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The Daily Beast Podcast

How Desperate Trump Could Kill Democracy: Toobin

The Daily Beast Podcast

The Daily Beast

News & Politics

4.67.9K Ratings

🗓️ 15 January 2026

⏱️ 63 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Jeffrey Toobin joins Joanna Coles to explain how Donald Trump has tightened his grip on the Justice Department, why Republicans in Congress have fallen into line, and how a Supreme Court that once checked presidential power has largely enabled it. Toobin, author and New York Times Op-Ed contributor, breaks down the looming tariff case—and why even a loss at the Court wouldn’t stop Trump, who would simply rewrite the policy and dare the legal system to catch up—alongside what’s at stake in birthright citizenship and the broader expansion of executive authority.

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Transcript

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0:00.0

The Supreme Court in our country doesn't have any individual enforcement powers.

0:05.0

They don't have an army, they don't have a police force.

0:07.0

I think Donald Trump is not going to directly defy the court.

0:12.0

What he would do is he would say, I understand the Supreme Court has said these tariffs are unconstitutional,

0:18.0

but I'm going to make some changes and these new tariffs

0:21.8

will be different enough and then force litigation on those sets of tariffs.

0:29.8

I'm Joanna Coles. This is the Daily Beast podcast. And what is going on out there?

0:35.5

We've got U.S. attorneys resigning, which never happens. We've got

0:39.9

Pambondi being yelled at by the president because she's not moving fast enough to violate all

0:46.3

the norms of the DOJ. And of course, we've got the Supreme Court making elemental decisions,

0:58.3

birthright citizenship tariffs over the next few months.

1:04.4

Well, who better to unpack this with than Supreme Court scholar Jeffrey Tubin?

1:07.8

He's written not one, but two books about the Supreme Court.

1:10.1

He's a contributing writer for the New York Times, and of course you probably know him as a contributor

1:12.9

to CNN.

1:14.0

Jeffrey.

1:16.9

So Jeffrey, how serious is it

1:19.9

all these resignations in Minneapolis?

1:23.0

Well, I think you have to recognize the history here

1:25.9

of how unusual it is to have federal prosecutors resign

1:30.8

at all at any time ever. I mean, it is not that it's never happened before, but before this

1:39.0

Trump presidency, and even the last Trump presidency, you never saw this kind of protest. Remember, there was a major

...

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