David Frum on Threats to Democracy in the Trump Era
The Lawfare Podcast
The Lawfare Institute
4.7 • 6.4K Ratings
🗓️ 9 February 2018
⏱️ 90 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In his recent New York Times bestseller “Trumpocracy: The Corruption of the American Republic,” David Frum, senior editor of The Atlantic, lays out a compelling account of how President Donald Trump’s tendencies could push the United States toward the illiberalism that many Americans believe the republican system of government to be immune to. In an event on Feb. 7 at the Brookings Institution, Frum sat down with Jonathan Rauch, Elaine Kamarck, and Lawfare’s Benjamin Wittes for a conversation and Q&A on the book and Trump’s threats to democracy.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The following podcast contains advertising to access an ad-free version of the LawFair |
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| 0:18.2 | Also, check out LawFair's other podcast offerings, rational security, chatter, LawFair |
| 0:25.6 | no bull and the aftermath. |
| 0:32.6 | On the core evil of an American presidential candidate sitting down with |
| 0:38.6 | representatives of a hostile foreign government and saying how can we work |
| 0:42.0 | together to achieve our common aims? |
| 0:44.3 | That's not illegal. |
| 0:45.5 | It's not illegal. |
| 0:46.5 | Not only because you couldn't write the law, but because it genuinely, it's, I mean, |
| 0:51.2 | it has not occurred to anybody that such a thing could ever happen. |
| 0:54.8 | This is our check on that. |
| 0:56.6 | Obviously a treason is defined in the Constitution and this is not treason, but obviously such |
| 1:03.2 | disloyal behavior is unthinkable and it is assumed that anyone wherever cop and |
| 1:10.5 | cooots with a foreign power as Henry Wallace was caught in the election of 1948. |
| 1:15.4 | That would just confine you to the uttermost margins of American politics, American people |
| 1:18.7 | and understand the situation. |
| 1:20.3 | But if it happens, the law won't help you because the law does not contemplate such a thing. |
| 1:27.3 | I'm Matthew Kahn and you're listening to the LawFair podcast February 10, 2018. |
| 1:33.0 | In his recent New York Times bestselling book, Trumpocracy, The Corruption of the American |
| 1:37.1 | Republic, David Frum, a senior editor of the Atlantic magazine, lays out a compelling |
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