CAFE Insider Sample 10/29: Some Trump 2.0 Worst Case Scenarios
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Hey folks, Joyce here. This week, Preet and I are speaking to y'all from the heart. One week out from one of the most consequential election days in our lifetimes, we share our hopes and our fears for the future of this great country. What will a Trump Justice Department look like this time around? Who will he target for political and prosecutorial revenge? Could he deploy the military in our streets? Will he carry out the mass deportations he's promised?

and how much further to the right could he push the Supreme Court for decades to come? Preet and I discuss all that and more on a new episode of the Cafe Insider Podcast.

So let's talk about the institution that's near and dear to our hearts.

where we both served for many, many years. And that's the Justice Department. I guess, you know, one question is what happens at the top? What kind of person do we get? And then another question, I don't know if it's equally important or even more important. What happens to the rank and file at the Justice Department? Do you have, depending on who goes in at the top, do you have a mass exodus of career people? And then there's this issue and threat that they're going to basically decimate the rank and file folks

The career folks who they refer to as the deep state and kick them all out and basically, you know, attempt to bring in all loyalist political types, which will be a formidable thing to accomplish given the legal protections that career employees have. Which one do you want to talk about first, the top or the rank and file? Man, it's a real box of horribles.

worry a lot about the rank and file. For one thing, I was part of the rank and file in my office for a long time. And, you know, we had a saying, did y'all have this saying? We used to say, we're bees. We would talk about the most recent political appointee and we would say, we be here when they come, we be here when they go.

And, you know, that was the attitude that permitted rank and file prosecutors to do their jobs, to do them without any taint of politics. We would occasionally roll our eyes at the emphasis placed on certain kinds of cases by an attorney general. But we would, by and large, do our jobs as we understood them, do the right things for the right reasons.

And that, I think, will not be the focus of a new Trump administration for the rank and file. Right. You were bees. We were bees. We'd be here when they come. We'd be here when they go. We were not bees. Y'all were probably all A pluses in the Southern District. Right.

Oh, I see. Different use of B. Nice plan words. No, we basically said, whatever happens with the levers of power, we're going to remain and do our rank and file work. Man, things must be tough because we are just comedians today. Oh, gosh. I don't mean to get up on a tangent, but, you know, the Madison Square Garden rally right in my hometown, my backyard, if you're going to tell jokes, even if they're sort of politically incorrect,

They should at least have some features of humor and comedy. I'm not going to repeat those things, but I was just reminded of it. So let's talk about the top. People keep suggesting a political person. I don't know if it's the person himself who's putting himself forward because that happens when people are jockeying for major positions. And the person that I keep hearing, and I have a view about the likelihood of this, Mike Lee, the senator from Utah, very credentialed, smart guy, very, very conservative,

Like some people, not as dramatic as J.D. Vance, but like some people in the Republican Party, kind of skeptical of Trump at the start, but now has sort of fallen for Trump, at least rhetorically in the things that he says, hook, line, and sinker. And we can talk about what a Mike Lee attorney generalship would mean. He probably has, you know, a little bit of an advantage over some other long shot candidates because he's a member of the Senate. I don't know exactly how well liked he is by the Democrats.

But I don't think so. And the reason I don't think so is that's the model that Trump tried at the beginning of his first term with Jeff Sessions, your fellow Alabamian, Jeff Sessions, who was as strongly pro-Trump, the first senator to come out for Trump. But, you know, he was an actual lawyer, recused himself from the Russian investigation, which is the thing that earned him the wrath and contempt of Trump and ultimately Trump.

his dismissal, don't you think Trump's going to be thinking about that precedent and doesn't want to pick another senator? I mean, even before we get to that, though, can I just ask why, given Jeff Sessions as an example, would Mike Lee even conceivably be interested in giving up a secure Senate seat for this? Yeah. I mean, I don't know. Utah, does Utah have a

viable Democrat who can get the Senate? No, absolutely not. Yeah. So he's not giving up a seat. That's true. For the Republicans. But still, I mean, he is giving up a lot of, you know, he's giving up personal life tenure for a job that lasts, what, an

until he goes to federal prison. I mean... 18 months. You know, it's insane. But yeah, I think you're right about Trump's assessment. Maybe Mike Lee is different, right? Because Mike Lee is someone who started out very strongly opposed to Trump and then just completely drank the Kool-Aid. And of course, we don't know what causes people to drink the Kool-Aid. Mike Lee is someone who's well-educated, who's very credentialed. You know, the fact that he would...

find acceptance for what Trump was doing on sort of political issues like immigration, which would seem to be at odds with his sort of religious convictions. He's a member of the Mormon church. So, you know, it's a little bit of a mystery of what the allure of Donald Trump is for someone like Mike Lee, and perhaps Trump would feel more secure about

about his absolute loyalty, which will be the defining credential for anyone who wants to be a Trump administration official this go-round. It will be loyalty. That will be the credential that will matter. And so where does Mike Lee fall on that spectrum? You know, I guess that's a matter between Donald Trump and Mike Lee, but certainly he has appeared to be on board and in line for the last several years. And this is, I think, an important bright line for Trump. After the election in 2020,

Mike Lee was part of that cohort of people who tried to secure the outcome of the election for Donald Trump after he had clearly lost. So here's another name.

John Ratcliffe. You want to remind folks who that is? Ratcliffe is a very staunch ally of Trump, and Trump became a fan of his during the Russia investigation after the 2016 election. He was a representative from Texas at that point in time. He was very critical of Bob Mueller and of the Mueller investigation.

But Ratcliffe comes with some real downside. He apparently had burnished his own resume and he was nominated by Trump to be his top intelligence official. And it took a long time. It went from one year to the next for him to be confirmed president.

because of this embellishment official, although he was ultimately confirmed. Right now, he's at a think tank, the Center for American Security at the America First Policy Institute, which is the big Trump-aligned think tank. So he would be a little bit from out of nowhere, right? Not someone whose name comes up in dinner table conversation in American homes. So one of the worst names that I've heard, and I still can't really believe this would be the guy, but a name that if you listen to this podcast and the other podcast,

that I do, you've heard his name a lot. His name is Jeffrey Clark. He's the guy who was at the sort of top of the heap in trying to carry out a pressure campaign with respect to Justice Department officials who were above him in rank to try to get people in Georgia to do something different with respect to the election. He is facing a suspension of his law license for two years. He has been indicted alongside Trump.

In Georgia, in that case, whatever you think about the case. So he's an indictee. We would say criminal defendant in Alabama. He's a criminal defendant. Does he have a shot? Oh, God. I mean, I hope not, because then we're going to have to talk about whether he's going to come to his confirmation hearing wearing just his underwear the way he stood outside while his house was being searched. Look, I can't believe...

that let's just leave aside the fact that he's under indictment and and let's leave aside for the fact his complicity in the big lie in 2020 this is someone who is completely unqualified to be the attorney general of the united states well he has a very important qualification loyalty loyalty i mean are you wanting me to like say do i think trump would do it sure i think trump would do it yeah yeah no that's my question is not whether i think at this point

Most of the things we're going to talk about, we don't think should happen. I don't think we should be mass deporting 14 million or 12 million people overnight. Whatever you think about the immigration system and how broken it is, it needs to be fixed with comprehensive immigration reform. So my questions to you today, Joyce, are about

The likelihood of them happening, not whether they're good or bad.

Then that leads you straight to Jeff Clark. Mike Davis himself. We've already mentioned him. He would have to be somebody who would be shortlisted. He's certainly somebody who would have had more exposure, at least to the way cabinet level folks might interact with each other and those sorts of internal D.C. considerations. Clark is is an outsider. What was it that they said to him that came out during the January 6th hearings? Go back to your office. We'll call you when there's an oil spill. Oil spill.

Something like that. Good grief. I hope you found our discussion informative. You can try the Cafe Insider membership for just $1 for one month. And from now through November, visit cafe.com slash November to get 40% off your membership for the first year. You'll be supporting our work and getting exclusive access to full weekly podcast episodes of Insider and bonus material from Stay Tuned. Head to cafe.com slash Insider. ♪

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