Trump’s War on Truth and Science (with James Morone)
The Oath and The Office
Corey Brettschneider
4.9 • 591 Ratings
🗓️ 30 April 2026
⏱️ 62 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This week on The Oath and The Office, Corey Brettschneider and John Fugelsang look at how President Trump is using political violence not as a reason for restraint, but as a weapon against his opponents. Jimmy Kimmel and Trevor Noah are targeted for jokes. A 60 Minutes interview becomes another venue for attacking the press. And the administration’s suit against the Southern Poverty Law Center raises a larger question: is law enforcement being turned into a tool of political retaliation?
We also turn to the Supreme Court’s major Fourth Amendment case over geofence warrants and cell location data. The old law-school hypotheticals about government surveillance no longer feel hypothetical. With companies like Palantir helping build the modern surveillance state, the threat of databases tracking protesters, dissidents, and political opponents is suddenly very real.
Then Corey is joined by James A. Morone, Professor Emeritus at Brown University and one of the country’s leading political scientists, to discuss his new book with David Blumenthal, "Whiplash: From the Battle for Obamacare to the War on Science". The book tells the inside story of how Obama, Trump, and Biden transformed health care politics, from the fight over Obamacare to COVID, Operation Warp Speed, anti-poverty policy, and Trump’s war on science itself.
Get the book from Yale University Press:
https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300263480/whiplash/
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the Oath and the Office podcast. I am John Fuglesang. It's great to be with you, and we are joined as always by the man, by the Mac, by the one and only author of the book, The Oath in the Office, |
| 0:21.4 | Constitutional Law Professor, Corey Brett Schneider, Professor, it's good to see you. |
| 0:26.1 | Thanks so much, John. |
| 0:27.4 | We're going to talk about the information universe that we're all living in, the war on truth |
| 0:32.7 | that this administration has waged, and also the war on science and where it came from and Trump's |
| 0:38.6 | role in it with my amazing friend and colleague from Brown University, Professor Jim Marone. |
| 0:44.1 | But of course, first, we're going to start with the news of the day. The horrific violence |
| 0:48.6 | of this country is facing, including at the White House correspondence dinner and the horrific |
| 0:53.3 | attempted violence that happened there. |
| 0:56.3 | So let's talk about that, |
| 0:57.6 | because there's a lot of information we don't know. |
| 1:00.0 | What we do know is that this man, |
| 1:02.1 | armed with a shotgun, a handgun, and knives, |
| 1:05.2 | got inside the hotel hosting the correspondence dinner |
| 1:08.3 | where the president and vice president |
| 1:09.8 | and cabinet officials, reporters, and half of the Washington, D.C. ego infrastructure were gathered in one room. |
| 1:16.4 | We know that Cole Allen is 31 of Torrance, California. Ladies, he appears to be single. And he |
| 1:22.7 | allegedly went to a security checkpoint with his weapons. The one thing he didn't bring with him was good |
| 1:28.0 | assassination planning skills because he was stopped at the perimeter. He never entered the White |
| 1:32.7 | House correspondence dinner dining area. He was never on the same floor as the ballroom. No reporters |
| 1:38.9 | or administration were ever actually in danger. We know this is bad for comedy fans because Cash Patel will |
| 1:46.0 | probably be fired. We know, Corey, if he'd worn explosives instead of carrying firearms, this could |
... |
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