Todd Blanche’s CNN Interview Could Come Back to Bite Him

Hey, everybody, it's Will Salatin from The Bullwork. I'm here with my awesome colleague, Catherine Rampell, who writes the receipts newsletter for The Bullwork. Catherine, thanks for joining me. Anytime. No better way to spend my Sunday. Our treat today is we're going to be talking about Todd Glantz, the attorney general, who was on CNN, was being asked about Donald Trump's latest threats against the Democrats. And it was a very strange interview because things that a normal attorney general might say about, you know, imprisoning the other party are not what this attorney general says. So we've got to start out with the highlight from this interview, which is Dana Bash, the interviewer, asking Blanche about Trump's demand that Democrats be imprisoned. But I do want to ask you about another thing that the president said. He said that the Democratic lawmakers are extortionists and they should be imprisoned. Is that a possibility? Well, it depends on what the crime is and what they've done. But listen, what President Trump is talking about, and it's easy to sit here and talk about the president's truth without actually talking about what he's responding to. Is you have members of Congress who, after Tuesday, have done nothing but threaten everything that's happening in this administration? So Catherine, is this normal? The president says, right after losing an election, by the way, that his opponents should be imprisoned. And it sounds like the attorney general is saying, well, it depends. Yeah, it depends on how mean the Democrats are to this administration. The way I heard a lot of this interview was basically, you can't investigate us, we're going to investigate you. And we have more guns, essentially, or the ability to imprison more people. So yes, this feels like these guys have been backed into a corner, very defensive. They're worried about any potential crime, or anything else that might be embarrassing or immoral coming out. And like, there's already so much that's public already that it seems like whatever hasn't been released, maybe worse, they're worried about all of that. And so they are accusing the accusers. But it seems like we've almost become numb to the idea of the president threatening to imprison his opponents. Like, that's just a normal Sunday now. It is. It's bizarre because these are the kinds of things that at least in Trump, one point, oh, I think would have driven a couple of new cycles, maybe a few days worth of coverage, the idea that this administration would be weaponizing the powers of state against its enemies for no reason other than they are perceived enemies, not because there's actual law breaking. I mean, this is kind of like what impeached, the first impeachment was about, was about using the powers of state to punish an ally because they were unhappy about not providing sufficient political support. In the first administration, this was a very, very big deal. This time around, it's just business as usual. And that in and of itself, I guess, gives more fodder to Democrats once they are back in the majority on Capitol Hill, and they have some more to dig up. But again, like, this is just happening out in the open. And I don't even know like how Democrats should respond to all of this, given that the threaten to retribution, the kinds of things that like Nixon would have tried to keep quiet Donald Trump is just tweeting out. Okay. So since this is the attorney general and we're talking about crimes, we should probably find out what the basis of that is that Trump is talking about. So let's go to what Bash asked about. She actually started the interview by asking Blanche about Trump ordering DOJ to investigate Democrats for what he called potentially criminal acts. President Trump said, quote, "I am ordering the Department of Justice to look into this criminal act." Are you going to follow that order and investigate Democratic members of Congress? And what is the criminal act you think he's referring to? Well, what we've seen over the past several days, and even over the past several weeks, are outright threats, many, many by elected members of Congress and some senators against anybody that's conservative and anybody that happens to be a Republican. They've threatened donors, they've threatened individuals who are in college and might want to work for conservative institutions or for a conservative government or for President Trump. And that is extremely troubling and it should be troubling to everybody in this country. So Catherine, it sounds like Blanche is claiming that Democrats threatened college kids, that they threatened college kids who said they might want to work for conservative institutions or conservative government. Is that your understanding of what the Attorney General is claiming? That's what it sounds like he's claiming. I'm not even sure what this is referring to. Do you know? I do know. Okay. So fortunately, we do have the clip. This is Senator Alyssa Slotkin, a Democrat of Michigan. She was speaking in October at a forum and she was talking about investigating corruption and the Trump administration to deter college kids, sure, people coming out of college from working for this administration. Here's the clip. I want to look at these signature cases and not just focus on the President, but on the people who enabled him. I want young people coming out of school to say, should I go work for the Trump administration? Like that sounds fun. I might get an opportunity. I want them to be like, Lord, that might be buying myself a ton of problems that I don't want. And so let me avoid participating in that. I want that deterrence message said. So Katherine, I'm seeing a discrepancy between what Senator Slotkin said and what Todd Lange claims she said. First of all, if you didn't say anything about conservative institutions or conservative organizations, she just talked about the Trump administration. She also said she didn't want the young people participating in that. Not exactly clear, but it sounds like she's talking about corruption and criminal activity, not just like working in government. So it just sounds like he's totally misrepresenting what she said. Do you hear it that way? Are you shocked that he's totally misrepresenting what she said? Yeah, the way that I hear what Senator Slotkin is saying is young people don't end up being a co-conspirator in a crime. Like it is not worth it. Not worth it to you to get involved with all of the grift and graft that you probably will not benefit from personally. There's a lot of downside risk and not a lot of upside risk, which is a totally reasonable set of career advice, right? It's like don't go into a criminal organization or don't go into an organization where you will be expected to commit crimes. Sure, Donald Trump has said he would pardon, what is it? Anybody who works within 200 feet of the White House, but that may not go all the way down to, I don't know, whoever is like pulling the lever at OMB, refusing to release funds, FEMA funds to a blue state or something like that. There are a bunch of things that are on the table here that there have to be, I don't want to say minions, but there have to be people throughout the institution who are involved in the bad behavior, who are not politically significant enough, who are not close enough to the president that they can expect to be shielded if, in fact, they committed a crime. And I think that those ifs are really important here. I don't hear Alyssa Slotkin saying we're just going to go out there and punish anyone who is politically on the other side of the aisle from us. I hear her saying I want to encourage young people to think really hard about getting involved in a project that may be on the wrong side of the law. There should be a set of people in this administration whose participation in the projects of this administration, some illegal and some illegal but lately immoral and some in lots of gray area, like a lot of the immigration stuff that's been going on. I don't know if they should be completely unemployable, but they should not be employable in any sort of position in which they have power over the public. There are people who were involved in Stephen Miller's agenda, who are involved in rust votes agenda, who are putting people's lives in danger, stealing constitutional duties, powers from Congress, who are involved in a lot of these illegal, immoral and anti-social acts, who should not be entrusted in any sort of position of political power again, and that's, I think, what Alyssa Slotkin is saying. I don't think she's saying you can't go work in accounting firm or something like that. It's like you work in this administration and if you potentially help them commit crimes, yeah, that probably should not be good for your career in any sort of similar field. But to me, what she's talking about is a bad culture. This is not a good place to work because it's corrupt, to corrupt through and through. I have a personal story about this. A friend of mine was recently interviewed in the federal government, the Trump administration, for a legal job. They asked him if you get called at 4.30 in the morning from the White House and they're asking you to do something illegal, what would you do? He's eyeballing the people in the interview, trying to read what answer they want. He's like, "Well, I wouldn't violate the law, but I would try to make the argument whatever it is." Then they ask him, "What if it's just unethical?" The whole time, this is a guy who, in a normal administration, it would have been obvious, like, "Okay, well, now the answer is no, yeah, I'm not going to do that." and the Trump administration. It's such a bad culture that new people coming in kind of wonder what the answer to that question is supposed to be. It's interesting. It's a litmus test in the wrong direction, right? It's like, oh, we only want people normally. We only want people who say, like, I will behave ethically. Now they're screening for the people who say, of course, I'll behave honestly if it helps the MAGA agenda or if it helps protect our dear leader, Donald Trump. That's a very striking story right there. So let me go on a little bit on this interview. So Todd Blanche, again, the Attorney General says to Dana Bash that the Democrats in Congress have, he says, no basis and no facts to investigate anyone in the administration. Here it is. And over the last several days, we've seen that the rhetoric even rise up to the point where they're already, before they're even in power, they're already talking about investigations and impeachments with no basis, no facts just out there running around. That should be something that President Trump is very concerned about, and certainly I am as well. Katherine, what basis does the Attorney General of the United States have to declare upfront that someone investigating wrongdoing in the administration, alleged wrongdoing, has no basis and no facts? It just feels to me like, this is, it feels to me like he's, again, he is literally Trump's former personal lawyer and is responding that way as opposed to a normal Attorney General who would be like, let's wait and find out what the facts are. Yeah, that let's weigh the evidence. Let's make sure everybody's following the law, yada yada yada. All the things that you would assume somebody who's sworn oath to the Constitution might normally say, there's so much that's already public that I don't know how he can say that with a straight face, that there are just no facts that suggest that there's any corruption or crime or bad behavior. There's so much that Trump just tweets out or that the administration declares or that gets caught on camera, right? Like the killing of U.S. citizens. There are so many things that we know we may live in a media environment that's very fractured and that people get their own, I don't know, their own lens into what reality looks like, but there are still some shared facts, including the record of stuff this president said and cops to on camera and on truth social. So that alone should be sufficient evidence for, I look, I'm not a lawyer, I should clarify, I don't think you are either. But there's plenty of stuff there that seems pretty bad that would justify somebody looking into it, somebody with subpoena power, let's say. The idea that like, there's no there there, you know, they're just, they're going after this squeaky clean administration and they're just like on a retribution tour, it's just, it's laughable on its face. This goes back to what Blanche said at the beginning in this interview that we've been talking about where he said something like, oh, they're going after donors, right? And as if this is only about people who have expressed political preferences that support the mega agenda, the, you know, the, the new golden era that Donald Trump is manifesting as opposed to donors to the ballroom, right? I mean, I'm pretty sure that they're going to be looking at donors, which I'm using scare quotes for, who are basically paying for Trump's vanity projects. If not in the case of an explicit quid pro quo, like a pardon, and there was at least one of those that seems to have been coincidentally granted to, I think, the father of a ballroom donor, but lots of other apparent favorite trading. This is saying, if you collaborated with this regime, if you engaged in any sort of potential grift or graft, if you had any sort of quid pro quo, if you looked the other way when a crime was being committed, or even you helped the administration commit that crime, like through some of the Silicon Valley tech that has been used in ice raids, things like that that may have had some dubious legality. Those are the situations in which, yes, it would probably be advisable for you to seek some legal counsel. That's how I hear all of this, and certainly that is how I hope the Democrats behave once they get the gavel, but it's not just like sort of this shotgun approach of anyone who's a conservative or anyone who's a Republican. This is such a target rich environment that they can afford to only focus their firepower at the people who actually committed the crimes or co-conspirators anyway in committing the crimes. Okay, so the last thing in this interview that I want to go to is what Todd Blanch thinks his job as Attorney General actually is, and Dana Batch asked him about it. He basically said that his job is to defend the administration in all contexts. Here's what he said. My job as the Attorney General is, among other things, is to defend the administration. We do that in court in all sorts of ways, and I will tell you, if Stephen Miller, if they try to come after Stephen Miller for these, whatever it is that Garcia thinks he's going to do instead of actually just conducting oversight and leading. Of course, the Department of Justice will be there to defend him, just like if they went after any cabinet secretary or any person in government. So, Katherine, I thought that the job of the Attorney General was to enforce the laws. Apparently you're mistaken. Regardless of whether the law breaker is in the Trump administration or outside it, but it sounds like that Blanch, again, who is Trump's personal lawyer, thinks that the job is to defend administration officials no matter what. Is that how you hear him? That's certainly what it sounds like. And look, it is true that the solicitor general is there to stand for the government when the government gets sued, for example, or the government sue somebody else, if it goes to the Supreme Court. It is true that there are roles within the administration and the DOJ that are about defending the governing interests, I guess I would say. Again, if I were a lawyer, maybe I would have more precise terminology for all of this. But it is true that the Attorney General is supposed to be defending the administration's policy positions, but that's very different from doing what Blanch sounds like he's talking about, which sounds like being a personal criminal attorney. I mean, he didn't use those words, but certainly that's what it sounds like, I think, to a lay person's ear. But Danabash brings up an interesting test case for this proposition, which is a case in which a former recently former administration official, and the Trump administration, has made allegations against a current, although soon to be former member of the administration. So here is the clip of Danabash asking about the case of Susie Wiles and Kelly Means. Mr. Attorney General, Kelly Means, who was a top federal health official. He just resigned from the Trump administration. He's accusing Susie Wiles, the president's now former chief of staff, of blocking certain health policies because of lobbying by her former firm. And he says that she put political fundraising over public health. Are you concerned about it, or is this something you'll look into? Something that someone says on a podcast, no, I do not listen to that. Absolutely not. Susie Wiles did an extraordinary job, not only as chief of staff, but as a leader and working with President Trump for the past several years. And the fact that a disgruntled former former administration official comes out and says something against whether it's chief of staff, Wiles or somebody else, that cannot be something that causes me to react in any way. So, Catherine, you can't trust those podcasters, you know that, very wily bunch. Nothing that happens on a podcast is, but okay, beyond the personal dig, which will which I take offense at, first of all, it sounds like the Attorney General is pre-judging the case. Like he has no particular information here, he's already dismissing it. He's saying that the accuser, Kelly Means, is disgruntled. But it's two administration officials, and pretty soon Susie Wiles will be what and Trump's political operation, which I guess is like going to live on a farm upstate. But it's not good. She's not good. She lived in America. The shield of the America is beautiful. So he's taking sides between two government officials based on which one is closer to Trump and which one's being accused of corruption. So it can't be about, you know, it can't be about defending the administration. It's taking sides on behalf of the accused corrupt, the person who's accused of the corruption. I don't even know how to begin to make sense of this in any, you know, normal understanding of what the Attorney General's job is. Do you? No. Certainly not. And look, we don't actually know who was in the right in this dispute. For all I know, they're both in the wrong in some way because like the administration sort of specializes in that and like, there being no heroes in any sort of internal fight. Yeah, so I don't know what happened here. And I guess like we should not assume that that Callie means is accusations of law breaking or whatever are necessarily correct, but it certainly warns investigating like I'm not going to prejudge it, you know, either way, but neither should Todd Blanche. You should say, "Yeah, these are very serious." We are entrusted with safeguarding public welfare and whatever sloganeering you want to use from the Maha movement or whatever. I'm sure that there are ways to couch this and here's how we protect the Maha agenda. Of course we're going to look into this and I would be very concerning. I have, like, there are so many better ways that he could have handled this question without necessarily throwing a Trump ally and a current Trump ally, anyway, Susie Wiles under the bus. Just say, like, I'm here to ensure the law is followed and, of course, I will take that job seriously rather than, like, podcasters catching a stray, like, nothing matter, you know, nothing this person says matters because they're disgruntled and blah, blah, blah. It's very clear that he does not see his role as being the nation's top cop. His role is being essentially Trump's closest bodyguard, not even personal turning. It's really like a bodyguard. He's there to shut down any investigations that might make Donald Trump look bad or his administration look bad. I guess I understand, going back to what we were talking about before, why he might be so furious about the incoming Democratic Congress investigating stuff that's going on this administration and talking about impeachment of various people because, like, I presume Todd Blanche might be on those lists of possible people to be impeached and people who are going to be heavily investigated. So the problem is he's, like, giving them more material just by these public cable news interviews. That's a lot of effort. It's very clear from listening to Todd Blanche and listening to you, that even though you're a podcaster and not a lawyer, you would make a better attorney general at the United States because you understand the basic concept of what the job is and its relationship to the law and corruption. That's a very low bar, you know, a better AG than Todd Blanche. But thank you. I will take the compliment nonetheless. Well, thank you so much for joining me. Hit like, hit subscribe, go read Catherine's awesome newsletter. It's called receipts. You can only get it at thebowork.com.