Will Donald Trump's revenge tour backfire?

0:00Imagine you've been charged with a crime and the only witness pointing the finger at you isn't even human.

0:06Paul Hunter:I remember thinking, are you serious? What is this thing? It's something artificial created by a mysterious Canadian. And it's coming for all of us. A life-defining technology. Crime as we know it will never be the same. I'm like, oh my God, he's lying. From CBC's Uncover, the expert witness. Available now on CBC Listen or wherever you get your podcasts. This is a CBC Podcast. Hey, Katie. Hey. Hi, Paul. I was going to say bonjour, Louis Bluand. I brought my Habs jersey on. He's got a Habs jersey on. It's great. Go Habs go. Oh, my goodness. You had to. You had to, didn't you? Of course. I want to annoy you as much as possible.

0:52Paul Hunter:Someone's got to be enthusiastic about something. So, Louis, I'm so glad it's you. I'm ready. Number one. Louis, thank you for joining us You of course are You do the same job that we do But for Radio Canada Despite the jersey You bring a great vibe to the newsroom I try You know, it's the spirit of Willie too You know, he's Habs fan So I needed to, you know If I'm replacing him Just to, you know Indeed, our usual co-host And noted Habs fan Willie Lowry is on assignment in Jerusalem this week Keeping an eye on a possible U.S.-Iran peace deal We'll connect with him again next week And I'm sure we'll have lots to talk about Yeah, and for this week We are going to take a look at a number of things Donald Trump has been doing that are fairly unprecedented in American politics.

1:34Paul Hunter:And we can talk about that all day long. That's nothing new. But we're taking a look at some specific challenges in this moment and how the president is actually being criticized for pushing a very personal agenda forward. And he's doing things that might be good for Donald Trump, but not necessarily for his party. And the midterm elections are less than six, about five months away now. So some Republicans are finally starting to express some concern about this and even push back whether or not they or anyone else can do anything to rein in Trump's seemingly ever-growing agenda is another question.

2:09So on today's episode, we're asking how far can Donald Trump go? I'm Paul Hunter. I'm Louis Bluwey.

2:15Paul Hunter:And I'm Katie Simpson. We are CBC and Radio Canada, Washington Correspondents, and we are two blocks from the White House.

2:29Okay, Katie, we should really start with this$1.8 billion, well,$1.776 billion, get it to be precise. $1.8 billion fund for people who say that they are victims of government, air quotes, weaponization. So, like, what is this fund and how will it work?

2:50Paul Hunter:So when I start to describe it, it's going to sound a lot like one of those really loud infomercials or commercials you see on TV where you've got the personal injury lawyer who's up there saying, have you been personally victimized by XYZ, XYZ, whatever it is? But in this case, it's have you been personally victimized by the previous Biden administration? And instead of a personal injury lawyer, it's the sitting U.S. president. You know, I make a joke about that, but it's so not funny. And it is causing so much controversy here and understandably so. We don't know a lot of the specifics just yet and things could be changing.

3:34Paul Hunter:So if you're listening to this, we are taping this on a Tuesday afternoon. By Wednesday morning, who knows if there could be all kinds of announcements about what comes next or what changes. But what we know at this point in time so far is that the Department of Justice is setting up a fund, a nearly$2 billion fund made up of taxpayer dollars, and it will be used to give payments to people who say they were, you know, targets of a weaponized Department of Justice, that the previous administration unfairly prosecuted them or targeted them or investigated them, things like that. Again, we are still waiting for more specifics, but, you know, there's going to be a creation of a commission, a five-person commission, and they are going to be sort of deciding who qualifies and who gets what kind of payouts, that kind of thing.

4:24Paul Hunter:But what is important to point out is that this commission is going to be selected by the attorney general. There are five people on it. Congress gets say on one person. They don't get to actually pick, but they get to weigh in on one of the five people. But it's going to be up to the attorney general to make these decisions. And who is the attorney general currently right now in the United States? It's an acting attorney general. It's Todd Blanche, who had served as Donald Trump's personal attorney prior to this administration. He was there to defend Donald Trump during his New York City criminal trial investigation that took place there.

4:59Paul Hunter:So this is one of Donald Trump's closest allies who is going to be overseeing who gets selected here. And then Donald Trump will have the power to decide if someone should be fired from this commission, that kind of thing. And so who might be interested in this? We're getting a little bit of a sense of, OK, who are the people who feel they have been victims of a weaponization of, you know, the Biden administration's Justice Department? Think January 6 rioters, the people who've been pardoned, possibly even people who were found guilty of violent offenses against law enforcement. We're going to get more into that in a little bit in our conversation.

5:38Pardoned by Trump.

5:39Paul Hunter:Pardoned by Trump. Think about Mike Lindell, the MyPillow guy. He was never criminally charged with anything, but he was investigated by the FBI because he was a prolific and still continues to push conspiracy theories related to the 2020 election, essentially making the argument that the election in 2020 was stolen from Donald Trump, which we know, of course, it was not. But he was a prolific pusher of that and cites, you know, attacks by the Justice Department or attacks from wherever they came from, from his perspective, as wrecking his business. And so he's already come forward to say that he wants to put his hand up.

6:17Paul Hunter:People who have been prosecuted for blocking access to abortion clinics. Some have already been pardoned by Donald Trump since Donald Trump returned to office, as well as some lawmakers who had their cell phones, some Republicans secretly subpoenaed in the wake of the 2020 election. So that sort of gives you a sense of critics, Democrats are calling it a slush fund, something that Donald Trump's allies or people who have, in some cases, broken the law since been pardoned, might be able to get a cash payout from taxpayer dollars. And though it should go without saying it's worth underlining that's taxpayer money.

6:57Yeah. That's where the cash comes from. And there's also with all this, this link with the IRS, right, Paul? Like it's stemming from that. I mean, you know, looking back at last week, it feels like this all came out of nowhere, but it didn't. It all goes back to Trump 1.0. I think I filed on this for the National that night, as I recall, but a contractor at the IRS stole and leaked Trump's tax returns when Trump's tax returns were an ongoing issue in the news. And what it showed, by the way, was that Trump effectively paid little or no tax income tax for a number of years, citing business losses.

7:35So anyway, the guy who stole that and leaked it to The New York Times and others was caught and sent to jail for five years. Trump was infuriated, you know, for sort of obvious reasons, I guess. Anyway, this past January, Trump sued the IRS over that for$10 billion.

7:53Paul Hunter:A sitting president suing the IRS for$10 billion. Just let that sort of... Just let that sit there. Not to interrupt, but just let that sit there. Because being the president, he was suing an agency that his administration controlled. Suing himself. He was suing himself. Something by most smarter people than I have noted has never happened in this country before. And then came the settlement. So he sued in January. Then came the settlement. As Trump put it, he was settling with himself. And that is the$1.8 billion fund that you were talking about for any of the people who felt they were wrongly investigated by the government.

8:37But then there was a little subsection in that settlement where it said that the IRS is forever prohibited from auditing Trump's prior tax returns or his family or those of his business. I think you used the word unprecedented. I think that's – Trump critics would say that's being generous. The other end of the scale is that it is corrupt. Wherever you land on that scale, I mean, it was jaw-dropping, and it's a lot. It was a lot to process.

9:13Paul Hunter:And Louis, as you'll note, it has sparked not just backlash from Democrats, but even some Republicans causing a lot of trouble up on, I was going to say Parliament Hill, up on Capitol Hill. Yeah, absolutely. And especially in the Senate Republicans, they were taken aback. They were taken by surprise that to see that this measure was included in this big immigration package that they were about to vote on. And Senator Toon, the leader of the Republicans in the Senate, he called up the acting attorney general, Todd Blanche, and he said, you know, can you come and explain this, please? You know, in a meeting with Republican senators.

9:47So they asked questions about how would that work. They questioned the legality of it. And he was trying to reassure them, but he didn't. Like, it didn't go well. The meeting was very tense. It ended up apparently in a shouting match, two hours and a half. And, you know, when they just came out of there, there was a lot of Republican senators who were just not buying it. Republican senators. Yes, Republican senators. And, you know, John Toome, the Senate majority leader, is the first, the most important. He said he was not a big fan of the fund, but also like influential figures like Mitch McConnell.

10:22You know, he's the former GOP leader, still an influential figure in the party who said, and I'm going to quote him, it's utterly stupid, morally wrong. This is also leading to a clash between Senate Republican and House Republicans because, you know, they have diverging interests. The Senate GOP senators, they represent diverse population of entire states, while many House Republicans represent deep red district, really, really, really loyal to Donald Trump, who will be ready to vote for everything he wants. So there's this clash going on between the Senate and the House GOP. These tensions. We don't know if this immigration bill will go forward when they come back in town on the Hill.

11:03So, yeah, this has done a lot of damage in the Republican family. So we don't really know where it's going to end. It's kind of remarkable to hear it coming from Republicans, though, isn't it? Was it Tom Tillis who called it stupid on stilts or something like that?

11:14Paul Hunter:Stupid on stilts. And, Paul, one thing you mentioned, we were having a conversation earlier about Mitch McConnell. Hearing Mitch McConnell, you know, push back and say this now, but Mitch McConnell, as you have pointed out in the past, He held authority at a time when he could have done something to stand up to Trump, to be, you know, when it was clear that Donald Trump was going to win the Republican nomination, he was an influential figure, less so now, but still very senior leadership within the Republican Party. And you had pointed out he had opportunities to stand up and push back, even with impeachment after the January 6th attack.

11:48Paul Hunter:And he didn't do it. So now it's kind of like, OK, so you're pushing back now. Bit of buyer's remorse. Well, exactly. So, Katie, you've been doing some reporting on this as well as Louis. What have you been hearing? So, when this story first broke, I started sending out a bunch of phone calls, a bunch of emails to just try and get reaction from sort of different people who could be involved by this or people who might have strong reactions. And one person I heard back from was a man named Trennis Evans. He was at the U.S. Capitol on January 6th. He was convicted of a misdemeanor. He pleaded guilty.

12:24Paul Hunter:He went into the Capitol. He was not convicted of a violent offense, but he sort of gained a little bit of notoriety, particularly in the United States, because he admitted to drinking shots of whiskey in Nancy Pelosi's office. But aside from that, that being his experience, he has founded this group called Condemned USA. And essentially, it's a legal advocacy group for people who face charges during the January 6th attack on the U.S. Capitol. And I sort of asked him, like, what are you hearing and what are sort of what's going on with within this community? And he had said to me, work had already been well underway for hundreds of people linked to January 6th, people who were convicted of crimes and then since pardoned.

13:11Paul Hunter:And they were going to pursue some sort of claim for financial compensation using laws and systems that already exist. They were arguing that they were unfairly treated. He says that he thinks that everyone who was involved in January 6th should qualify for payments because even if people were convicted of violent offenses against law enforcement, he argues that those people didn't get a fair trial. This ripped apart families. People were destroyed because the false narrative of insurrection played out. You can never take away what the media said by calling people insurrectionists. And the narrative that was ginned up, it caused them to lose people still in many cases, lost jobs, lost employment, lost businesses.

13:50So those dollar figures, I'd say they're going to range in the millions of dollars. I'm sure some of those will be eight figure settlements that their people are seeking in these matters. It's going to be justice on this matter one way or the other.

14:03Paul Hunter:And he told me that he's working with more than 450 people who are going to be pursuing claims as soon as the process is up and running. And he's just one advocacy group. He's aware, he says, of hundreds more who also plan to pursue claims. And he's predicting some of the requests for compensation could reach eight figures. That is his estimate. That's a lot. Yeah. Now, so on the flip side of that, I also spoke with a man named Michael Fanon. Canadians might recognize that name. He was one of the police officers. He was a metropolitan police officer. He was at the Capitol on January 6th and he was severely, severely beaten during the riot and during the Capitol attack.

14:45Paul Hunter:He has since become an advocate and sort of an outspoken critic of anyone who sort of is pushing claims of misinformation and all of these conspiracy theories around, you know, what actually happened on that day. He presents himself as living proof of the violence that happened. And, you know, he's one of dozens of police officers who were seriously injured on January 6th. And I talked to him and I wasn't necessarily surprised by what he had to say. But I found what he had to say deeply revealing about this moment in America. And so anyone in America, whether it's in the media ecosystem or just the average citizen who's shocked or surprised by this, hasn't been paying attention.

15:31Um, this is what Trump supporters voted for. And, and so, you know, my anger has since turned, like I said, to the American people for betraying me, uh, and betraying my colleagues who fought to defend democracy, because what did we do it for? What was that sacrifice for if Americans were going to vote themselves into an authoritarian, uh, dictatorship?

15:55Paul Hunter:And he is very frustrated. He continues to get, he says, intense amounts of death threats. He said that when this fund was announced, he saw social media posts that suggested people could basically get paid to go and kill him. That's the kind of online chatter he's seeing. And so from his perspective, as we heard there, it is par for the course in what is a very dangerous moment.

16:29Imagine you've been charged with a crime, and the only witness pointing the finger at you isn't even human.

16:36Paul Hunter:I remember thinking, are you serious? What is this thing? It's something artificial, created by a mysterious Canadian. And it's coming for all of us. A life-defining technology. Crime as we know it will never be the same. I'm like, oh my God, he's lying. From CBC's Uncover, The Expert Witness. Available now on CBC Listen or wherever you get your podcasts. There's the fund, but there's like other issues also that are raising eyebrows, even amongst Republicans on Capitol Hill, right? Yeah, I mean, and some of those are also fund related, not that fund, but just funds broadly. I mean, keep in mind that constitutionally in this country, It is the U.S.

17:23Congress that generally controls the purse strings. If money is being spent, it's up to Congress explicitly not, with some exceptions, the realm of the U.S. president. So with all this money heading out the door, effectively on Capitol Hill, and we've been talking about some of this already, people are losing their minds, right? This is not the way this country is structured. The new ballroom that we've talked so much about at the White House, for example, that Trump said would be privately funded. Well, all of a sudden now American taxpayers are learning. But now there's this it's being tagged with security costs and things like that.

17:59And that's going to cost a billion dollars. The Iran war launched without congressional approval, by the way, is costing, depending on who's giving the estimate, somewhere between 500 million and two billion dollars a day taxpayer money. And now there's talk of a U.S. military intervention in Cuba as well. I mean, it's all of this is head spinning. Right. But. As many have learned the hard way, if Republicans who are starting to speak out, but historically and even now, Republicans who speak out against Donald Trump are finding have found that it gets complicated fast. I mean, say what you will about Donald Trump, right?

18:40He has a long memory and he's not afraid to target those who crossed him.

18:46Paul Hunter:And we saw that Trump is already getting heavily involved in these primary races. For Canadians who are unaware of what a primary race is, we should probably just explain. It's basically a primer on primary. A primary. That's what we're here for, Paul. Basically, it's when candidates are running to become the nominee for a party. So a number of people are running to become the Republican nominee for this position, whether it's in the House or whether it's in the Senate or whether it's for mayor or whatever it is. Those races, there's no sort of set schedule for it other than these parties have to pick their nominees and it varies by state.

19:21Paul Hunter:And so there are all kinds of races all over the place. And Donald Trump is getting heavily involved when it comes to who should be selected to be the Republican nominees. And he's gotten involved and it means a lot for some Republicans who have spoken out against him. And Louis, you went and chatted, spent some time in Kentucky chatting with one Republican who's been very critical, very vocal against the president. Yeah. And this fracture in the Republican Party was like all out. And the question was, can Donald Trump, you know, it's a test for him, keep his grip on the party? Is he still the most influential person in this party?

20:00And that was the test in Kentucky. And, you know, the answer there was yes, because it was Thomas Massey, this guy who has libertarian views, who stood up to Donald Trump on the Epstein files, on, you know, on spending, that he also expressed himself against the war in Iran. He questioned the unconditional support of the United States toward Israel. So the question was, could he survive this primary against Trump's back candidate, Ed Galrine? And he didn't. And it was a demonstration of how Donald Trump is still the most powerful man in this party. But what was interesting that I found when I was there is this generational divide, too, between older Republicans who watch Fox News, you know, a very Trump-aligned, loyal media towards Donald Trump, and younger Republican voters who supported, you know, in a big margin, Massey over the candidate of Donald Trump at Galrine.

20:58And it's interesting because they consume their news differently. They have, you know, different influencers talking to them, you know, older generation, boomers listening to Fox News, younger generation, podcasters, influencers. And I could see that clearly and also the position that young voters would take. They were very similar to the one of Massey's, you know, about state spending, about the war in Iran and everything. So there was this clear divide there. And I asked Massey, because I met him the day before the vote, you know, if you lost, I said, I'm telling you, you're going to lose. But if you do lose, what's the damage that might be done to the party?