\n<\/p>\n
Subscribe here: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | YouTube | Pocket Casts<\/em><\/p>\n On this episode of The David Frum Show<\/em>, The Atlantic<\/em>\u2019s David Frum opens with reflections on the new Trump administration\u2019s pattern of \u201cpoliticized stupidity\u201d: the willful refusal to understand abuses of power, including the destruction of the White House\u2019s East Wing and the perceived sale of government influence disguised as private donations.<\/p>\n Then Frum speaks with his Atlantic<\/em> colleague Tom Nichols, an expert on civil-military relations and a longtime scholar of U.S. defense policy, about President Donald Trump\u2019s efforts to turn the military into a personal instrument of power. Nichols explains how the capture of the Justice Department, the firing of Pentagon lawyers, and the use of the National Guard against civilians are eroding the rule of law, and how a president can launch wars without congressional consent.<\/p>\n Finally, Frum closes with a reflection on Eug\u00e8ne Ionesco\u2019s play Rhinoceros<\/em>, a parable about conformity and courage, and what it means to remain human in a world where everyone else is turning into beasts.<\/p>\n The following is a transcript of the episode:<\/em><\/p>\n \u200b\u200bDavid Frum:<\/strong> Hello, and welcome to The David Frum Show<\/em>. I\u2019m David Frum, a staff writer at The Atlantic<\/em>. My guest this week will be my Atlantic<\/em> colleague Tom Nichols, and we\u2019ll be discussing civil-military relations in the United States as troops march in American cities and as the United States appears to be sliding toward a unilateral, unapproved-by-Congress war in the Caribbean.<\/p>\n My book this week will not be a book at all; it will be a play, Rhinoceros<\/em>, by Eug\u00e8ne Ionesco. Please stay to the end to hear a discussion of that play.<\/p>\n But first, some preliminary thoughts about the week just past and the week ahead. There\u2019s so many outrages in the Trump years, there\u2019s so many abuses that maybe it\u2019s petty to fix on minor irritants, but there is a minor irritant that got caught in my craw, and I just want to ventilate a little bit about it. One of the more annoying and more pointless aspects of the Trump era is what I call politicized stupidity. Politicized stupidity is a kind of aggressive not getting the point by people who are otherwise perfectly well equipped to getting the point. Genuine stupidity is a misfortune and is distributed by God, but the politicized stupidity is chosen, and it\u2019s chosen for reasons.<\/p>\n Let me give you an example of what I mean. So President [Donald] Trump has just demolished the East Wing of the White House. He did this without any form of consultation, as if the White House were his personal property, and in order to build a giant ballroom that there\u2019s no demonstration of need for and that, again, he\u2019s treating as a point of personal property. He\u2019s choosing the design; there\u2019s no process of respect for historical or cultural integrity. And he\u2019s financing this whole project. We have no idea how much it will cost\u2014or President Trump originally said $200 million; now he\u2019s suggesting $300 million. But who knows what the cost will be. There weren\u2019t drawings. There weren\u2019t plans. It\u2019s being done on a kind of ad hoc basis, and the cost could well climb beyond the startling figure of $300 [million] to much more.<\/p>\n And he is proposing to pay for this project\u2014that is chosen entirely by himself with no consultation\u2014by accepting donations from corporations and wealthy individuals. He has people who have business before the government, who seek favors before the government: Some of them have mergers that they\u2019re hoping for approval. Others are in the crypto industry that has received a massive government favor in the form of the GENIUS [Act] and who are hoping for more favors. Others of whom are in business with members of the Trump family. If the country needed a ballroom, then there should have been a review process, a design process, and Congress should pay for it out of public revenues because it\u2019s the People\u2019s House, not Donald Trump\u2019s house.<\/p>\n Okay, you get that. But there are people who insist on not getting it. There are people who say, Well, are you against ballrooms? Don\u2019t you think the White House ever needs renovation? Other presidents have renovated the White House in the past<\/em>. The point is not that you are for or against renovations, of course; the point is you are for or against not treating the White House as a person\u2019s property. But there\u2019s a kind of deliberate refusal to get the point, and you see this in many places in our public media. It\u2019s the same when Donald Trump delivers a pardon to a crypto criminal, a convicted crypto criminal, who has helped to enrich his family.<\/p>\n Now, there have been other doubtful pardons by presidents in the past, and President [Joe] Biden apparently used an autopen to sign some of his pardons, and maybe that\u2019s not ideal. But no one has ever pardoned people because they gave money to his family, his sons, his relatives. No one has ever delivered pardons because he just seems to have a general attitude of being pro-white-collar criminals. No one has ever said, I\u2019m pardoning this convicted fraudster congressman because he always voted for my political party and always supported me, and that is the one and only grounds and basis of my pardoning this figure<\/em>. But people insist on not getting that point: Biden used an autopen; isn\u2019t that the same? No, it\u2019s not? Well, I refuse to understand why it\u2019s not<\/em>.<\/p>\n Or, most recently, other presidents have applied tariffs in the past. And some of those tariffs have been discretionary, where the president uses powers delegated to him by Congress to impose tariffs too, and sometimes the motives are not great. Now, when I was in the Bush administration in 2001 and 2002, and one of the reasons I left when I did was because I knew my next job\u2014I wrote economic speeches\u2014my next job was gonna have to be to write speeches defending President Bush\u2019s imposition of tariffs to protect the steel industry, which he was doing for domestic political reasons, and I just couldn\u2019t do it, and that\u2019s one of the reasons I left when I did, one of the most important reasons why I left when I did.<\/p>\n So presidents have done it before, but no one has made it the basis of his policy. And no one has ever said, I\u2019m imposing tariffs on one of America\u2019s closest allies, Canada, because I\u2019m upset that they made a TV ad that implied that Ronald Reagan was a better president than I am<\/em>. And indeed, Donald Trump is not 1\/1,000,000th the president Ronald Reagan that was, and so it, obviously, it cuts to the bone. But again, there are people saying, Well, foreign countries shouldn\u2019t criticize American policy on American TV<\/em>. They don\u2019t get the point. The stupidity is politicized.<\/p>\n Now, where does this come from? Well, part of the, I think, the reason for not getting the point is because the actual point is too big and too scary. Nobody wants to face what Donald Trump is and what he\u2019s doing to the United States. Even those of us who talk about it all the time, we don\u2019t wanna face it\u2014it haunts our nightmares. But even though the point is big and scary, the point has to be faced and not denied through clever evasions.<\/p>\n Sometimes people don\u2019t get the point because their boss demands they not get the point. If your job depends on writing an editorial saying that the destruction of the East Wing and its replacement by a ballroom financed by favor-seekers is just the same as President [Barack] Obama replacing the wiring and water in the main White House with money appropriated by Congress, if your boss says you have to do that or lose your job, there are people who, unfortunately, will do as told rather than lose their job.<\/p>\n Sometimes the politicized stupidity originates in a kind of purist, ultraleftist politics that is engaged in a quarrel with the mainstream Democratic Party so overwhelming, so all-encompassing to the people involved in it that they can\u2019t see anything else. They\u2019re engaged in a petty factional dispute of ultraleft against mainstream, and that is the only thing they\u2019re aware of or care about; everything else is just too far away.<\/p>\n And sometimes, unfortunately\u2014and this is where it most irks me\u2014the politicized stupidity originates in the need of a writer to seem clever within some tiny, invisible media clique, where this is a different thing than all that writer\u2019s friends are saying, and so they say it to seem smarter than everybody else, to seem a little not as caught up in the true drama of our times, to be able to have that kind of superior attitude to everyone else: You all are overreacting. I alone take the true measure of events<\/em>. As I say, it irks me.<\/p>\n Now, it\u2019s just going to be true that in an administration that is doing thousands of things every year, hundreds of things every week, dozens of things every day, no matter how opposed you are to this administration, some of the things they\u2019re going to do are going to be things you don\u2019t necessarily object to. I can give you a list of things that this second Trump presidency has done that I don\u2019t object to, and some of them, I support. I mean, yeah, there were genuine governance problems at America\u2019s elite and prestige universities: genuine problems with free speech, genuine problems with protecting Jewish students from abusive action by anti-Israel demonstrators. That does not justify the administration saying, Okay, we\u2019re coming after you using the process of law, we\u2019re disrupting funds to cancer research, all unless your faculty agree to say the following list of things that we command them to say<\/em>.<\/p>\n I can be concerned by the things that the universities are doing that are bad without having to come up with some clever, counterfactual, counter-imaginative justification for things that are obviously outrageous. We\u2019re all going to like something, but we have to keep our sense of proportion. We have to understand that the main thing is the main thing. And, as I said, if God inflicted stupidity on you, it\u2019s not your fault, but don\u2019t choose it. That\u2019s just annoying.<\/p>\n And now my dialogue with Tom Nichols. But first, a quick break.<\/p>\n [Break<\/em>]<\/strong><\/p>\n Frum:<\/strong> Tom Nichols is an expert on U.S. military policy who taught first at Dartmouth College, then at the U.S. Naval War College. A lifelong Republican, Tom Nichols has distinguished himself since 2016 as one of the first and truest of the Never Trump Republicans. Since his retirement from academia in 2022, he has been a colleague at The Atlantic<\/em>. You\u2019ve seen him also on Morning Joe<\/em> and many other TV shows.<\/p>\n Three things you may not have known about Tom Nichols: First, Tom was a five-time Jeopardy<\/em> champion. Second, he made a guest appearance as a bloviating cable news talking head on the fantastic TV show Succession<\/em>. And finally, he earned his early living as a disc jockey, an accomplishment that qualifies him as an especially welcome and cherished guest at Frum family karaoke nights.<\/p>\n Tom, welcome to The David Frum Show<\/em>. (Laughs<\/em>.)<\/p>\n Tom Nichols: <\/strong>(Laughs<\/em>.) Thank you, David.<\/p>\n Frum:<\/strong> So you wrote this very important article for The Atlantic<\/em> about the coming crisis in civil-military relations. This is a subject you\u2019ve devoted so much of your academic life to. I wanna ask you to sit on the other side of the table for a moment. Imagine yourself\u2014I don\u2019t know that such a thing could ever happen\u2014but imagine yourself a malign and criminally intended president who wanted to remake the U.S. military as a tool of personal power. How would you go about doing it?<\/p>\n Nichols:<\/strong> In this<\/em> system of government in the United States, the first thing I would do is seize the Justice Department. And by seize, I don\u2019t mean being elected and nominating an attorney general; I mean flushing out all of the people committed to the Constitution, the rule of law\u2014you know, the lawyers. It\u2019s almost a trope now to do the Merchant of Venice <\/em>line, but you start with getting rid of the lawyers, if you\u2019re going to do these kinds of things, and you replace it with your cronies. You replace it with people that are going to be loyal to you. You basically undo everything that\u2019s been done with the Justice Department over 50 years.<\/p>\n Frum:<\/strong> So the first move at the Pentagon is not at the Pentagon; it\u2019s across the river at the Justice Department.<\/p>\n Nichols:<\/strong> Exactly. Because if you\u2019re a military officer, the people that you\u2019re gonna want an opinion from are lawyers\u2014which is the next step, which is you not only get rid of the lawyers at the Justice Department; you do what Trump\u2019s already done: You get rid of the top lawyers of the Pentagon.<\/p>\n And look, the rule of law requires lawyers and people to interpret the law, and the first people you have to get rid of are anybody who says, My loyalty is to the rule of law, the statutes as written, the Constitution, and not to Donald Trump<\/em>.<\/p>\n Frum:<\/strong> Because our hypothetical military officers will want advice about what is illegal and what is an illegal order, and\u2014<\/p>\n Nichols:<\/strong> They\u2019re already asking.<\/p>\n Frum:<\/strong> \u2014and who do they turn to? If you have\u2014<\/p>\n Nichols:<\/strong> Yeah, that\u2019s already happening.<\/p>\n Frum:<\/strong> If you\u2019re a three-star or a four-star general and you have a question, Is this a legal or an illegal order?<\/em>, who do you ask?<\/p>\n Nichols:<\/strong> Well, you would ask the top legal service adviser in your branch, but [Secretary of Defense Pete] Hegseth and Trump have fired them all. So now you\u2019ve got guys\u2014there are people doing that job, but you and I both know from working in government, when your boss has been canned and you\u2019re the acting guy, or you\u2019ve been suddenly elevated because people above you have been fired, that\u2019s not a signal to you to be brave and innovative and daring about standing up for the Constitution. You\u2019re sitting in a desk that somebody else had who tried that and got fired. So you might ask them\u2014I can imagine some of these very senior officers are talking to friends or family attorneys or somebody. Because what\u2019s going on, we\u2019ll be talking about\u2014I guess this is the hand-wave \u201call this\u201d\u2014but all of this, I think, is not legal.<\/p>\n So you capture the Justice Department, you fire the military lawyers, you insist on loyalty from the top commanders\u2014which Trump thinks he has, apparently, with somebody like [Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General] Dan Caine\u2014and then you make sure to neuter the intelligence community so that foreign threats or plots or any other things that could interfere with elections in your favor are left undiscovered or uninvestigated.<\/p>\n Frum:<\/strong> Yeah. So you don\u2019t have to remake the officer corps from top to bottom. You don\u2019t even have to start looking for sympathetic two-star generals to replace the three-stars and sympathetic three-stars to replace the four-stars. You just cut them off from information and rely on natural bureaucratic inertia to make them obey you?<\/p>\n Nichols:<\/strong> And the chain of command. Because remember that officers are required to begin<\/em> from the presumption of legality with an order. The system is designed to make sure that the chain of command functions effectively so that if you\u2019re a colonel or a one-star or a two-star, you have to assume that if the order has come down from the president to the secretary, the advice of the chairman\u2014the chairman\u2019s not actually in the chain of command, but he gives advice\u2014and by the time it gets to you, the assumption is: Well, this must be legal because all these other guys wouldn\u2019t have ordered me to do it<\/em>.<\/p>\n Frum:<\/strong> So if you get an order to blow up a fishing boat in the Caribbean or the Pacific, you would start with, Well, somebody must have signed off on this. They must have<\/em>\u2014<\/p>\n Nichols:<\/strong> Somebody signed off<\/em>, exactly. And the place it should have stopped, of course, is: The attorney general, the secretary of defense, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs should all be standing in the Oval Office, saying, You can\u2019t do this. This isn\u2019t legal. This is a violation of both American and international law<\/em>. And if the president says, Well, go ahead, just do it<\/em>, well, by the time it gets to that lieutenant commander in a helicopter or piloting a drone, he or she\u2019s already saying\u2014well, as you just said, David\u2014Somebody must have signed off on this<\/em>.<\/p>\n Frum:<\/strong> Well, the president of Colombia has charged that at least one of the destroyed boats was a fishing vessel with completely innocent people aboard. Now, the present president of Colombia is kind of a flaky character and certainly someone with strong anti-American feelings, so take that as it may. On the other hand, it would be a pretty bold lie to tell, that it\u2019s a fishing boat, because the United States could refute it. And President [Gustavo] Petro in Columbia is operating in an unsympathetic Colombian political system. He\u2019s quite unpopular. Colombia is a country that normally tilts toward the right, that values cooperation with the United States, where public opinion would be not inclined to be super nationalistic about the United States killing even Colombian national drug traffickers, if they really are. So it would be a bold lie to tell if it is a lie; maybe it\u2019s a lie. But if it\u2019s true, if the United States has killed at least one innocent boat with these, so far, eight\u2014at least that we know of\u2014attacks, what are the legal implications of that? What are the consequences that would follow?<\/p>\n Nichols:<\/strong> Well, this is where I take pains to point out I am not a lawyer. But in international law, if it\u2019s proven, then normally what would happen is the president of the United States says, Oops, our bad. Here is an apology and restitution<\/em>. Because we have had incidents like that, where we shot down an Iranian airliner in a war zone where a ship skipper misread the signs\u2014<\/p>\n Frum:<\/strong> Nineteen eighty something?<\/p>\n Nichols:<\/strong> Eighty-eight. It was the [USS] Vincennes shooting down\u2014and we said, Mm, here\u2019s some restitution<\/em>, without going too deep into whether we were right or wrong about it. So the international consequences aren\u2019t\u2014I mean, we\u2019re the United States; we defy these things kind of at will, and we have\u2014<\/p>\n Frum:<\/strong> Okay, but I don\u2019t wanna talk so much about the international implications here. The domestic system. So now you\u2019re the operational commander with responsibility for the Caribbean, and you have an idea that at least one of the eight boats you killed was completely innocent and the people aboard were innocent, and maybe you\u2019re not so sure and you don\u2019t really have great information on the other seven, and now you\u2019re asked to kill a ninth with all aboard.<\/p>\n Nichols:<\/strong> That\u2019s where I think it gets interesting, yeah.<\/p>\n Frum:<\/strong> What does that operational commander do?<\/p>\n Nichols:<\/strong> (Sighs<\/em>.) The problem is that when it gets down to the level of the operational commander, once again, he says, Well, somebody must have figured this out<\/em>. The question is, why isn\u2019t this being stopped at the three- and four-star and CJCS [chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff]?<\/p>\n Frum:<\/strong> Who should be the person who is raising\u2014is it a four-star? Is it the commander of the Joint Chiefs? And we know what Trump is, and unfortunately, we also know what the secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth, is. And I guess it would be originally Pete Hegseth\u2019s job, but if the secretary of defense and the president\u2014and I call him the secretary of defense because that\u2019s his title in law.<\/p>\n Nichols:<\/strong> Yes, thank you.<\/p>\n Frum:<\/strong> He can call himself the secretary of war; he can call himself the secretary of partying, the latter title equally accurate. But the statute that Congress laid down in 1949 says that it\u2019s the Department of Defense, the secretary of defense; you have a quarrel with that, go rename it at the congressional level\u2014it\u2019s a statute. But the secretary of partying, as he might be called, he\u2019s the person who should have this mission, but if he fails, who is the next person to say, I think we may be killing some innocent people here<\/em>.<\/p>\n Nichols:<\/strong> I would think it\u2019s the chairman\u2014it\u2019s the chairman of the Joint Chiefs. He is the president\u2019s top military adviser. That\u2019s why he\u2019s there. He is supposed to be the most senior military officer in the United States advising the president on these issues. He is not actually in the chain of command anywhere.<\/p>\n This came up when Mark Milley got everybody together during January 6 and said, Now, we all understand our jobs, right?<\/em> He wasn\u2019t ordering anything, but he was convening his colleagues to say, As the president\u2019s top adviser, we all understand what we\u2019re doing here<\/em>. That should be General Caine.<\/p>\n Now, the thing is, Donald Trump learned\u2014as we painfully know\u2014he learned from his first term. He\u2019s making sure that there isn\u2019t going to be anybody in that room who\u2019s gonna say, Mr. President, it\u2019s a bad idea. What you\u2019re doing isn\u2019t legal<\/em>. And I suppose the other person that should be there, given the branch having to carry this out, is the secretary of the Navy. But as we know, the secretary of the Navy has never been in the Navy, has no military experience. These people were all chosen to say, Yes, Mr. President, whatever you think is appropriate<\/em>. And the problem, David, is, to go back to your point about the domestic environment, is that the chain of command, it\u2019s really not supposed to get to some lieutenant colonel or commander on a ship to say, Wait a minute, wait a minute\u2014I don\u2019t think this is legal. I don\u2019t think this is constitutional<\/em>.<\/p>\n Frum:<\/strong> How does the National Guard fit into the chain of command? We remember in [his] first term, Trump wanted to use the National Guard or other military personnel to shoot lawful demonstrators. He suggested shooting them in the knees. Now we have National Guard patrolling the streets of Washington, D.C. They were in Los Angeles. I don\u2019t know if they\u2019ve all been withdrawn from Los Angeles; I think most have. They\u2019re in Chicago supporting ICE, which is on a kind of lawless rampage. There is talk of sending them to San Francisco, although maybe that\u2019s off the table. How do they fit into the chain of command? Who has the mission of saying, The National Guard should not be shooting demonstrators<\/em>?<\/p>\n Nichols:<\/strong> Once again\u2014and we know this, again, from the first term\u2014in the first term, it was the secretary of defense and the chairman, again, walking in and saying, Mr. President, don\u2019t do this. This is a bad idea<\/em>. The National Guard answers to the governor of the state they\u2019re in until the president orders them federalized. And, of course, that\u2019s been the source of multiple court cases, some of which the Trump administration keeps losing or running into injunctions\u2014<\/p>\n Frum:<\/strong> Because you can\u2019t just do it as an act of power. You have to show some basis\u2014<\/p>\n Nichols:<\/strong> Right. You can\u2019t just say, Today, I feel like nationalizing our federal guard<\/em>\u2014the National Guard, excuse me.<\/em> However, even in the past, back in the \u201980s, Massachusetts\u2014I used to work on the Massachusetts National Guard issue, so it\u2019s kind of this little bit of lost history\u2014Massachusetts tried to tell the federal government, No, our guys are not going to go down and do training that could possibly be involved with the Contras and the Sandinistas <\/em>and all that stuff. And they were overruled. They said, If they\u2019re in federal training, the governor of Massachusetts can\u2019t decide where they train or what they do<\/em>. The president has huge<\/em> amounts of latitude here, which is why he\u2019s going after the National Guard because, obviously, when he talks about using the regular military, then he has to talk about\u2014I mean, we\u2019ve run into Posse Comitatus and the Insurrection Act. That\u2019s why, I think, he\u2019s talking about invoking the Insurrection Act.<\/p>\n Frum:<\/strong> Because one of the long-standing principles of the United States is the military does not do law enforcement.<\/p>\n Nichols<\/strong>: Right.<\/p>\n Frum: <\/strong>And this was grounded in a series of statutes. The Posse Comitatus, the present law, I forget when it was passed, but it\u2019s quite an ancient law, right\u2014<\/p>\n Nichols:<\/strong> Mm-hmm, yep.<\/p>\n Frum:<\/strong> \u2014Civil War era or something like that?<\/p>\n Nichols:<\/strong> Yep. It\u2019s an old American tradition\u2014let\u2019s face it, David, going back to the Founders\u2014it\u2019s an old American tradition not to have a big standing army. That\u2019s a 20th-century innovation. Before World War II, American soldiers were training with sticks because we would mobilize and then demobilize. So this notion that we have this large standing army would already be kind of making the Founders jumpy. But the idea that you just put them into the streets at will because you\u2019re pissed off is completely antithetical, it\u2019s complete anathema to the American experience.<\/p>\n Frum:<\/strong> So I wanna go back: Who has the mission? So the South Carolina or Texas National Guard is called up, sent to a blue state, and is told something like, We think a lot of the people in this lineup in this swing suburb are probably illegal aliens. And we think they should be detained for 12, 14, 16 hours, or \u2019til whenever the polls close. Your order is to go detain these people we believe are illegal aliens<\/em>\u2014I mean, they\u2019re Democrats; they might as well be illegal aliens\u2014detain them and hold them until the polls close<\/em>. Who has the mission to say, That sounds like kind of an illegal order to me<\/em>?<\/p>\n Nichols:<\/strong> Well, but they\u2019re being much more clever about it than that. The mission to detain those people and to disrupt those operations goes to ICE. And then the president says, This being a federal agency, I\u2019m not using the military to detain any of these people. I\u2019m simply using the military to protect these other federal agencies while they do their job<\/em>\u2014<\/p>\n Frum:<\/strong> \u2014of detaining everyone in the voting line<\/em>\u2014<\/p>\n Nichols:<\/strong> Of detaining everybody in line. <\/em>It\u2019s very clever. They say, We\u2019re not doing domestic policing. We\u2019re simply securing federal installations, protecting federal employees because the state or the local municipality either can\u2019t or won\u2019t do it<\/em>.<\/p>\n Frum:<\/strong> Right. Now, I think a lot of this\u2014and I\u2019ve been arguing this; I\u2019ve written this for The Atlantic<\/em>, and now I hear Democratic politicians talking about it\u2014the game has always been to disrupt the 2026 elections.<\/p>\n Nichols: <\/strong>I think that\u2019s right.<\/p>\n Frum: <\/strong>Because Trump is doing stuff that is so illegal and exposes them to so much jeopardy, personal<\/em> jeopardy: reaching your hands into the till and taking $230 million out and putting it in your own pocket; tearing down the East Wing and then putting a collection plate around to people who have business before the federal government [that] says, Who wants to build me a ballroom?<\/em> The TikTok\u2014I keep going on about this\u2014I think TikTok is being sold for something like one-third to one-quarter its actual market value, the 80 percent stake in TikTok USA is being sold to insiders at two-thirds, three-quarters off, an instant windfall.If there is ever an effective Congress again, these things are going to be publicized. There could be all kinds of jeopardy, including personal legal jeopardy.<\/p>\n So he can\u2019t have that. And it\u2019s a two-seat margin in the House of Representatives, and so, yes, you can gerrymander. That\u2019s limited effort. The real prize is to find some way to disrupt the elections in the places where you are most at risk. And then repeat the 2024 experience, or 2020, of saying, Well, there\u2019s so much doubt; well, let\u2019s seat the congresspeople we\u2019re sure of, who are our congresspeople, and let\u2019s put the others in abeyance for weeks or months until we settle all of this<\/em>.<\/p>\n And the last thing that, as I\u2019m sure you know, is there is this precedent from the 1980s that, when all else fails, when you have a contested seat in Congress and all else fails, the person who ultimately makes the decision whether to seat it is the speaker of the House. And the speaker of the House decides because the courts will not interfere; it\u2019s a political question. They will not interfere in the ultimate question of whether this candidate or that candidate is the true winner. The House is the judge of its own qualifications, says the Constitution.<\/p>\n So we have a big sort of illegal project being built. Is there any check interior to the system that will prevent this project from being carried out?<\/p>\n Nichols:<\/strong> I often think that the states and the cities can say, with a show of force, to say, Our police have this. We\u2019re good. We don\u2019t need you here<\/em>, that our state cops\u2014we\u2019re good<\/em>. Because I think part of Trump\u2019s project here\u2014and the way they\u2019re just dragooning people into ICE who have no qualifications, really, is another tell and creating this kind of paramilitary goon squad out of ICE. I always thought of myself as an immigration hawk, and I\u2019m kind of reaching the \u201cDefund ICE\u201d level at this point.<\/p>\n But I think part of Trump\u2019s plan is simply to have these military forces during the elections so visible that people just stay home, that they\u2019re just intimidated out of the public square, that you don\u2019t even have to arrest them. You don\u2019t have to have a big display of force. That the goal of all of this political activity, the goal of everything Trump is doing, is to drive people out of the public square, to say, The Wi-Fi is still working. There\u2019s still 150 channels on TV. Beer is cheap. Gas is affordable. I don\u2019t wanna deal with this. I don\u2019t wanna deal with all of this, and it doesn\u2019t really matter<\/em>. \u2019Cause the other thing, I think, that\u2019s the undertone of all this is, Look\u2014it doesn\u2019t really matter who\u2019s in office. They\u2019re all bad. Everybody\u2019s corrupt<\/em>. And so rather than use the military to inflict violence to stop the elections\u2014you know, gerrymandering and voter suppression work in marginal elections, not huge-turnout elections. And so what they\u2019re really trying to avert is a large Democratic turnout in places where they can pull that off. And I think you\u2019re right. Look at what\u2019s going on right now with this representative from Arizona, [Adelita] Grijalva. The speaker\u2019s just saying, If I have to keep Congress closed to not seat this person, that\u2019s what I\u2019m gonna do<\/em>.<\/p>\n And I\u2019ll just add one more thing, David. You talked about this kind of orgy of lawlessness here, and it\u2019s a clich\u00e9, but it really is just out of control. I actually think a huge part of this is about the [Jeffrey] Epstein files. I really do. I think that when this first became a thing, that\u2019s when Trump went into hyperdrive about throwing things against the wall just to see what sticks, what could distract us. And I hate that. I never thought the Epstein files were important until Trump started acting like they were important.<\/p>\n Frum:<\/strong> What could be in these files that is worse than what we already have?<\/p>\n Nichols: <\/strong>That\u2019s the only part of this that gave me pause. I figured he\u2019s beyond shaming. The man, his shamelessness is his superpower. And this is why initially I said, The Epstein files, who cares?<\/em> They\u2019re terrible, and everybody knows they\u2019re terrible, and everybody knows these guys were friends. But he\u2019s the guy\u2014it\u2019s kind of like, why did we think Saddam Hussein had WMD [weapons of mass destruction]? Because he was acting like it. Why do we think the Epstein files are radioactive? Because Trump\u2019s acting like it. Maybe they\u2019re not.<\/p>\n But I think this, along with the tariffs going wrong, the economy in the wrong direction\u2014and I think you\u2019re right; I think he knows that if, and this is actually a hopeful sign, he knows that one election in 2026 could be the beginning of the end of all of this. And for them, that\u2019s an existential threat; for Trump and his people, that\u2019s existential. And that\u2019s why he would say, The military is the one institution that has to do what I tell it<\/em>. Now, that\u2019s not true, as we know, but I think, in his mind, he thinks of the military as toy soldiers.<\/p>\n Frum:<\/strong> Well, let\u2019s revert to this conflict in the Caribbean, the Pacific, and Trump has mused about taking it to land. And Venezuela seems to be target A; Colombia has also been indicated as a target. Before Trump became president, there was a lot of talk from Trump allies, including the vice president\u2014in fact, Trump was kind of more cautious on this [than] some of his allies\u2014of doing strikes inside Mexico. And it is true there are cartel operations of different kinds in all of these countries. How much legal authority would a president need to start carrying out land targeting of cartel operations?<\/p>\n Nichols:<\/strong> More than he has now. I was never a fan of these AUMFs, right\u2014the authorizations for the use of military force\u2014that guided us through the, or that were the, in theory, the constraint on the global War on Terror. But at least it was something. It was the president going to Congress and saying, Here\u2019s what I wanna do, and I would like your authorization for it because now I\u2019m gonna spend money to do these things<\/em>\u2014that\u2019s the other part of it\u2014and because you are the Article I power, and we need to be coordinated as the United States goes to war<\/em>. Trump is arguing that I can simply determine a threat, point the military at it, and say, \u201cDestroy this.\u201d <\/em>That is not what Article II says. That is not what the Constitution says.<\/p>\n And I think, first of all, can we just step back and say, What happened to the guy who said,<\/em> I\u2019m not gonna start any more \u201cstupid wars\u201d like all my predecessors?<\/em> We\u2019re talking about invading Central America, Latin America? It\u2019s bonkers. But I don\u2019t think that he has anything like the legal authority to do this\u2014but that would require a Congress that actually meets and functions as a Congress.<\/p>\n Frum:<\/strong> I think something people forget about these authorizations to use force: Before 1945, when the United States used military force on any scale, there was a declaration of war\u2014although there were a lot of police actions, especially in Central America. And there are some that continue, like the Philippines insurrection was pursuant to the powers that the president got from declaring war on Spain in 1898, and then there was the aftermath, which was this long insurrection in the Philippines. But he used the powers that were left over\u2014first President [William] McKinley, then President Teddy Roosevelt\u2014left over from the initial declaration of war.<\/p>\n I think one of the reasons they went out of style after 1945 was declarations of war gave the president too much power, and the Congress of the \u201950s and \u201960s said, Look, we\u2019re not fighting the Soviet Union; we\u2019re fighting Soviet proxies. Yes, we wanna give you <\/em>certain military powers, but we don\u2019t wanna give you the power to nationalize the entire civilian economy the way you would have if we did a proper Declaration of War, whether it was Korea or Vietnam. So here\u2019s a much more limited grant of military power that is intended to protect the rights of the citizens from the vast powers the president gets with a declaration of war<\/em>.<\/p>\n But now that game has gone into reverse. We have now a situation where presidents are asserting these\u2014or this president is asserting powers with no basis of any kind, and Congress has not been asked even to give him any kind of authorization. And innocent people may be being killed.<\/p>\n Nichols:<\/strong> Well, in the past, the other way that presidents got around this was to say that they were exercising force in accordance with treaty obligations. And that is a legal out, right? How do you go into Vietnam, for example? You say, Well, we are members of SEATO, Southeast Asian Treaty Organization. This is an alliance obligation<\/em>. Treaties are the law of the land; the president executes the laws\u2014<\/p>\n Frum:<\/strong> There was also an authorization, the Tonkin Gulf Resolution.<\/p>\n Nichols:<\/strong> Right, there was a resolution. But the president can always say\u2014God forbid, there had been a World War III, he [could have] said, I can send troops in under my obligations as America as a signatory to the NATO treaty<\/em>.<\/p>\n There is no treaty. There is no law. There is no\u2014I feel like I\u2019m about to go all Al Gore\u2014no controlling legal authority here that tells the president that he can just go kill people because he happens to think they\u2019re bad for our country. Why not counterfeiters? Why not bootleggers? Why drug black marketeers? Why not just start killing anybody that you happen to think is doing something bad to the United States? And I think he\u2019s doing this\u2014well, I think the link between what he\u2019s doing overseas and the link to domestic politics is very clear. He\u2019s trying to establish the precedent that the military will do what he says, kill the people he wants killed, and undertake the operations he wants undertaken, no matter where they are.<\/p>\n Frum:<\/strong> And I think with the drug case, he\u2019s also trying to make Americans falsely believe, as he often does, that their domestic problems are the fault of foreigners.<\/p>\n Nichols:<\/strong> Of other people, right.<\/p>\n Frum:<\/strong> One of my favorite drug war stories is a story that is told both by Daniel Patrick Moynihan and by George Shultz in their respective memoirs. But the story is that Daniel Patrick Moynihan\u2014you probably know the story\u2014was the first federal drug czar in the Nixon administration. That is, Nixon created an office in the White House, Office of National Drug Control Policy, Moynihan was put in charge, and he became known as the drug czar. And in 1971, the United States executes the largest\u2014in cooperation, I think, with the French police\u2014the largest drug bust in the history of the world to that date: the famous French Connection that became the basis of the Gene Hackman movie\u2014<\/p>\n Nichols:<\/strong> Popeye Doyle, baby.<\/p>\n Frum:<\/strong> So Moynihan is very excited when he gets word, and he commands a helicopter to take him to Camp David to brief the president personally about this tremendous victory, and as he gets into the helicopter, there is Secretary of Labor George Shultz, with the big helicopter earmuffs, reading the Financial Times<\/em> or The Wall Street Journal<\/em>. And Moynihan, over the helicopter communication device, just gushes with enthusiasm: We\u2019ve just completed the biggest drug interception in the history of the world<\/em>. And Shultz, utterly uninterested, says, Congratulations. Nice job<\/em>. You don\u2019t understand<\/em>, says Moynihan. This is the biggest drug bust in the history of the world<\/em>.Good<\/em>, [says Shultz], congratulations<\/em>. And Moynihan\u2019s a little hurt, a little crestfallen. And then he remembers, before Shultz went into government, he taught economics at the University of Chicago: George, I imagine you think that so long as there\u2019s a demand for drugs in the United States, there will be a supply from somewhere<\/em>. And Shultz now looked up interested for the first time and said, There may be hope for you after all<\/em>.<\/p>\n Nichols:<\/strong> Yeah, I actually hadn\u2019t heard that story.<\/p>\n Frum:<\/strong> Oh, it\u2019s in both their memoirs, and\u2014<\/p>\n Nichols: <\/strong>It\u2019s a great story.<\/p>\n Frum: <\/strong>\u2014and the point is, Americans were dying in very large numbers from fentanyl overdoses in the teens. It came to a peak in 2020. And then, thanks to different policies, thanks to the availability of drugs that interfere with drug overdoses, those numbers have come down a little bit. But it remains an article of faith to Trump and the people around him and especially to Vice President [J. D.] Vance: This is something that bad foreigners have done to Americans, not that Americans are doing to themselves. And if we can only punish the foreigners enough, virtuous Americans will not be lured into drug dependency<\/em>. But that\u2019s, of course, not how it works. It\u2019s the demand that brings forth the supply. It\u2019s a domestic problem.<\/p>\n Nichols:<\/strong> There was a great quip, and I\u2019m trying to remember who said it on social media, where somebody said, Yes, we\u2019re in danger from drug traffickers the way that my cholesterol levels are in danger from Dairy Queen<\/em>. This is something that we seem to learn over and over again. You and I are both old enough to remember the first War on Drugs, the French Connection, then the War on Drugs in the \u201980s, and then the War on Drugs in the \u201990s, and all it did was drive up the price of drugs and make it more profitable. But the heroin epidemic of the \u201970s, you know how that ended; it ended when a lot of people died from taking heroin. That\u2019s what snuffed it out.<\/p>\n Frum:<\/strong> The War on Drugs\u2014I think we didn\u2019t use so much War on Drugs analogy\u2014the logic of the \u201cJust Say No\u201d campaign that was publicized by Nancy Reagan was, that was an attempt to address demand. It\u2019s a triangle\u2014there are three basic remedies, or outcomes, to the drug problem. One is you attack supply. The second is you attack demand. And the third is you learn to live with the drugs. And all of them are evil, right? Learning to live with the drugs means Americans suffer and die in preventable numbers. Dealing with the demand means that Americans go to prison because you punish both the low-level dealers and the users. And the supply means that you end up at war with the rest of the planet and trying to put your fingers in infinite numbers of holes in dikes as the drugs flow in. All of them are imperfect, and sound policy begins with some kind of balance.<\/p>\n But the Trump policy is to say, Look, we are going to blame entirely suppliers, and not only suppliers, but foreign suppliers, and we\u2019re going to kill them, and we are going to imagine that this is doing something<\/em>, when, of course, as George Shultz will tell us\u2014<\/p>\n Nichols: <\/strong>That\u2019s because it\u2019s not about drugs. I\u2019m convinced that this policy in Central America is not about drugs, David. I think it\u2019s about\u2014<\/p>\n Frum: <\/strong>Training the military to do bad things.<\/p>\n