The following is a lightly edited transcript of the March 24 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.
President Trump has completed his first successful shakedown of a major law firm. The organization Paul, Weiss has agreed to a “deal” with Trump in which it gives the president major concessions in exchange for Trump agreeing to drop his corrupt use of state power against the firm. Speaking about this to reporters, Trump essentially said straight out that firms like these have the option to make similar “deals” with him if they want to avoid getting targeted. We think this kind of thing gives Democrats an opening to continue galvanizing the grassroots against Trump. And in fact, the White House’s top political adviser is quietly warning that Democratic anger could be a major problem in the midterms. Today, we’re chatting about all this with Michael Tomasky, the editor of The New Republic, who’s been arguing that we’re actually in the middle of multiple constitutional crises right now and that Democrats really need to find their footing in this moment. Great to finally have you on, Mike.
Michael Tomasky: I guess you ran out of other guests. Happy to be with you.
Sargent: Trump has reached the deal with the law firm Paul, Weiss in which Trump drops his executive order about the firm and in exchange gets a range of concessions, including a contribution of $40 million in legal pro-bono services for things Trump has championed. The White House claims that Paul Weiss is acknowledging wrongdoing by a former partner who worked as a Manhattan prosecutor against Trump. I don’t know if that’s been confirmed yet, but either way, this is straight-up extortion. Mike, is there any other way to look at it?
Tomasky: None whatsoever. Complete extortion and shocking behavior by Trump, but what else is new? Incredible behavior by Paul, Weiss, a longtime, large, respected [firm]. I wrote about this Friday, and I went to the Paul, Weiss website just to see what they had to say about themselves. And it turns out that The American Lawyer, a respected legal magazine, named them Law Firm of the Year in the United States in 2024. I doubt they’re going to repeat. We can at least bet on that.
This is just incredible. To take it from the Trump perspective, he comes into office, and he and his people draw up this executive order targeting Paul, Weiss—no president has ever done anything remotely like this—because one of its partners, Mark Pomerantz, had worked in the Manhattan district attorney’s office and was one of the lead lawyers there who was pursuing a corruption case against Trump that the district attorney, by the way, never brought. It was reported that Pomerantz left partly in anger over the fact that D.A. Alvin Bragg did not act on on his research. So he goes to Paul, Weiss, and Trump’s just mad about this. It’s a shakedown. It’s extortion. We’re going to have to track the $40 million; or David Fahrenthold, who did all the great work about the Trump charity, I hope he’s going to track where this $40 million goes and how it’s actually spent.
Sargent: And I think there’s a way to look at this: as a clear warning to other firms out there. You’re going to get shaken down if you dare get crosswise of me.
Tomasky: That’s right. Someone’s got to stand up. I know it’s risky, and I know it’s hard, but somebody’s got to stand up and say, We’re not going to do this. It’s a shameful day in the history of this law firm.
Sargent: It is. And Trump actually said straight out what the game is. Let’s play some audio of Trump talking to reporters about this whole saga. Listen.
Reporter (audio voiceover): What do you say to critics who say that your actions toward law firms amount to coercion?
Donald Trump (audio voiceover): Well, the law firms all want to make deals. You mean the law firms that we’re going after that went after me for four years ruthlessly, violently, illegally? Are those the law firms you’re talking about? They’re not babies, they’re very sophisticated people. Those law firms did bad things. Bad things. They went after me for years.
Sargent: Mike, there’s the shakedown right in plain sight. These firms didn’t actually do bad things to Trump. He’s revoked security clearances from two other firms, Perkins Coie and Covington & Burling. Those firms have worked with Democrats or provided legal advice to Jack Smith. And guess what? Under our system, they’re allowed to do those things. But hey, if you want Trump to stop targeting you for doing imaginary bad things, just make a “deal” with him. Could that be more blatant?
Tomasky: No. And of course, it would never occur to any other president in the modern history of the United States to do something like this. Even Richard Nixon would tell his guys, Go audit some partners tax returns for a few years, maybe; harass them a little bit. Even he wouldn’t try to shake them down. It’s just another staggering thing that is going to fade in a day or two, and that in other circumstances would have been utterly shocking news.
Sargent: The thing about this is it’s really hard to square out with the cover story that MAGA uses about a lot of this stuff, which is that Trump is taking on “elites.” In some cases, you can squint and see a grain of truth to that, maybe here and there, even though it’s almost invariably for corrupt reasons that he’s going after elites. But here, he’s going after these legal elites solely because of what they did to him.
Tomasky: Yeah, yeah. That’s the only reason. There’s no pretense at any other reason. No pretense.
Sargent: Right, and here he is saying it straight out. I think that’s part of it. We need to understand that he’s telling the world that you need to get in line with him, otherwise you’ll get shaken down. That’s why he says it straight out to reporters the way he did.
Tomasky: Right. Saying it straight out, I guess, makes you able to get away with it, at least if you’re Donald Trump. He doesn’t try to hide any of this. That’s the one thing we have to say: He doesn’t try to hide any of this. He thinks he ought to be able to behave like a monarch or a potentate or an authoritarian ruler of some backward country—and if he just does it out in the open, he does get away with it.
Sargent: I want to play another repulsive claim from Trump that’s just as blatant. Here, he’s asked about his recent deportations, which have taken place with no due process for the targets. Listen to this.
Reporter (audio voiceover): President, do you think you have the authority, the power to round up people, deport them, and then you’re under no obligation to record, to show the evidence against them?
Trump (audio voiceover): Well, that’s what the law says. And that’s what our country needs because we were.... Unfortunately, they allowed millions of people to come into our country totally unvetted, totally unchecked.
Sargent: He claims, “That’s what the law says,” meaning the law says he can deport people while showing no evidence against them. Now, we should stress that his most prominent deportation efforts lately are using the 1798 Alien Enemies Act and another statute allowing the secretary of state to remove alleged foreign policy threats. In these cases, what’s at issue is whether the laws can be applied the way he’s applying them. He basically says straight out he’s got free rein to apply them this way, that it’s good not to have to show evidence. Your thoughts on that, Mike?
Tomasky: Yeah, that’s exactly what he says. And of course he’s going to interpret the law the way he wants to interpret the law, in ways that are favorable to him. But once again, no other president has ever interpreted the laws this way. There is language in the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 that is a little bit ambiguous, I’ll admit that. It refers to a president being able to take actions against noncitizens in the U.S. during “any invasion or predatory incursion.” So Trump’s claiming that we’re being invaded, that this is certainly a predatory incursion. You can practically hear Karoline Leavitt standing up there and saying, We believe this is a predatory incursion. And we’ll see, but there have been a number of experts, legal scholars, and law professors quoted saying that no one has ever tried to argue that invasion or predatory incursion could be used in any context other than that of a conventional wartime setting.
Sargent: And as you say, it hasn’t been used in any other setting.
Tomasky: Right. And it’s only been used a few times in our nation’s history.
Sargent: I was really struck by that quote from Trump because he says straight out that he doesn’t want to give due process to the people he’s removing. He says it straight out.
Tomasky: Yeah. Yeah. And there was reporting in the Financial Times last Friday afternoon that was really interesting that said that these Venezuelan nationals were asked to sign papers extraditing themselves back home, essentially. So they thought they were going to Venezuela, according to the FT. And if that’s true, that’s another pretty remarkable wrinkle here.
Sargent: Reminds me a little bit of Ron DeSantis flying all his migrants up to Martha’s Vineyard on false pretenses. I guess this is a hallmark of MAGA.
Tomasky: It is, and because they know that nobody’s— Well, I shouldn’t say nobody; we care, a lot of people care, millions of people care. But they know that public opinion is not going to turn violently against them in the case of gang members, or alleged gang members. We don’t even know they’re gang members. We have to take Trump’s word for it on who these people are, and I sure don’t do that. They know that public opinion is probably not going to pummel them as long as it’s people like this. But one of these days, who’s to say there’s not going to be some future roundup that includes naturalized citizens or that includes even birthright citizens, outright born-in-the-USA citizens? I don’t think Trump’s going to stop there, or be given any pause by that fact.
Sargent: In your piece, you get at this question of what happens if the Supreme Court, which will inevitably hear this, does side with Trump in the end. I think that there’s a reasonable chance that the court actually won’t in this case; that it will say it matters whether we’re actually at war or not. But if the Supreme Court were to say that the president has the authority to simply say we’re at war and then say that these are gang members or terrorists, and that’s good enough, then all of a sudden you do potentially, I think, open up the door to the types of scenarios you’re talking about.
Tomasky: The 1798 Act refers specifically to unnaturalized aliens—I forget the archaic language that they use, but it’s something like that—because those laws were passed. John Adams was the president; they were part of the Alien and Sedition Acts. And the Alien and Sedition Acts, at least the way I learned American history in high school, were not something that we’re supposed to be proud of, or at least they weren’t when I was taught history, but Donald Trump obviously thinks they’re great. They were passed at a time when America thought it was heading into war with France, and there were a number of French citizens in the U.S., apparently, in Adams’s mind at least, making mischief. So that’s who the law was aimed at. It’s specifically aimed at unnaturalized aliens, but I could see Trump blurring that line pretty quickly.
Sargent: I would think so. In your piece, you say that these deportations under the Alien Enemies Act and the surrounding things that Trump is trying to do are a straight-up attempt at dictatorship. Can you talk about that?
Tomasky: Well, this has manifested itself in many other ways, but as the sound, at the first clip that you played [indicates], he just doesn’t believe there are any restraints on him. There’s just no restraints whatsoever. It starts with people who aren’t citizens—and as I said, I don’t think the polls are going to turn violently against him if that’s who he’s going after. But that’s where it starts, in the second month of his presidency. Who knows about the second year?
Sargent: Indeed. And I think, by the way, that we shouldn’t necessarily write off the possibility that voters will care about this kind of thing. I want to read a quote from James Blair, the White House deputy chief of staff for Political and Legislative Affairs. He says Democrats are “running angry and riled up” and that this can be a challenge politically at the ballot box, meaning in the midterms. Mike, we keep hearing from certain Democratic consultants and data analysts—you know who I’m talking about—that Dems can’t spend too much time defending our institutions because voters don’t care about that sort of thing. Allowing that maybe the particular word “institutions” is maybe not politically potent, it seems clear that this lawlessness, deportations without due process of people who have a soccer tattoo that can be relabeled a gang tattoo as they did, has got the Democratic base very angry and agitated. How should Dems try to harness that, do you think?
Tomasky: Are low-information swing voters going to get worked up about this sort of thing? Probably not. Probably not. So if you think that the only thing that Democrats have to do is persuade low-information swing voters to turn against Trump and turn toward them, then yeah, it’s a waste of time to defend institutions and talk about things like that. However, I would say, while that is a very important thing that Democrats need to do and probably on balance the most important thing, there are other important things. Showing your base that you have a pulse; showing your base that you hear them; and just standing up for history’s sake, for certain principles and notions and ideals.
There are a lot of Democrats. There are 215 in the House of Representatives, and 47 in the Senate, whatever that adds up to. I’m bad at math. Surely, among all those 262, I guess, they can find some who want to try and reach low-income swing voters or low-information swing voters, and they can find others who want to talk to the base, and they can find others who want to take a stand for history’s sake and make sure the Democratic Party is on the right side of history. They should be able to do all three of those things at the same time. It shouldn’t be that hard.
And you can target things so precisely these days. They can send one message in this direction or another message in this direction or another message in this direction. I don’t think it’s complicated, but it looks complicated in their hands.
Sargent: It does. I also want to say, though, that there is some virtue in just making a lot of noise about Trump’s lawlessness. Now again, maybe you don’t use the word “institutions,” but what has to be portrayed vividly to the country is that something’s very profoundly wrong, that we’re really off the rails. This is something the right does relentlessly. Democrats think that they have to shape everything around what the median 53-year-old noncollege white guy sitting at his kitchen table thinks, but it’s not all about issues, necessarily. It’s not all about just picking and choosing popular issues and unpopular issues. Again, that stuff’s important; but making noise about lawlessness, chaos, disruption signals to swing voters who don’t pay attention that something’s wrong and breaks through the clutter to them a little bit. Don’t you think?
Tomasky: Yes, I agree completely. It breaks through, and it signals that something’s wrong. And even if those voters can’t exactly wrap their heads around it, and even if they’re not deeply passionate about it, it signals that something is amiss with what Trump is up to. It’s very important. I would say it’s also important … I said for the sake of history, but there’s yet a third reason why it’s important, which is that if they don’t talk about it, Trump’s going to get away with it, and then he’s going to get away with the next thing and the next thing and the next thing. And then it’s going to be too late.
Sargent: Yeah. I was going to ask you about that. In fact, where do you see this all going? It seems to me that the internal logic of the situation leads inevitably to defying court orders, more deportations without a shred of due process, more people in foreign gulags. What do you think?
Tomasky: It sure seems like this particular question may be headed for the Supreme Court. And by the way, let’s not conclude this conversation without seriously tipping our hats to Judge Boasberg. What he’s done is taken some guts. The partners of Paul, Weiss should invite him over to give them talking to. He’s been incredible, and you can imagine what kind of emails and phone calls his office is getting. He’s a hero of the second Trump era already, in my book. And by the way, he’s not some radical lunatic. He was originally appointed to the bench by George W. Bush, then elevated to a higher court by Obama, put on the Federal Intelligence Surveillance Court by John Roberts, and then back on the federal bench. He ruled in Trump’s favor in a case about disclosure of Trump’s tax returns. In Trump’s favor. I’m sure people who watch Fox only hear radical lunatic; he’s nothing of the sort. He’s been a hero.
If this goes up to the Supreme Court, this particular case, and Trump defies and they rule against Trump as you suggested, let’s say Trump defies the Supreme Court and just keeps doing this. Then, where are we? And will that break through to the low-information swing voter? Will they finally say, This is a problem?
Sargent: I just want to highlight a point you made, which is that this judge actually ruled in Trump’s favor. The lawyers at Paul, Weiss should take that under advisement as well, right? Because it should be clear from what’s happening with this judge that MAGA has turned him into public enemy number one. Trump has called for his impeachment. That judge has learned that there is nothing that appeases these people. Nothing. And so if Paul, Weiss or any other law firm that makes a “deal” with Trump thinks that they are going to appease him with tens of millions of dollars of pro-bono legal work to Trump’s favorite whim of the moment, they’re kidding themselves, aren’t they?
Tomasky: Of course they’re kidding themselves. He may come back and ask for more. He’s not going to have them to the White House Christmas party, that’s for sure. So Judge Boasberg is a lesson in how you can take a stand and take a position that history will reward. He’s doing it in the face, I’m sure, of a lot of difficulty, but he’s doing it without fear, and he’s very much to be admired.
Sargent: Couldn’t agree more. Mike Tomasky, we’ve got to do this more often, man. Thanks for coming on.
Tomasky: Sure, yeah. I’m happy to do it. Great way to spend the afternoon.
Sargent: You’ve been listening to The Daily Blast with me, your host, Greg Sargent. The Daily Blast is a New Republic podcast and is produced by Riley Fessler and the DSR Network.