear gas.
They'll tolerate the rubber bullets or whatever those things are that they're firing.
They just won't move.
And so that is then going to escalate the confrontation because what comes then?
So then what you see is those police or whatever we're calling them, federal police, they come with the batons and they just start beating people because the tear gas isn't working anymore.
So yeah, I mean, to me, that's probably where it goes.
The crowds will not disperse as easily.
There will be a kind of escalation.
Well, now, not to be lost on that is that the tear gas use is supposedly illegal as well at this point.
They're not supposed to do it unless it's a last resort of they feeling so threatened.
And they're just lobbing it out of the federal building.
I'm kind of curious, based on the answers you gave just now, does it feel like the founding fathers and the framers of the Constitution, were they simply not smart enough?
I mean, here's what they built in.
What?
Elections and impeachment.
I mean, I think part of what you have to ask is, are we smart enough?
You know, are we smart enough?
Aside from that, yes, like like were they not smart enough to handle this kind of thing?
Or is it is it kind of going along the way they figured it might go?
Knowing that, I guess, this next election is supposed to be the thing that will.
Yeah, I mean, I think part of what you have to ask is, are we smart enough?
You know, are we smart enough?
I mean, we're looking to a group of white 18th century male slaveholding guys for guidance as to what we should do now.
So part of that is just endemic in our constitutional system.
It might not be the best idea to ask ourselves what the framers would do.
But to answer your question in a more straightforward way, it's clear from The debates, the Constitutional Convention, that they imagined, they didn't foresee the kind of polarization and partisanship that we have now.
So they thought, kind of following on John Locke, that if there was a law that was needful for the public benefit, as they might put it, that the legislature would then pass that law in the common interest.
Now, because of all kinds of things that we could go through that would take forever, we've reached a point where Our legislature can't really legislate.
It's a little bit strange to call it a legislature when all it really does at this point is confirm judges, at least the Senate.
But yeah, the short answer is they thought, I think, that we'd be able to pass legislation as needed.
Yeah, and there was like a weird agreement between them that rich white men would just figure out the way to do it, which is a very weird thing.
Yeah, if you read the Federalist Papers, that's that's the tone of it, that, you know, we'll have these enlightened men because, again, that's very influenced by the Enlightenment, that if we can, you know, banish superstition and if we can elevate reason, you know, the principles of politics are True by nature, you know, they invoke natural law.
And if you have people who understand these laws of nature, they will be able to legislate in the public interest.
Yeah, I agree with that, Jared, that there's this, as you read it, it's this kind of, I don't want to call it quaint, but it's this elitist presumption that reason will prevail.
Well, I had never read it until I wrote my most recent book, and I was pretty amazed by the conversations, which was, oh, we don't have to worry about factionalism because we're all on the same page.
And, you know, we'll just be, and that immediately went out by what?
The third election.
And I find that really amazing is that, you know, people keep saying, oh, the founding fathers would roll in their graves if they knew about Donald Trump.
And it's like, well, he is a white, wealthy man.
That is exactly who they expected to be president.
And I feel like, like you said, by looking at the past of what they have done and looking at this situation, I think they always assumed that men of good faith would rule the government and we would just end up where we needed to be based on reason and all this.
But we're in a moment of bad faith.
And when you're in a moment of bad faith, the government and laws don't matter particularly.
Right.
And if you read the debates around the impeachment power, that's precisely what they're addressing.
There's this general assumption that you will have these so-called men of good faith and If there ever was a circumstance where we didn't have one, well, we have this power of impeachment.
And also keep in mind that there were all kinds of other filters on the ability of a demagogue to rise to power.
And so they thought that those would all be in place to prevent somebody like a Donald Trump, kind of a populist like that, would be insulated, would be kept from power in various other ways as well.
But if for whatever reason, all of those failed, you then would have the power of impeachment.
But of course, in the debates around the power of impeachment, They presuppose these same reasonable, wise, reflecting men who will make the judicious decision about the individual.
And we don't have that either.
And that's why whenever I talk about Trump, I always say, we have to always also talk about the Republicans who enable him.
They're as important.
When I think about how this era will be written about in, say, 50 years, I really think it'll be not just about Donald Trump, but about Trumpism and the movement he inspired.
And the kind of loyalty he demanded out of people and the kind of willingness of the Republican Party to be subservient to him.
I think that'll be as important as Trump himself.
Yeah, you know, it's a powerful, you know, this notion of don't be a sheep, you know, and that's what the Republicans will accuse the Democrats of being, when in reality, it really is the other way around, and you have to be so subservient to him to function at all, and it must reach down to the core of who we are as Americans, depending on, I guess, how you were raised, which way you want to go.
My one question, though, I think I want to ask is that, Let's just say they're going to fight this in the courts.
It sounds like the local governments are going to fight this and not let them do this.
Have you thought about that and what that might look like?
How are they going to approach this and what they might invoke to try and win a case?
Yeah, so I think it'll come down to, unfortunately, what it always does, which is just like, what judge does this get in front of?
Because if you've got a kind of conservative leaning judge, then they'll go for that kind of very narrow interpretation of the Insurrection Act.
You know, there's also the, whatever the law was called that established DHS, Department of Homeland Security, they created this, I think it's FPS to protect the federal buildings.
So they'll cite those kind of narrower statutes.
And if it's a conservative judge, I think the conservative judge will probably be amenable to that.
And then the mayors will appeal to these broader constitutional principles about law and order being the purview of local government.
It's ironic because that's the kind of argument that Republicans would have made throughout most of our history.
You know, the right of state and local leaders to police state and local affairs.
Um, so I think if it gets in front of a judge that is part of, you know, the kind of Trump agenda, one of these judges that have been appointed over the last few years, they'll probably take that narrow interpretation of the Insurrection Act.
And I would guess maybe limit some of it, but basically validate that kind of activity.
If it gets in front of a more kind of liberal leaning judge, my guess is there'd be this more invocation of basic constitutional principles.
First Amendment.
10th Amendment, the right to protest, the right to petition the government, the right to demonstrate, the right of assembly, and then the federalism argument, the right of states and local governments to police state and local affairs.
That's how I would guess it would go.
Well, we're going to let you get out of here.
And unfortunately, I could sit here and listen to this piano music all day.
I'll just say that.
So this is going to be unfortunate saying goodbye.
So somebody who has Studied the precedent of this thing, and like you said, looked at it in other countries where people have behaved like this.
What does it mean to establish a precedent like this?
Like you said, if it ends up with the wrong judge, if it ends up in the Supreme Court, and we get a 5-4 in the wrong direction, what sort of a precedent does this set, and what can you see this turning into if you extrapolate it forward?
Yeah, I mean, I think it depends on how Congress responds, right?
So, like, I think a good example is if you look at the Supreme Court decision in 1990, Oregon v. Smith, which was the one that denied Native Americans the liberty to use peyote for ritualistic purposes.
It was kind of immediately everyone decided that was wrongly decided.
It was drug war era, and it was a violation of basic religious principles.
So a couple years later, Congress comes and passes the Religious Freedom and Restoration Act.
Now, that's much later been used to defend kind of refusing to sell pastries to homosexuals.
But at the time, that was used to protect, say, the rights of indigenous people to practice their religion.
If the next administration comes in and immediately passes legislation to clarify that this kind of use of federal troops in policing local affairs is clearly unconstitutional, illegal, then we're probably fine.
If the next administration, on the other hand, comes in and starts to use federal troops in the same way they were used these last couple of weeks, that's where I think we really are going to have to worry.
Now, let me ask you this before we go.
I mean, we all have that.
There must be a concern over the fact that these troops may or may not be trained properly, A, in crowd control, and then B, it sounds like they're not law enforcement trained in the in the sense that they don't know about reading Miranda rights and they don't understand the process, the process that needs to go ahead.
They're stooges, is what you're saying.
Yeah, I guess.
I mean, we don't know who these people are, right?
They're DHS workers or Border Patrol.
It's unclear to me.
So that has to be the biggest concern now as far as what we're going to end up seeing eventually, I would imagine, would be a Kent State situation or something.
Sure.
I think we know that they're primarily Border Patrol, don't we?
Most of the individuals I think are redeployed from the border.
Which has been a kind of a center of right-wing activity as far as the broad spectrum of DHS goes.
So it's not surprising that you'd see similar tactics applied in Portland.
So what I would say to all of your listeners is, you know, when you see that kind of force being deployed at the border, you want to think of it as a kind of dress rehearsal for what might be applied And that's exactly what we're seeing now, is the same tactics that were kind of honed there are now being deployed on city streets.
And so, yeah, I guess that's the lesson I'd want to leave you guys with, all of us with, because that's what hit home for me when I saw that.
I thought, you know what?
I knew what was happening at the border was wrong, but I didn't fully take the measure of what that could mean in the rest of the country, and we really need to.
Well, Dr. Needleman, I can't thank you enough for giving us incredible insights and a great conversation.
We'll get you back on to do Rousseau at some point, because Jared is geeking out on that one, too.
No, I want to do, like, a three- or four-hour podcast that, like, five people will listen to.
That's what my parents joke about my research.
Yeah, it's great, but only five people can understand it.
Yeah, so we'll do that.
We'll definitely do that.
So thank you so much, and we can't appreciate it enough.
Thanks.
Thank you, guys.
Thanks very much.
So that was Dr. Jason Needleman of the University of Luverne.
Just a fantastic conversation and a guy who really just really you could tell thinks very deeply about these things and I can imagine making this class would be really interesting as well.
So again it's just I really wish we could have a clear sense of like what needs to be done to get back to you know where we were before or to get back on the track of progressing to become a better country year over year.
You know what I mean?
Yeah, I'll just say, I think we have the best guest.
I just do.
I think we have the best guest.
I'm just gonna, I know that's controversial, but I think we have the best guest, Nick.
And Dr. Needleman and all of our guests are fantastic.
And you are fantastic for hanging out with us for another episode of the Muckrake Podcast.
Again, we're going to be opening up our Patreon at the beginning of August.
Go ahead and send us a message over at muckrakepodcast at gmail.com in order to get into Our mailing list will keep you up to date on all that.
In the meantime, we still need you to like, subscribe, rate, comment, all that good stuff.
It helps us.
It's already built up a hell of an audience and a hell of a thing here, and we're so appreciative.
In the meantime, if you need to find Nick, you can find him at CanYouHearMeSMH.
You can find me at J.Y.
Sexton.
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