Trump's Oligarchs: Will American Democracy Survive?"

Welcome to Phil and Ted's Sexy Boomer Show. I'm Ted Bonnitt.

I'm Phil Proctor. I'm remote today, believe me, off the coast of Baja on the 43rd annual Legendary Blues Cruise.So I'm having a lot of fun, and I'm delighted that I can participate in the show today because I know it's going to be very interesting for everybody.

Yes. Our guest today is Michael Genovese. Professor Michael Genovese, he's the president of Global Policy Institute at Loyola Marymount University.We asked him on today because we thought this was the time to have a conversation about the presidency. Professor Genovese is an expert on this. He's written 50 books, much of it on the presidency. He is Oxford trained, graduated usc.He has all the credibility of a scholar of the presidency.And we thought, here's where we can find out where the real boundaries are, because our current administration doesn't seem to be adhering to law and order or even common decency in some respects.And what we thought would be interesting and helpful would be to discuss just how much of this is legal, how much of this is not legal in terms of how the framers of the Constitution set up our. Our democracy and republic and what dilemmas we face and what solutions we have. Professor Genovese, welcome to the Sexy Boomer Show.

Great to be here with both of you. Yeah.

So 50 books, huh? Couldn't you get it right the first time?

No. The real question is, what am I overcompensating for?

Yeah.

What I found most interesting in your extensive resume. I think you're the most overqualified person we've ever had on Philip, that Sexy Boomer Show.But the most interesting credit, you saved it till the very, very end where you said you occasionally did stand up at the improv. So we must talk about that at some point. Okay.

Okay, I'm happy to.

Did not see that coming. In your book they published in 2022, the Modern Presidency, you were writing about what is the Modern Presidency? And it's a really interesting book.Now, three, four years ago, it might have been a dry read, but now it is so pertinent, it is so interesting to see the boundaries of the presidency and it being pushed and tested to the degree that it is. And when you wrote the book in 2022, you had the hindsight of the first Trump administration, which you did not seem to be a big fan of.And now here we are three years later in the depths of a second Trump presidency, which isn't unprecedented. Grover Cleveland, I Believe it was. He was also non consecutive, but he was a reformer. He had some personal issues, but he was basically a reformer.The question that I'm sure people are asking is what Trump doing legal and is what we're witnessing a push to a different form of government, more of an autocracy? How do you see, having studied the first Trump administration and what you're seeing now?

I'm accustomed to studying the constitutional presidency, the presidency under the rule of law, and I've done that for all my public life. Today, instead of the constitutional presidency, we're moving towards a runaway presidency.The constitutional presidency had limits and boundaries and they were recognized. And presidents always tried to push on those boundaries, but there was push back.Sometimes it was the Congress, sometimes the courts, sometimes the public. There are fewer pushbacks today, partly because Donald Trump, I think, learned a great deal after his first term. His first term was not a success.He had limited some positives here and there, but for the most part, I think even he would say that he blew a chance to do something. Now, I think he's learned from the first term and he's basically said, I'm not going to recognize the limits any longer.There's no one's going to stop me. Especially because we used to have what we call the separation of powers between the president, Congress and the courts.We don't have much of that anymore. What we have instead is what you would call the separation of parties.And so that if the parties are all unified behind a president, if the president has control of the White House, the House, the Senate, the Supreme Court, there's a lot that a president can do.And if you've got a president who believes, as Donald Trump keeps saying, that and I'll quote him, I have an Article 2, and that means I can do anything, end quote.

Right.

He doesn't have that ability to do anything. The Article 2 is a limiting as well as an empowering article. But he believes that because that's who he is.He believes that he shouldn't be constrained. He believes he's the smartest person in the room. He believes that anyone who's against him is either corrupt or venal.And so he basically said, in the first term, gee, let me see what I can do. And the second term, he said, I'm just going to do it. And the sad disappointment is there aren't enough people to stand up and say no.The most disappointing of which, of course, is the Supreme Court.

Correct.

In your book the Modern Presidency, you talk about articles one and two. Article one is about the congressional branch. Article two is the executive branch.And in your book, you say that the framers regarded the congressional branch as the primary controlling branch in terms of keeping checks and balances, so that typically a president wouldn't be able. Able to get away with this, because if the Constitution was being adhered to as intended, much of this would be stopped.It seems to be that Citizens United and corruption basically buying the judicial branch the way Mitch McConnell Jerry rigged and fixed the supermajority in a really sleazy way. But he got away with it.

And, hey, Ted, I call it the extreme court.

Yes.

And I do want to point out you were talking about a president being a reformer. I think Trump thinks of himself as a transformer. He's a garbage truck that transforms into a superhero. Yeah.

Getting a lot of press is this ballroom and the ballroom being built. He said that the East Wing would not be touched. And of course, he demolished it.He demolished it so quickly that it couldn't be stopped, asbestos be damned. And yet he's not breaking any laws. Is that correct?

The balls.

Breaking certain regulations and guidelines that are set in law. For example, you're supposed to bring plans for development to a commission. You have a board that you have to go through.You have all kinds of basically small, but they're hurdles that you have to go through to get approvals. He just swept that all aside.And on his own order, he wiped out the entire East Wing and all the 123 years of history that goes with it to build a $300 million gilded ballroom where, although I will say the south wall has the slot machines, Pam Bondi is going to be the keynote runner. Don't even ask me what Kash Patel's going to do. But you have to ask, is nothing sacred with him?

No, no.

His taste is so gaudy.If you look at the Oval Office, all the gold that's there, all the glitz and all the glitter, it is so over the top, so glitzy, it looks like Las Vegas threw up on the Oval Office. Yeah. And it's a tribute to bad taste. And it's a tribute to one man's taste.

It's the Oval Office. To me. Offal. Look it up.

As I understand it, though, the White House, the Supreme Court, and the Capitol are exempt from those regulations. They're not subject to the same regulations.

They are not subject to the same regulations, but there are regulations that the White House, excuse me, the presidency has agreed to over the years, and it's followed over the years. And it's very simple and you get what you want. It's just that you have to go through a little bit of time and a little bit of paperwork.I don't know, I may be wrong here, but I don't know of any president who did not get what he wanted from some kind of redevelopment of the White House grounds.

Right. Truman, when they did an extensive renewal, he went through Congress. It was completely transparent. Congress paid for it.The ballroom, it's so Versailles personified. While we're literally cutting off snap food for the first time in history, people are going to start going hungry in this country. Country.And yet they are building a gilded ballroom for the super wealthy.

Well, let them eat cake and they will.

And the grift, Ding Dongs, the grift of the ballroom is such an illustration of this. He, he just decided to say that is now a 300 million dollar project. It's a 90000 square foot building.He's which is larger than the White House, which is typical. He likes his name in this on the skyline. I don't think he's building this for somebody else by the way.And it's not going to be done for a couple of years. That's another concern. But if you just do the math, if you take $300 million and divide it by 90,000 square feet, it's 3,333 per square foot.To build a class A office building with all the amenities typically costs between 400 and $1,000 a square foot. The most expensive buildings in Manhattan, which would be high tech like hospitals, they peak at about hundred square foot to build.Now this is supposedly at 3333. And then I heard him make a comment because I think of his cognitive decline.He doesn't hold back and he mentioned that I think we're going to hear is that he's such a great builder and he's so good at what he does. He has so much money left over. He's going to build that arch. So. And he said as much.So you look at, he's made $3 billion in nine months since he's taken office through cryptocurrency. Is this whole with cryptocurrency, is it legal?

Donald Trump has monetized the presidency as no other president has in history. Not just Trump, but his family as well. His family businesses, plural. His son in law getting money from Middle Eastern sources.His daughter getting licenses. When she goes on a trip with Trump to China. They meet in private with the top hierarchy of the Chinese government.She comes out with licenses to sell products in China. Melania with her book and with now she's got her own cryptocurrency. I could go on for hours. With Donald Trump's monetization of the presidency.Politics has always had its seamy side, and the money has always been a factor, but no president has been this blatant about it. And you wonder, when he engages in policy changes, are they for America or are they for the Trump family, the Trump Organization?

And now he's literally shaking down corporations and companies who want to buy in. Everything's for sale.Remember he said before he was elected that he was willing to sell out his policy for oil for if the oil companies gave him a billion dollars.

Yeah.

A little contribution.

Right.

Which they probably did through crypto.Even the 501C3 that they've set up to contribute the money to build the Ballroom is done in a way where you can't really trace donors corre through this foundation. The corruption is so in your face and so blatant. Is there any way we can stop this?

From the day he took office, he was breaking the law because he broke the emoluments clause of the Constitution. And once he got away with that, it was just clear sailing. There were no speed bumps on the road to making money off of the presidency.And it's incredibly tempting. And with Trump, how he values money, he equates that with success. He equates that with strength, with power.And so for him, making money is important as a show of strength and a show of success. And so once he wasn't brought to heel on the emoluments clause or not releasing his tax returns, I could go on and on.He just saw that there was clear sailing. No one was going to stop him. No one in Congress would.I can't imagine the speaker of the House, who probably is the weakest speaker we've had in the last hundred years,.

Ineffective Congress in history as well.

And he's not even doing Donald Trump a favor. A strong speaker of the House could really help him.But a weak one basically says, let you do everything you want, Congress is not going to support you.And so what you like is when a president and Congress are out there for the takeoff, because if it crash lands, you want them all to have a piece of that pie. But right now, when Donald Trump crashes, no one else is going to be suffering. He thinks the speaker thinks that.Let Donald Trump do what he's doing and then he'll catch the blame if goes wrong. No, I don't want to catch the blame. I don't want my caucus to catch the blame. And so he's abdicating any responsibility.

Right.

Mike Johnson, who wraps himself in the Bible and the American flag and talk about a religious hypocrite. Every time he's confronted with the obscenities of what's going on and the embarrassment, he just claims ignorance. Oh, I hadn't heard that.I haven't heard that. How long do you think he can get away with saying things like that?

Last night on the news? I'll say it's on cnn.They did a sort of a montage of all the times that in the last week that the speaker said, I didn't see it, I don't know it, I haven't heard it, I can't comment on it. Which is a wonderful blame avoidance strategy until you get caught doing it, and that's all you do. And so it becomes embarrassing.I don't know if it's. If he's capable of being embarrassed. Mike Johnson has just been such a sycophantic little toy to Donald Trump.The Trump mini me, they all want to be Trump mini mes. And so I don't think he minds being a sycophant.

Why do you suppose the Congress has completely collapsed and abdicated to the executive branch? Is it all about intimidation and money or blackmail?

Fear is a big factor. No one wants to be on Donald Trump's social media receiving end.And so I will say Donald Trump has very effectively used social media more than any other president, better than any other president, and with greater effect than any president. He's mastered the art of using social media as a tool and as a weapon. He weaponizes everything he can.And weaponizing means that if you want to take him on, you know that there's a likelihood that with his megaphone, the president has a bully pulpit that can outshine anyone and can outspeak anyone, that whatever you do, he's going to do it bigger, louder and harder. And so once you start, you're not going to get a word in edgewise once he starts.And so Donald Trump knows that, I will give him credit, he has a good sense of what power is, how to use it, the problem, and this is where you started, the question is, where's Congress? Basically, when the Constitution was written, Madison had a very clear theory of how government's supposed to operate in a republic.Ambition was to check ambition. Those were his words in the Federalist Papers. In effect, it was power was going to Check power.And you need to give each branch the means and the motives. Those are his words, to check the other branches when they go to excess. Congress has the means. The motive now is gone.Because again, with the rise of political parties, when parties became more important than the institution of Congress, saving a president of your own party became more important than defending your institution. And so that's where we are today. The theory upon which our government is based no longer applies. That's not because Madison was a fool.He was a very smart man. He knew the risk. The problem is, over 200 years, we've morphed into a very different political system.200 Years ago, we were a deliberative democracy. We are no longer a deliberative system because the world is changing so fast. Hyperchange. And everything is making policy has to be made.Now we think, and we don't have a chance to think, to debate, to discuss. So what we're left with is the Congress is not well suited to govern and the presidency is. The presidency is a modern, streamlined institution.It can change on a dime. It can move quickly. Congress is slow. It's like a hippopotamus. Once it gets started, you can't stop it.But it's not going to get started if the Congress has leaders who keep on putting it in a corral. And so what we have today is very different than what the framers had in mind. And maybe it's a necessity.We have an 18th century constitution that governs a 21st century superpower. Maybe the coat that fit us in 1787 fit us beautifully then, maybe it doesn't fit us now. Maybe Trump is right.Maybe we need to just jettison all that baggage, the Constitution, the rule of law and elect kings. It's much more efficient, I will tell you that.

Is that why we're seeing a global trend towards autocracies?

Yeah. Donald Trump didn't start this. Donald Trump came in when it was already in motion and it was in motion globally, across the industrialized nations.What we see is a specific trend which is middle of the road. Voters look to government and say, you didn't solve my problems. You're letting others in, immigrants. And there's a strong racist component to that.We know you're letting them in and you're not servicing us. You're giving preference to them. Them is anyone who's not like the majority.And you see it all over Europe when in Germany, when Angela Merkel started to have a very open policy towards immigration. Now, let's be honest, every country in Europe needs desperately to have immigration.Their populations are not reproducing at a fast enough rate to sustain them. So Angela Merkel, the smartest person of her day, said, this is a good way to get more people so we can basically sustain our economic machine.Politics intervened and said, we want a certain type of person. And so the public said, you aren't satisfying our needs, you're satisfying the elites of society. You're giving everything to them.And I will say that they have a point. Income distribution has shifted dramatically to the top. The hollowing of the middle class is a real thing.And the rise of the super rich is a real thing. Income inequality has expanded in the last 20 years.And people look at that, average citizens look at that in Europe and in the United States and go, we're getting screwed. They have a reason and right to be mad. The solution that they go to, though, is worse than the problem that they're trying to fix.It's a problem that is global and we face it in the same way that Europe faces it.The rise of populist right wing governments that tend to be racist, that tend to be anti immigrant, that tend to be anti elitist while being elitist in and of themselves. Donald Trump came in and he saw that playbook develop and he goes, we're right for that.Give him credit for recognizing that, for diagnosing the problem and for applying a solution that may be bad for American democracy, but is very good for Donald Trump.

You know, you hear the term late stage capitalism. Are we looking at late stage democracy?

You have to remember, democracy for almost all of human history was a dirty word. Plato was the greatest enemy of democracy.If you look at a broad sweep of history, the amount of time that democracies existed and thrived was minuscule. We happen to be alive at a time when democracy was in full flourish, when it hit its peak.And a lot of people who study this go, democracy can't work. First of all, and it had a good day, it had its run, it's over. My hope is that's not true.My hope is that constitutional democracy, which is different than direct democracy, the thing that we had in 1787, that that might still work. Because in the absence of that working, the alternative is to hand things over to a strong man who may or may not do well.He might be Augustus, but he might be Hitler. And so I don't trust one person ruling. Not that the people have the best record in the world, we have an imperfect record. We make mistakes.But I'd rather have Those checks and balances. I'd rather resort to the rule of law when a wrong has been done, rather than the will and the graciousness and the kindness of the king.

Checks and balances, some recourse. We're looking at the fruits of the Reagan revolution. As you said, we grew up as boomers. We grew up at a time of unparalleled prosperity.We were the undisputed empire after World War II, and we had a robust middle class, we had strong unions.And it was so successful in the early 60s that the wealth class was getting concerned that the wealth was increasing at a faster rate for the middle class than it was for the wealth class. Suddenly, the attack on unions and associating it with communism and socialism kicked in. And then mourning in America.With Reagan, this trend began, and now the people who are feeling like the elites took the food off their plate.If Trump's not in the elite and representing the elites, how are people not connecting the dots that Trump and his minions are representing the very threat that people are concerned about?

That's a complex question, a deep question, and if we had a good answer to that, we might be able to turn things around.My answer to that would be that it started in the United States, it started globally, but it took its turn in the United States when Donald Trump started with the birther lie. Ah, yes.We had someone in the White House who happened to be of African American descent, and a lot of people didn't like it, and they weren't allowed to say the ugly things that we used to say when we were small children and we heard it on the playground or we heard it in different places. We, all three of us, remember hearing the N word used in public. But we learned that was ugly and horrible and you should stop it.Donald Trump came in, lifted the rock, and let all those people out from under it and said, it's okay. Reagan gave the code words for racism in a much milder way. It's almost civilized when you look at it now.He talked about welfare cheats and welfare queens. We didn't know what that meant. Donald Trump has taken it much further, basing his entire public Persona on a lie. That's the beginning.A hatred for someone who's black and in the White House, someone who took away our country. Why don't we have one of us in the White House? Oh, he's a Muslim. And all those lies were a way, I think, of saying that we. Let me back up.I was one of the people who was foolish and naive enough to Think that Obama was right, that maybe this was the start of a post race America. God, was I wrong. God, was he wrong. It only did the opposite.It made it even worse because now it made people who harbored those feelings and kept them in to let them out. And the ugliness has spewed out. Our public discourse is much uglier than it was.I mean, in the Reagan years we knew what he was saying, but it was not as blatant. Today, it's as I said, you lift the rock and all these things crawl out. White nationalism is now acceptable.The language that you heard from the young Republicans about the N word was used. That's not the exception. It's also not the rule, but it's a part of that base. The Republican Party used to say to those folks, stop or get out.Now they say, welcome to the big tent. So he's diminished and demeaned us as a culture. And instead of Abraham Lincoln's, let's appeal to the better angels within us.Some people appeal to racism blatantly or subtly.

Let's call it for what it is. White supremacy is coming up. When we were kids, we thought a liberal democracy was the norm. It was an anomaly, what we experienced.And we're going back to the way it was.

We believed in diversity. It was exciting to share our country with so many different people for who wanted to contribute to it.

President Trump is suing the American people for $230 million because he doesn't like what somebody said to him or calling him out of his criminal behavior, which he has been convicted for.

He has a lot of gall, a lot of nerve, I'll say that. Saying to the American taxpayer, give me 200x million dollars because you made me face up to these criticisms about the Russia hoax.First of all, the Russia hoax was not a hoax.Just ask the head of the Senate Intelligence Committee at the time who did this study, who happens to now be Donald Trump's Secretary of State, Marco Rubio. His report that his committee put out literally said, it's not a hoax. They did try to interfere.They did interfere and they aided Donald Trump and they hurt Hillary Clinton. Excuse me. This phony hoax that Donald Trump talks about, his members of his own cabinet say it's real.And back to something you said earlier about when we were younger. We grew up in a fantasy world. We grew up in a world, a post World War II world. All of our adversaries and allies were in rubble.We emerged not unscathed, but with our physical plant humming and going 100%. We were the most powerful nation in the world by default. In 1950.We produced, and this is astonishing, half of the world's goods and services in 1950 were produced by one country, the United States. That is artificial.

Wow.

But what we did at that time is astonishing. We built a regime of free trade, fair trade. It was imperfect. We made mistakes. Yes, it was to our advantage.But we built a regime that prevented major war for over 70 years that brought massive prosperity to a world that was suffering. It was a net positive. And when we were leading at our best, we were doing a pretty darn good job.What will the world look like in the absence of American leadership? What will the world look like when China emerges stronger and stronger?Because what we're doing is we're basically handing the Chinese the keys to the kingdom.

I just read today that India and Russia and China are starting to trade in Chinese currency. The only thing we can do is print money, but if the currency does not become the sole reserve currency, we're in real trouble.

And China's been trying to do that for quite a while. In Donald Trump's first term, presidency went to basically the playground of the elite.He went to Europe during one of the great sessions in Switzerland and gave a speech in which he said, I'll paraphrase. Okay, Donald Trump in America now has decided they're going to back away. Don't worry, everything's fine, because we'll take over.We're ready to take over. They want to take over. They have been trying to get the Chinese currency as the world trading currency. It hasn't worked.But now that they have some pretty powerful allies, India, Russia, not so much, but China, will this turn the tide? Will the world turn against us? Because, Phil, Ted, you traveled around the world.It used to be when you go to another country, people would admire the United States. They had things to criticize.

Vietnam.

I remember going traveling when we with Vietnam and other things, but we were admired, even begrudgingly admired today. What's the attitude that people have when you go to Europe? It's pity poor America. Oh, my goodness, how you suffer with that man.They get it where we don't. And as I said, when we were kids, it was a fantasy world. We're facing reality now and we have not dealt with it well.

Let's talk about the intimidation against our own people that's occurring. We know that Trump has said as much that he's targeting all his perceived enemies.And it's not just individuals, it's entire states celebrating, ostensibly the 250th anniversary of the Marines. They were shooting live ammunition howitzers over i5 down in Pendleton over an active passenger train route saying, oh, it's always been done.It's not ever been done. It happened on Saturday, which, oh, just happened to be the. No Kings Day march.But they did practice rounds on Friday during the rush hour without telling anyone. They were shooting live artillery rounds over i5. There was an Amtrak train going through at the time. This sounds like intimidation.And he said in Japan, speaking to sailors, that he's considering using more than just the National Guard domestically, meaning the military. Is anyone going to stop this?

Donald Trump keeps testing and he pushes the envelope and if no one pushes back, he takes the next step. And the next step in terms of that. You talked about fear and intimidation, putting troops in Los Angeles.What was the perfect example of a paper tiger is Donald Trump sending American troops on horseback into MacArthur park and nobody's there to round up. Does that tell you what?Donald Trump is like a paper tiger, but he also has some very real measures that bring about a state of fear, which has a powerful impact because ICE agents or whomever dress up in their camouflage gear, their arms and their weapons.They wear masks, they are not identified and they come in and they bully people, they arrest people, some of whom are American citizens who were arrested without due process, without their rights. Someone who worked for us said they could no longer come in to work for us because they were afraid. I go, aren't you a citizen? Doesn't matter.And so if you can round someone up and send them down to El Salvador, that's a powerful inducement for me to behave and I'll be a good boy and I won't rock the boat and you can do what you want. Just leave me alone. Leave me with my good job and my tv. The great Roman poet Juvenal was asked, how do you govern a place like Rome?And he said, you do it with bread and circuses. And so for Donald Trump, it's important to have bread, a good economy and circuses, entertainment.Can you name a public figure in your lifetime who's more entertaining than Donald Trump?

He's definitely co opted the media. How do you see the use of humor?And why did you decide you wanted to try some stand up, which, as you said yourself, is a dangerous profession in many ways and terrifying.

Every political joke is a shot fired at a dictator. Every political joke is something that instills fear in the heart of an authoritarian.Every time you make fun of someone who's pompous, you puncture a hole in him. And so for Donald Trump, what is it he fears most? Not defeat, not the loss of money. It's being laughed at.To laugh at Donald Trump is the greatest sin against Donald Trump. And if you laugh at him, he will go out to destroy you, and he will not let anything stand in his way.Which is why Colbert is going to be gone soon, why Jimmy Kimmel was gone for a while. Again, Ted, you talked about fear. You instill fear in the hearts of people who make jokes. Jokes. What is it?Was it Tolstoy who said, there's nothing funny about political humor? Someone like that said, or Groucho Marx said, I don't like political jokes because they keep getting elected.But humor is the greatest of cleansing agents, greater than sunshine, because what it does is it washes away the pompousness of our leaders who think that they're so great. And it brings them down a level or two, a peg or two, and it brings them down to the people's level.And what I encourage, and I do it a lot, is laughing at Donald Trump. If I don't laugh, I'm going to cry because look at what he's done. What he's done to my country is just breathtakingly sad.This is my 46th year of teaching college, and I celebrate constitutionalism, the rule of law, all the things that I thought mattered and still to me do matter. And I see what's happening to them and my heart is breaking. And I wonder, have we seen our better days? Are they behind us or can we come back?

I have a lot of friends who do stand up comedy, and they avoid political comedy because they don't want to alienate people in the audience. And I am of your mind that I think it's vitally important.After all, the Fireside Theater spent most of our career making fun of society, making fun of power. Okay. And relating to the fact that we have the power.Now, that brings up the question of these demonstrations, 7 million people on the street challenging the Trump administration. What do you think? Is it effective? And what do you think the next step has to be?

If you wonder whether or not it was effective, take a look at what Donald Trump released right after he saw 7 million people marching against him. An AI aided video of him as a Top Gun guy with a crown dropping a massive amount of human excrement on marchers. Now, that's not funny. I don't know.I limit myself to put jokes. I will not do a Poop joke. Donald Trump has done a poop joke and he thinks it's funny.When you're six years old, you think it's funny, but grown ups don't think it's funny.And his sense of injustice towards him, every time he sees someone looking at him the wrong way, he gets outraged because he thinks there's an injustice being done to him. You're supposed to bow to him. And that's why humor, you can't stop using humor.

Yeah, but where is this coming from? It took a bunch of people to make that AI the movie. Right. And to do his music videos and everything. Who is, what does he do?Does he call somebody up and say, do this for me, or are they doing it for him? Cohorts.

A lot of willing enablers who work for him. The Stephen Millers and the Bannons and, and those folks who. Very angry people who want to go out and get people.The one thing I wanted to say is I, I recycle jokes. And the same jokes I told about Richard Nixon and George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton, I'm telling today.All of my career I would get laughs from Democrats and Republicans at those jokes because they're damn funny.

Yeah.

Today I only get joke laughs from half the class.

There you go.

And I get a look of resentment from kids. I used to have a hard time telling you until the end of the semester whether this kid was left or right. Democrat, Republican.I can tell you the second class, because the kids who sit there like this with their arms crossed and smirk on their face and look and I tell really funny jokes and they get angry. It's a different world. And we were trying to apply the old standards that we used to use to Donald Trump. They seem not to apply.

Terrifying.

In the time we have left, there are certain things happening.

Please, Ted, Ted, don't say that. Makes me nervous. Right.

Oh, God. I think we're giving Trump way too much credit, by the way.I think it's people like Russell Vogt who are self avowed Christian nationalists who have said they want to tear everything down. Take the CDC for example, firing people that are in disease research that we desperately need.And you have to ask yourself, why would somebody do that? And there is this mentality that government is bad and we should tear it apart. It's like setting the fire and then showing up to put it out.And then they'll come back and say, we have the answer, let's privatize everything. It's as if they're undoing and undermining everything they possibly can.

Hey, you know what? We're rewriting it. It's now the funding fathers. I'd like to ask you, professor, what.What do you think is the end game of all of this manipulating that's going on?

It's easy to say that Donald Trump wants power. That's the easy answer. Is it power for himself or is it power for a Trump dynasty? Or is it just.That's his personality and he'll just do it because it's what he does. It's who he is. But one of the things, Ted, you mentioned vote V A U V O U G H T is how you spell it, but it's pronounced vote.Yeah, there's a great article in the Region New Yorker about him and just how horrible he can be. But what it suggests is that conservatism is dead in America. It used to be the counterbalance to liberalism. It's dead.And in fact, the middle has been hollowed out. And I think New York's mayor's race may move the Democratic Party further left. And so what happens is you got a big hole in the middle.And I go back to William Butler Yeats, his poem the second coming in 1919, after First World War and he wrote, things fall apart that the center cannot hold. Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world. The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity. That is America today.The center has not held the good are not doing their job because a lot of them are afraid. And the worst are full of passion and intensity.We need passionate intensity to defend the Constitution, to defend the rule of law, to defend decency because civility is on the ballot every time we go to the vote.

This isn't a fair question because we're almost out of time, but I really wanted to touch on the unitary theory.This is what Russell Vote is and his ilk are promoting bringing predominance to the executive branch as they try to misinterpret the intention of the Founding Fathers that this is a Judeo Christian based government. It is not.And as you write in your book the Modern Presidency, the unitary executive theory, at least the extreme version promoted by many conservatives, is a groundless view not supported by the evidence or logic. It serves as a description of presidential behavior while it is also used to justify actions beyond Republican standards.So to translate that into layman language, this idea of creating a dictator is exactly against the principles of the Founding Fathers and their intention.

Yeah, the Constitution was written at a time when we didn't have democracy. And we were trying to experiment with it.And the framers had an incredible fear of monarchy, and so they wrote a constitution that prevented a monarch from taking over. But again, if the framers looked to their left and looked to the right and they would see nothing but emperors and kings and the unitary theory.I'm going to use a very technical political sciencey term to describe the unitary theory of the executive. And it may be really technical, but I think you'll understand the unitary theory is a steaming loaf of pony poop.There is no constitutional basis for it. They've latched onto it.They started this in the 80s under Ronald Reagan when they wanted to find a way to add to the President's power when he's going to conservatives in the White House. And it had no intellectual grounding or historical base then. It has none now. It is a phony baloney.I have debated several people who are unitary advocates and I feel bad because they have nothing to offer and they get humiliated because not because I'm a great debater, because I'm not, but because their position is so weak, it is groundless. And yet it is what they cling to because it gives them the answer they want. But to get to the answer, one and one plus one equals two.To get to two, you have to go one plus one. And if you don't have one plus one, you don't have the two.They go to two right away because they want to go there and they can't get there in the normal way. Unitary theory of the executive is a phony baloney.

One nation under Trump.

Yeah, he is the God to a number of people. If you looked a lot of.

Absolutely, yes.

A lot of people who claim to be Christians talk about how he's anointed by God and that God has given us an imperfect vessel. But he's our vessel and we will follow him.

There's something in your book you quoted former George W. Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson and he wrote in the Washington Post. I think it's in your book, or I just read it in the Washington Post.But it said politics does not directly determine the morality of citizens, but it helps shape the system of social cues and stigmas which citizens operate. It matters where leaders delegitimize hatred and or fertilize it, if they isolate prejudice or mainstream it.If political figures base their appeal on cultivation of resentment for some group or groups, they are releasing deadly toxins into our society without any idea who might be harmed or killed. Such elected leaders may not have blood on their hands directly, but they are creating a society with more bloody hands.When you have a leader that leads by example in the way in which Trump does, which is cheating, lying, stealing, no accountability, that's gonna reflect on the populace and it gives him permission to behave badly. This is the key aspect of leadership and what we're so missing.

I'm gonna quote my mother from when I was a little boy. Every time I left the house, my mom would stop me and said, michael, be nice. And it bothered the hell out of me because I wasn't nice.And I think I am a nice person. Be nice.In my last 20 years of my life, I thought, I really want to be more like my mom because she had all the wonderful virtues of kindness and generosity and compassion that I would like to develop in myself. So be nice.

Don't follow leaders. Watch your parking meters.

I think they don't write them like that anymore, do they?

The majority of America is good. And it may get messy, it may get ugly, may get violent. I hope not.But I think we're going to have some kind of a square up here that at our 250th anniversary, we may redefine and have a rebirth, if you will, of democracy.

Right now, I think we have the Untied States of America, and we're looking to make it united again.

Phil, I'm going to steal some of those lines to sell you right now.

Professor Genovese, you are the president of the Global Policy Institute, Loyola Marymount University, author of many books about the presidency. I highly recommend the Modern Presidency, Columbia University Press, published in 2022.Thank you so much for joining us and provide some clarity to our current situation.

It was a master class, Michael.

Yes, it was a great pleasure. I enjoyed it thoroughly.

Let me know where you're when you're performing again.

I'll come down and it's too frightening to stand up. My students have to laugh, but my audience doesn't.

Oh, good point.

You're listening to Phil and Ted Sexy Boomer Show. I'm Ted Bonnitt and he's Phil Proctor, and we'll see you next week. Thanks for listening.