Hey, everybody, we got a great one today, you know, for a change.

And that's because Ian Basson, the co-founder and executive director of Protect Democracy,

joins me again.

Ian was just recognized as the MacArthur Foundation genius for the work that Protect Democracy has been doing since it was founded in 2016 in response to the threat that Trump posed to democracy here and the spread of autocracy around the world.

Now with Trump threatening to root out the vermin, use the Justice Department to go after

his enemies to start mass deportation of immigrants, I wanted to have Ian lay out what Trump might do

if he becomes president again. So let's get right to it because we've got Ian Bassin and a great one

today. You know, for a change.

First of all, thanks for joining us.

It's always a pleasure.

And congratulations on the MacArthur Award, the Genius Award, I guess they call it some times.

They go a little over the top with the branding, but thank you.

It's a testament, I think, to the incredible team that I work with who really deserve an enormous amount of credit for the work they do.

Well, it's a team that you put together and you started what in 2000.

This is, of course, for Protect Democracy. And it's a team that you put together starting in

2016. That's correct. And it was just you and another guy, right? There was a couple of us coming out of the White House counsel's office, and we were talking with not just alumni of the White House counsel's office, but some of the senior outgoing members of the Department of Justice with pretty much a simple question, which is we had, when we were in the executive branch followed a whole bunch of rules

that had been in place for decades, if not centuries, but that are not really legally binding.

They're just traditions.

They're norms.

They're norms.

And the question was, what would happen if a president chose not to follow them?

And so we set about trying to organize an effort outside government

...