Transcript: Jamie Raskin’s Harsh New Takedown of Trump Lays MAGA Bare
His fate depends on Trump pardoning him. So, it’s another invitation for a bribe, basically.
Litman: Exactly. When you make everyone’s future, their career, their liberty depend on the whims and decisions of one person, that is a recipe for abuses of power, which we are seeing. Because even if Deputy A.G. Blanche thinks, well, look what I’m doing that might violate a ton of federal laws—you know, he might be thinking, well, Donald Trump will pardon me. And so who cares? As long as I remain on this guy’s good side, I basically have a get out of jail free card.
Sargent: It’s almost like the authoritarian regime is figuring out a way to sort of self-enforce loyalty to it, or to him.
Litman: Yep. Yeah.
Sargent: And just to close this out, like that’s something that MAGA thinks is good, too. They have no conception of the public interest or the rule of law really, it’s whatever is good for Trump is is is good for the country.
Litman: Yeah, they have completely collapsed the distinction between Donald Trump’s private interests, and the public interests, and the nation’s interest, and you can see this in myriad ways: When Donald Trump refers to the weaponization of the Department of Justice, all he’s talking about is efforts to enforce the law against him, but all of a sudden that becomes this big principle that is about our national interest because he was legally vulnerable and he faced a risk of liability.
Sargent: So is he going to get the money?
Litman: You know, the fact that I can’t say no is the biggest indictment of how much they have subverted and just abused the federal government. I don’t know. I really don’t. I think there is a possibility that this is the sort of thing where enough people understand this is straight-up theft. And it can’t be that this guy, who ran on this platform of, I’m going to make all of your lives easier by reducing costs and reducing taxes. Now he gets to extract this huge cost from all of us—that just cannot be. And I would hope that that would be something that could break through to enough people, even if not to MAGA, to enough independents, or people who are not likely to vote or low information voters to start to register in ways that make the Republican Party unwilling to go along with this.
Sargent: Well, I’ll tell you what, if this isn’t enough to break through, then I don’t know if anything is. Folks, if you enjoyed this discussion, make sure to check out Leah Litman’s book, Lawless. It’s all about the Supreme Court. Leah, thank you so much for coming on with us, even though that was really some stiff medicine.
Litman: Thanks for having me.
