Jack Goldsmith: Assessing the Rule of Law in the Trump Presidency

Conversations with Bill Kristol

News, Society & Culture, Government, Politics

4.7 • 1.7K Ratings

🗓️ 22 September 2020

⏱️ 63 minutes

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Summary

How well have political and legal norms held up in our politics during the Trump presidency? In November 2017, Jack Goldsmith, a professor of Law at Harvard and a former Assistant Attorney General in the Office of Legal Counsel, shared his assessment of the early days of the Trump presidency. Now, as we head to the end of 2020, Goldsmith re-joins us to consider where things stand today. Goldsmith argues that American institutions and legal norms have retained some resilience over the course of Trump’s presidency. However, he analyzes how checks and constraints on norm-violating or corrupt behavior have weakened in many areas over the last three years. Drawing on his recent book (coauthored with Bob Bauer), After Trump: Reconstructing the Presidency, Goldsmith explains how future congresses should consider legislative remedies to restore norms in politics. But the heart of the matter, Goldsmith contends, is that the potential for a restoration of norms in our politics principally depends on whether future presidents will make adherence to norms a priority.

Transcript

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0:00.0	And the Hi, I'm Bill Crystal.
0:15.0	Welcome back to Conversations.
0:18.0	I'm very pleased to be joined today by my friend Jack Goldsmith,
0:20.7	who's a veteran of, I think, three of these conversations.
0:23.4	Is that right?
0:24.0	And I think so.
0:25.1	Very much looking forward to this fourth one.
0:27.8	Jack is Professor Lott.
0:29.6	Harvard, obviously, served in the Bush administration and the defense department and then
0:33.6	assistant attorney general for the office of legal counsel author of many many books
0:38.5	important student of separation of powers executive power and and forth, has a new book out, which I should certainly plug,
0:46.5	co-authored with Bob Bauer, President Obama's White House Council, called After Trump,
0:51.8	Reconstructing the presidency, which we'll touch on some of those themes too.
0:56.0	But Jack, we discussed actually three years ago, I think almost,
1:00.0	what was today, September 21st, so I think it was October three years ago, the
1:05.2	beginnings of the Trump presidency and how much damage would it wouldn't be
1:09.2	done to the rule of law and to our institutions and our norms and now we're near the end of the Trump presidency or the end of the first term of the Trump presidency at least and I thought we should revisit that and sort of get your judgment on what do we make of it all.
1:26.0	Are our institutions hanging by a thread or things basically fine and people are too hysterical or what's the story that we can go
1:34.3	into some detail in some of these particular.
1:36.3	Okay, that makes sense?
1:38.3	Makes sense.
1:39.3	Okay and we're doing this by Zoom obviously and you're teaching by Zoom this term I gather?
	...

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