GROSS: So the goal is to keep America more white and Christian?
BAZELON: Well, yes. I think, bluntly speaking, that’s the case. So Sessions, for example, on Bannon’s radio show a couple of years ago was talking about an earlier period in American history of high immigration in the beginning of the 20th century. And he talked about that as a radical time. And he used that in a kind of pejorative sense. And then he said that the solution was the 1924 immigration quotas Congress passed and that those quotas were, quote, “good for America.”
So the 1924 immigration quotas barred immigration from most of Asia. And they tightly capped the number of people who could come from Italy, the number of Jews, people from the Middle East and Africa. So we’re not talking about a kind of neutral form of immigration restrictions. We’re talking about a particular way of trying to hold on to a vision of America, the kind of traditional Christian European demographic.
GROSS: So you say that Sessions and Bannon see immigration and the country’s changing demographics as America’s chief internal threat. What is the threat?
BAZELON: Well, I think from their point of view, there’s a kind of cultural threat going on. So one of the things Bannon said before the election was that he was worried that so many of the CEOs in Silicon Valley were from South Asia or from Asia.
And then he said a country is more than an economy, we’re a civic society. That seems to imply that if we have too many minorities and foreign-born people here, we’re not going to have the same kind of civic society that we’ve had in the past, that there is a kind of damage or fraying that will be happening. And that’s a, you know, very distinct idea of why you want to prevent immigration.
BAZELON: In 2015, Jeff Sessions wrote a 23-page memo to his colleagues saying that the party had to show working class voters how lax immigration policies have stolen their jobs and erased their prospects for moving up the social ladder. What do you know about that memo?
.. One of the themes that Trump emphasized throughout his campaign and has continued to push as president is the idea that there’s this very dark rise in crime happening particularly in what he calls the inner cities. It’s not statistically accurate. Actually, we’ve had a 25-year decline in crime with a small uptick in 2015.
But Trump really pushes this notion that America is under threat and that there’s all this danger. And there’s an obvious political reason for this. Republican presidential candidates since Nixon have tended to win office when they really strike a law and order theme
.. And so instead of kind of balancing the interests of law enforcement with the interests of people in the community who feel threatened by the police, we’re really seeing a shift here toward always siding on – with the police.
.. Jim Comey as head of the FBI has a fair amount of independence. But you’re right, the Justice Department oversees his work. And he wanted a kind of backup in refuting Trump from the Justice Department that Jeff Sessions was not willing to give.
There is a kind of further wrinkle here, which was that because Sessions didn’t mention his own meetings with the Russian ambassador during his confirmation
.. So during the George W. Bush administration, Alberto Gonzales testified before Congress. He wound up I believe saying, I do not recall, more than 60 times. This was in relation to another scandal over firing a group of U.S. attorneys that actually was also prompted by voter fraud investigations if you can believe it. And Gonzales was not prosecuted for perjury. But he did have to resign.
.. And I do think it’s a very good sign that Jeff Sessions recused himself from the investigation of the potential ties between the Trump campaign and Russia because that was an important norm kicking in. Trump publicly asked Sessions not to recuse himself, said he didn’t see any reasons for Sessions to do that. And Sessions did it anyway. And that was the right thing for him to do in terms of his professional integrity.
Ari Berman Reveals Neil Gorsuch Praised a Leading GOP Activist Behind Voter Suppression Efforts
the person that Neil Gorsuch praised, who he worked with in the Justice Department, was Hans von Spakovsky, who really is the leading figure behind GOP voter suppression efforts, the leading figure in pushing the myth of widespread voter fraud. They overlapped in the Justice Department from 2005 and 2006
.. Four of five lawyers on the review team recommended it be blocked as discriminatory against African Americans, but Hans von Spakovsky, who was counsel to the assistant attorney general for civil rights, manipulated the process for putting this law through, for approving the law. Not only that, von Spakovsky wrote an anonymous law article, when this was being considered, that praised voter ID laws, which was totally unethical.
.. it seemed like he had a very strong view of executive power, meaning that, you know, he might be sympathetic to things the Bush administration was doing, and now the Trump administration is doing, on national security.
.. Scalia was so outspoken, but here we have a situation where Gorsuch wants to be another Scalia, but there’s such a small paper trail on him.
.. where John Roberts, for example, when he was nominated, he said, “I just want to be an umpire. I’m just going to call balls and strikes.” We know that John Roberts has been a deeply reactionary figure on the Supreme Court, authoring decisions, for example, that gutted the Voting Rights Act. Will Gorsuch be the same?
What’s the method in Trump’s madness?
On the one hand, he has continued to make himself out as a “populist” standing up for workers by scrapping the Trans-Pacific Partnership and bringing verbal pressure on American companies to keep or create jobs in the United States.
On the other, he has been promising corporations the moon.
.. In principle, it’s possible that Trump is returning to the days of William McKinley and Calvin Coolidge. From the 1890s to the Great Depression, Republican presidents pursued policies that were simultaneously pro-business and protectionist.
.. And so far, his announcements about jobs “kept” in the United States under his pressure have been largely symbolic, involving relatively small numbers in an economy where 152 million people are working.
.. he said he’d ask for “a major investigation into VOTER FRAUD,” using those Trumpian capital letters.
Here again, Trump set off a debate between madness and method. The most obvious conclusion is that we are confronting yet another case of his bizarre insecurity. He’s furious that even though he is president, his enemies are denying him a popular mandate because he lost to Hillary Clinton by 2.9 million votes. But voting rights advocates fear that he is laying the groundwork for extensive voter-suppression efforts aimed at making voting far more difficult for Latinos, African Americans and others hostile to him... If there is any consistency here, it lies in the right-wing nationalism of his senior adviser Stephen K. Bannon. He hopes to marry broadly conservative economic policies with protectionism, restrictions on immigration, and new infrastructure and military spending.
Is American Democracy Strong Enough for Trump?
I find it hard to imagine a personality less suited by temperament and background to be the leader of the world’s foremost democracy.
On the other hand, as a political scientist, I am looking ahead to his presidency with great interest, since it will be a fascinating test of how strong American institutions are.
.. Americans believe deeply in the legitimacy of their constitutional system, in large measure because its checks and balances were designed to provide safeguards against tyranny and the excessive concentration of executive power. But that system in many ways has never been challenged by a leader who sets out to undermine its existing norms and rules. So we are embarked in a great natural experiment that will show whether the United States is a nation of laws or a nation of men.
.. President Trump differs from almost every single one of his 43 predecessors in a variety of important ways. His business career has shown a single-minded determination to maximize his own self-interest and to get around inconvenient rules whenever they stood in his way, for example by forcing contractors to sue him in order to be paid...He could also have argued that the mainstream media, which thinks of itself as a fourth branch holding the president accountable, is under relentless attack from Trump and his followers as politicized purveyors of “fake news.” Acemoglu argues that the main source of resistance now is civil society, that is, mobilization of millions of ordinary citizens to protest Trump’s policies and excesses, like the marches that took place in Washington and cities around the country the day after the inauguration... I argue in my most recent book that the American political system in fact has too many checks and balances, and should be streamlined to permit more decisive government action... I still believe that my earlier position is correct, and that the rise of an American strongman is actually a response to the earlier paralysis of the political system... His strategy right now is clear: He wants to use his “movement” to intimidate anyone who gets in the way of his policy agenda. And he hopes to intimidate the mainstream media by discrediting them and undermining their ability to hold him accountable. He is trying to do this, however, using a core base that is no more than a quarter to a third of the American electorate... And Trump has not done a great job since Election Day in alleviating the skepticism of anyone outside of his core group of supporters, as his steadily sagging poll numbers indicate. Demonizing the media on the second day of your administration does not bode well for your ability to use it as a megaphone to get the word out and persuade those not already on your side... It is absurd that any one of 100 senators can veto any midlevel executive branch appointee they want. In some respects, unified government will alleviate some of our recent dysfunctions, which Trump’s opponents need to recognize... It is important to remember that one of the reasons for Trump’s rise is the accurate perception that the American political system was in many respects broken—captured by special interests and paralyzed by its inability to make or implement basic decisions. This, not a sudden affinity for Russia, is why the idea of a Putin-like strongman has suddenly gained appeal in America... However, the single most dangerous abuses of power are ones affecting the system’s future accountability. What the new generation of populist-nationalists like Putin, Chávez in Venezuela, Erdogan in Turkey, and Orbán in Hungary have done is to tilt the playing field to make sure they can never be removed from power in the future. That process has already been underway for some time in America, through Republican gerrymandering of congressional districts and the use of voter ID laws to disenfranchise potential Democratic voters.