Trump and Barr Are Out of Control

The prosecutor who quit over the Roger Stone sentencing is sending a powerful message about political weaponization.

The resignation of a Justice Department prosecutor over the sentencing of Roger Stone is a major event. The prosecutor, Jonathan Kravis, apparently concluded that he could not, in good conscience, remain in his post if the department leadership appeared to buckle under White House pressure to abandon a sentencing recommendation in the case of Mr. Stone, the associate of President Trump who was convicted of obstructing a congressional inquiry into Russian meddling in the 2016 election.

Three of his colleagues quit the Stone case but remain with the department: Mr. Kravis left altogether. Even though the president for years has derided federal law enforcement officials, accusing them variously of conflicts of interest and criminality and weakness in not pursuing prosecution of his political opposition, Mr. Kravis’s is the first resignation in the face of these assaults.

Dramatically forceful responses to Mr. Trump’s assaults on rule-of-law norms have been all too rare. A resignation can set off an alarm bell for an institution whose failings an official might be unable to bring to light in no other way, or as effectively. It upholds rule of law norms in the very act of signaling that they are failing. It makes its point with power and transparency, and stands a chance of rallying support from those who remain in place and compelling other institutions like the press and Congress to take close notice.

The government official who resigns for these reasons is, paradoxically, doing his or her job by leaving it.

Why did the Stone matter so clearly warrant resignation? The president has used Twitter to denounce and pressure department officials, senior administration lawyers and the Mueller team. When he did that to Attorney General Jeff Sessions, his deputy attorney general, Rod Rosenstein, and the special counsel Robert Mueller, they stuck it out. They must have thought that the best way to serve the rule of law was to hold off or humor the president, maintaining regular order as much as possible even as Mr. Trump raged that he could not fully control his department.

And there is a case to make for their choice. Mr. Sessions stood up to the president and adhered to his decision to recuse himself from the Russia investigation. Mr. Mueller was not fired and completed his investigation in the Russia matter.

But this time, the president got what he wanted. Mr. Trump attacked the department sentencing recommendation as an unacceptable “miscarriage of justice” that was “horrible and unfair.” And then the department did switch positions on the sentencing, criticizing its own prosecutors for failing to be “reasonable” in their recommendation to the court.

This, then, could be seen as the extreme case, whereas normally a lawyer might decide that “working from the inside” is the best, most responsible answer to the president’s behavior.

Still, if resignation had been seen earlier as viable, even necessary option, it’s possible that we would not have arrived at this point. Mr. Sessions could have resigned over the president’s public calls for him to ignore his recusal requirements or prosecute Hillary Clinton. If Mr. Mueller had resigned over the president’s attacks on him and refusal to sit for an interview, he might not have completed his report but he would have rendered a devastating and unequivocal judgment. And, without a report he felt compelled to rely on, Mr. Mueller might have felt himself more at liberty to testify in detail to Congress.

Resignation, while an act of professional conscience, can be effective in pushing back against violations of norms of impartial, professional law enforcement insulated from political pressure. According to the Mueller report, having been finally pushed too far, the White House counsel Don McGahn threatened to resign in June 2017 over Mr. Trump’s directive to fire Mr. Mueller. What did the president do? He backed down.

That was then. Mr. Trump has established a new normal at the senior legal leadership of his administration. The rhetoric of Mr. Sessions’s successor, William Barr, suggests that he accepts, to a disturbing degree, the president’s desire for a politically responsive Justice Department. Mr. McGahn’s successor, Pat Cipollone, defended the president in the impeachment proceeding with arguments of the kind, in tone and variance from the factual record, you would expect to hear from Trump surrogates on Fox News.

We can’t know if a wave of resignations early in this administration would have made a difference in preventing or tempering the unfortunate appearance, and perhaps increasing reality, that the administration of justice is being politicized. During the Watergate scandal, the Saturday Night Massacre resignations by Justice Department leaders certainly made an impression on President Richard Nixon, who then appointed an effective independent prosecutor, Leon Jaworski.

Resignations can be a shock to the system, just what is needed to clarify the issues, force Congress to pay attention and alter a president’s behavior.

What government lawyers are prepared to accept, the conditions under which they are willing to work, still matters. Institutions can be severely damaged in one huge blow or whittled away.

Of course, resignation as an act of protest is not a choice to be lightly made by those who join an administration and find themselves in disagreement with the president. It is not justified by policy decisions that a subordinate official would have made differently.

But the president should not be able to command this loyalty when the conflict concerns something as fundamental as the professionalism and independence of the Justice Department — and involves a case in which the president has a direct personal interest and the defendant is a political associate.

For senior administration lawyers to just manage these kinds of conflict — ignoring Mr. Trump’s tweets and disregarding his inappropriate if not unlawful presidential orders — allows the abnormal to become normal and professional standards to crumble.

The prosecutor who resigns rather than remain in a decaying institution is upholding crucial norms. To his credit, at least one lawyer has chosen to do this, even if it is the rare case and it may have come too late to protect the Department of Justice from Mr. Trump’s demands and Attorney General Barr’s apparent willingness to accommodate them.

“How Do Democracies Fall Apart (And Could it Happen Here)?” Session 3

106:04
ultimate question and one of the maybe
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before answering and I’ll be brief I
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invite people and this is may be
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responsible y’all should just say to ask
yourself what are you trying to
accomplish here if what you’re trying to
accomplish is how do we strengthen the
left that’s one answer and you’re saying
how do we try to strengthen democratic
norms that’s quite a different answer

and there’s been a tendency to blur them
the way I’m not on the person with the
left at all so I’ll just give you four
Myositis me you wanna strengthen life
the way you do it is by ramping up is by
building a coalition of minorities
that’s that’s the best democratic
mobilization build-up racial antagonism
black lives matter those because of the
the big the reason that Hillary which
the reason the 2016 election was
abnormal was by the normal political
science indicators Hillary Clinton
should have won fifty three percent of
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the vote the fact that she got forty
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eight is abnormal she lost five points
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in a very common friendly
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environment why failure de mobilized
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black voters partly because of voter
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suppression partly because she wasn’t
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offering them much of anything Medicare
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for all that that’s how you build the
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left but what you will discover when you
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do that is the candidates who leave that
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will be Trump’s of the left not as gross
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for example like Bernie Sanders who was
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good at his job
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yeah they won’t they they will be norm
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travelers they will do things like
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Obama’s executive actions to in his
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second term that’s what you’ll get that
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is a way to a more social democratic
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United States it’ll be an ethnically
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driven way if what you want to do if
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it’s it but if your question is how do
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we build democratic norms that’s a
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different question and then and and then
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you have to say this is not about party
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advantage and that means that some of
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the people you have to address the
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things that are driving the corrosion of
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democratic norms what do you think was
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you would you be a butter he said why
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did you why did you vote for trouble and
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by the voter said well you know I’m just
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really disappointed and what is happened
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to my personal living standard I’ve been
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at a way wage increase in twenty years
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saying you are so greedy and
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materialistic don’t you understand that
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money is the root of all evil hi Colin I
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caught you like order you delay aside
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these crass okay but that is the sermon
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that they get if they say I’m happy that
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my sis my neighborhood which used to be
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a hundred sailors percent
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english-speaking now has 30 percent
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English second language learners in my
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children’s school and that will happen I
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went to a school in North Carolina what
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does research in Oakland 20 in 2007
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where family reported the change from no
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foreign language speakers to 30 percent
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over the course of their through
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children’s time in that one school
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district if what finally what is
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bothering and do something about and
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take them and take the grievances
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seriously I’m the trumpeter Jose
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trumpeter is deeply at a stop but I had
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a big impact on me the job that seems to
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me that Democratic systems get into
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trouble in two ways
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one is when you put populist muses the
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people identify the problems and the
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people offer the solutions
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bad lead ISM is the the people identify
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problems the elites tell them they’re
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wrong about them and offer other
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problems and other stages also bad
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listen to the problems then then use
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partisan competition to compete to offer
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responsible solutions but do not read
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the problems on court any anyone else
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want to pick up any of that well there’s
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several questions that are basically
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about the connections between populism
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and presidential ism to what extent are
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they some kind of you know symbiotic to
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mutually encouraging or one one
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producing the other or yeah I’m going to
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be very brief this time but I’m gonna
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make myself even more unpopular um if
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there’s one thing but all of political
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scientists seem to agree on over the
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last thirty years so that it’s all about
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institutions right and and it’s not
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clear to me in the case of populism but
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it is now obviously the particular way
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in which populism plays out in different
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countries is shaped by institutions but
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when you look around these different
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contexts what is striking is that
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populism has found a way of expressing
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itself here for a presidential election
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there threw a party was very strong in
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Parliament there through you know a
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popular referendum across all it is very
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very different institutional context so
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while I think was obviously things to be
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said about hyper partisanship about
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anger about the fact that the political
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system is blocked because of all the
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veto powers and all of those things the
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United States what’s striking to me when
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you look at international perspective is
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how little of the experience and the
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variation of populism can be explained
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by institutions
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just add you know Viktor Orban era Diwan
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came to power as Prime Minister you know
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you go down the list and so to me what
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this suggests is that old debate juan
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linz his question actually in some ways
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it was answered I think by Adams
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students a chaemoo I don’t know if you
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stood but he answered it about a decade
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ago you know that it’s not presidential
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ism or parliamentarism per se there’s
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selection issues which create the
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outcomes we see and to me that suggests
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a much more micro focus in terms of our
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research agenda can I pop in I wrote a
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book about mandates and presidential
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mandate claiming and my argument in the
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u.s. context is that populism is a
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rhetorical strategy for presidents to
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deal with the legitimacy challenges to
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an incredibly powerful and problematic
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institution and the conditions of
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partisanship so I think this there’s
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something separate there about populism
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as as a rhetorical strategy
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well so here’s one that this says it has
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david firm’s name at the top but that
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may be a rhetorical sleight making
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America great again would require
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strengthening the welfare state which
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many voters interpret us giving handouts
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to blacks and Latinos these voters are
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also the most vulnerable to
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anti-immigrant and xenophobic appeals
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would your concessions work question
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mark did at one point endorse the
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lowering of the age would qualification
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for Medicare I think to 55 I forget that
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was one of her 972 policy proposals and
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one of the things I has always been a
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theory of mind about campaigns as if you
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have 1972 policy proposals you don’t
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have any if you have four you don’t have
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any if you have two you’re testing
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people’s memory so if you yeah I think I
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think generally I think you see
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throughout the that the United States
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needs a thicker Social Insurance network
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Europe needs a thinner one we need ways
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of financing it that are not too
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provocative and you need you need an
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offer but the offer the offer works
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because it’s an offer to the politic if
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if the offer is to the planet then the
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offer is going to break down to the tone
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of its own way so I think actually the
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two thing when you talk about it is not
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that this there in this it is not a
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contradiction that you have a policy of
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thicker social insurance and higher
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borders those two go hand-in-hand and
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that’s one of things by the way that
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people want to break the welfare state
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they understand that very well that’s
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that’s why you find libertarians are
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very committed to open borders because
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they know with
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orders your welfare system your social
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service system cannot work and that’s
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why they’re favored so a question for
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for Emily and perhaps also Yasha there’s
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a deals party with social media
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how can journalists deal with the
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particular challenges of covering the
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Trump presidency a that so much is
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happening such that many important
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stories get neglected and be that Trump
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manages so often to dominate the news
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cycle with tweets that derail attention
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from substantive and timely issues
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sometimes this seems to me like Trump’s
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main talent is that he has taken his
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reality television show and turned it
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into the news that we consume all the
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time that is an inescapable and there’s
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a kind of fire hose and in fact there
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are all kinds of teasers you know you’ll
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we’ll see soon he’s sort of using all
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those strategies that served him in this
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different role to great effect and it is
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a huge challenge for the media you know
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we cover everything it’s just that
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people can’t really keep up and it
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becomes harder and harder to know what’s
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important the 972 points
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kind of hold in that era as well you
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know one part of the media that I
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probably should have mentioned and
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didn’t it’s obvious is that um you know
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the right-wing media has become has
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taken on such a role in fueling social
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media in covering the president in a
116:00
different way and I think that again
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that puts pressure on the mainstream
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media to become kind of a different
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animal and responds in a way that were
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not particularly well suited for um I do
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think one thing the mainstream media has
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doing been doing better at is covering
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fake news as fake news as opposed to
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ignoring it even last year you see a
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fake news story you just sort of like
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act as if that’s you’re not gonna touch
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that as opposed to trying is realizing
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that it’s out there being consumed and
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needs to be debunked and it’s always
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tricky debunking also you know spreads
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misinformation too but I think we’re at
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the point
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given how people are consuming news how
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difficult it is to tell on Facebook
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whether the source you’re looking at is
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credible or not that the mainstream
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media has a responsibility to be
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engaging in these stories that we used
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to see as beneath us yeah so I mean
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i-i’ve been thinking through sort of the
117:02
different notions of truth and lies we
117:04
have right so those this pair of
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concepts that were very popular a few
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years ago so Stephen Colbert’s
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truthiness and when Harry Frankfurt on
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which is basically saying the
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problem isn’t isn’t any more of a sort
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of straightforward lies for problem now
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that people are sort of indifferent to
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the truth and we don’t quite know how to
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deal with that and that’s different from
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the straightforward lie because at least
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there’s a how Frankfurt ones at least
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Valaya pays it kind of tribute to the
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truth right I actually think that that
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in retrospect is really naive that
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compared to what we have now
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that sort of child’s play but what you
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see and I think the first place where I
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observed it actually was Italy and a
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silhou Bella’s kony but I think Donald
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Trump is completely following that part
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of Paris Coney’s example it’s it’s it’s
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over frating the public of so many false
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claims and with just so much spectacle
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and with so many things going on that it
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becomes impossible for people to
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ascertain what’s true or not because if
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you have a normal sort of attention span
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to politics which is to say a fraction
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of that of what most people in this room
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whose life it is to study politics half
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you just cannot no longer it’s the
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opposite of what David was saying what a
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policy promise it’s not one lie that is
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defining of your presidency you do 10
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lies a day and so nobody in the you know
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in 98 percent of population don’t have a
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patience to try and figure out with
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details on each of those claims and so
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all you can do is to trust the people
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whom you trust and if you’re on the
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right that’ll mean you know Fox News or
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to the right lad and if it’s on the left
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it means you know the kinds of things we
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must be probably consumed right and I
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think there’s a difference between those
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two I’m not saying but we’re the same
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but but but I at this point don’t have
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the time and the patience to go through
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every claim and
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make my own assessment as to whether
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Donald Trump is actually true in bout
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racist things he claims a happening I
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simply assume that they’re false because
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he has managed to over freight the
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system so much but there’s no other way
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of dealing with that I’m a diving is a
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fundamental attack on the very
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possibility of having a truth based
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discourse or a political discourse in
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which truth sort of negotiates how we
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should act though we haven’t quite faced
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up to conceptually much less in terms of
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our response to it can I say something
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very brief about this very brief yeah
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it’s a question actually you know Trump
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has a big Twitter following but you know
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when you tweet something it might get
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retweeted I don’t know ten twenty thirty
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thousand times it’s nothing like Kim
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Kardashian right so my question is why
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is it that every tweet is news why is
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the mega the megaphone is actually the
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New York Times printing you know
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treating his tweet as news and I wonder
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how you guys think about that so it does
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seem that the subject no I’m sorry
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oh you want an answer to that well
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you’re gonna get the penultimate worries
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well and also this is just like
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everything turns into my trying to
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answer for the New York Times right I
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don’t even work on the news desk but
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look the president is making statements
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right I mean I don’t know if you all
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notice the Twitter account that turns
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every tweet into an official statement
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but ridiculous as it is that is what
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they are and so then you have to make
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judgments as the news desk every day
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that covers the president well which of
120:23
these really matter and that is hard to
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do there is no question that there’s all
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kinds of chaff with the weed but that is
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a tough decision for a journalist to
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make something the president says
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something provocative isn’t newsworthy
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the problem with the refusal to stay
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away is we have things like you know the
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four days during Puerto Rico where
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Puerto Rico is a nun television because
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there’s no electricity there and it’s
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very hard to get images and instead
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we’re having some made-up fight about
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you know Colin Kaepernick and Steph
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Curry and the and black athletes which
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is simply divisive it’s that is tough
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for journalists to push back on
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and one sentence I know this is will be
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to your question the fact that the
121:07
statements don’t matter is why they
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matter so when the President of the
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United States the commander-in-chief of
121:12
the Armed Forces says with an eight and
121:14
a half minute gap in between to give the
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Russians lots of time to get off a
121:16
nuclear missile response I am about to
121:19
announce a total and complete ban on dot
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transgender soldiers in the military and
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then the military says thank you for
121:26
your helpful comment we certainly will
121:31
take it into consideration
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and give it to and the military’s
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actually no we thought it over we’re
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sticking to our original policy because
121:39
it’s tweetIn that’s astonishing that’s
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an amazing thing and the fact we have
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this decision of government where the
121:46
president proposes ideas from time to
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time and the Secretary of Defense
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determines whether they’ll become
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government policy we we are out of time
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I would just say that I think it’s
121:58
fitting since we are a university that
122:01
the subject of truth is where we’ve
122:04
we’ve ended up we are after all our
122:07
basic mission is the creation and
122:09
dissemination of knowledge and you know
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some might might go so far as to say
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that the the movements within
122:19
universities to question whether it’s
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possible to actually generate nevermind
122:23
disseminate knowledge have have created
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part of the intellectual and ideological
122:29
terrain that makes what we’ve been
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talking about for the last five minutes
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possible and perhaps in addition to
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being public intellectuals are coming
122:39
out of our our ivory towers and speaking
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in the public sphere we might want to
122:45
pay some attention to the the recreation
122:49
of norms of truth-telling and truth
122:51
seeking within our own institutions but
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I want to thank everybody for
122:57
participating and particularly the
122:59
people have done all a tremendous amount
123:01
of work to come here
123:04
thank you all very much indeed
123:06
[Applause]
123:11
[Music]

Time for G.O.P. to Threaten to Fire Trump

Republican leaders need to mount an intervention.

Up to now I have not favored removing President Trump from office. I felt strongly that it would be best for the country that he leave the way he came in, through the ballot box. But last week was a watershed moment for me, and I think for many Americans, including some Republicans.

It was the moment when you had to ask whether we really can survive two more years of Trump as president, whether this man and his demented behavior — which will get only worse as the Mueller investigation concludes — are going to destabilize our country, our markets, our key institutions and, by extension, the world. And therefore his removal from office now has to be on the table.

I believe that the only responsible choice for the Republican Party today is an intervention with the president that makes clear that if there is not a radical change in how he conducts himself — and I think that is unlikely — the party’s leadership will have no choice but to press for his resignation or join calls for his impeachment.

It has to start with Republicans, given both the numbers needed in the Senate and political reality. Removing this president has to be an act of national unity as much as possibleotherwise it will tear the country apart even more. I know that such an action is very difficult for today’s G.O.P., but the time is long past for it to rise to confront this crisis of American leadership.

Trump’s behavior has become so erratic, his lying so persistent, his willingness to fulfill the basic functions of the presidency — like

  • reading briefing books,
  • consulting government experts before making major changes and
  • appointing a competent staff — so absent,

his readiness to accommodate Russia and spurn allies so disturbing and his obsession with himself and his ego over all other considerations so consistent, two more years of him in office could pose a real threat to our nation. Vice President Mike Pence could not possibly be worse.

The damage an out-of-control Trump can do goes well beyond our borders. America is the keystone of global stability. Our world is the way it is today — a place that, despite all its problems, still enjoys more peace and prosperity than at any time in history — because America is the way it is (or at least was). And that is a nation that at its best has always stood up for the universal values of freedom and human rights, has always paid extra to stabilize the global system from which we were the biggest beneficiary and has always nurtured and protected alliances with like-minded nations.

Donald Trump has proved time and again that he knows nothing of the history or importance of this America. That was made starkly clear in Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis’s resignation letter.

Trump is in the grip of a mad notion that the entire web of global institutions and alliances built after World War II — which, with all their imperfections, have provided the connective tissues that have created this unprecedented era of peace and prosperity — threatens American sovereignty and prosperity and that we are better off without them.

So Trump gloats at the troubles facing the European Union, urges Britain to exit and leaks that he’d consider quitting NATO. These are institutions that all need to be improved, but not scrapped. If America becomes a predator on all the treaties, multilateral institutions and alliances holding the world together; if America goes from being the world’s anchor of stability to an engine of instability; if America goes from a democracy built on the twin pillars of truth and trust to a country where it is acceptable for the president to attack truth and trust on a daily basis, watch out: Your kids won’t just grow up in a different America. They will grow up in a different world.

The last time America disengaged from the world remotely in this manner was in the 1930s, and you remember what followed: World War II.

You have no idea how quickly institutions like NATO and the E.U. and the World Trade Organization and just basic global norms — like thou shalt not kill and dismember a journalist in your own consulate — can unravel when America goes AWOL or haywire under a shameless isolated president.

But this is not just about the world, it’s about the minimum decorum and stability we expect from our president. If the C.E.O. of any public company in America behaved like Trump has over the past two years —

  • constantly lying,
  • tossing out aides like they were Kleenex,
  • tweeting endlessly like a teenager,
  • ignoring the advice of experts —

he or she would have been fired by the board of directors long ago. Should we expect less for our president?

That’s what the financial markets are now asking. For the first two years of the Trump presidency the markets treated his dishonesty and craziness as background noise to all the soaring corporate profits and stocks. But that is no longer the case. Trump has markets worried.

.. The instability Trump is generating — including his attacks on the chairman of the Federal Reserve — is causing investors to wonder where the economic and geopolitical management will come from as the economy slows down.

  • What if we’re plunged into an economic crisis and we have a president whose first instinct is always to blame others and
  • who’s already purged from his side the most sober adults willing to tell him that his vaunted “gut instincts” have no grounding in economics or in law or in common sense. Mattis was the last one.

We are now left with the B team — all the people who were ready to take the jobs that Trump’s first team either resigned from — because they could not countenance his lying, chaos and ignorance — or were fired from for the same reasons.

I seriously doubt that any of these B-players would have been hired by any other administration. Not only do they not inspire confidence in a crisis, but they are all walking around knowing that Trump would stab every one of them in the back with his Twitter knife, at any moment, if it served him. This makes them even less effective.

Indeed, Trump’s biggest disruption has been to undermine the norms and values we associate with a U.S. president and U.S. leadership. And now that Trump has freed himself of all restraints from within his White House staff, his cabinet and his party — so that “Trump can be Trump,” we are told — he is freer than ever to remake America in his image.

And what is that image? According to The Washington Post’s latest tally, Trump has made 7,546 false or misleading claims, an average of five a day, through Dec. 20, the 700th day of his term in office. And all that was supposedly before “we let Trump be Trump.”

If America starts to behave as a selfish, shameless, lying grifter like Trump, you simply cannot imagine how unstable — how disruptive —world markets and geopolitics may become.

We cannot afford to find out.