The following is a lightly edited transcript of the July 23 episode of the
Daily Blast podcast. Listen to it here.
Greg Sargent: This is The Daily Blast from The New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR network. I’m your host, Greg Sargent.
In the last few days, we seem to have crossed a threshold. President Trump is ratcheting up the authoritarianism and threatening to arrest his enemies in a new kind of way. He’s angrily hinting at arresting Barack Obama and other members of his administration. He’s openly saying that Obama committed sedition. And he’s raging that Senator Adam Schiff is also guilty of crimes, explicitly calling for him to be put in “prison.” Critically, however, all this has been accompanied by a new type of manipulation of the bureaucracy, one clearly designed to manufacture pretexts for the prosecutions of those enemies. Ryan Enos, a professor of government at Harvard, put it all very starkly on Bluesky, saying that authoritarianism is “right here in front of us.” Ryan added this: “You either fight it or you accept that this is our future.” So we’re talking to Ryan today about his warning. Thanks for coming on, Ryan.
Ryan Enos: Yeah, thank you. I’m glad to be here talking about this.
Sargent: Let’s start with Trump’s threat toward Barack Obama. The basic gist of this is that Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, put out this supposed finding that the Obama administration faked the conclusion that Russia had interfered in the 2016 election. A reporter asked Trump about Tulsi Gabbard, who referred this to the Justice Department for prosecution. Listen to this.
Reporter (audio voiceover): Tulsi Gabbard has submitted a criminal referral to the Department of Justice. From your perspective, who should the DOJ target as part of their investigation, what specific figures in the Obama administration?
Donald Trump (audio voiceover): Well, based on what I read, and I read pretty much what you read, it would be President Obama. He started it. And Biden was there with them and [James] Comey was there and [James] Clapper. The whole group was there. This was treason. This was every word you can think of. They tried to steal the election. They tried to obfuscate the election. They did things that nobody’s ever even imagined, even in other countries.
Sargent: Ryan, what makes all this so preposterous is that a Republican-led Senate committee concluded that Russia sought to interfere on the 2016 election to help Trump, as well. Your reaction to all this?
Enos: Well, yeah. Of course, we have to first start by saying this is a pretext, as many of Trump’s attacks on his political opponents and on civil institutions he doesn’t like are: There’s no basis for this. As you mentioned, this is something that we’ve gone over in the past nine years at this point over and over again. And there’s no doubt that Russia had a preference for Donald Trump and that they acted on that. And why would we expect anything different out of one’s geopolitical opponent? That’s the way they do things. But more importantly—and this is the thing that we should be so worried about as Americans—this is what authoritarians do. They threaten to arrest their political opponents.
Sargent: Well, just to bear down a little on the facts here, Gabbard’s charges are snake oil. She mixes up two different claims: one that Russia hacked the votes and the other that Russia tried to swing the election. As The New York Times points out, Gabbard holds up a supposed admission by an Obama official that Russia failed to successfully hack the votes as proof that the whole claim about Russia is made up, but the Obama administration never claimed Russia successfully hacked the votes. The whole thing is made up, as the ranking Intelligence Committee Democrat Mark Warner notes. Ryan, isn’t the brazenness of the swindle itself almost the cause for concern?
Enos: Well, yes. There’s so many things that Donald Trump has … claims he’s made to the American public that are frankly preposterous. In some ways, it shows the lack of respect he has for the American voter and the American electorate. But I think that in many ways, it raises something larger where he doesn’t feel like he has to make claims that have any type of validity, which is what people do when they’re not worried about the repercussions and public opinion and in the ballot box. When you can trump up flimsy claims that can be easily disproven, that once again is a signal that somebody is operating as an authoritarian.
Again, we can go back to these examples over and over again—where, when opposition politicians have been arrested in other countries, it’s often using preposterous claims. And when Donald Trump trots something out that is so preposterous, it gives us a concern that he doesn’t care about the facts. Now, of course, we should say that Donald Trump either believes or acts like he believes all kinds of conspiracy theories, ones that are convenient for him, like that he won the 2020 election. So one interpretation is that Donald Trump just doesn’t have a command of reality. But that, of course, is concerning as well.
Sargent: And I wonder if that almost lets him off the hook. To me, what I’m seeing here, and you can maybe talk about this as a scholar of government and authoritarianism, is that the brazenness is the whole point. The brazenness of the swindle is an assertion of power in its own right. He’s basically saying, Yes, I’m making stuff up about the opposition as a pretext to arrest them, and I can do that. Tough. Now he doesn’t say it quite that way, but the preposterousness of the claims says that. Can you talk a little bit about that as a symptom of authoritarian breakdown?
Enos: Yeah. When [people] talk about the breakdown of democracy or the breakdown of democratic norms, when people are commenting on it, they will often use these terms such as a “test” or a “trial balloon” or something like that. And what they mean is that somebody is trying something and seeing whether they can get away with it, essentially. And it’s never clear how much somebody doing something like that actually has that logic going through their head. But if you’ve ever raised children, for example, you know that they take signals from what they can get away with to understand what they can get away with next.
And what Donald Trump is doing—and in many ways this makes it sound too anodyne, too unimportant—is he is testing the legal limits of the presidency. [That] is the kind of language people use, which is a nice way of saying he’s doing things that should be illegal, or at least should be things that should be condemned by all the democratic norms of this country that have operated for more than 200 years. And yet he does them. And if he does something that is so brazen, and his party and the people that he has appointed to the bureaucracy go along with it rather than saying, You can’t do this, or I condemn you breaking these democratic norms, then that’s a signal that he can do it again. So every time somebody does something that pushes the limits of what is acceptable, does something that seems brazen, and, as you mentioned, does something that seems to assert their power—in many ways, if it is not pushed back on, that becomes a new power they have. If we don’t condemn it, if it’s not something that is shut down, all of a sudden that new power is something that is adopted by that would-be authoritarian. And it seems very clear that that is what Donald Trump is doing.
Sargent: Just to tease that out a little more, if I understand you correctly, you’re basically saying that Trump is testing both the Republican Party but also, in an important respect, testing his underlings. If he just preposterously invents pretexts for prosecuting opponents, will his underlings go along? Well, here it sure looks like Tulsi Gabbard, one of those underlings, is very much going along. I don’t know what DOJ will do, but if we understand what Trump is doing as a test, the absurdity of the claim, the absurdity of the pretext tests whether the underlings will carry out lawless actions based on them, correct?
Enos: Yeah, that is correct. And in many ways, that’s one of the most concerning things about what is going on in this second Trump regime: the fact that he has gutted the independence of the bureaucracy. Now, one of the first checks that went away—and this, in many ways, went away during the first four years of Trump.… One of the first checks on his power was that his party failed to oppose him and slowly the people that did oppose him left and they fell into line. And the Republican Party became totally subservient to Donald Trump. What was still the case, though, in the first Trump administration, as it should be in a functioning democracy, is that you had an independent bureaucracy that would not carry out illegal orders. They would not do things that they have sworn an oath to the Constitution not to do, and they had civil service protections and other things that make them independent of these political persecutions.
But for all the different reasons that we’ve seen unfold in the last six months, that has gone away. And he was able to stock things like the Department of Justice—and this is very concerning when you think about it for the rule of law—with people that seem to be more loyalist than anything else. So when he puts out these orders that a person that believes in democracy would say, I will not carry out, he is testing to see if people will carry him out. This, again, is part of the problem: He’s putting these things out there and see if people will oppose them. And he’s shown a very open willingness to fire people that he considers insufficiently loyal. That increases the probability that whoever’s left after everybody has been fired, people like Tulsi Gabbard and all these other folks that we have running these places now and the people under them, will carry out orders even if they are illegal and damaging to democracy.
Sargent: Well, let’s listen to more of Trump talking about Obama. Here’s what he told reporters.
Trump (audio voiceover): This is like proof, irrefutable proof that Obama was seditious, that Obama was trying to lead a coup. And it was with Hillary Clinton, with all these other people, but Obama headed it up. This is the biggest scandal in the history of our country.
Sargent: Ryan, there he accuses Obama of sedition, treason, and all the rest of it. Can you put that charge in a broader context for us? Is this something that is symptomatic of authoritarian breakdown in and of itself?
Enos: Yes. And we could dwell on the more technical components of this, as well, which, of course, is the case that the sitting president of the United States—which I think is the claim, that Obama did this when he was the president—looking into the attack on the election integrity by a foreign government is not something that could possibly be seen as treasonous. That would seem like actually one of his duties. So there’s something convoluted about it anyway, but I think in many ways that is also important because it shows how this claim of treason—something where somebody is making an attack on not just the officeholder or something like that but an attack on the country itself, doing something that’s un-American [and], in some ways, treasonous—is something that is symptomatic of what happens in other countries during democratic breakdown.
This is what happened in Hungary, for example. Viktor Orbán, when he was taking apart Hungary’s democracy, would often accuse his opponents of doing things that were … I can’t remember exactly the words he used, but something like anti-Hungarian is essentially what this would translate into. Saying, He was doing things that were against the Hungarian state.… Often, this is the case: They say, You’re doing something that is treasonous to the people or treasonous this larger project of the country. And it very much fits that because it’s something that is trying to capture this populist attack on the rule of law.
Sargent: So on this point about manipulating the bureaucracy, we have this Adam Schiff matter. Trump is now claiming that Schiff committed mortgage fraud based on him identifying two different residences—one in Maryland just outside D.C. [and] the other in California—as primary residences on loans. Schiff flatly denies any misrepresentation, and it’s common for members of Congress to have two residences this way. But that aside, a government entity called the Federal Housing Finance Agency produced the supposed evidence of this. We have a piece on this up at tnr.com. You can check it out. It was then referred to DOJ for prosecution. Now, that aside, here again, you have Trump using the bureaucracy to create reasons for DOJ to prosecute his enemies. Your thoughts on this one?
Enos: Yeah. In many ways, I find this one even more concerning than Trump’s rantings about Barack Obama and Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton. What we see here is an attack on a sitting member of the opposition—a sitting politician, a prominent one that is a member of the opposition to Trump. And that, again, is something that is directly out of the authoritarian playbook where you try to silence politicians and the other party—and not retired politicians, in this case. It’s very concerning in that respect as well, but it’s also concerning for the reasons you highlighted, which is that we’re seeing a weaponization of the bureaucracy here. Even with the way the Trump administration has taken apart the federal bureaucracy, the federal bureaucracy still is involved in so many aspects of every American’s life, right? It handles things like our mortgages; it has oversight over our insurance, our paychecks, in many cases, through Social Security, our taxes, everything else. So you can think about all the ways that federal bureaucracy can be made to trump up charges against individuals if they’re willing to ignore the reasons they shouldn’t be doing that, which are often illegal in many cases. But Trump has ignored those.
There’s a lot of cases of this. For example, one of the more prominent examples is Trump’s attacks on my employer, Harvard University, where he’s pulled out every stop he possibly can to think about, How can the federal government try to punish this institution that I don’t like? And you could see if it wasn’t a mortgage thing that Trump could start digging through Adam Schiff’s taxes or whatever else he wanted to do to try to find a way to punish him. As we know, if you try hard enough, I guess I should say, it’s not impossible to find reasons that somebody technically broke the law, but we have norms against prosecuting people and trying to dig up reasons to prosecute them. Trump simply ignores those because he doesn’t believe that this damage that would happen to democracy is important.
In that sense, I worry more about this one. One more thing I’ll say against this attack on Schiff than I do these other things is that, ultimately, somebody like Adam Schiff … now [Trump] could actually prosecute him. And Trump doesn’t control the judiciary—at least not top to bottom—so there’s a good chance this could go to court and it could get thrown out. But a politician, of course, might have to decide the next time he’s ready to run or to criticize Trump or to do whatever that this just isn’t worth it. Who wants to subject themselves to that kind of disruption of their lives, to have to pay for lawyers, to have to worry about whether or not they could possibly go to prison if they don’t get the right judge, for example? And that kind of thing is what undoes the opposition to authoritarian leaders. Everything Trump would be doing could be technically perfectly legal in a certain respect—but once you weaponize the bureaucracy to say, I’m going to [go] after my political opponents, it makes life very hard on those opponents in a way that undoes their ability to be political opponents. And at that point, when you don’t have opposition, you’re undoing democracy.
Sargent: Hugely alarming. And I think this really is underscored by Trump talking about Schiff, which we’ll listen to right now.
Trump (audio voiceover): Now it looks like Adam Schiff really did a bad thing. They have him. Now let’s see what happens. It’s not up to me. It’s not up to … I stay out of it purposely, but it’s mortgage loan fraud. It’s a big deal.
Sargent: Ryan, what strikes me about that is him saying that he’s staying out of the decision whether to prosecute, which is pretty hilarious given that he’s openly and explicitly urging the bureaucracy to find reasons to prosecute. Can you talk about that?
Enos: Yeah, I was very struck by that as well because, of course, he almost directly contradicted himself afterward. And I think what that signaled when he said he was going to stay out and then, of course, he said, But you should prosecute him, and here’s all these things we know and he’s going to be prosecuted and found guilty and such, is it shows this tension of this moment we’re in where the U.S. is in a moment where we see our democracy slipping away into the state of what we call competitive authoritarianism. But that democracy is still there and functioning.… It’s in a very concerning point, but it’s still out there. And so these norms still operate somewhat, where Trump is trying to signal, Well, I’m staying out of it. He’s trying to give this air of legitimacy to it as we would expect in a democracy where these things happen impartially and not for political reasons.
But then of course, he then goes and bulldozes right over those norms because Trump doesn’t actually believe in those. It, again, is this problem where even if nothing happens—even if it’s just a bunch of hot air and we never even see any attempted prosecution—imagine you’re the next Democrat that wants to run for office. [You’d] think, Well, is this really worth it? If I come into Trump’s political crosshairs and he’s going to criticize me and threaten to persecute me like that, then it just might not be something I want to do. Maybe I won’t run for office.
Sargent: Well, I want to ask you about how Democrats should respond to this. The hook is that just moments ago, Obama’s office responded to Trump’s charge of treason. I’m going to read the whole statement from Barack Obama’s office, “Out of respect for the office of the presidency, our office does not normally dignify the constant nonsense and misinformation flowing out of this White House with a response. But these claims are outrageous enough to merit one. These bizarre allegations are ridiculous and a weak attempt at distraction. Nothing in the document issued last week undercuts the widely accepted conclusion that Russia worked to influence the 2016 presidential election but did not successfully manipulate any votes. These findings were affirmed in a 2020 report by the bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee, led by then-Chairman Marco Rubio.” Point being Rubio is now secretary of state. You’d think he’d be asked about this. Do you think that response is good enough, Ryan?
Enos: Well, I think it’s OK. I do wish that Democrats would more often call this what it is and point out that when you are threatening to prosecute your political opponents that we’re slipping into authoritarianism. And often, I think that people like Barack Obama maybe think they’re above the fray or something, so they don’t want to say that—or just that Democratic leaders don’t recognize this moment we’re in. And I think that’s often the problem we see coming out of many prominent Democrats in Congress and other places. So I do worry about the fact that they are not strong enough in these statements. But I do think it’s worthwhile noting that Trump, I should say, is in a remarkable moment of political weakness right now, where he is on the defensive. And it doesn’t take a lot to imagine that the reason he is putting out all these crazy things right now is because of him being on the defensive because of this Epstein stuff. And I would point that out too. I think Obama came close to saying that—that he’s trying to do this as “a distraction.” But he’s trying to do this [as a] diversion because Trump is the one that has a lot to hide at this point. And I think it’s important that Democrats are willing to point that out.
Sagrent: I agree 100 percent. I think maybe Democrats like Obama … by the way, I should point out that Obama has in some of his other public statements, seems to indicate an awareness of the moment we are in. I wonder whether some Democrats are thinking to themselves, Well, we don’t want to make Trump look too strong. It’s a bit of a jujitsu calculation that gets you to that point, but I worry that that’s what they’re thinking; that it’s something along the lines of, OK, we know we’re in real trouble here, but we want to respond with ridicule to make Trump look weak and little, an impulse that I get. But the moment demands more.
Enos: Yeah, I would agree with that. At some point, I think we have to think past the exact political calculations of it and just recognize the moment we’re in. And I should say that I think that largely, the American people do respond to these threats to our democratic norms. They respond to them negatively. And you can see this in Trump’s poll numbers. You can see this in the fact that the people that he has attacked in this authoritarian manner have largely been supported by the American people. This includes universities and things like that that have been attacked. And I think that’s because with all the faults we have as the American electorate—like we elected this guy twice—at the same time, Americans don’t take well to people that are trying to attack our democracy. At least the majority of them don’t. Of course, Democrats are thinking about the next election—but they also just have to think about the state of our democracy. And often those two things are compatible with each other. You can point out that somebody is damaging the system that we all value, and that hurts that opponent electorally. And that’s very clearly what Trump is doing in this case.
Sargent: I would add to all that by saying that Democrats have a responsibility as public officials and as leadership figures to communicate to the public what our situation is. So to close this out, and not to get too technical with the language here, but are we fucked or are we not fucked?
Enos: Well, as an academic, I always have to take the either-or/middle-ground type of response to that. But I would say that we’re in real trouble in the short term—fucked, if you will—in the sense that every democratic roadblock we thought we would have that would stop Donald Trump has failed us and has done so more quickly than we thought it would. One of the things that alarms me the most is how quickly all these things have fallen apart. And we could list them: from our political parties to our independent bureaucracy, to our judiciary, to many aspects of our civil society.
I do think, though, that it takes a lot. And this isn’t just me speaking off the cuff; this is something there’s political science research on. It takes a lot to bring down 250 years of democracy. We have a lot of norms that are failing us right now, but they are ingrained into the American people where we do believe in democracy. It’s not like we’re perfect, but a lot of people do believe in democracy and do value it. And we do see opposition. And it’s going to be tough. It’s going to be a tough next three and a half years. But if I had to guess, I think we’re going to come out from it OK. It’s just a guess. I think we’re going to come out from it OK in the long run. I think at the end of this three and a half years, we’re going to have a lot of rebuilding. And where we go in the future is going to depend a lot on what changes we make to make sure something like this doesn’t happen again.
Sargent: Yes. And I think that the chances that we come out OK are reinforced if people stay in this and remain engaged. That is one of the most critical things here. Ryan Enos, it was an enormous pleasure to talk to you, man. It was really interesting. Thank you.
Enos: Yeah, thank you.