>> From WXXI News.

This is Connections.

I'm Evan Dawson.

Our connection this hour was made in 2011, when investigative journalist David Cay Johnston offered a kind of warning about Donald Trump.

Trump had been musing publicly about running for president for years and increasingly often during the Obama administration.

Johnston had covered Trump for two decades, and he wrote at the time that if Donald Trump ever got to the white House, he would see himself as an all powerful dictator, unconstrained by constitutional limits on his office.

Johnston also warned that Trump would not willingly relinquish power after January 6th.

We knew that Johnston was correct about that last claim, but he got plenty of skepticism and some downright mockery over the idea that Donald Trump would try to fashion himself as a dictator and not agree to basic limits on a president's power.

This past week, David Cay Johnston had the chance to do a little I told you so.

It's a story that might have gotten more traction if not for the seismic events in Minneapolis and elsewhere.

President Trump sat down for a long interview with The New York Times, and in that interview, he declared that no one can check his power, no one but himself.

Here's how the times characterized it.

Quote, President Trump told The Times during a wide ranging interview that he alone was the arbiter of his authority as commander in chief.

He brushed aside international law and other checks on his power to order the U.S.

military to strike or invade nations around the world.

When asked if there were limits on his powers, Trump said, yeah, there is one thing my own morality, my own mind.

It's the only thing that can stop me.

End quote.

Today we welcome back David Cay Johnston to discuss the implications of that statement and what else David might be concerned about.

He's a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and author and professor of practice in journalism at RIT.

David, welcome back to the program.

>> Well, thank you.

And by the way, I also teach criminal justice, political science, and law, as I taught for 15 years on the faculty at Syracuse University College of Law.

>> And I know you're just out of class and you're generous with your time today.

I want to start by listening to the actual audio of the exchange that President Trump had with The New York Times on the subject of the limits of his power.

Let's listen.

>> Do you see any checks on your power on the world stage?

Is there anything that could stop you if you wanted to?

>> Yeah.

There's one thing.

My own morality, my own mind.

It's the only thing that can stop it.

And that's very good.

I don't need international law.

I'm not looking to hurt people.

>> Do you feel your administration needs to abide by international law on the global stage?

>> Yeah I do.

I you know, I do, but it it depends what your definition of international law is.

>> All right David do you want to do a little I told you so first.

>> yeah.

I wish as many people have written to me, more people had listened to me in the period from 2011 through 2016. my batting average on predictions about Trump is holding steady at a thousand.

My batting average on how Congress, particularly the Republican majorities in Congress, would deal with Trump.

That's pretty bad.

it's in the maybe the the the high one hundreds.

but the The Donald's behavior is so open and obvious.

You only have to study him.

And I had the benefit and privilege of for years being able to do that.

I've spent hundreds of hours with him, one on one, and his comment to my colleagues at my well, not people who succeeded me at the New York Times.

I think are very revealing on several levels that about who Donald is and how he thinks.

>> So, you know, I think it's possible that some Americans will hear that, David, and think, well, that's just Trump being Trump.

But I also think that this second Trump administration is in some ways profoundly different than the first.

It is more prepared to act more brazen.

It is staffed by very different people than we saw in the first Trump administration, and it is much more aggressive in asserting power here and around the world.

Do you see it that way?

>> Absolutely.

That's exactly what happened the first time around.

Donald, by his own account, did not expect to win.

So as you approach the election candidates normally began identifying, well, who do I want to vet the incoming 4000 important political appointees?

I'm going to be able to put in what policies do I want to pursue?

Trump did none of that.

Absolutely none of it.

In fact, when his family arrived at the white House and were given a tour by Obama and Obama aides Jared Kushner and Don junior, and I don't know who else but those two went into the office area, which is a very crowded packed place and asked, well, how many of these people do we get to keep?

Well, none of them.

They're political appointees.

They all go.

That is how utterly unprepared they were.

And then Trump appointed people around him who put brakes on him, who said, Mr.

President, you can't do that.

It's against the law.

Mr.

President.

that requires the approval of Congress and a variety of other things that constrained him this time around.

He's surrounded by zealots and people with little regard for the law.

And who hewed this theory developed by John Hugh, who's now a professor of law in Berkeley, California, that we have a unitary executive.

And I've written that that is a prescription for corruption, venality.

and trampling on the rights of the people.

The reason we have all these boards and commissions of five members, three of one of the majority party, two from the minority party, is to act as a check and a balance on excessive actions by the executive.

>> I understand that with everything going on in Minneapolis.

Minneapolis in particular, the focus of the media and the public has not been on these comments from the president.

But at the same time, when a president says only my own mine and my own morality can check my power, I'm a little surprised this didn't get more attention.

Are you.?

>> Very much so, because I thought, along with his interview last year to The Atlantic magazine, where he said, I run the country in the whole world, something I had also said.

He believes these were important disclosures about how Donald Trump views himself.

in 1988, I was the first person to ever write about Donald becoming president of the United States.

I recognize that he was the most skilled in a in a class by himself, con artist I had ever met.

There are a number of con artists I've exposed over the 60 years, almost of my career, who've gone to prison after I revealed what they were doing, and then police and prosecutors got on to them.

And Trump was an extraordinarily skilled con artist.

he is appallingly ignorant.

And yet I meet people all the time who tell me how wonderful we have this incredible genius in the white House.

all the things he knows.

He doesn't know anything.

And the times article really laid out how Donald believes he is above the law.

He believes he is the law.

And, you know, he put those little hedges in after my own morality.

well, yes, I believe in international law, but then it depends on what you mean by international law.

That's not how it works in a system of rule of law.

>> Yeah.

I mean, the actual the three statements he made about international law, the first thing he said was, I don't need international law.

And then he was asked, do you think you have to abide by it?

And he says, well, of course.

But then he hedged and said, but it depends on what you mean by international law.

So in our second half hour, we're going to talk more about the implications of that perspective as well here.

And I want to open it up to listeners.

If you've got questions.

Comments for David this hour, you can call the program toll free.

844295 talk.

It's 8442958255263 WXXI.

If you call from Rochester 2639994, email the program Connections at wxxi.org.

If you're watching on the WXXI News YouTube channel, please like and subscribe there and you can join the chat there.

And Jack in Greece is on the phone first with David.

Hi, Jack.

Go ahead.

>> Oh, hi.

Hi.

Evan.

David, I appreciate your books.

I've read all your books on on Donald Trump, and I really appreciate what you've done.

now, I grew up just to.

>> I think we lost Jack for a second.

>> I don't know, this is Doug.

>> Oh, we got a lot.

All of a sudden, we've got two.

Jack, something happened here, so let's do this here.

Jack and Greece.

Give me a call back here.

I might that might have been, by the way, that might have been host error.

I might have punched the wrong button.

Here, guys, we're taking you deep behind the scenes here.

Jack, give us a call back.

We'll take some more of your phone calls in just a second.

And before we get Jack back here, David, let me ask you a maybe a related question here.

There is a question of why this matters.

Because it's one thing for a president to say there's no checks on my power.

It doesn't there's nothing that limits me.

It's another for that to actually matter in practice.

And I didn't just ask you on the show today to see if you wanted to gloat.

I wanted to hear what you think the implications of of the president's viewpoint on on his power.

What do you think?

>> Well, let me give some context here.

The framers of our Constitution, who are not the same people who wrote the Declaration of Independence the framers of our Constitution were very concerned about abuses of executive power and about a president who was being paid off by foreign governments or even state level governments.

And so they limited the action of the executive.

And essentially, article two of the Constitution, says the president of the United States will do what Congress tells him or her to do.

And your commander in chief of the military that that's the rule.

It's not.

You're in charge.

You're the boss.

You do what you want to do.

Now we have over time, created a presidency that's become more and more self-directed and less constrained by Congress, which I do not think is a good thing.

I think president is basically an errand boy of Congress is a better model.

and so when when Donald Trump says the only thing that concerns me is my morality, it just establishes that he's never read article two of our Constitution.

And I encourage people just go to a browser and type in U.S.

Constitution article two and read it.

It doesn't support what Donald is doing at all, but Donald has always believed he's above the law.

And a telling example of this is one day in 19, I think, 89, Donald and I were walking together down the boardwalk in Atlantic City, and I asked him about the 12, 13 and 14 year old children he was letting gamble in his casinos.

He was plying them with liquor and limousines and hotel rooms, and he was fined by this wrote about it in my first book, Temples of Chance, about gambling in 1992.

And I thought Donald would say, yeah, that shouldn't have happened.

Or, boy, I could have gotten in some big trouble over that.

you can be sure I won't do it again.

You know, some kind of contrition statement.

And he just looked at me with this blank look and went, yeah, I paid a fine.

>> There was no moral component to it because there is no moral core to Donald Trump.

There's no limit except his own self-preserving instincts and lust for power on what he does.

he, you know, most of us understand that that's your car, not my car.

Donald looks at the world and says, well, the only reason that's not my car is I haven't figured out how to get it from you yet.

>> Well, but look at the last week here.

Here's Jonathan Chait writing in The Atlantic today with a piece called Donald Trump Can Be Stopped.

And I want to quote from Chait's Chait's piece here.

What he's referring to is the way that the Trump administration started out talking about the killing of Alex Pretti in Minneapolis, and then how the president saw the public reaction.

And he himself yesterday, not only dismissed Bovino Kristi Noem as apparently in hot water.

You know, the president seems to be understanding that there's there's going to have to be some limits.

And here's what Chait writes.

He says of the many lessons to be drawn from the administration's retreat in Minneapolis.

The most important is that Donald Trump can be stopped.

He spent his first year acting as though the 2024 election were the last time he would ever have to give a thought to public opinion.

Now, the myth that Trump is invincible has been exploded, end quote.

Do you agree with that, David?

>> Yeah, Chait is exactly right about that.

As I said a moment ago, Donald has these two fundamental instincts.

Well, right now he's in feral mode.

you corner an animal and it will figure out how to either attack you get you to back off or how to escape.

And Donald is trying to escape.

What he realizes is a terrible situation.

And why is that happening?

Brand name Republicans like Ted Cruz, who have bent the knee to Donald, who have given up the prerogatives of their Chamber of Congress and submitted to anything Donald wants, pushed back on this one.

And when he saw that happen, he realized, I've got a problem, and now he's going to try to work it out.

That doesn't mean it's substantial.

Substantially.

There'll be any difference.

It just means he's going to do his best to not lead where he doesn't need to with his chin, but he's still going to do his best to round people up to engage in less aggressive tactics than we've seen.

and the clear instructions that have been given to Ice and Customs and Border Patrol agents that you can do anything.

You have immunity.

both Kristi Noem and Trump's minister of hate Stephen Miller, have publicly said they have complete immunity.

Trump has said they have immunity.

They do not those rules are going to be pulled back a little bit, but they're still going to engage in behavior that is not professional law enforcement behavior.

>> I want to come back to that question of immunity coming up here.

And, Jack, I'll get back to your phone call in just a second.

But let me just kind of close the loop on a point that I think Chait and others are making here.

I think your critics, David, would say you're being too hyperbolic about Trump claiming he's all powerful because when people finally push back, it is an indication that he's not all powerful.

So when the Republican Party pushes back, Trump pulls back.

When the prime minister of Denmark stands up and says, you're not getting Greenland.

We actually didn't cut a deal and get the hell out.

Essentially, Trump sort of walks away with his tail between his legs.

And so I think the critics would say, well, David, you're focused on the wrong things here.

It doesn't matter what he says, what matters what people do around him to show that he doesn't have that power.

>> Well, one of the themes when I and my best friend created DC report, which is broken, many of the biggest Trump stories was we cover what politicians do, not what they say.

And Donald's actions show that he believes he is all powerful.

He can take Greenland, he can occupy Mexico, he can make Canada the 51st state.

he can go and kidnap the dictator in Venezuela and leave the dictators lieutenants in charge of the country.

but when Trump faces serious pushback, yes, it limits what he does.

And that's the tragedy of what we've seen, that the checks and balances of the Constitution have not been working, mostly because the Republican leadership has not stood up to him until this specific incident.

Of the two killings in Minnesota.

By the way, of the three murders this month in Minneapolis, two of them were by federal agents.

and that's why, you know, the Democrats keep saying, well, we're in the minority.

We can't do anything.

That's nonsense.

They can do lots of things.

And they've been timid and cautious instead of full throated in defending the liberties of the people.

The limits on presidential power and the welfare of the nation, which is their duty even in the minority, where they can't control things.

But they certainly can make a record and bring things to the attention of the public.

>> All right, let's get back to Jack in Greece.

Jack, that was definitely hot air before here.

You'd think I'd know the tech on this program by now.

Go ahead.

Sir.

>> Hi, Evan.

Thank you so much.

hey, David, by the way, I appreciate the books you've written on Donald Trump.

I've read them all, and I really appreciate the work that you've done in the research you've put into that.

Thank you.

And now what little just from a background standpoint, I grew up, in the 1960s, early 70s just a few miles from where Donald Trump grew up in Jamaica Estates in Queens.

And my brother in law actually lived in Jamaica Estates when he grew up.

So we got a we got a real close look at Donald Trump years ago.

And, and, you know Mitt Romney's description of Donald Trump as a buffoon is right on target.

It's what he was, what he showed himself to be back way back then.

the, the self-promotion.

He just seemed like a clown, a caricature.

And you know, none of us took him serious at that time.

I don't think anybody did.

But.

But my mother used the had the expression of self-praise is false praise when describing Donald Trump.

Just disgusted by what he did.

Now, the thing that strikes me is people seem to believe that still today, that Donald Trump was a brilliant businessman now.

But my same brother in law worked for a German bank.

And and he talks about how much Donald Trump cost him in terms of his bonus because of all the losses that they had to in terms of Donald Trump defaulting on his loans or defaulting on, on the casinos that he bankrupted, I guess what my a couple of questions for you, David, is what most surprises you about us, the American public, and how gullible we are and and are inability to what I would say is maybe intellectual curiosity.

I'm not sure what it is, but how we see what we want to see in Donald Trump.

And the other is assuming we do have an election coming up, hopefully we will.

But I mean, there's an opportunity there for Donald Trump to prevent one from happening if he is convinced that they're going to get demolished in the elections, if we if we survive as a liberal democracy, what do you think should be done could be done to prevent this from happening again.

I look back now at the idea and you wrote about it, him hiding his taxes and that he didn't pay any tax.

>> And Jack.

>> Thank you.

And yet it's quaint.

>> Yeah.

Let me let me just jump in, Jack, because there's a lot there here.

So there's, there's basically there's three questions, David.

And I'm going to take them one by one because Jack's question about the elections.

We got an email from Derek.

Derek is asking straight up, do you think the president will try to suspend the 2020 elections?

Let's start with that one, David.

>> No, but he will try to interfere with those elections.

And you will see tactics for which for a half century, the Republican Party nationwide had been subject to a court order to not intimidate voters, particularly minority voters.

That order was lifted 25 years ago or so by a federal court.

But there will be armed men who are going to show up at polling places where there are people they think are Democrats or people of color.

They're going to be calls.

hi.

This is the so and so.

And if you show up to vote, we will arrest you.

We have an arrest warrant for you and other absolutely false things to intimidate voters.

the request by Pam Bondi in writing to Minnesota authorities to turn over Minnesota voter rolls, which they have rejected.

And I'm sure the courts will defend that rejection was clearly part of an effort to rig the election.

so we're going to have elections the Supreme Court would not stand for not having elections.

We held presidential and congressional elections during the Civil War in the 1860s.

But interfering in the election.

Oh, that's a whole 'nother story.

>> Now, Jack wants to know what you think about the the electorate's view of Donald Trump.

>> I am not surprised that Donald Trump, with all of his skill has persuaded millions of people that he alone can save us his language, not mine.

we have gone through a period that I wrote a trilogy on best selling books about economics, which is pretty hard to do in this country.

showing how over the last roughly now 55 years, we have created a massive hidden stealth system that picks the pockets of ordinary people even people who are making half $1 million a year, which would put them in the top almost into the 1%.

Not quite.

They'd be in the second percent and redistributes that money to people at the very top.

And I've found enough to fill three books.

I mean, it took enormous amounts of time reading the most boring, god awful, obscure regulations and laws and then figuring out how they worked.

But we have created this monster that is pushing down the the financial lives of about 99.5% of the public to benefit the top 10th and 100th of 1%.

And, you know, there are companies in this country who get to keep the state income taxes, like New York State, that are withheld from their workers paychecks.

We don't have it in New York, but it's big in new Jersey and Illinois.

Some of these are foreign companies like continental, the German tire company, and Mitsubishi.

The Japanese carmaker that the government doesn't get the state level income taxes.

They're kept by the company through laws nobody knew about until I exposed it about 14 years ago.

there are companies where you are required to pay the corporate income tax of the company, plus what's called the grossed up tax.

which makes it much, much higher.

And you don't know that and the investors in those companies don't even get the money.

The executives shave it off for themselves.

The.

This is so Americans are worse off today, the bottom 90% than they were in 1973.

I've shown that in to 2016.

I haven't updated the numbers, but in 2016, the bottom 90% of Americans compared to 1973, only got paid through about Thanksgiving.

And when then you add in how we've shifted retirements and, health care from tax free benefits above your salary to deductions from your salary, 90% of Americans basically only get paid through Halloween.

They went two months compared to 1973, without any income.

Now, why would people know that?

I mean, it took me years to figure this stuff out and document it.

And by the way, nobody's ever shown a single error in my three books.

Perfectly legal.

Free lunch in the fine print.

so people only know, gee mom and dad, grandpa and grandma, they're better off than I am.

Why is that?

Why is it I'm in such tenuous circumstances?

And it's this massive hidden system?

that was enacted primarily by Republicans, but.

But Democrats acquiesced in a number of them, and they're responsible for a few of the worst ones themselves.

and so Trump has been exploiting that along with racism.

There's a deep core of racism in MAGA.

so no, I'm not surprised.

Millions of people are taken into what I'm surprised is how many people defend him even today.

And I'll offer you a prediction here.

if we get as sworn testimony says exists photographs and video of Donald Trump engaging in sexual acts with 1314 year old girls.

You will hear this defended by some of the MAGA crowd.

Well, that was years ago.

It was decades ago.

He's not doing that today.

Or similar defenses.

Instead of saying, oh my God.

>> Now that's a pretty strong insinuation though, David, because we don't have evidence yet that there's mounds of evidence.

We know that Donald Trump spent a lot of time with Epstein.

We see the videos of Donald Trump dancing and hanging out with young girls.

I get it, I don't.

>> But we have sworn testimony, Evan.

Sworn testimony from some of these then girls, now grown women under oath.

We don't have the evidence.

And here's the question to ask if is Donald Trump claims the Epstein files will prove that he's as pure as a fresh fallen snow.

Why are they hiding more than 99% of the documents, especially after Congress, with almost unanimous unanimity, said release the Epstein files.

I mean, you don't hide files if they are exculpating every time they're inculpated.

>> Every time you're on this program and you talk about this, though, somebody emails me to say, tell David to tell us why the Biden administration didn't put those things out.

So.

>> Oh, I think.

>> I want to get ahead of that one.

>> Biden administration did not handle this.

Well.

The Obama administration didn't handle this.

Well.

I don't think there's any question about it.

And I think we've learned mostly thanks to Julie Brown and some others, that that this Epstein network was not just at the top of the U.S.

It's all around the world.

And let me point out, something came into the public record yesterday.

Ghislaine Maxwell, in a court filing, says that there are 25 men who made secret deals not to be prosecuted in this.

These cases.

That is quite a surprise.

She's in jail.

She might be lying.

We don't know.

But she has now sworn to it under oath, making her subject to prosecution for perjury.

If she's lying.

>> The the reporting source I've seen on that so far has been The Daily Beast.

I would like to see more of that.

but certainly if Maxwell is saying 25 men made these deals not to be prosecuted for child sexual abuse.

And David, as you've pointed out, President Trump is, you know, sort of in those records saying that he was concerned about people close to him being prosecuted.

Are you connecting dots there?

>> Yes.

I mean, he said, you know, my friends will be embarrassed if this stuff comes out.

Well, the law Congress passed explicitly addresses that and says damage to reputation is of no consequence in this matter.

And, you know, I mean, I fundamentally believe that if the president of the United States is in fact and we don't know this, but if he is a repeat child rapist, we should know that.

And hopefully the American people have the character to be so appalled by that, that they say, you got to go now.

We can't prosecute you because the statute of limitations has passed, but we cannot have a child rapist sitting in the white House representing our nation.

>> I mean, I have so many questions.

>> By the way, there are people who tell me I'm wrong about that, Evan, that that those Donald will be defended over, that I hope not.

>> Okay.

Well, I mean, I, I've got so many questions from listeners on some of these subjects.

and we're going to get through as many as we can.

Frederick was asking, does David think it's more likely that Donald Trump would be removed if he's removed from office via impeachment, or because of mental disability?

I.

>> There's no 67 votes in the Senate to convict.

The House is going to impeach him again if they win control of the House in the elections in November.

But you need 67 Senate votes.

And even if the Democrats romp in the Senate elections, they're not up to 67 votes.

Now, something could happen to change that.

And there might be 67 votes, but it would be require something really horrific to come out.

Maybe it would be photographic and videotape evidence.

By the way, there's one thing we skipped over from Jack's question, and that's about Donald as a businessman.

I just want to point out Donald Trump was never a businessman.

He's a cash extractor.

He used borrowed money for every single business that I've investigated that he ran, with one exception, Trump University, which he had to admit was a fraud from top to bottom.

And he would extract cash from these businesses until they became unstable.

And then he would walk away and say, what a genius I am for leaving this business, which was failing.

so I don't call him a businessman.

He does the functional equivalent of mafia bust outs of companies.

>> We've got to get this only break of the hour, and it's a very short one.

And we've got a mountain of your emails.

Listeners at Connections at wxxi.org that we will get through with.

David Cay Johnston, Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and author, professor of practice in journalism, among other subjects at RIT.

We'll come right back with your questions next.

>> Coming up in our second hour, Jean Dupree was kind of a Rochester legend, and he passed away last year.

It was 56 years ago that Dupree helped found the Rochester Urbanarium, designed to give citizens more of a voice in local government, designed to connect people who felt disconnected from what was going on in their local government.

And maybe you still feel like that today.

Well, an upcoming event not only honors Dupree, but seeks to move that work forward, and we'll talk about it.

>> Support for your public radio station comes from our members and from Mary Cariola, center, proud supporter of Connections with Evan Dawson, believing an informed and engaged community is a connected one.

Mary Cariola and Excellus BlueCross BlueShield providing members with options for in-person and virtual care.

Creating ways to connect to care when and where it's needed.

Learn more at excellus.

BCBS.

>> This is Connections.

I'm Evan Dawson David Cay Johnston mentioned in our first half hour that the Trump administration has been saying that Ice officers, Ice agents have total immunity for their actions.

You heard Bovino before he was dismissed from his top ranking post with Border Patrol.

Say that we're never going to learn the name of the the person, the people who shot Alex Pretti because he doesn't want them doxxed.

And that's his top priority.

And Joel writes to the program to say, for David Cay Johnston, I assume that the Ice agents don't have immunity from state charges.

Correct.

Or from civil charges.

David.

>> The Ice agents and Border Patrol agents have limited immunity.

They do not have absolute immunity.

And Keith Ellison, the elected attorney general of Minnesota who was behind the successful prosecution of Derek Chauvin and the four officers who stood by and did nothing as Chauvin murdered George Floyd, has said, we will find these people, build a case, prosecute them.

and I expect particularly the two agents in the Pretti shooting are going to spend many years in prison.

They will be identified and we should be very troubled that even before immediately they were exonerated by Kristi Noem Greg Bovino and even Donald Trump, when there was no investigation.

And they said things that are simply not true about what happened.

that's an indication of Donald Trump's belief that he's all powerful until he realizes there's a reaction and he has to now take a federal approach to defend himself.

>> Okay, Joel, I hope that helps there.

By the way, David do you want to tell us a little bit about how you see this question of police behavior?

I mean, I don't know if you've ever had any police pistol combat training, those kind of things, but what have you seen in the last month?

>> I spent years investigating the LAPD.

I'm the person who changed their reputation when I was at the L.A.

times, and I have studied police tactics enough that I've written, been retained to write about them for police publications.

And I, on no notice, took LAPD pistol combat training, which was the most sophisticated in the world at the time.

I got a 98.9 out of 100 score, the virtually perfect score, three shots, all fatal.

And when I turned around, when the training was over, I realized the police chief had had video cameras on me because he assumed that I would incompetently handle a pistol, shoot the mother and the baby, and then he could show that at roll calls to diminish me.

And I outsmarted him.

>> Oh my goodness gracious.

>> So this is something I know very well.

And what's troubling in watching Ice is that police should de-escalate.

These guys clearly escalate.

That's very clear in the videos that are all over the place.

they do not competently take people down.

One of the things we teach police is how to take people down.

they're not competent at that.

Even that most basic sort of training.

And I am sure that we will eventually find out that many of the Ice agents have criminal records, even if they've been pardoned by Donald Trump for violent assault, wife beating other sorts of crimes.

And we know that in part because a woman journalist, a freelancer, applied for a job at Ice was totally unqualified.

they within minutes of her submitting her application, made an initial job offer, and they came back later with a final job offer for her.

she.

>> Was on the show.

She was on the show last week.

>> Yeah, well, good for you.

They they they are not vetting people the way they should who are going to be given a gun and a badge.

>> Okay.

yeah.

So, Joel, I hope that answers the question on possible immunity and the difference between some of the rhetoric from the Trump administration versus versus what is likely to be in play there.

But if you've got questions, more comments on that score, listeners, we'll take them.

Let me get back to your phone calls, Greg in San Diego.

Hey, Greg, go ahead.

>> Hey.

Hi.

Thanks for taking my call.

I have been just confounded by the degree to which such a large percentage of the American public has let Trump get away with the statement morality is whatever I declare it to be.

Whatever I think it is, people have voted against their own interests like the terrorists.

you know, it's raising prices for the average American, but Trump says, no, it's not.

It's bringing the rate of inflation down and people will not they don't believe their eyes.

They listen to him.

And what comes out of him.

And since he has no moral compass, compass to use it's just astounding how people vote against themselves.

As if he were.

You know, I just don't understand it.

>> There's Greg.

They don't they don't they don't think they're voting against themselves.

That's not what they think.

They think they're voting for.

What are their values?

there's a lot of racism in this, a tremendous amount.

I mean, basically, we Donald Trump has revealed that the civil rights movement put a veneer of respectability, on race relations.

And he's just pulled that back and shown it's rotten wood underneath.

And I've been jousting with some of my high school classmates from California.

on, on Facebook and elsewhere.

And it's very clear in their answers that, well, they would say, I'm not a racist.

Underlying their support for Donald Trump and their views is a very deep seated racism.

And that's a fundamental element.

You combine that with people being economically worse off.

one of the reasons that Hitler and Mussolini rose to power was people lost control of their economic lives in the 1920s and the early 1930s, and that was exploited by people who became dictators, not just in those two countries, but Spain, Portugal, et cetera.

>> Greg, thank you for the phone call.

Got an email from John that I'm going to try to summarize for you, David.

But first of all, it's on the subject.

John wants to know what you think you learned from your pistol training.

And but the larger picture that I think is interesting in this moment, David is so John is someone who thinks that people on the political left should, whether they own guns or not, get trained on them, get the experience because he thinks there are too many lawmakers on the political left who try to make laws about gun ownership and gun rights when they don't know how to fire a gun, they don't know how to handle a gun.

They don't know anything about guns and gun rights.

but the interesting thing I would say to John is, I mean, I'll let David respond to what he learned.

And if he thinks journalists, should they take pistol training?

Does he think average Americans should?

But clearly this, this idea that in this country, it's the Republican Party that's going to stand up for your to gay rights, and it's the left that's going to come for your guns.

The president of the United States yesterday, yesterday said, you can't have guns at a protest.

You can't have guns on an American street.

You can't have guns.

He's talking about Alex Pretti, but he's talking in general about his feeling that guns are just not safe.

People shouldn't have them.

I can't imagine what would have happened on Fox News if Barack Obama had said the same thing.

So I'll let David respond to John's questions.

I mean, what you learned if you think more people on the political left should do this, but we don't have a president who is a big two way guy.

Clearly he just revealed that yesterday, didn't he, David?

>> Yes, he absolutely did.

And even the NRA has spoken up against Trump about this.

John's question is a good one.

What did I learn from the combat training?

Well, one of them was of course, there was a police chief in L.A.

who was much like Donald Trump, who I covered before.

Donald who wanted to vanquish anybody who questioned what he was doing.

I was glad that I was familiar with handling guns.

My original career objective, when I was in junior high and high school was to become an LAPD homicide detective, and I did, later in my career, solve a number of murders.

the the.

But the key thing I learned was in this very dramatic presentation.

Very well done with Hollywood people was my heart was really pumping when I had a guy pointing a gun at me.

I mean, you're very much in the moment when that happens.

And I crouched down, as you should do.

Unlike TV, showing these people standing up in front of the shooter and use two hands to hold my pistol.

And that's why all three shots I fired at the two bad guys were fatal shots.

the the larger issue here about law enforcement is that we need to recognize that law enforcement is here to protect and serve, not to be warriors.

And to Evan's point about weapons you know, I've argued that if we're going to be absolutists about the Second Amendment we now have nuclear weapons that will fit in a backpack.

So I want my own personal nuclear weapon.

Nobody's going to mess with.

>> It, you know.

the second.

Go ahead, go ahead.

>> David, this this notion of open carry and concealed carry is ridiculous.

Dodge city, Kansas, that is the iconic town of the American West in the 19th century.

You had to turn your guns into the sheriff when you arrived in town.

And you could get them back when you were leaving.

That was the standard back then.

Not and not carrying them around.

And if I walk into a store here in Rochester and there are a bunch of men who have assault rifles or other weaponry slung over their back, I don't know if they're there for a mass murder, or they're just a bunch of people who want to demonstrate in an aggressive way, their belief in Second Amendment rights.

But I'm leaving in my advice to anybody else is get the hell out of that store.

Yesterday.

>> So do you think the president's comments revealing that he doesn't think we should have guns in public?

Do you think that will fundamentally change the debate in this country?

And maybe who are the political bedfellows, arguing that we should have more restrictive gun laws?

>> I would hope so, because we're the only country that has these mass shootings all the time.

And other countries have shown that we can have intelligent gun control laws and reduce these numbers to almost nothing.

You know, in the 1800s, gun murders were very common in London.

they're unheard of now because they changed the law.

And over time, they changed the culture.

so the, the there's a terrible need in this country to recognize that the purpose of the Second Amendment was not what some of the advocates claimed protect us against a tyrannical government.

If Donald Trump decides to turn the U.S.

military against us and the troops don't rebel, you think any of us are going to stand a chance against the most powerful military force in the history of the world?

You know, don't be silly.

>> let me read some more comments.

A couple on YouTube.

First of all, I think one of your students, a commenter on YouTube, says, this is my professor.

He's got wonderful, many wonderful insights and stories.

We'll have to sit down on one of your classes sometime.

David, another comment from YouTube says regarding excusing this president's behavior.

My sister in law says that sometimes God uses imperfect people.

Yeah.

>> Yeah.

>> That's an argument.

>> This has become a Evan.

This has become a very common theme among a certain group of people who call themselves Christians.

And I would argue they're not Christians at all.

They just call themselves that, that Pol Pot and Hitler and Stalin and others like them were all part of God's plan.

Well, if you can justify that, you can justify anything.

There's no moral principle underneath things.

And I've spent a lot of my life studying moral issues.

I've actually been a paid consultant to the Protestants, the the Methodists, the Lutherans interdenominational groups.

I've spoken at national conferences.

I've been a speaker at the Harvard Divinity School and the Colgate Divinity School here in Rochester on these issues.

And it's very troubling when people say, you know, well, God works in mysterious ways.

And that's why we have these these terrible dictators.

That's just justifying something.

You can't justify because you aren't really who you think you are.

>> Robin Rochester wants to know, does David Cay Johnston think that Elon Musk helped Trump rig the election in some of the swing states in 2024?

>> We don't know.

I mean, one of the problems with this is we don't know.

There is some very limited evidence of that.

On the other hand, elections are locally controlled.

We have the Monroe County Board of Elections here in Rochester, for example.

We don't have national elections.

The Constitution provides that the states and local, county and city governments are creatures of the states that the states will decide the rules of their elections unless Congress passes a law to the contrary.

I'm a little surprised that Trump didn't try to have Congress take over federally.

All elections there would have been easy to to rig them.

but we need to be very concerned about not just bad vote counting, but we need to be concerned about efforts to purge people from the rolls to intimidate voters and to rig the elections in subtle ways that aren't just taking your vote for candidate A and counting it for B, of which there appears to be no evidence that I've seen no significant evidence, efforts to try and do it, but no actual changing.

>> Dug in.

Webster had called in to ask.

Well, to make the comment, he wants Stephen Miller to leave the administration.

Miller is telling Trump what to do.

What do you think, David?

>> Well, Miller was cut out of the two hour meeting that Trump had with Kristi Noem and others, which I think is a significant sign that Donald realizes Miller is a problem.

Stephen Miller, when he was a high school student at Santa Monica High in California was supposed to give a talk about civics, and he got up and went into this horrible racist diatribe where the principal had to pull him off the stage.

And a friend of mine was in the audience.

Which is why I know about this.

Miller DC report we call we refer to Miller as Trump's minister of hate, his own family has said they think there's something wrong with him.

He's just filled with this hatred of nonwhite people and doesn't seem to appreciate his family's, his own family's immigration history and why they're alive and not dead.

Because they were able to enter the United States.

Trump dumps people when they are a liability to him.

The loyalty to Donald Trump has always been a one way street.

Doesn't matter if you're his wife or a business executive who's making him a lot of money.

if if you become a liability in his mind, you're gone.

>> here's a different Jack.

Wanted to ask what David thinks about this past weekend.

He said he was surprised at how little coverage there was of the meeting that Trump had with Bezos and Cook.

And I think what Jack is referring to is I don't think it was a meeting.

I think it was a screening of the new Melania movie, and Tim Cook was there.

Tim Cook actually put out a memo to employees saying that he told Trump he didn't like what he was seeing in Minneapolis.

And Trump's open to a conversation.

And and Bezos has agreed to fund help fund the Melania movie.

so but this Jack is asking David, you know, what we should make of Bezos and Cook there?

>> Well, corporate executives duty is to the corporation, not to the shareholders.

It's to the company itself.

And Cook and Bezos are going to be a moral here, not immoral or moral.

They're going to be amoral on what they regard as the interests of the company.

Trump has gone after companies where he has regulatory power over them.

Television networks, for example, Jeff Bezos, who needs regulatory approval for a number of things.

And so they have done their best to favor him.

Melania was paid $40 million for the rights to a movie about her life.

Be very interesting to see the box office numbers, which will come out Sunday night or Monday.

but I view this as a clear example of a bribe.

This is a payoff, plain and simple.

And we know from the New York Times reporting and other reporting that isn't as extensive.

Trump has taken in an absolute minimum of $1.4 billion since he returned to office, despite the emoluments clause that says you cannot receive money from states or foreign powers unless you have the explicit permission of Congress.

>> Anthony writes in to say Trump himself has said he probably can't run in 2028.

Does David think he will abide by that?

>> Yeah, I don't see any way he can run in 2028.

The Constitution is eminently clear.

he gets two terms.

I think the thing to watch for is if there is a 25th amendment move to remove Trump and the 25th amendment is incredibly badly worded piece of law.

it will probably occur.

no sooner than two years and one day.

So essentially a year from today of Trump taking office.

Why?

Because JD Vance, assuming he could get elected, could then serve two terms plus two years.

and, you know, we'll see.

We don't we don't know what's going to happen.

Donald is not in good health at all.

there's no question about that.

When you get two brain scans months after your annual physical, you can't argue as he has credibly, that that was part of his physical.

I was on another TV show, an international show where I was asked about Donald's health, and I said, well, notice in the videos where he walks at angles and throws his right leg across his left.

And I cited three other conditions and said, all of those suggest he has a form of dementia, not Alzheimer's, a different form.

And lo and behold, the next person they called on I didn't realize was an expert in this field, a medical researcher who said that was exactly right.

Donald has prefrontal lobe dementia, and it never gets better.

And the leg crossing the other leg is one of the best indicators that used by physicians to diagnose that condition.

>> Okay.

Well, let me close with this here.

We opened with you talking about your your warning back in 2011 that if Donald Trump ever became president, he was not going to see himself as a president.

It would be more of a dictator.

And now he's telling the New York Times, yep, I've got no checks on my power.

Just me.

And you said you were batting a thousand on Trump, but you're you're not batting a thousand on Congress.

What you thought Congress would do?

Why were you wrong about what Congress would do if Trump became president?

>> Great question.

I assume that leaders in Congress would want to protect the institutions in which they serve in their own prerogatives.

The Constitution puts all sorts of limits on the president.

The appointment of important officers requires the advice and consent of the Senate.

the House has important duties.

only Congress has the authority to impose tariffs.

The whole reason we live in this, the Second American Republic, under the Constitution, not under the original failed Articles of Confederation government, was because the original government had no power to tax.

We created our Constitution for the primary purpose of taxing ourselves something we don't teach in our schools, and yet is solid history.

And so, yeah, the the fear that you will be voted out in a primary, that Donald Trump will come after you or make trouble for you.

And the failure to stand up is very disturbing.

More than a million people died so that this country could exist.

My father was a 100% disabled veteran of World War two, whose life was severely shortened because of that war, and for Donald Trump to do things that violate this Constitution that he is sworn to uphold is one thing.

But for the leaders of the Republican Party on Capitol Hill to enable to look the other way that is atrocious.

And if you're afraid you'll be voted out of office for doing for following your oath of office, you are worse than a coward.

You have no business being in public life.

We should shame you.

We should treat you as the kind of cur that you are.

>> David Cay Johnston is a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and author, a professor of practice in journalism, among other subjects at RIT.

Thank you David.

Thanks for being generous with your time.

I know we can talk soon.

Here.

>> Thank you.

>> David Cay Johnston.

More Connections coming up in just a moment.

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