Hi, Bill Crystal here. Pleased to be joined for this bulwark on Sunday by Tom Jocelyn.

We've done this a few times, lead author of the January 6th Committee report a few years ago and

been writing and speaking about the Trump administration's version of, well, I'm not version of the Trump administration,

which turns out to be the January 6th administration,

as Tom and I both discussed, I think, maybe over a year ago on this podcast, and both of us

have written about, I mean, one of the first things he did was pardon all the January 6th, or give

clemency to a few, but all the January 6 insurgents and assailants.

Right?

I mean, and now here we are a year and a half later,

and what I want to talk about is it seems like the,

let's call it the January 6th type agenda,

the authoritarian agenda, is chugging right ahead.

I mean, Trump, for all of his occasional tax to, you know, not doing stuff that's too unpopular this week, he nominated Bill Pulte to be Director of National Intelligence, nominated, well, selected him because to make the acting director of national intelligence, so there's no confirmation issue, nominated Todd Blanche to be Attorney General. Both things that even a couple of weeks ago, a lot of people who were watching the administration,

I think wouldn't have expected.

Kind of bold moves towards just saying,

you know what, it's all about loyalty to me and me grabbing power.

But I don't know if people really come to grips with the implications

of those two moves as well as others. That's what I want Tom to explain to us. So where are we here a year and a half in? Yeah, you know, I don't know why anyone would be surprised by any nominations at this point. I mean, you know, part of what we talked about when we talked about this being the January 6th administration is that Trump was going to pick up where he left off. And the lesson of January 6 was that if he has people around whom are going to say no,

who aren't total sick offense, who aren't total loyalists all the way, you know,

bend the need no matter what, that his plans can get interrupted, right?

The people could throw up roadblocks, or it'd be Vice President Pence or Department of Justice officials or state officials or anyone, right?

And so what he's been doing is looking for loyalists and installing loyalists everywhere he can. And, you know, with Polte and Blanche, those are two loyalists. These aren't guys who are going to be put in these positions because of their expertise. It's not because of their savvy. It's not because they have some great agenda that it's going to serve America. It's purely about serving Trump's interests.

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