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I spent some time there last year. An intruder said in an advanced state, the power that comes from controlling the law is not the power to persecute the innocent. Thats too dangerous. It is the power to protect the guilty. Then you can make friends. Host lets go to jim, clarksburg, west virginia, democrat. Jim, good morning. Caller good morning, mr. Frum. I have a statement first and then a question. My statement, is completely dangerous, a securey guy. My question was with sam harris, that was an awesome interview you did with sam harris. And my question is, the impeachment, you said that its not possible. Say it isnt so. Ill take your comments offline, thank you for your time. Guest well, i believe what i said was its not possible under the circumstances of today. Donald trump has not committed impeachable offenses, at least so far as were aware. He may do so in the future, but, of course, impeachment is a political process with some legal standards. And there isnt its very hard to imagine that with republican controlling both houses of congress, or even one, that such a thing would proceed. Impeachment is also a trauma, and its not its too painful a remedy. And so long as donald trump retains his considerable hold on a third of the country, it would be a convulsive act. I think for those of us who i agree with you, but the danger presented both to the integrity of our institutions and to american freedom, i think the task is not to remove this president before the end of his four years, but to hem him in and to take away his ability to break the rules. And that means that whoever is in congress, if the republicans wont do it, then somebody else will have to, pass a law requiring the secretary of the treasury to release the tax returns of anyone who wins a Major Party Nominee for the president sifment once you win the major party nominations, you get secret service protection, you get money from the public for your convention, you get all kinds you sign up for a lot of public benefits. So it is not unreasonable that the public say we want to know youre not taking bribes. And the release of tax returns is the most tailored mechanism to do that. The confidentiality of your tax returns is a statutory, not a constitutional right, so congress can change those rules. That would be the first thing i would hope would happen. The second is we do need proper oversight. I think we also need another rule, maybe a law, that no one works in the white house who doesnt take a public salary. When president s work in the white house without a salary, theyre not doing us a favor, they are defeating disclosure requirements. And this idea that somehow you become more independent or more honest by not taking is exactly wrong. Nobody whos up to any good purpose refuses a salary and the duties and obligations that come with it. If you want to be in that building, you have to take the salary, you have to submit to the rules. Host line for republicans, gain re nell durham, north carolina, good morning. Caller hello, good morning, good morning. As always, this show is so captivating and brings a lot of expert insight into issues. Ill be quick, and ill try not to editorize too much. But i think what you touched on earlier about information, the public is just severely misinformed about really where things are. And we fall in different camps from fox news with msnbc and, you know, its just toxic for our understanding of where the country is really, really trending. I think the oligarchy stance and the a to come race is absolutely real. I guess my question to you would be, for one, looking at trump, theres a lot of similarities between him and i think richard nixon, and there is a potential i think that they would, as he grows further and forty into his own corner at both the left and right, hate him, i think. They would like to see him impeached, because that would put mike pence in the drivers seat, which they would probably like a lot more. Anyway, my question is, Citizens United plays a huge role here i think in al roug people like donald trump from the getgo to get to where they are, and that is allowance unfunded or unlimited sources of money to come into these political objective, so to speak, so what would you do to roll back the or what could we do in this american democracy to roll back what Citizens United has allowed to happen, and should it require the state to go to a more federalized, consistent system and potentially get rid of the Electoral College . Thank you. Guest the caller raise as lot of interesting points. Let me say this about Citizens United t. Did donald trump no good at all. Donald trump financed himself through a mixture of his own selffinancing, much less, by the way, than he ever claimed, and, of course, he invoiced the taxpayer back for a lot of it. He did a lot of graphs that the taxpayer was paying very high prices, secret service on Donald Trumps plane. But still, he probably had a net contribution of some millions of dollars that came out of his own pocket. Thats got nothing to do with Citizens United. A candidate can spend unlimited funds on himself or herself. And for the rest, donald trump actually did better with small dollar donors than any republican did. Again, a lot of those people were horribly scammed, but if your vision is a lot of 200 contributions, donald trump did better than any other republican getting those. One of the things that the 2016 cycle showed is Citizens United has been a disaster for republicans. Ive written a lot about this in the atlantic, and i urge the caller to look. A lot of those articles are online. Citizens united created a mechanism whereby in addition to the regular Campaign Finance system with all of its disclosures, theres a second Campaign Finance system created in which unlimited amounts of money can flow to a campaign, providing the candidate himself or herself exercises no control over that money and divulged it entirely to selected campaign assistants. Now, imagine we had a Public Corporation in which the shareholders were never allowed to communicate with management, in which management was forbidden to release anything to shareholders until after it was all over. And in which there was no effective Corporate Law against selfdealing or arms like the transactions of any kind. How would that corporation function . Thats what happens. The super p. A. C. s set up for jeb bush and to a lesser extent marco rubio only did harm to their candidacy am they absorbed vast amounts of resources, spent them extremely wastefully. They made a lot of very bad decisions. A lot of people got very rich. And the candidates themselves were unable to say knock it off, thats not how i want my money spent. The candidates always care about making sure that money is spent efficiently. Campaign consultants dont. The Citizens United empowers consultants at the expense of candidates. Host the caller began his question talking about the media. I want to read a little bit from your piece and have you talk more about it. The rumors of back sliding democracy resent an independent press, but cannot extinguish it. Mostly modern strong men seek merely to discredit journalism by denying that such a thing as independent judgment can exist. All reporting serves an agenda. There is no truth, only the competing attempts to grab power. And he his team are serving notice that a new era in government Media RelationSocial Security coming, an era in which all criticism is, by definition, oppositional, and all critics are treated as enemies. Guest yes. I dont think theres any chance the First Amendment will go away. I dont think the New York Times or the Washington Post, although in the article i talk about some of the pressures that can be brought against the Washington Post because its owned by the person that created amazon, so theres some antitrust instrumentals that can be brought to bear. During the campaign, the trump people threaten ad lot to do this. They brought pressure on twitter in that same way and pressured twitter to restore the accounts of a number of White Supremacists who had been suspended just before the election. But youre exactly right, the technique, you see this in south africa, you see this in india, which is another backsliding democracy. You treat the press as the enemy, and you inspire your followers to ignore the press and deride it. What you want to do, the age of social media, controlling the press is almost impossible. But what you can do is make people cynical. In those days, you talked about the ambitious totalitarianism in the middle of the 20th century. Communists tried to create a whole consistent system of ideological truth. You signed into it, believed it, followed it, you obeyed. The problem with that system was something could happen that would disillusion the follower and make him suddenly realize i dont believe this, and if theres anything you disbelieve, the whole system crashed. So you had excommunists. If you teach people and say this is what the trump people do, everything is lies, everything. Theres only power. Theres no truth. Everybody speaks in their own selfinterests. Theres only that all criticisms come from a place of opposition. If you tell people everybodys a liar, and then it turns out you lied to them, they cant complain. Host james, pawtucket, rhode island, line for independents. Good morning. Caller hello . Host go ahead, james. Caller oh, how you doing today . I just wanted to comment now. Please stay with me. Im frustrated as an independent. Because all these conserve tizz and liberals are going back at it, how bad trump is, how bad trump is. They have to remember that theyre liberals, theyre conservatives. They screwed up this country for years, and now theyre mad because somebody whos going to fight them on every end is going to, you know, change everything, and hes probably right about 90 of the things, but people are so thickheaded they believe what they believe. They dont believe that their party is wrong. Nobody went on went against obama the last eight years with all the illegal stuff he did. Let me just point out one thing quick, because i know i dont have a lot of time. What about fast and furious . Nobody investigated. That thing went away quicker than anything. If you go back in obamas history, it was a lot of stuff that the press never covered. Host david frum . Guest nobody ever contradict president obama what he did that was illegal . At the end of his term, president obama issued a gigantic executive order creating legal status for millions of people who were present in the country illegally, despite the law that says that it is congress, not the president , that regulates immigration and naturalization. And not only was it not true that nobody said anything, a lot of people said things, including me, but the courts told him he couldnt do it. When the courts told him, he stopped doing it. It is true that a lot of the imaginary scandals about obama urned out to be imaginary. Obviously, yeah, if you conjure up things that dont exist, you cant be shocked if when the press looks into them they report they dont exist, and cro congress doesnt act on them because they dont exist. Fast and furious was a policy mistake, but it wasnt a scandal. It wasnt somebody that did anything morally wrong. They were trying to track the flow of weapons back into mexico. And they did it in a way that was effective. Not the first time the government has had a good idea or what somebody thought was a good idea that proved out to be a bad idea and was shut down. Theres a difference between that and massive selfenrichment. As for the point the country is in ruins and donald trump is going to change everything, i think thats i think i can think of a lot of ways that the United States could be improved. I think by and large its a pretty successful country. And weve had some bumpy Economic Times and some hardship, but our parents and grandparents got a lot of things right. Let me point to one that is probably the one that is upper most in my mind, and that is the global structure of peace created after world war ii, through our alliances with democracies around the world. In the age of nuclear weapons, contain the soviet union and china without any major great power war. There were, of course, flash points, vietnam on our side, the russians fought wars too. But no war between Nuclear Armed pours over something that no one in 1950 would have imagined possible. When you say trump is attract he is attacking that. He is tearing apart our nato alliance, the top goal, first of the soviet union, number one Foreign Policy goal of soviet union was to cut the connection between United States and germany, and that would make europe weak and dependent and able to be dominated by russia. Stalin couldnt do it. Khrushchev couldnt do it. Brezhnev couldnt do it. Donald trump is doing it. I dont think hes serving the interests of this country. And yeah, hes changing things. But the changes are not improvements. Host good morning comborge is next, pete, republican. Go ahead. Caller good morning. I think its doing the country disservice to use the word autocracy with president trumps president simple all hes doing is waking up a sleeping giant, america. ve been duped into thinking and allowing government to set the standard for how this country should operate and exist. And over the last 50 years, this country has been dumbed down to a degree thats just breathtaking. Donald trump is just the messenger. He uses that term a lot in his speeches. Hes just pointing out to america how great the people of this country are and Free Enterprise and capitalist system, and hes trying to awaken it, because its been handcuffed by government for decades. Gues