The For-Profit Presidency
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Hello, everybody. Welcome to the weekly show podcast. My name is Jon Stewart. It is Wednesday, May 14th. The president is in the middle of his tour of kings, his king of kings tour, kings of comedy tour, kings of corruption tour. He is on his way. I have to say, I don't know that I've ever seen the president so happy and comfortable. I think this is his...

This is his happy place, that being with kings, having just a lot of camels. I would not be surprised if when the president comes back from the Middle East, he ditches pantaloons. I believe he may think, you know what? These guys have it. The free-flowing robe. Let the boys breathe. Let me have it. Because I think the accoutrement of monarchy truly suits him. He seems happier.

Maybe when he's done being president, if I should qualify, if he's done being president.

That is where he will end up in the way that like certain, like the Shah of Iran ends up sort of an exile somewhere else. He may end up there because I think that's how he views the world. I just want, who's in charge here? That dude, the dude with the robe, who's got the giant sword, he's in charge. Let's make a deal with him. It's why he, he fucking hates Canada.

Canada and the EU now, it's like, what do I have to do? Well, we have a Congress, we have to check with them. And then the parliament's going to vote on it. He's like, ah, just give me the plane and I will give you these weapons. And that's how shit's going to go down. I'll be honest with you. I expect big things to come out of these meetings because this is the type of deal-making that he prefers to

He doesn't want to talk about it. He sits, you saw today, he sits, I was sitting with Mohammed bin Salman. He's like, you should really take all the, you know, everything away from Syria, the sanctions and everything. He's like, you make a very convincing case. I'll just go do it. Like he could come back. You don't even know what he's going to come back. He could come back and just be like, Palestine's a state. Actually, Israel, you're out. And now he's got the South African refugees are allowed in.

Because that's a genocide. Look, there's children in Gaza apparently that should get visas right away if that's going to be the rule. I mean, you don't know what's going to happen because there is no larger governing principle other than I like these guys, I dig these guys, they treat me well, I'll treat them well, handshake, you scratch my back. It's pure transactional wildness.

And I think he prefers it. And it's the level of the corruption, because this is how those countries operate to begin with, that they have sovereign funds. They, hey, you know what we should do? Buy some golfers. How much do you think it would cost for a Mickelson? $200 million. Like Trump is Shopify for nations. It's just, all this stuff's coming up on my feed. I guess they really know what I like. Let me just press this button. Hey, look at that. I just bought a golf course in Doha.

Boy, I swear to God, he is a Greek mythological figure and not in the good way, in the Icarus way, in the King Midas. Oh my God, everything I want to touch should turn to gold. Oh no, my balls. So we're going to talk a little bit about these systems now and how we are operating as a country with two experts on the topic, and we'll get to them right now.

So corruption, conflict of interest, this is all the name of the game that we are talking and we're delighted to have our guest today, Susan Glasser, staff writer at The New Yorker, co-author of The Divider, Trump in the White House, 2017-2021. I'm assuming there will be a sequel because I don't know if you guys have heard, he's back.

And Eric Lipton, who is an investigative reporter in the Washington Bureau of the New York Times and has wrote about these issues. Susan and Eric, thank you so much for taking the time today. Eric, I'm going to start with you because you're in mid kerfuffle right now. You are kerfuffling as we speak. You've been writing about these conflicts of interest and corruption. Can you explain to us very briefly why?

What happened to Ignite Blue Sky, which turned into Red Sky when they got a hold of this? Eric, what happened?

I've been writing about the Trump family for a decade now, and I've been watching the conflicts of interest that emerge from the mixing of their personal businesses with the governance of the United States. And, you know, at the times, we're quite careful about the terms that we use. And what I'm seeing in this administration, without question, is conflicts of interest. These are not apparent conflicts. These are real conflicts. I'm seeing ethics violations. I'm seeing, you know, unprecedented violence.

kind of breaking of norms in terms of these financial conflicts. But when you use the word corruption to me, you really need a quid pro quo, which is you need to take a gift and

And then the action that comes as a result of that gift needs to be in response to that specific gift. And I think that there is the appearance of corruption and the governance is being corrupted. But whether or not President Trump is acting in a corrupt way. I see. People were upset that you were not being definitive enough about calling it corruption.

because you were using the more legal definition, which has been watered down, I guess, by the Supreme Court. Is that sort of where all this is coming from?

I mean, I relate more to the terminology like around a bribe. A bribe is something when you take money and you respond to that bribe offer with a direct – with that cash. You got to go full Menendez. Right. You got to go full – Gold bars. I have gold bars sewn into my jacket. Yes. And I am going to be now giving Egypt a bribe.

a better deal because of that. - I think the governance has been corrupted through this process as to whether or not President Trump is acting corruptly is, I'm just, I'm observing and waiting for additional evidence. - Agnostic. - I'm interested, Susan, in what you think. Maybe you disagree. - Susan, talk to me. Talk to me, Susan, this word corruption.

Look, let's stipulate on the front end here that corruption knows no party and no bounds. We are here in Washington, both Eric and I, and we've been around long enough to see Democrats and Republicans, of course Menendez, not the only gold bar. I remember there was a Congressman Bill Jefferson years ago. They found piles of cash in his freezer. In his freezer. In his freezer. Right.

I want to say that on the front end. However, I also want to say that even for we journalists who are generally allergic and should use this word unprecedented very, very sparingly, uh, that this is a fair word in my view to use right now for what's happening.

The reason that I think Eric is being cautious about the word corruption, it's good to be cautious. But what I would say is that that's what we used to have a Justice Department for. And the thing that I think is the particular tragedy of the moment is not only that Donald Trump and his family members are literally adding zeros to the amounts involved in any previous known examples of- They're doing quite well.

You know, they're adding a lot of zeros here. There's no freezer big enough to put what they're getting into there. Can you put Air Force One in a freezer? No. Yes.

But it's not only the scale and scope of the corruption that take it into a different realm, but the fact that they've systematically gone after weakening the rule of law that would go along with constraining our leaders from accepting this kind of money. It used to be a big deal to do something that had the appearance of

of potential impropriety or the appearance of confraction. I mean, this is what a lot of Washington, quote unquote, accountability reporting was like when I got here as a kid right out of college in the 1990s. Okay. You know, there was a whole Bill Clinton fundraising scandal, no controlling legal authority. Forget about that. Right. Okay. Now we've just exploded the campaign finance laws we have, and I'm sure we'll talk about it. Crypto, uh,

coin for the Trump family that's literally going into the pocket of the president of the United States. Right, the meme coin. So for me, this issue of, I'm glad we started with this question of when is it corruption or not, because if we stick to that legal definition, Eric, unfortunately, in a world where Donald Trump has appointed his former personal lawyer to be the attorney general of the United States, who literally was a registered felon,

foreign lobbyist for the government of Qatar and has, according to you and your colleagues at The New York Times, personally signed off on a legal guidance allowing Donald Trump to accept a $400 million Boeing jet to be the new Air Force One from Qatar. Yes. In his defense, it is a very nice plane apparently it is.

Two bedrooms, nine bathrooms. It is, if this were being rented on the Upper West Side, I think people would throw down quite a bit for it. But let's talk about, so I find this to be a fascinating discussion because in the United States, there's sort of this idea, this fiction, I think,

In the same with separation of church and state, there is this wall, the separation of governance and business. But that separation with Trump does not exist. But let's roll back further than Pam Bondi and, you know, whatever the DOJ might be saying about this jet. And let's talk about what has set the ground for this, which I think is Citizens United,

A, right, all those campaign financing. B, when the Supreme Court said it has to be an explicit, right, quid pro quo. Was that that case? Yeah, no. For the former governor of Virginia? Right, and was ultimately acquitted. And then the third leg of this chair is the decision that the president is immune to

from any of these kinds of corruption investigations, as long as he is acting within the bounds of his presidential duties. Given those three tent posts, is there a world where even explicit quid pro quo can be investigated when it comes to the activities of the president? Haven't we disarmed our entire government

ethics infrastructure through the Supreme Court. I'm not even talking about he's doing unprecedented things. Eric, I'll start with you. Yeah, it is a really important question. I mean, first of all, the president is exempt under law from the criminal process

conflict of interest law. It's a crime and you could go to jail as a federal employee for taking an action that a particular action that impacts your family or yourself and your financial interest. And you could be charged by the Justice Department if the Justice Department were investigating that. The president and the vice president are exempt from that.

So already, and this president has cited that frequently, I have no conflicts of interest. Legally- I can't. Right. But what the Supreme Court did last year, it opens a question as to whether or not the Justice Department could even charge the president with accepting a bribe because-

If it's an official act, there is an open question. There's a footnote in that decision, which leaves it slightly ambiguous as to whether or not actually in what the Supreme Court majority wrote, there's a footnote that leaves a bit unclear whether or not there's enough room still to charge a president with bribery. And how would you gather evidence if you're not allowed to get his, everything's under executive privilege? But the Constitution does make clear, though, there is the language in the Constitution does that impeachment is,

that one of the crimes and misdemeanors that, you know, that you could be, that could justify impeachment, the word specifically bribery is there in the constitution as the grounds for an impeachment proceeding. Well, isn't it even the emoluments clause? Isn't that, you know, doesn't that in and of itself,

justify not being able to take a giant plane. An emoluments clause could result in a civil suit against the president that would require the president to give back the emolument that he or she received from the foreign government. And it could also be the basis of potentially an impeachment proceeding, but it wouldn't be a criminal matter. Let that be a lesson, by the way, to the kids out there.

Never take an emolument. If any of your classmates, if anybody offers you an emolument, tell them constitutionally. Right. All right. Quick break, and then we shall be right back.

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Hey everyone, Jon Stewart here. Do you guys get hungry? I know I do. And when I get hungry, I love to have a sandwich. Sandwiches. I don't know if you've had them. I've talked to people and they're like macaroni and cheese. Yes, fine. You can eat that too in a bowl. But a bowl is not how certainly lunch should occur. So for me, the sandwich is the perfect choice.

You can take a variety of different breads and a variety of different ingredients and combine them. I'm telling you, the options are limitless. So the next time you find yourselves hungry, try a sandwich. They're delicious. We are back.

But the bottom line question that you ask is that over a series of things that have happened over the last decade, it has made these questions much harder. And it's also part of the reason that what's happening is a conflict of interest. It is unethical. It is unprecedented. It is corrupting the government. I agree with all those things.

But whether or not it is legally, you know, he is acting corruptly, I think that has become a harder question to answer. But it almost doesn't matter. These terms are important and we have to be careful with the words we use, but it doesn't matter because what's happening is unethical and wrong and it's damaging to American history and to democracy.

And we are committed, and Susan is as well, we're documenting this. The thing that I think really matters is as a reporter is that let's get the primary details, the primary documents, the proof, and let's bring that to the public. And that's what we've been doing. - Transparency, it's the only thing you can do. - That's right. We are the only thing left of accountability. The Justice Department, the IGs have been fired.

Oh, my God. The Office of Government Ethics. The head has been fired. Right. The Speaker of the House today. This was a great one today. The Speaker of the House. I don't know if you saw this, Mike Johnson. So they asked him about these gifts that are coming, to your point, Eric, of the unprecedented nature. And he said...

This is nothing like what the Biden crime family did. Trump is transparent. And the reporter said, we don't know who these meme coin people are. We don't have any information on that. They're just putting money directly in. And he goes, I don't know anything about that. And the reporter goes, isn't Congress the oversight body? And he just goes, ah, we're good. Susan, talk about how that's changed. You were talking about since you've been there, you've seen the erosion of these barriers.

How are you seeing that play out? Because it's definitely not just this administration. Oh, no. I mean, this is the sort of the final death rattle of the post-Nixon era, post-Watergate reforms that were designed to protect the country in many ways and protect our political system from the kind of abuses that Richard Nixon envisioned. Because it wasn't just

by the way, his, um, you know, specific coverup of Watergate. There were a whole host of abuses of power, uh, that Richard Nixon. That's why Agnew went down, right? Didn't Spiro Agnew. Well, that's right. The vice president, that was actually for corruption that of a very old fashioned, you know, Menendez like crying. He was literally getting bags of cash, uh, uh,

predating his time in the federal government as vice president. That's right. I believe B.B. Rebozo had a slush fund and they were all... That's right. Richard Nixon was seeking to weaponize the IRS against his political opponents. I mean, there was a whole array of abuses of power that will be very familiar to anybody who spent any time reading Eric's terrific coverage in the New York Times about the Trump family and its essential use of the inner... Basically, the

unclear barriers between their personal financial interests, their personal political interests, and use of official government agencies and actions to benefit themselves in a whole host of ways, both personally, financially, and politically. That's what Donald Trump's 2019 impeachment was over, was essentially seeking to take hundreds of millions of dollars in

military and security assistance that the United States Congress had authorized for Ukraine. And to say, I'm not going to give that to you unless you undertake this personal political errand for me of investigating my political opponents. So this is Donald Trump's playbook, his MO, and the scale and scope of it is frankly Richard Nixon's fever dream. I mean, the level of, you know,

not only the dollar signs, but across such a wide array of fronts. And the fact that Trump sort of does it almost in front of us, flaunting us, has served in a bizarre way to insulate him. But you're right, John, I think to underscore that

Trump is the beneficiary of this erosion over time of these laws and institutions. And by the way, one of the most important of the post Watergate reforms was a level of campaign finance

limits, disclosure. There was even a system of public financing that had previously collapsed for our presidential general election nominees. And the Supreme Court essentially dealt the final blow to those post-Watergate campaign finance rules in its Citizens United thing. And actually, last year, when I went back and did a big piece for The New Yorker on the kind of Republican fundraising in this post-Citizens United era and looking at basically the final co-opting

of the Republican establishment on behalf of Donald Trump in the 2024 campaign. The amount of money that was flowing into Donald Trump's coffers in that campaign, that should have been this incredible warning sign for democracy. And of course, we all know now that Elon Musk managed to spend at a minimum around $300 million essentially to promote Trump and other Republican candidates and causes

last year, it's just an extraordinary amount. And I think it's the classic thing. The red lines were crossed before people even understood that they were red lines. And now we're living in a world where what really frightens me is, as Eric said, that most of the watchdogs are gone. Most of the accountability that had been built in our system is gone. And even when journalists like Eric at The Times are doing this great reporting, it's

The public is, even those people who don't like Trump, I fear is supine, is overwhelmed, is unable to meaningfully process how serious a blow this is to our democracy. And actually, what I'm worried about, I don't know if both of you think this as well, what I'm worried about right now is that we're actually seeing corruption being institutionalized into our democracy.

executive branch in Congress refusing to operate as any kind of a check and balance in ways that will actually have long-term ramifications even beyond the personal enrichment of Trump and his family. I agree wholeheartedly. And Eric, I'll get to you on this because to that point, Susan, what I would say is right now, the only check on any sort of corruption is partisanship.

is ideological opposition. The Republicans were very clear about going after the Joe Biden crime family. They wanted to impeach on that. But even impeachment, I think, has shown itself to be a feckless check on whatever corruption that the situation in Ukraine in terms of weapons shipments for investigations into a political opponent.

is as clear cut as you can possibly be, let alone the January 6th insurrection as clear cut an impeachment as it can be. And it failed basically because at its heart, it's a political process. And if the political process is broken, but I'll go further than that. You know, Eric, I once asked Nancy Pelosi, she was on the show, she was talking about

we got to get money out of politics. It corrupts people. And I said, well, you know, you raised $32 million for your PAC. And she said, that's different. And I said, well, why is that different? And she said, because it doesn't corrupt us. I said, well, you just said money corrupts. Yes, them. But what about you? No. And even when Ed Martin, when he took over for the DNC, what did he say? We need these billionaires out. They're billionaires, not our billionaires. Our billionaires are good.

their billionaires are bad so the system i fear has surrendered we we've already surrendered now it's just a question of how bad is this going to get eric yeah i mean i think you know unfortunately campaign finance at this point given the supreme court actions is sort of a lost cause and i don't really see you know unless you kind of completely remake the supreme court how we're ever going back um and i mean but what what we're seeing is is the personal enrichment

You know, with Trump, he is both, you know, effectively the chief regulator of securities and exchange by appointing the head of the SEC. And his family now runs one of the world's largest cryptocurrency stablecoin issuers that is regulated. So he is both the regulator and the regulated regulator.

And and that we that's the threshold that we have crossed that really has no precedent and that, you know, campaign finance and the corruption of government through, you know, influence and access that comes with campaign donations has been something we have written about for many years and and tried to document. But we just have never seen something where the elected official is personally benefiting to the extent that Trump is through his family.

So the whole campaign finance debate is important, but it's tangential to what's going on here, which is direct personal enrichment.

In a way, you know, the fact is that that like President Trump will benefit from there's this legislation pending in Congress called the Genius Act that would for the first time recognize the issuance of stable coins, which are a form of cryptocurrency as legally part of the financial system in the United States. As a security or just as to just as a. As a form of currency, basically.

as an alternative form of currency that in which you have a form of crypto that's worth a dollar consistently and it's backed up with treasuries and it's constantly worth a dollar. FDIC insured? It's not insured, but it would be recognized by the government and it would be regulated by the government. But once that happens, while it does create a regulatory structure to some extent, you think the industry doesn't want that.

But what the industry recognizes is as soon as that exists, then banks and other financial institutions will begin to embrace stable coins. And they will really become almost a competitor of credit cards and financial cash. Oh, my God. And for the Trump family, they are the seventh largest stable coin issuer. Oh.

In the United States now. And so he is urging Congress to act. Wait, they issue stable coins? You don't, it doesn't have to be created through mining or anything? You just issue it? You issue it. And the Trump's got $2 billion worth of stable coin deposits from the government of UAE a few weeks ago, just before Trump flew over there.

And now, overnight, they became one of the world's largest issuers of stable coins. And Trump is urging Congress to act on this legislation, and he's going to sign it. But his family is already profiting, and he is profiting enormously off of the same industry that he is giving birth to as the top regulator. It's like we've never seen anything like that. That is such a blatant profit of interest. But isn't he just exploiting? Don't we owe him, to some extent, a debt of gratitude?

Is he not making explicit what is the operating system, oftentimes, we like to pretend it's not, of the world, which is a pay-to-play system where the rich and the powerful have an unusual backscratching relationship and access to each other. I'll give you an example. So here's the small bore example of that. Susan, you can talk to this.

congressional members serve on committees that regulate pharmaceuticals, other types of things. They can also trade stocks. And there are numerous examples of congressional leaders being in meetings where they learn information about what is going to happen to a certain product that is going to have profound impact on stocks and then making trades that play upon that information.

and nothing ever happens to them. And how is that different other than the scale? Isn't he just supersizing the corruption that we have allowed?

I take the point, but I think that we're capable of holding multiple different levels of thoughts in our head. The difference between the petty crook who keeps cash stashed in his freezer and the most powerful man in the world accepting billions of dollars in personal enrichment while at the same time negotiating major international arrangements.

is so fundamentally different in scale, scope, and character that it is, of course, a much greater thing. I say scale and scope, but is it different in character? There are sins and there are sins. Is it different in, is insider trading amongst congressional people

really different in character. Yes, it is. By the way, it's interesting. I think insider trading among members of Congress is a good example of something that they may finally be doing something about right now, which is something. But, you know,

It's like handing out traffic tickets when, you know, the head of the city is a murderer. I mean, you know, the scale of the actions that you're talking about are so vastly different. And I think Eric is...

making a point here that imagine essentially if Andrew Carnegie or John D. Rockefeller was the president of the United States, setting the rules by which he could have that railroad monopoly in the end of the 19th century, and disabling his competitors, and rigging the system in every possible way, and performing both functions all at once.

All right, quick break, and then we shall be right back. You may get a little excited when you shop at Burlington. Oh, the price! Did you see that? They have my face! It's like a whole new world! I can buy two! I'm saving so much!

Burlington saves you up to 60% off other retailers' prices every day. Will it be the low prices or the great brands? Burlington. Deals. Brands. Wow. I told you so. Styles and selections vary by store. We're back. On the crypto thing, buyback.

By the way, it's not just Donald Trump and his sons who are now in this business that the government is essentially going to determine the future of at the same time they're earning money from it. Their partners in this business are the sons of Steve Witkoff, Donald Trump's everything envoy, who is... No, that's literally true. Okay.

And who is traveling the world going from Gaza and Hamas to meeting with Putin all by himself without a translator to Iran. Witkoff and his two sons are the business partners of Donald Trump and his two sons. Howard Lutnick is a huge proponent and investor in the crypto industry. Last summer, I think one of the signal moments, very overlooked, although covered in The Times and The Journal and elsewhere,

uh, was when Donald Trump took time out of the campaign trail in 2024 and went to Nashville, Tennessee for the annual national crypto conference. He was cheered like a hero by the crypto industry. And he made promises that he is now fulfilling to this industry, uh, to, uh, essentially help treat it like a currency and to give it the status that will enable them, uh, to become even, uh,

more wealthy. And he followed that up in September, again, in the middle of this campaign, by taking time out to announce that they were going to get into the crypto business with the Witkoffs and his sons and create this company called World Liberty Financial. There's a classic quote from Donald Trump because he used to call crypto a, quote, scam.

And then when he made this announcement in September of 2024, he said, well, you know, I don't really know what it is, but everybody's got to get into it. So we got to get in it. Everybody's in on it. Everybody says it's great. So I'm going to do it. Yeah. Yeah. No, you're dead on right. But you brought up a really interesting point, Susan, which is you kind of reflected it back to imagine if Andrew Carnegie or any of these guys was also president.

So there is a really unique situation here, you know, to Mike Johnson's point, which is, well, the Biden crime family, they're not business people. Trump is a business person. So why shouldn't he rather than corruption? Isn't he just monetizing his brand? Isn't that how he would view it? How is that different from the Biden family, which is corrupt?

What, consultants and lawyers? I don't know. I think you can answer that question by looking at the differences between the first term and the second term. And in the first term, the president and his family agreed to not do what they called new international deals. So they continued to run their real estate business. To avoid the conflict. Right.

Right. And now we did all write about the Trump International Hotel in D.C. and how it became a den of lobbyists and foreign diplomats that were buying, you know, $50 martinis or, you know, $100 Trump seafood towers at the Benjamin Bar. Right.

By the way, the crab was fantastic. Yeah. The Mar-a-Lago also became a magnet and he tried to bring like the G7 or the G20, I forget which, to Trump Darrell. But they were not, in fact, doing deals overseas, announcing new ones. Still small ball, right. But now, not only are they doing new international deals, but they're actually doing new international deals with foreign government entities.

So, you know, UAE is putting $2 billion into the World Liberty Financial, you know, in stable coins. Qatar, just a couple weeks ago, signed a deal to do a $5 billion real estate project that's going to have a Trump Hotel. Oman has a project, it's

leasing the land for another project that's going to have a Trump golf course. The Saudis gave $2 billion to Jared Kushner to invest in. And Serbia, at the site that NATO bombed during the Clinton administration to stop the Balkans war, is now turning that same site over to Jared Kushner where there's going to be a Trump hotel.

And Donald Trump Jr. was in Serbia and having dinner with the president of Serbia. And the president of Serbia was posted on Facebook how, I'm roasting a pig tonight to have dinner with the son of the president of the United States as he's trying to keep his job as president because there's huge protest in Serbia. Oh, God.

Dear Lord. And he's giving land to the family of the president to build the Trump International Hotel. So having that kind of interactions with foreign governments at the same time as you, that you are directing foreign policy and making decisions, for example, should Saudi Arabia be able to get F-35s? Should the United States authorize the sale of advanced AI chips to Saudi Arabia or to

You know, UAE, you know, Qatar and what role is it, you know, the military presence in Qatar and Serbia, should Serbia, should the United States help Serbia's effort to get into the EU? I mean, these are all huge. And how are those choices influenced by the fact that money is flowing from those governments to the personally to the pockets of the president of the United States?

That creates an appearance of corruption that really undermines the legitimacy of government in a way that is, for any person, would be disturbing. And it's happening again and again and again in front of us at a scale that's totally, it's much worse than the first term.

What you just said there, I thought, was really the crucial point, which is undermining the stability. For those of us, and this part I think it's important to get into because all these ideas of, well, they're going to benefit from this and they're going to benefit from that, it's all sort of amorphous, right? So let's get into what can be the real ramifications of this. Those systems are

that don't have the institutional checks undergirding their financial situation or any of those other things are less stable. They are more, the governments that function in this way, much more autocratically, much more, you know, the kleptocracies, all those other things, hollow out the civil institutions that hold countries together

in difficult times. It's why you see those countries and systems collapse violently. Is that when we talk about the ramifications of this and we really want to get into what are we risking? Is that something that comes to mind?

John, right now, the United States of America is the single largest source of global instability. That's bold. Yeah. I mean, there's no question about that. When a superpower goes rogue, you have an enormous crisis for the world. And the one element that...

We should add to Eric's already very daunting and distressing list of ways in which the co-mingling of Trump's personal business and America's foreign policy interests create a crisis is, of course, Donald Trump's single-handed upending of the world economy. And by imposing quote unquote reciprocal tariffs that aren't reciprocal on essentially all of the world's major economies. And

in particular, targeting America's allies as much, if not more so, than most of her adversaries. And the reason this matters is because this is the ultimate vehicle for conflicts of interest, for ways in which the President of the United States personally

is the decider on what happens to the fate of countries and companies. And that opens up corruption. Every lobbyist in the world is busy investing, you know, and getting other companies to invest in lobbyists who have direct connections to the Trump family here in Washington right now. The reason for that is that Donald Trump has fundamentally shifted the balance of power in our society to essentially, you

Instead of a rule of law society to a essentially a personalist regime So he has become kind of he's become the kind of instability that you're talking about, right? you know, that was America's theory of the case in what we saw in the 1990s as kind of the Democratizing world is like, you know democracies don't go to war against each other You know that this notion call it the quaint Washington consensus of the the late Clinton era which was the notion of

that integrating countries who had previously been outcast into the world economic and political order, drawing China and Russia into the rule of law, to the web of institutions would lead to democratization, to further stability and to further peace in the world. It didn't work out that way.

And so now we have a situation where, you know, a quarter century later, it's the United States that has gone rogue on the very institutions in the world that have actually secured and maintained our power. So for example, Donald Trump is going after, he doesn't like the idea that the US dollar, you know, is so strong. He wants to weaken the US dollar. He's risking

undermining the US dollar as the global reserve currency. And why does that matter? Because that's one of the main reasons that we're all so rich and we enjoy this incredible lifestyle here in the world. When countries are making now a determination that Donald Trump is not just some crazy four-year aberration in the world, that he might actually be a long-term new direction for

for the United States and therefore the world. They're making decisions in a way that I think they weren't, they were avoiding making in Trump's first term that really have the kind of consequences. But yeah, I don't think it's overstating it. Maybe you guys do. But in my view, we're the instability. No, I think changing it into a transaction, and I'll go further, Eric, maybe one of the reasons why

Trump has a bigger problem now with Canada and with the EU is that they still operate through this system of democratic checks and balances. It's a bit more bureaucratic. It is not one man, one man sitting in a room, shaking a hand, going, I'll give you a jet and you'll give me this. It's not as transactional.

because it goes through the processes that are created by constitutional stability. But if you remove that,

You really are knocking away. You're hollowing something out that has worked for us for a very long time. Yes. Yeah, no, it's really interesting just because this nation for decades now has been the promoter of what is called the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. I mean, we were effectively punishing people.

companies and governments in nations around the world, if there ever was any type of a government contract that involved a payment to an executive abroad, basically. And the United States was trying to enforce its value system across the world for decades now.

in Africa and Europe and Trump has basically announced that FCPA is the lingo in DC, that they're not really gonna do Foreign Criminals Practices Act enforcement anymore. - No, he said basically, if you can't bribe foreign leaders,

You are going to put American businesses at a disadvantage. So we have to be able to bribe. I guess the question is, is he just saying, well, I'm going to operate in the world as it is, not in the world as we would like it to be? I mean, I think the United States was successful in a way. I mean, you know, there's still parts of, you know, particularly like, you know, Democratic Republic of Congo, which I've spent some time writing about and where it's still overt and companies, the American companies left, you

DRC mining companies because they were so concerned about the corruption and being accused of it. But the United States to some extent has succeeded in really discouraging that kind of corruption. And so when you say Europe and Canada and other nations are like, they're, you know, they're reacting like, how is this possible? Because the United States actually successfully created a norm that now Trump is exploding. And it, it,

So, I mean, to some extent he's benefiting. And not just exploding, suggesting that creating that norm made us suckers.

and that we are the big losers of the international order that we created. That is such an important point. Donald Trump sketches this American hellscape vision, which is fascinating that, you know, for the guy who also- A shining city on fire on a hill. Yeah, exactly. You know, the dumpster fire vision of America is what he's been selling to his base for, you know, essentially this whole almost decade that he's been in politics. And it's completely

at odds with the notion if America was getting ripped off and was at a disadvantage because we wouldn't pay bribes and everybody else would, then how come we were the world's largest, most successful economy? How come everybody from around the world wanted to come here? How come our regulatory norms used to be the leading norms for people around the world? Obviously, since the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act was passed, I believe, uh,

in the late 70s or early 80s, it was kind of one of the last gasps of that post-Watergate bout of reforms. The United States economy has only grown and grown and become more dominant and successful. And so it's really about making war on the idea of America as being a kind of a value-based country.

global superpower. Uh, and you know, in the past, right, you know, you look at other superpowers, uh, other empires, they, they were ethnic based or they were nationalist, uh, at core. And the United States was always about, uh,

the notion of an idea. Now, we didn't always live up to it. And even the spreading of it caused instability. I mean, you mentioned the past 20 years of war to spread this stable system that completely destabilized entire regions. Yeah. And by the way, that continues to fuel a lot of Donald Trump, right? You can definitely continue to see him as a reaction against the excesses of his predecessors'

foreign policy and activism in the world. In fact, just in his Mideast tour this week, you hear him complaining about neocons and military adventures, and I'm not going to lecture you. And he's responding as much to George W. Bush's Republican-led invasion of Iraq as he is to any

acts by Democratic predecessors. So, you know, it's a reaction. It's a reactionary movement that Trump has led of a minority of Americans, by the way. You know, he won the popular vote. He came just short of a majority in the 2024 election. But it's really the core of MAGA is a minority vote.

of Americans that have passionately subscribed to Donald Trump's essentially rejectionist view. Somebody said to me, you know, Donald Trump wants to repeal the 20th century. Well, a lot of it came with all these rules and norms and laws. I mean, I think he goes by the great man theory, the, you know, like you say, the Vanderbilts, the Carnegies, the great men that created something that wasn't stable though. And it collapsed in the Great Depression and we rebuilt something that had

more stability. And I think we're undervaluing, you know, all those, all those different institutions and checks and balances as flawed as they may be.

for holding the world somewhat together, financially, at least over this time. Would that be fair? Yeah. I mean, I think that if the United States is saying that it is okay to be completely transactional and to be accepting multi-billion dollar payments from foreign governments as you're making critical foreign policy decisions, it just opens up the world to a kind of a family oligarchical

global governance that isn't transparent, that doesn't have any accountability, that is profiting a very, very thin – it's like the Turkey's government or the kind of – where you're both the financial leaders and the government leaders. And it just – the United States worked so hard for so many decades to create a world order where that was not –

you know, we were trying to move beyond that. And, and it's, it, the, the consequences of this are, you know, could last a really long time. If it, if you, if the one nation that, that just imposed this new value system globally says, okay, we're not, we're done with that. You know, we're, we don't really agree and we're going to start, you know, taking payments and making decisions. So it, it, yeah, it's, it's an, potentially enormously consequential to the whole world order, honestly, unfortunately. Yeah.

His comfort in this trip to Saudi Arabia, Qatar, you know, UAE is obvious. His comfort in a system of royalty, he looks so much happier.

there than he ever does here. You know, the only moment that I saw that felt like the Donald Trump that we see in the United States was, I think somebody from ABC News asked him about the plane and he went, that's an embarrassing question, but mostly, man, he's in his happy place. Monarchy, I think, is his happy place. I think in some respects is America

This constitutional republic that has survived 250 years and built itself up over myriad difficulties and all these, the tumult of world wars and everything else. Are we now just a subsidiary of the Trump organization? You know, certainly in the Middle East, he is in his preferred aesthetic. There is enough gold everywhere to satisfy him. But I think you're right. You know, he essentially does not subscribe to politics.

the basic principles in our Constitution. And in fact, he was directly asked about this in a television interview a couple weeks ago. And meet the press, Kirsten Welker. And she said, aren't you supposed to uphold the Constitution?

He paused and he literally said, I don't know. Right. He said, I'm not a lawyer. I mean, they were talking specifically, I think, about due process for these immigration cases. And he said, I'm not a lawyer. I think what he's shrewder than that. I think what he is doing is doctor shopping lawyers. If a lawyer says, well, this is the constitution. He goes, get rid of that lawyer and get me a lawyer who will come in here and tell me you don't have to do due process.

I think you're right that, again, this was a key shift from Trump's first term to Trump's second term is understanding, especially in the key positions like attorney general, like White House counsel, you want to have

lawyers who are going to give you what you want. And so he's taken the extraordinary step of appointing his multiple of his personal lawyers, by the way. So it's not just Pam Bondi. Todd Blanche, who's the deputy attorney general, now also acting librarian of Congress because they fired the librarian of Congress. She was making inappropriate books available to children. And you're like, you can't just, that's not what's happening at the library. No, that is not what's happening at the library. What are you talking about?

It's the personalization of power, which is so fundamentally at odds with and incompatible with a system of constitutional checks and balances. That's what Trump doesn't subscribe to. This goes all the way back to his first term, by the way. He said, you know, I have the power to do anything I want. I'm the only one that matters in our system. You know, he's long- I alone can fix it. Exactly. He's long betrayed sort of a complete-

not just ignorance for the Constitution, but a sort of rejection of its basic principles. So he goes to the Middle East. He's surrounded by emirs and kings. He's greeted with monarchical reverence. Loves it. This is what he wants to be. This is who he is. All right, quick break, and then we shall be right back.

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We're back. It's not an accident that since he stepped on the world stage, it's our allies, our democratic allies he's consistently attacked, and it's our adversaries that he's praised. Just a point. It's not about lecturing, by the way. Human rights is not some abstract construct.

Okay. Saudi Arabia, it's not just that they took a bone saw to, uh, a critic of theirs, Jamal Khashoggi, who was a columnist for the Washington Post. This is one of the most unfree societies on the planet. Okay. This is a place where, uh, women don't have basic rights, uh, granted to, uh,

others in the West centuries ago. China, it's not just that Donald Trump wants to treat as an equal with Xi Jinping. It's that he's been perfectly fine. At times in his first term, he seemed to even wave away or to justify China's human rights crackdown on the Uyghurs putting a million people in camps. Not a big deal to Donald Trump. Well, he says always,

Are we so good? Are we so nice? Right. And in some respects, you know, look, we have oftentimes, as you said, failed to live up to those higher ideals. But I think this goes beyond the types of higher ideals of personal freedoms and treating, you know, with equality and respect. This is a whole...

other thing that, you know, you can back off of personal criticism. We do business with terrible regimes all the time and they do business with us. But this is very different in that we're throwing away the system for the writ of one man.

That's the part that, and Eric, I'll ask you, once you throw that away, do you know of a situation where people have been able to get it back? Once you go to a transactional strongman theory of he makes the decisions,

I don't know how you claw that back. Unless he gets called on it and challenged, particularly by his own party. I was up on Capitol Hill last week. Yeah, good luck with that. And I was on the Senate side and I spent my entire day, I spent like 10 hours right where the senators walked out of the chambers. Right.

I was focused almost entirely on Republicans, and I ended up speaking to over 25 U.S. senators in the course of a day. I just spent the whole day there as soon as they were walking out and pestering them.

I was asking each one of them about the Trump meme coin and that he's selling access to a dinner for 220 buyers of his meme coin. Whoever spends the most money on his meme coin, they can have dinner with him and 25 of them can have a VIP reception and 25 of them will get a White House tour.

And so, you know, was that is that acceptable to you? I was asking the U.S. senators this and there was only two of them that were willing to to give any most of them gave the answer. I don't know enough about it. You know that the Republican or I don't do what I don't do walk and talks. That was it.

I don't do walk and talks, but I will never sit down with you. Right. Yeah. And yeah, so I think that what's the lasting implication of this? I mean, I think it really is going to depend upon it.

a kind of a, you know, a rejection of this approach. And if that doesn't happen, then maybe it is normalized. But so far, I mean, the Cutter, you know, 747, you're hearing resistance from Republicans in the Senate, in particular. And if it really does start to go forward, there could be a significant backlash there. Each step that seems more outrageous to

there's a certain hints of maybe he's gone too far. And so to answer your question, how normalized this becomes, it really depends upon if it becomes normal. And if as an American public, we begin to accept it. And as Susan says, one of the challenges that we face as reporters is that even when we write these stories and we try to make sure that they're understandable, plain language, and that they're distinct stories,

they, they're not, they don't, I don't sense that they're resonating as much. I mean, the American public is sort of like, well, there's nothing we can do about it. This is, you know, and, and it's just that I don't feel like the public is engaged or as outraged by some of the things that are happening. Right. And that's also part of the normalization. So if both the Republicans in Congress and the American public is just going to sort of let this become normal, then it does become normal. Well, some of that I think is because

you know, the competing vision that they're up against. First of all, it's amazing how crazy shit has to get for even a couple of Republicans to go, yeah, I might have to look into that. Like it's bananas to me how far it goes. And it just shows how fearful they are for their own political lives over that. And you've seen people excommunicated just for speaking out against that. But

The other side of it is, you know, the corruption of it just gets embedded into it and with no powerful alternative. I mean, for God's sakes, on the Democratic side, you've got Chuck Schumer going, I'm going to send a strongly worded letter with eight pretty hard questions and you'll see what's

Now, maybe it's because we're in an unusual situation of they control the Senate, they control the House, they control the executive, they mostly control the Supreme Court. Maybe if that shifts, some of this begins to get adjudicated in a different way. Do you think, Susan? Yeah. I mean, the fear is that an election is a long time away, first of all. Second of all, Democrats have a much harder time.

road ahead to actually win back control of the Senate. So that seems more unlikely. The House is much more in reach in the midterm elections. But it's not just about the partisan advantage, right? The system is being changed right now in ways, some of which will be quite hard to undo. So that's first of all. Second of all, I do think that the drama of Republicans'

was the story of the first term. And Trump won that battle. That was a hostile takeover as he and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, put it in the first term. And they succeeded in that hostile takeover. And

Now, you've essentially got Lisa Murkowski and a fully Trumpified GOP Senate. So, you know, I'm not wasting a lot of energy or breath thinking that Republicans are going to do anything other than the most mealy mouth of statements. In fact, Mike Johnson, you referenced him earlier, he also, I think, came out and said, oh, the

Never mind. Even though that emoluments clause in the Constitution specifically says it would require congressional approval for some kind of massive gift from a foreign government. But don't you think they would regain their oversight immediately if a Democratic president—

was there? In other words, will this just be, it's sort of in the way they look at the debt ceiling. Like if it's a Republican, oh yeah, no, we're going to lift the debt ceiling and everybody's going to do it. And then a Democrat comes into office and say, aren't we going to be responsible here? Let's do that. Is there a chance that we once again become a rules-based responsible country, as long as a Democrat's in charge of it, that this is a Trump phenomenon, not a

permanent change in autocratic rule? Well, remember that Democrats and Republican presidents have participated in the creeping imperial presidency. Right now, Republicans definitely subscribe to much broader, more sweeping vision of executive authority. But most presidents want to have more authority not left. And the institutional shifts, like not just in

foreign policy, but broadly speaking toward the presidency are a long-term trend that have happened under Democrats and Republicans alike. So I think you would see some, you know, reorientation where Democrats to re, uh, gain control of one or all of the branches of government. But I think that it's, it's, it's really hard to see a meaningful way where this is just going to be wiped away, given that one of our two major political parties has become

completely all right with a series of things that just don't check the box for basic democracy anymore. And that's the part that is a long-term trend, especially because we're in so much more of a politically polarized system. It is basically a fully partisan system now. The idea of a nonpartisan civil service Trump is blowing up, the idea that there's institutional imperatives for Congress rather than just partisan imperatives.

You know, that's all, I think, disappearing very quickly. Do you see that, Eric, in any way being a corrective once the cult of Trump is gone? No, I think that the partisanship has really undermined accountability. It makes it hard to have accountability when all of these investigations, whether led by Democrats or Republicans, are

That the other side is immediately dismissing them as, you know, witch hunts that are politically driven. And the Congress used to be made up of Democrats and Republicans, more so at least. I mean, like a Frank Wolf was a Republican that I can remember, or Tom Davis is a Republican. I mean, these were, you know, the conservatives, but- Partisans, but not ideological.

They were value-based Republicans. Even Orrin Hatch was a value-based Republican. Chuck Grassley is a value-based Republican to some extent. And now it's just all investigations are so partisan and even the way that the public reacts to them is so dismissive, depending on which side you're on, that it empowers the executive, the president, to just ignore them and to say, oh, this is just political nonsense.

you know, nonsense. And, and I think that it, that feeds into this, this pursuit of greater executive power and, and, and, and, and ignorance of red lines. And, and, and I think it's, it's unfortunate. And I think social media is also a factor in this where, you know, the tribes are feeding each other, you know, they're through tunnels of information that just backs up their favored,

politician. So I do, I think this, this, all of this is becoming more normalized in a way that is unfortunate and potentially long lasting, but you know, we'll see how it plays out. And, you know, first of all, we've got to get through the Trump years and, you know, we're just going to continue to, we're going to continue. Which by the way, may continue until we don't even know when it's going to end. Right. And by the way, the more power that the family amasses, look,

dynastic families in American politics are not abnormal. And the more power and influence that they amass, the more likely a dynastic influence emerges through there. I don't think that's any question. I think this is going to be with us, depending, for a very, very long time. And I will end with this. The fear for me is always the stability of these societies is

demands the consent of the governed. And if you don't have it, things like martial law get declared or they pull all kinds of emergency powers and crack down on certain things. And it creates the volatile political cycles that you see in countries that don't have the fealty, not to a man, but to a constitution. And that's my fear for the cycle that we're heading into. I'm looking...

70 years down the line, not just five. Would you guys comment on that? Yeah, I mean, rule of law, it's just, you know, the Republicans and the Democrats love to use that term, but

the rule of law is becoming less real and less apparent in society today. Our country has really been held up by that norm for centuries now, and it's becoming less and less apparent, and that's really problematic. But Susan, what are your thoughts? Last word, Susan. You got this. Sum it up. Bring us home, Susan. Rule of law, you'll miss it when it's gone.

That's the bumper sticker you never see at the rest area on the Jersey Turnpike. Thank you both very much, man. Very enlightening conversation. Very much appreciated. Susan Glasser, staff writer at The New Yorker and co-author of The Divider, Trump and the White House, 2017-2021. And Eric Lipton, who is an investigative reporter in the Washington Bureau of The New York Times. Thank you both so much for enlightening us during this time.

Well, I didn't want it to end so dark. I didn't want it to end with, we are entering an 80-year era of darkness and despair by which the rule of law shall be punished. You thought a conversation about Trump's corruption would end on a glass half full moment? Oh.

I don't know. I thought maybe they had some key to this. I kept trying to throw in there like, what about when the Congress changes it? Hey, didn't we? What about insider trading? They're like, you don't understand, motherfucker.

How deep this goes. You don't get the, is that what you guys were thinking? I mean, I was kind of focusing on, you said it a few times, I think, about how crazy it is that Trump is just like so comfortable on this trip. And of course he is because he's making lots of money, but I just cannot imagine being in the same room as MBS and doing what he did, which was fall asleep. Hey, listen, man. Gotta keep one eye open. Nap time.

Listen, yeah, they're not, listen, that's not, that's not where they're taking the chainsaw. That's for sure. And, you know, listen, you guys know when you fly east, much harder on the jet lag. Absolutely. And listen, I loved Susan's sort of the scope of her knowledge I thought was really, really

And I also, I mean, I found the conversation just around the use of the word corruption that you guys started with very interesting because yes, the Supreme Court changed what's considered to be bribery and corruption in government, but the Supreme Court is corrupt.

like they accept millions of dollars in gifts and have made it easy for themselves to do that. That's a great point. So at what point do we stop using their definitions and start using the definition that you're just using your eyes and ears to accurately describe a situation? That's a fabulous point. And I also think anytime you get in on the idea that corruption is purely defined in the legal arena,

you'll lose sight of what real corruption is it's just corruption to me is the erosion of those things that hold something up with integrity and the minute you erode that whether it's

the legal definition of it or not, it is certainly corrupting of the tent posts that we kind of relied on. If you want a quo at this point, like you're going to have to pay up. Oh, we're getting the quids, but I don't know about- $1 million to the inaugural fund does not get you a quo. Yeah. And also the idea like, so Cutter, they're going to give him a $400 million jet just because, just because.

Okay. They're just cool like that. Yeah. They're cool like that. Yeah. How about Susan dropping bars on rule of law? Bars? I was like, okay, Susan. And by the way, gifts are corrupt. Like, why do you think grandparents lavish grandkids? That's not like, oh, I gave you a toy plane because I am buying your love. I give my dog so many treats. Right. All of this. This is how I became the favorite. Right.

Also the proving. I mean, I can't imagine trying to parse through all of the companies and all of the shady movements to prove. You're not allowed access to the communications now. The Supreme Court has made it so you don't have it. You can't have access to the communications. You can't prove anything if the president is involved. And do you think like if he was just doing one of these things, it would be easier to indict him on like.

both literally and in the court of public opinion. Because isn't that what like the Biden crime family was? Was it was just one thing that everybody could sort of focus on? Look at how long it takes to investigate. Like even just Hunter Biden, the dude had like a laptop with images of him like naked holding a gun.

And like that was a three year investigation. Like imagine if you can't get access to anything. And it's crazy. Like you just had an hour long conversation. You didn't touch on the media. What about all of the money he's making there? Like it really is endless. Oh yeah. True social. No. $40 million for a documentary. I'll get, get them back on the line. I want, I want to ask them more. Now I feel terrible. I've missed all these things. No, there's not enough time. I think. Another episode. Yeah. What about the listeners? What do they want to know this week? All right. We got a couple for you this week.

All right. What do we got? Nowadays, what's the point of playing by the rules? I don't know anymore because the system requires. Yeah, I don't fucking know. It's a great like I remember in the old days, like if the president can get a blowjob from an intern, what's keeping the earth on its axis? Like we're so far beyond. I think that's really where you get down to.

Is he exploiting the system that we've all been operating in, but with rose colored glasses on and didn't recognize like, yeah, money talks, bullshit walks.

And that's kind of how it is. And this dude's just ripped the bandaid off and said, look at yourselves. Like he's forcing us to view how this whole thing really works. Rules of a suckers. That's what I'm saying, kid. What's the other one? If you could only choose one, would you advance or destroy AI?

wait well i can only choose one that's correct no but that's no you can't keep in mind the ai is listening oh this is a hypothesis question it's like if if and butts are candy and nuts every day would be christmas like no it doesn't work that way i refuse to answer your hypothetical on there it's like saying like uh you know if we'd never advanced uh

uh you know physics well then there wouldn't have been an atomic bomb like you just can't work that way what i would choose to advance is humanity's understanding of not having to do everything that they can do that you don't always have to be in the meeting and go hey should we reanimate the virus from 1919 that wiped out all those people and like somebody in the office should be like

I don't know about Rihanna. Is there something else? Is there some way we could learn about it without unleashing it again? Is that something we could do? No progress requires providence and caution. And so you have to advance it because it's going to, anyway, there's an inevitability to it, but you also have to advance our ability to understand how to mitigate. It's like, you know, we've all talked about global warming like this all the time. I'm like, look,

i don't care how many cop conferences they do i don't care how many times you tell people what if you just got a smaller car like that's not somehow we're gonna have to figure out a way to mitigate like somebody's gonna have to clean this up if they're relying on humans to stop being humans and that's i feel the same way about ai

And everything else. This is the darkest episode we've done. And on that note. But it's like saying like the wheel, would you go forward with it? And you're like, yes. But that means that there will be, you know, trucks that have missiles on the back of them. Like, yeah. It's yin and yang, baby. Light and dark. We got to manage it.

Got to manage the shadows. Hell yeah. Speaking of bars. All right. How are the ways that they get ahold of us? Twitter, we are Weekly Show Pod. Instagram threads, TikTok, Blue Sky. We are Weekly Show Podcast.

And you can like, subscribe, and comment on our YouTube channel, The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart. Thank you once again, guys. Fabulous. And thank you for the conversation after that. I thought that was very, very thoughtful of you guys. Lead producer, Lauren Walker. Producer, Brittany Mamedovic. Video editor and engineer, Rob Vitolo. Audio editor and engineer, Nicole Boyce. Researcher and associate producer, Jillian Spear. And our executive producers, Chris McShane, Katie Gray. Come on, people. Stand. Stand in the light.

Oh, fuck. All right. We'll see you guys next time. Bye-bye. The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart is a Comedy Central podcast. It's produced by Paramount Audio and Busboy Productions. Paramount Podcasts.