Trump’s intimidation playbook and a presidential middle finger

0:00Dan, you actually are the only reporter who has spoken to the guy who yelled out. Yes. How is he feeling being on the receiving end of a presidential middle finger? Quite proud.

0:15From the newsroom of The Washington Post, this is Post Report's weekly politics roundtable. I'm Kolbie Echowitz. It's Friday, January 16th. There were several examples this week that really showed how Trump and the Trump administration respond to critics and their perceived enemies. And so today we're going to talk about first the FBI raid of our colleague's home. And then we're going to talk about the prosecution of Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell. We'll also get into the continued fallout from the Minneapolis ice shooting, how that probe is gone and why it led to six top prosecutors quitting their jobs.

0:54And finally, we'll talk about Trump in Detroit and how he gave the finger to a heckler. I'm thrilled to be back at the table with Dan Merica. He is the co-anchor of our politics newsletter, The Early Brief. And we have Matt Weiser, the Post's White House Bureau Chief. Guys, thanks for being here. Happy to be here. Good to be here.

1:16So I want to start with, you know, news that rattled our newsroom on Wednesday. Obviously had all of us a little shook. and that's that the FBI raided our colleague Hannah Naitenson's home and took her computers and her phone and her Garmin watch. And we covered on the show what happened, that this was related to a source that they're investigating for leaking, possibly leaking classified documents. But I want to talk about this from the perspective of how this aggressive move against Hannah and the Washington Post fits into this broader question of how Trump deals with his perceived enemies. What do you think, Matt?

1:57I mean, we've seen throughout his administration how he will pick individual instances or institutions and try to make an example out of them. We've seen it with foreign leaders. We've seen it with news organizations, aside from ours earlier, with lawsuits. And we've seen it with immigrants. And so this instance, you know, it does seem like there's an aspect of trying to intimidate. And it's sort of twofold. I mean, one is people who are providing news organizations with information is clearly a target of this investigation. And as a side effect or perhaps a primary effect is a targeting of a news organization and going to extraordinary measures to show up in the early morning hours at a reporter's house and seizing their devices.

2:49There's a chilling effect as well on both sides of that equation. You know, you want to... It seems that by doing something like that, you want to chill government officials from sharing information with reporters. And we, here at The Washington Post, have broke a story, wrote a story yesterday about the impact it's having more broadly on journalism in Washington, D.C. and elsewhere, and how newsrooms across the country are concerned about could they be next? Could their reporters be next? What are they going to do when it comes to handling information, handling sources, and that certainly impacts the way reporters can do their job.

3:22Yeah, and Dan, I was actually bylined on that story, because I'm back to writing on our democracy and politics team after a long stint here as host of Post Reports, but I will still be doing this politics roundtable with my colleagues. I talked to a very seasoned reporter for that story who said that they were already receiving texts, worried texts from longtime sources. Like, are you going to be next? After all of our years of working together, is this how it ends, right? And so they and reporters, we do a lot to protect our sources. We use encrypted data on our devices. We might not keep people's contacts in our phones, But still, it's very unnerving for someone who maybe wants to share information with a reporter but doesn't want the government to know who they are.

4:17And I think we've known kind of about this potential threat to news gathering for a while in theory. You know, at the start of the Trump administration, you know, he came in. He's called the news media the enemy of the people. You know, there's been an adversarial relationship from the start. And the way that he's handled the Justice Department this time around compared to his first term has been different. And so there's a weaponization of that that I think we've all intuitively been prepared for in theory. It's different, I think, yesterday morning for a lot of us seeing it in practice and the lengths to which the Justice Department is gonna go to.

4:55And this fits into the broader conversation, but it shows that this administration, this version of the Trump administration, is different in some ways than the first administration, where he is an encumbered on a whole host of issues, including the way he interacts with the media. And I do think the one thing that the newsroom has said in one voice is how proud I think we all are to have Hannah as a colleague. And she's kind of an example of what it is to be a journalist right now. And I think she is the best of the Washington Post, and I think we should all say that. Yeah, yeah. Agreed. um this conversation around you know the trump administration the justice department going after its critics we also saw that play out with federal reserve chairman jerome powell this week we also covered this story on post reports but i want to get into again the trump of it all because for just like a quick context prosecutors are investigating powell over this fed building this renovation project that has gone over budget and like a congressional testimony that powell gave last summer, you know, Powell posted a video and said, this is politically motivated.

6:04This unprecedented action should be seen in the broader context of the administration's threats and ongoing pressure. This new threat is not about my testimony last June or about the renovation of the Federal Reserve buildings. It is not about Congress's oversight role. The Fed, through testimony and other public disclosures, made every effort to keep Congress informed about the renovation project. Those are pretexts. The threat of criminal charges is a consequence of the Federal Reserve setting interest rates based on our best assessment of what will serve the public, rather than following the preferences of the president.

6:43Is Powell right? Like, is this part of Trump's intimidation tactics? Yeah, I mean, it certainly seems as much. Donald Trump said in the moments after Chairman Powell put out his video, that he knew nothing about it. He told that to NBC. I do think that strains credulity a little bit, given how upfront he has been about wanting Powell to be investigated, and about how closely he is linked with the Justice Department in a way that, I would say, few presidents ever have been linked with the Justice Department, and how much they have carried out his own grievances and desires through the Justice Department.

7:21I do think it's interesting that Powell took to social media and posted a video hitting back at the president. And not indirectly. I mean, he said exactly what he thought about what motivated this. And I do think there's almost like a lesson to be taken, or it shows that people have taken a lesson from others in Trump's orbit about the way that you push back against an attack from President Donald Trump is by being forceful and not just letting it come at you, but also coming back at him. Because I'm not sure in a past cycle or past administration you would see a Fed chair or someone who's largely anonymous to most Americans post a video online pushing back against something like that as forcefully as he did.

8:06And it was also interesting the way that, I mean, he's withstood an immense amount of criticism from Donald Trump. That it got to this point. And it got to this point where he ultimately did decide to do that. And I think part of that is that, um, there's almost like a Vatican-like aspect to the Fed, sometimes, and how they make decisions. And so I think Powell, when Trump is criticizing his policy decisions, I think Powell was reluctant to push back on that or explain it or to be very much of a public face of it. This was different. This is an investigation. This is something where he personally is targeted and so decided, you know, And also, like, his term is almost over, you know, so his term is coming to a conclusion very soon.

8:54So I think he felt a need to push back aggressively. One aspect that I'm interested in is how this investigation affects Trump's next Fed chairman. And there's some animosity, I think, growing on the Hill among Senate Republicans, and it was striking to hear some of them come and speak out, Tom Tillis and John Thune, about this decision. And so, what are the long-term implications of Trump's decision? It's such a great point. That's the irony here, right? Donald Trump has been calling for an investigation into Jerome Powell for months now. And by doing so, he may have sunk any chance he had at replacing Jerome Powell with someone he could more easily control.

9:38It is widely reported that Donald Trump's top pick for the Fed chair is a guy named Kevin Hassett. He is a White House official, economic advisor, is often on TV talking for the administration. Natalie Allison, our colleague here at The Post on the White House team, got some great reporting after this incident with Powell, and the video went up, and that people inside the administration, including the Treasury Secretary, who was a big proponent of Hassett, believe that the fact that the Justice Department is investigating Powell may mean that Hassett's chances of becoming Fed chair have been totally sunk.

10:12Because, as Matt referenced, Tom Tillis, who was on the Senate Banking Committee... North Carolina Republican. North Carolina Republican, who is retiring, has said he will not approve any nominee to the Fed board until this investigation is over. And that matters because the Senate Banking Committee is divided 13 to 11. So if Tom Tillis does not vote with Republicans, it deadlocks 12 to 12, and no one can get through to the Senate floor. There are other Republicans who have expressed concerns as well. And so there's a belief that, you know, Donald Trump was hoping to nominate someone he could more easily control to the Fed board because he wants interest rates lowered.

10:50But by having the Department of Justice investigate Powell, he may have sunk any chance that he has to see that goal out. Why is this like rattling hill of Republicans so much like this specifically because, you know, we talk all the time and how Republicans don't push back on what Trump does, even when the things that he does are outside, you know, stretches the bounds of normalcy. But this seems to have is this like gone too far? It feels I mean, you're not only seeing it from some of the Senate Republicans, but from also a number of people on Wall Street, including Jamie Dimon, the head of JPMorgan Chase, who've been very concerned about this intrusion into the Fed.

11:32And so I think that Senate Republicans are also responding to it from people like him. It's not like an uproar from constituents. It's an uproar from donors and people on Wall Street who are concerned about this sort of red line that has kind of existed between monetary policy and a White House administration where they're supposed to be independent. And so I think that that is creating more angst potentially from some of the Senate Republicans. Yeah. So from there, let's turn back to Minneapolis. We covered this on the show last week as well. But the fallout from the ICE shooting of Renee Nicole Good continues.

12:15And then we saw a handful of top prosecutors actually quit their jobs this week. And our reporting shows it's because they felt pressured to investigate Good's widow as part of the probe into what happened there. This feels like another example of kind of a weaponization of our law enforcement, at least our federal law enforcement. What do we make of this story? I mean, I think it's, you know, again, we've seen Trump throughout his term, whether it's like the clashes between his administration and states, states that he with governors and with people that he disagrees with sending in National Guard troops.

12:55And this is an example, I think, of the federal government trying to take over and not even not cooperating with local law enforcement, not cooperating, you know, on the investigation. And so I think in this instance, you know, it seems like the Minnesota wider law enforcement community had, you know, in the past worked together. So in some cases you have people who are used to working together who are no longer able to. And, you know, it is kind of extraordinary that, you know, five or six of those, um, you know, prosecutors decide to resign over the course of this investigation. And some of the demands coming from on high at Maine DOJ.

13:41Yeah. And these aren't just like random prosecutors as well. I mean, one of the prosecutors who resigned was, I think, the point person on investigating the fraud that was happening, allegedly happening in Minnesota, around the Somali-American community. Our reporting indicates that they decided to resign because the DOJ also wanted these prosecutors to look into the widow, Good's widow, who had been protesting ICE as well. I was struck by the way that Attorney General Pam Bondi came out on Wednesday and basically said good riddance to these prosecutors, bragged almost, about the fact that they were leaving.

14:20And it does, it is, I'm going back to this again, but it does show the way the Trump administration and Trump himself are largely unencumbered when it comes to the way they push back against people who criticize them. There have been past administrations where there's disagreement in the Department of Justice about how to go about an investigation, who to investigate, who to target. Um, and you rarely see those spill out in the way that we've seen them spill out so regularly in this administration. This is not an isolated incident. You've had these kind of departures from the Department of Justice in the past.

14:51Yeah. In the past year. And so it really isn't, this isn't an island. I mean, the Department of Justice has experienced this over and over again since Pam Bondi and Donald Trump took control of the Department of Justice. And so it is a significant moment just because of the focus on Minnesota, but it also is significant because this is continuing to happen inside the department. And it makes, you know, makes you wonder, is it even possible for the DOJ to conduct independent investigations without partisan pressure at this point? I don't think that's the aim of the Trump administration. I mean, I think Trump likes having control.

15:27And, you know, there's some reporting this week, a little bit of some tensions with Pam Bondi in some instances where, like... But I think Trump wants control over investigation. Are those tensions because he doesn't think she's doing enough to go after his... Yeah. And that could be reflected in Bondi's responses this week to this particular investigation, where Trump is sort of encouraging a culture of, you know, going after, you know, some of these things and being quite aggressive. But I think that's by design from Trump, and he feels like part of the election mandate was to do things like this, and so he's taking it to kind of extraordinary measures given the history and sort of what we've expected of lines and having an independent Department of Justice.

16:13I don't think that's the goal of the Trump administration. And Matt is right. You often see this kind of play out in the Trump administration where there's some reporting that he's upset at one of his cabinet secretaries, Pam Bondi, Kristi Noem, Pete Hetzketh, whoever you want to pick. And then that person comes out and goes on Fox News and kind of ratchets up the temperature, largely because of an audience of one, hoping that the president sees that moment and sees them kind of fighting for him or does something that signals that they're willing to fight. This is something that has happened throughout this administration.

16:48Yeah. We should also note, as it relates to Minneapolis, that Trump took to Truth Social on Thursday morning and threatened the Insurrection Act, which would, of course, allow him to send in federal troops to Minnesota. And that is also kind of part of this narrative that he is trying to build, that there are all of these agitators, that Renee Nicole Good and her widow were agitators against ICE, and that, you know, the protests in the aftermath of her death is requiring troops on the ground. Yeah. Talk about that. I mean, Donald Trump has threatened to use the Insurrection Act before. It is significant that he's saying as much about Minnesota, given everything that has played out in Minnesota this week.

17:34I am struck by just how much what happened to Good and the shooting has broken through. I think we operate in this world where we are constantly engaging with the media. We are on Twitter. We're watching cable news. Most Americans are not like that. Yeah. And most Americans don't see kind of the minute-by-minute, day-to-day machinations of the Trump administration. But polling has shown, uh, since the shooting video was posted, that some 80 % of respondents to a certain poll said they had seen the video. Mm. And that has led polling to also show that, there was a CNN poll this week, that 56 % of respondents said ICE's use of force in that video was inappropriate, compared to only around, I think, 25 % that said it was appropriate.

18:24And then if you take that a step further, other polls have shown, I mean, you saw in the wake of the show, Trump administration officials accusing Good of being a domestic terrorist. Right. Very few Americans are getting on board with that kind of language towards her. And I think all of this speaks to the view inside the Trump administration is not the view that most Americans have of what happened. And we've known for a long time that the president's ICE enforcement has not been popular, despite him running on, doing most of what he has done. And that's gonna be significant, as he and Republicans face voters in the midterms.

19:03He does not, he's not a popular president right now. His approval rating is pretty low. And that will be something to continue to watch as this year plays on. I think Dan's point is interesting about the idea that there are a few moments, I think, in our modern culture where everybody is watching the same thing. I mean, everybody's choosing different news sources these days and different, you know, TV shows. Like, we rarely have moments where everybody's together watching the same thing. And this was one of those moments where I think everybody saw the same footage. What's interesting is people had dramatically different conclusions off of the same video.

19:41Um, and so I think that shows, like, kind of where people's perspectives are not aligned. And, you know, but as a country, I think most people did see this. And so it resonated in a different way and has triggered a response in Minneapolis that I think Trump is trying to quash and trying to, like, you know, quell the protests and the dissent in part so that in his view that ICE can continue their jobs and do what they're sent there to do. But also to illustrate that, you know, he's not going to put up with protests. And that might be why the way that DOJ seems to be conducting this investigation seems to be in an attempt to prove their side right.

20:27Because right now they don't have public opinion on their side. I mean, it was striking just given the comments, the quick conclusions from many in the Trump administration about what happened. Yeah. You know, and then the idea that there was going to be an independent investigation kind of strained credulity a little bit. But just because they'd already decided, you know, sort of what happened based on their views of the video. So, you know, I don't know. It'll be interesting to see how some of this continues to play out. Yeah. Well, let's take a quick pause there, guys. And when we come back, how President Trump's tour of a Ford plant in Detroit this week showed just how crudely he's willing to respond to his critics.

21:05We'll be right back.

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22:38Right now, you can get a premium subscription to The Post for$6 every four weeks. Just$6 unlocks trusted reporting to share with other people in your life. After your first six months, it'll cost$19 every four weeks. You can cancel anytime. Head over to WashingtonPost.com slash subscribe and get premium access to The Washington Post today. That's WashingtonPost.com slash subscribe. So over the course of Trump's decade in political life, I think he has done and said a lot of things that people might not deem presidential. Mm-hmm. And we saw another example of that this week in Detroit. He was touring an auto factory, and he mouthed a curse word and gave the middle finger to a guy who heckled him.

23:31Dan, you actually are the only reporter who has spoken to the guy who yelled out. Yes. How is he feeling being on the receiving end of a presidential middle finger? He's quite proud. So to set the scene, he is a, um, line worker, union worker, UAW member at the Ford plant in Michigan. He was working when Trump was taking a tour. He is very animated around the way that the Trump administration and Donald Trump himself have handled the allegations around and the investigation into Jeffrey Epstein, the disgraced financier we've talked about a lot. And he yelled at the president. He called him a pedophile protector.

24:13Mm. And in the video, you see Donald Trump turn and look at him. Donald Trump's kind of on an elevated space. T.J. Sabula is the man who, the line worker, estimated he was about 60 feet away, but told me that the president could very, very clearly hear him. You can hear him in the video as well. Yeah. T.J. described himself as like a large man with a loud voice. Donald Trump mouths something twice directed at T.J. that I can't say on this podcast, a colorful language... A curse word. A curse word to criticize or attack him. And then as he's walking away, flips him the middle finger. It is shocking video from a president.

24:58And I... But I do think it's more than just kind of a salacious moment. I do think it speaks very clearly on a few things about the president. His headspace when it comes to critics. You know, this is a president who largely operates in a world that he is the hero. Uh, he goes to events where he's not often criticized. He's surrounded by people in the White House and his administration and in Congress who hold him in incredibly high regard and are willing to do a lot to make him happy. And he's not often faced with criticism so directly. Um, I also think it shows, as I've said throughout this show, how unencumbered he is when it comes to pushing the bounds of what is acceptable for a president.

25:42Um, I, if you had told me in 2016, when we were covering Trump's campaign, that he would be, 10 years later, flipping the middle finger to a white, working-class, you know, union worker at an auto factory in the key state of Michigan, I would have thought, you, you know, we're probably ingesting substances that has altered your mind. because that really was his political base. That was the magic that helped elect him in 2016. The Clinton campaign, Hillary Clinton campaign back then thought that they were going to win Michigan going away. And what was shown in that election is that Donald Trump had this unique hold on particularly union voters, white union voters, in Michigan.

26:30And they really helped deliver him the presidency in his first term, and we've seen him kind of build on that coalition throughout the last decade. So in a way, TJ kind of fits with the Trump supporter, the Trump demographic, the base of Trump support. Was TJ ever a Trump supporter? So I talked to TJ about politics. We've been talking the last couple days. He identifies as an independent. He has never voted for Donald Trump, but he has voted for other Republicans. And to get back to your original question is, he is incredibly proud in this moment. He told me, I think very eloquently, that there are very few times in your life when, you know, kind of this moment reaches you and you have a chance to do something that you think is impactful and that you want to do, and he is very glad that he took that chance.