Ian Bassin on Protecting Democracy
The Lawfare Podcast
The Lawfare Institute
4.7 • 6.4K Ratings
🗓️ 19 January 2019
⏱️ 41 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Ian Bassin served in the White House Counsel's office under President Obama. At the dawn of the Trump administration, he became the impresario behind the litigating organization Protect Democracy, which has become an increasingly cross-ideological mechanism for using litigation to protect democratic values. Benjamin Wittes sat down with Ian to talk about the differences between Protect Democracy and more traditional litigating organizations, what sort of projects they do take on, and what sort of projects they don't take on. And they talked about the role litigation can and cannot play in preserving the norms that make democracy vibrant.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The following podcast contains advertising. |
| 0:04.0 | To access an ad-free version of the LawFair podcast, |
| 0:08.0 | become a material supporter of LawFair at patreon.com slash law fair. |
| 0:14.0 | That's patreon.com slash law fair. |
| 0:18.0 | Also, check out LawFair's other podcast offerings, |
| 0:22.0 | rational security, chatter, law fair no bull, and the aftermath. |
| 0:29.0 | These modern autocrafts corrupt elections. |
| 0:35.0 | They know, unlike their 20th century brethren, |
| 0:39.0 | that they cannot pass the natually active, |
| 0:41.0 | simply dismantle democracy overnight altogether, |
| 0:43.0 | because democracy is deep into public consciousness, |
| 0:46.0 | the way that it happened in 1930. |
| 0:48.0 | And so what they do is they maintain what someone once called, |
| 0:52.0 | told me, I love this phrase, |
| 0:54.0 | our contempt in democracy. |
| 0:55.0 | Democracy is really just on the surface. |
| 0:57.0 | Think about it in the last two years, |
| 0:59.0 | glad in their Putin, C.C. |
| 1:01.0 | Erdogan, Maduro, Orban, they call one election, right? |
| 1:05.0 | But that really means he's got a guy from his own party right against, |
| 1:08.0 | and he's one really election. |
| 1:10.0 | So what is Trump doing when he comes to office? |
... |
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