Unlike Nixon, Trump has tried unconstitutional actions ‘in the wide open’: Fmr. Trump DHS official

[0:00] joining me now our friend miles taylor former department of homeland security chief of staff [0:04] now founder of defiance.org and another friend hugo lowell wired magazine senior politics [0:10] correspondent welcome to both of you miles would watergate seriously be just a 12-hour story in the [0:16] news if it happened today well no and yes this is the part where i might agree with jd vance in [0:24] comparison to all of the things that donald trump is doing it might only get a multi-day [0:31] news story and that's because donald trump as president i say this with a straight face [0:35] has done things substantially more unconstitutional than even watergate and jd vance's comment is a [0:44] tacit admission of that here's the difference though alex is richard nixon tried to cover it up [0:51] donald trump and team on many of these actions that have been ruled by federal judges to be [0:56] facially unconstitutional have not tried to cover it up they've done it in the wide open [1:02] and that is brazen it's scary for people who worry about the rule of law but here's the thing [1:07] a lot of prosecutors who've worked in doj say that's going to make it easier for a democratic congress [1:14] and a future administration to hold them accountable as they've worn the lawlessness [1:19] on their sleeves so there's a double-edged sword to comments like that alex what's your reaction to all [1:24] this hugo i think uh if if watergate was happening now trump would be in a kind of a dangerous position [1:33] because of the feud that trump has had in senate republicans in in recent weeks i mean we saw him [1:39] blow up the signing ceremony of the bipartisan uh housing bill and that is the latest in a string of [1:46] uh fights that he has had with senate republicans and clearly there is a very public fraying tension [1:51] between the president and republicans in congress and you know i think as we get closer to the midterms [1:57] and uh kind of republicans see the writing on the wall that you know trump's polling is is in the tank [2:04] and that polling is also going down that there will be a divergence between republicans uh congressional [2:10] republicans and the president so i want to stay with this because vance compared nixon's fall to trump's [2:17] indictments and impeachments blaming so-called deep state actors and i want to play some of what ty [2:23] cobb former trump white house counsel and now vociferous trump critics said here's that comparing [2:30] nixon to trump in terms of what they could be impeached for is like comparing a jaywalker uh with a [2:37] serial killer i mean trump's corruption you know let's just start let's say any with the 1.8 billion [2:44] that he and blanche wanted to take from the american taxpayers to create the slush fund you know the 400 [2:49] million dollar qatari plane the 500 million dollars from the uae in exchange for our most sensitive [2:55] trips they invest in in uh in a trump-run company um you've got the crypto issues the coins from the [3:02] white house the watches uh 750 million dollars in recently reported stock trades hey miles by the way [3:11] we abbreviated ty's list of things that could potentially be investigated there but didn't republicans [3:16] in congress play the biggest role in checking nixon's illegal actions as president and could [3:22] the difference between nixon and trump be that today's republicans seem unconcerned by trump's [3:28] business activities yeah and unlike nixon alex donald trump has had years to essentially purge disloyal [3:37] party members who are willing to put the rule of law ahead of the ruler himself those people have largely been [3:45] pushed out of the republican party and now donald trump very much feels alex like he has no [3:51] constraints remember that interview he did in january with the new york times where he said [3:56] that the only check on his power these are his words not mine was his own conscience that was the [4:03] only limitation he felt like he has and as a result we have seen arguably the biggest sustained assault [4:11] on the first amendment in american history we've seen the president go after senators who've spoken [4:16] out against him congressmen states universities law firms governors former officials foreign governments [4:24] the revenge targets have been enormous and you know more than anything alex one of the data points [4:30] that sticks out to me is government workers when trump came into office according to the partnership for [4:34] public service 75 of government workers said they felt comfortable sounding the alarm about illegal [4:41] activity one year later only 25 percent of government workers feel comfortable doing that [4:48] that shows you how much his revenge campaign has had an impact stunning stat there uh i want to stay [4:55] with you miles with this first question about the new headlines and it's about maggie haberman and [4:59] jonathan swan's book regime change and it highlights trump's plans for retribution his fixation on [5:05] ordering trees maple trees i think it was at the start of the iran war situation room meetings to [5:11] discuss epstein files and then you tweeted that when you worked in the first trump white house [5:16] there was a rule that if a memo had a staple in it it was too long for trump to read adding quote [5:23] life or death decisions were cut to one page how distracted is he in this second term and given that [5:31] why might people in his orbit be willing to facilitate his life and death decisions well alex [5:38] it kind of goes back to your previous question because in the first term the danger was a distracted [5:45] donald trump to the point that we could not go into the oval office on life or death issues without [5:51] doing exactly as i said in that tweet giving him pictures to tell the story a couple of sentences he [5:57] couldn't digest a long document which means he couldn't process the complexities of some of the [6:02] challenges a president faces again that was a donald trump problem in the first term now in the second [6:08] term this is a systemic whole of government problem because he has called the republican party to the place [6:15] where many of them are very complicit in these distractions they take on issues like the reflecting pool [6:22] and the slush fund as if they are their own issues so they are chasing donald trump's distractions [6:28] around washington the challenge is orders of magnitude more serious than it was when i was in [6:34] the first trump administration for that reason and it's one of the reasons alex that we're trying to [6:39] we're going to produce a documentary about it this fall at defiance.org called unfit to the hijacking of [6:46] america for power and profit this will be the sequel to the 2020 documentary unfit which millions [6:52] of people watched but again there's a lot more that has happened in the first year of this [6:57] administration than the entire first term of trump and it's important for voters to remember that [7:02] before the midterms wow that should be mandatory viewing that documentary forthcoming um i want to [7:08] play some of what author maggie haberman said this week on the moment with katie tur let's watch [7:14] he says this is from from a historian whose thesis is that donald trump is the most powerful [7:20] person to ever walk the face of the earth not president person uh more than and then it goes [7:25] down this list genghis khan um napoleon uh the caesars tamerlane hitler mao stalin and he's reading this [7:36] and he's clearly there's no moral component to it he's not talking about who they were what they did just [7:41] that they were powerful and remembered the coda to this is that the historian was not a historian [7:47] it was gary players former caddy and business associate you go how do you interpret this yeah [7:55] i just want to come back to one thing that um miles was saying i think you know a lot of it is the [7:59] distraction but a lot of this is also the fact that trump has a very short attention span in his [8:05] second term and that is informed by what maggie is saying which is uh how he has such confidence in [8:11] his abilities and this idea that he basically has limitless power so he should be able to affect [8:17] change in the way that he wants at the at the flick of a switch and what we have seen with iran [8:23] most notably is that that is just not the case and i think there were certainly distractions when he's in [8:30] you know in the situation room talking about the epstein crisis on the eve of the iran war and yet at [8:35] the same time it's also the case that he is now focusing on beautification and and trying to clear [8:41] the algae out of the reflecting pool and doing renovations around dc while the iran war is still [8:45] happening and that is because he has lost interest and he has kind of lost patience with how long iran [8:51] is is taking you also saw it in other conflicts as well right you see it with the the russia ukraine [8:56] conflict you see it with a whole host of stuff you see even on the hill with republicans republicans won't [9:01] cut the filibuster uh so he he gets frustrated with that and is now pushing the save america act and [9:07] saying you know i'm gonna hold my entire domestic agenda hostage until republicans do this one thing [9:12] for me and when he cannot get done what he thinks he should be able to get down because he has this [9:17] idea of limitless power that is what frustrates him and he feels he feels the need to lash out and to [9:23] attack to a different topic hey hugo quickly i'm sure you've seen and read uh regime change is there [9:29] something in that book that really sticks out to you yeah i mean we we also at wired reported on um [9:37] his uh his interactions with big tech titans and so i will i will just talk about that aspect of it [9:43] um it is fascinating to me the degree to which uh people like uh jeff bezos uh the the founder of [9:49] amazon um people like zuckerberg at meta would suck up to trump would continue to suck up to trump and [9:56] with text and platitudes and selfies um and in the case of zuckerberg had his grade school uh aged child [10:05] write a letter to trump fawning uh how they look forward to the golden age of america which was a [10:11] line that trump was repeating at campaign rallies and what did trump do to repay that that platitude [10:17] and that you know loyalty that he he professes to love so much well you know he was mocking them uh in [10:23] his conversations with other people at mar-a-lago and when jeff bezos tried to get that favor uh [10:29] returned when he was trying to get space spacex to share some of the government contracts with blue [10:35] origin the um his his space company trump turned around and just gave more access to elon musk so [10:40] it's uh it's a one-way street sometimes with the president 100 loyalty and and now apparently [10:45] flattery as well all right thank you good to see you both miles and hugo appreciate you