Preet Bharara:

From CAFE and the Vox Media Podcast Network, welcome to Stay Tuned. I’m Preet Bharara.

Tom Nichols:

The American president, in theory here, says, “I’m going to put a stop to this. I’m going to summon the Russian president to a summit. We’re going to sit down. I’m going to lay out a ceasefire, and he’s going to accept it. Maybe another president might’ve been able to pull that off? I doubt it.”

Preet Bharara:

That’s Tom Nichols. He’s a staff writer at The Atlantic where he focuses on national security and foreign policy, specifically Russia, nuclear weapons, and democratic institutions. He’s a professor emeritus of National Security Affairs at the US Naval War College where he taught for 25 years. In recent days, President Trump has emerged at the center of renewed diplomatic efforts aimed at ending the Russia-Ukraine War. Nichols joins me to discuss the stakes of this moment and whether a ceasefire is viable. We also discussed Governor Gavin Newsom’s satirical posts on X mocking Donald Trump. Then I’ll answer a question about Ghislaine Maxwell’s transfer to a minimum security prison, and then I’ll have a question for you about Gavin Newsom’s controversial social media posts. That’s coming up, stay tuned.

What’s the future of the deadliest war in Europe since World War II? Foreign policy expert and Atlantic writer Tom Nichols joins me this week.

Tom Nichols, welcome back to the show. It’s great to have you.

Tom Nichols:

Good to be with you again. Preet.

Preet Bharara:

Before we get to Russia, I do want to ask you, and I’m worried about the answer to this question, have you had an Indian meal since you and I had that meal a few years ago?

Tom Nichols:

I have not. Part of it is-

Preet Bharara:

Okay.

Tom Nichols:

But part of it’s where I live. We don’t have a lot of… I mean, I live on a big town-

Preet Bharara:

I have found Indian food in West Yellowstone, Montana-

Tom Nichols:

You’re just not going to buy that argument, don’t you? You’re not going to buy the-

Preet Bharara:

I’m not going to buy it. I’m not going to belabor it. I’m not going to buy it. I’m not going to belabor it. But you-

Tom Nichols:

I did have a craving the other day for biryani. That biryani is still sticking with me-

Preet Bharara:

Okay. There’s some new places that I can take you to. So when you come to New York next, put aside the peanut butter and jelly and have a little biryani with Preet. All right?

Tom Nichols:

Maybe we can even find another charity to support.

Preet Bharara:

Perhaps we can. I want to date-stamp this for the audience because things change on a daily, if not hourly, basis. We are having this conversation on Tuesday afternoon, August 19th. I don’t want to start with what just happened. Can we go a little bit back in time, maybe a week or two weeks? Am I correct that the war between Russia and Ukraine still rages on?

Tom Nichols:

All indications are that people are still dying in droves, yes.

Preet Bharara:

Yes. Donald Trump decides to have the bilateral meeting. I don’t know why we have to use such fancy words, bilateral, trilateral, multilateral. I never understood that in foreign policy. Maybe you can explain that also. He decides to have a meeting with Putin in Alaska, which Trump seemed to forget regularly is a part of the United States. Why did he want to meet with Putin? What was the point of that meeting? And then we can judge whether or not the purpose of the meeting was fulfilled.

Tom Nichols:

I think that he wanted to meet with Putin because he was trying to change a brutally ugly news cycle that he was stuck in.

Preet Bharara:

Oh, is there something going on with him?

Tom Nichols:

There have been rumors.

Preet Bharara:

A list of-

Tom Nichols:

Between the two of us, this is the driest martini ever, but I do. I think he’s tired of the Epstein story. He’s tired of some of the controversy swirling around the economic numbers, and firing the labor statistician, and the economic numbers that are not going in the direction he wanted them to go in. And I think he just decided, “You know what? Let’s throw a summit, focus foreign policy.” This is just a kind of basic rule of news, right? A summit is an instant news priority, and I think he just used that to-

Preet Bharara:

It goes right to the top. It wipes everything else off.

Tom Nichols:

Absolutely.

Preet Bharara:

Okay. So that may have been his real reason. But then, he had to state reasons and he had to state goals. Although it’s been some days, my recollection is that he talked about how he was going to press for a ceasefire. Did he use fairly strong language about the ceasefire?

Tom Nichols:

And a 25% chance that the meeting could fail. It was a one in four.

Preet Bharara:

Yeah.

Tom Nichols:

But there was no-

Preet Bharara:

So he was right about that?

Tom Nichols:

Well, the other reason I think he just kind of did this in an impromptu way, there were no… Nothing had changed. There were no indications, no signals from Moscow, nothing. It was just, “We’re going to have a summit and he’s going to make a deal for me,” and that didn’t happen.

Preet Bharara:

Let’s put aside Trump’s interests and motivations and goals for a moment. Putin gets a call… or I don’t know if they’re on a walkie-talkie or they share a signal chat with Jeffrey Goldberg or whatever. Putin gets an invitation to meet in Alaska with the sitting president of the United States. Is that an easy, easy yes for him or are there other considerations from his perspective?

Tom Nichols:

Oh, that’s a slam dunk for him. He gets several things out of it. He is rehabilitated. This guy’s an international pariah. There are a lot of countries he can’t go to because he is under indictment from the International Criminal Court, to which we are not a signatory, of course, so he can actually come here. He gets Trump to roll out the red carpet, quite literally. He gets Trump to do his usual, that cringe-inducing performance that we’ve seen since Helsinki. Where every time they get together, Trump bows the head and pats the arm and claps and reaches, all of that kind of cringey, submissive kind of behavior that he engages in around Putin.

And he gets to restate his case. I’m only doing this by implication or by extended, and now extrapolation, I guess, is that I think he went behind and closed doors and said, “Listen, I’m fed up with this. You need to get Zelensky to hand over territory. You’re not going to put sanctions on me. There’s not going to be a ceasefire. Thank you very much, but I’m going to skip lunch and I’m going home now.” Easy call for the Russian president, piece of cake.

Preet Bharara:

Yeah. So what do you imagine was happening in the Oval Office between Trump and Rubio, who has every job it seems, and other people in his orbit about doing the meeting or not? Do you think they were telling him it was inadvisable? Do you think they thought maybe, even without an inflection point, a Hail Mary pass that was worth doing? And maybe you know this from reporting, maybe they all just go along with what the emperor wants to do because he can’t be persuaded against anything that is in his mind.

Tom Nichols:

Do you want to be the guy that goes into the Oval Office and says, “Bad idea, Mr. President,” in this administration? There used to be people who would do that. There were people who would walk in, even if they were-

Preet Bharara:

So he says he wants to do the thing, and everyone just says, “Okay.” Do they engage in a mitigation strategy or they’re like, “F it, is what it is. We’ll let the chips fall where they may”?

Tom Nichols:

It seems like, “F it, let’s just do it,” seems to be pretty much the guiding standing instructions for everybody around Trump. I don’t know. I mean, I would hope. Remember, this is the guy where they had to put the sign in front of him and said, “Do not congratulate,” when won another election and Trump congratulated. It’s very clear that he learned the lessons from his first term. You don’t have people in the office that are going to say no to you. You can see it, by the way, not just in his own staff, but look at the way other world leaders manage him. I said the other day… I was on a talk show and I said he’s like that little kid in the Twilight Zone episode.

Preet Bharara:

Oh, it’s one of the most famous Twilight episodes ever.

Tom Nichols:

It’s a Good Life, with the incredibly mean but omnipotent little kid who can just wish you into the cornfield. So no matter what you say to Trump, it always starts with, “It’s good what you did. This is good. You’re doing great,” and you see it. You saw it with Starmer and Merz and all the others, “Yes, Mr. President, a lot of faith, good job,” even as they’re almost literally trying to tackle him around the legs to stop him from making one of these harebrained deals with Putin.

Preet Bharara:

Okay. So he has the meeting, could you explain to listeners what was so bad about the meeting, people who are not versed in foreign policy? I think you called it a humiliation. Fox News, they had anchors who said it was definitely not a good meeting. There was a bad feeling in the room, and they used the verb steamrolled, meaning the object of which was Trump. What was so bad about that meeting? Yeah, they didn’t make a lot of progress. But was the effort set back in some way? Why is your analysis so grim?

Tom Nichols:

Well, let’s go back to why they’re meeting at all. The dictator of Russia took 150,000 people and launched the biggest war since Hitler in the middle of Europe. The American president, in theory here, says, “I’m going to put a stop to this. I’m going to summon the Russian president to a summit. We’re going to sit down. I’m going to lay out a ceasefire, and he’s going to accept it.” Maybe another president might’ve been able to pull that off? I doubt it. Putin has no reason to stop the war. But if that was the setup, then let’s look at what actually happened. Putin shows up, the American president fawns all over him, pats his hand, talks about… This morning, by the way, on Fox, he said, “There’s a warmth there. We have a real warmth between us.” Makes it clear that this is his pal, takes him for a ride in the presidential Cadillac, and then goes by and closed doors, and comes out and essentially parrots Russian talking points, “Zelensky’s the problem. He’s got to be flexible. We’re going to have to see what happens.”

Again, there’s always that, “Two weeks, and you never know,” and in later interviews, “I will see in a couple of weeks.” That’s a disaster because the Russian president shows up large and in charge, gets treated like a visiting honorary. When in fact, if there had to be a summit, the right approach would’ve been for an American president to be stone-faced, distant, nod politely, perfunctory handshake and none of these press praise, into a quiet room, turn the cameras off, and then bang the table and say, “This war in Europe, I am not going to be the President who presides over the second largest war since 1945.” None of that happened. I think Putin’s the guy who banged the table and said, “I’ve had enough of your crap, and I’m going back to Russia now.”

Preet Bharara:

I just want to repeat a point of just complete incredulousness that I have every time we come to this topic, which is not at the center of my wheelhouse, that Donald Trump and many other people don’t really think in their mind and in their heart, and tell me if I’m wrong, Tom, don’t really think that what Putin did, which was invade a neighboring peaceful country for no apparent good reason at all, resulting in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of his own people, hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian people… that these guys don’t think there was anything wrong with that. Is that a fair statement?

Tom Nichols:

I think if you’re talking about these guys, meaning Republicans-

Preet Bharara:

Let’s start with Trump and then concentric circles beyond Trump.

Tom Nichols:

Okay. Starting with Trump, I think Trump has completely internalized Putin’s talking points.

Preet Bharara:

But he’s the guy who hates… The one thing that people say about it, and Bill Maher said this last week very earnestly, and people have their differing views about Bill Maher depending on the day of the week and what he’s saying, but there is some evidence to suggest he hates war and he doesn’t like war. He thinks war is for suckers and losers, and people who are combatants in war, and he wants to end the war. Right? That’s the whole premise here. Trump hates war, he wants to stop war, he likes peace, he’s done it elsewhere. If that’s all true, then how does he not condemn the person who started the war? I know these are very basic questions, and I sound-

Tom Nichols:

I don’t think I take issue with the premise of your question, counselor. I don’t think that’s true. This is also the guy who says to Netanyahu, “Go into Gaza and finish the job,” the guy who launches B-2 strikes against Iran. I think he has gotten into his head that he is going to be the world’s great peacemaker, and part of that is to say, “I hate war.” Just before we-

Preet Bharara:

So you think it’s a talking point like everything else?

Tom Nichols:

Yeah. Look, I don’t want I be too… Is there such a thing as being too fair to Trump? Nobody likes war, but you can’t say on the one thing-

Preet Bharara:

I don’t know. Putin doesn’t seem to mind it.

Tom Nichols:

Well, yeah. I mean, okay. I don’t think he likes it. I think he didn’t expect it. I think Putin said, “I didn’t expect this war. But now that I’m saddled with it, I’m going to just butcher people left and right-”

Preet Bharara:

Well, because what did he expect? He expected to have a 4-day romp.

Tom Nichols:

Right.

Preet Bharara:

Yeah.

Tom Nichols:

When you say, “I hate war,” but going to Gaza and finish the job, “and I’m going to launch a B-2 raid on Iran,” I think-

Preet Bharara:

Well, that was a surgical strike, Tom.

Tom Nichols:

You asked about, “Is there still a war in Ukraine?” Apparently, there’s still an Iranian regime pursuing nuclear weapons. But to be fair to him, I think sure. If he can end this conflict, he would want to. But he has completely accepted Putin’s frame of reference about this. So I think that really undermines this ability to end the war and his commitment to ending the war. Because if he were really that enraged about it, as you said, he would sit down with the person who started this war, use that personal warmth and say, “We have a personal relationship. I’m here to help you. This war has to stop.”

Preet Bharara:

Yeah. I think he tried that-

Tom Nichols:

Instead, he walks out and says… Well, this morning, by the way, just before you and I met today and started talking, Trump gave an interview where he said he castigated Barack Obama. He said Crimea was handed over without a shot being fired. I’m sorry, I thought this was the peace president. Does he think Obama should have gone to war in 2014? I was, as you know, very critical of the Obama administration’s response to the aggression and the annexation of Crimea. But if you hate war, then you don’t castigate your predecessor for letting a piece of territory be taken without a shot fired. I think he jumps back… I don’t like that Trump always plays both sides of the street, “I’m tough. I’m going to have a B-52 flyover.” That was another weird thing, right? It’s like I’m here to negotiate peace, and we’re going to have a-

Preet Bharara:

Can I tell you something, Tom? His people loved it.

Tom Nichols:

Of course, it’s all theater.

Preet Bharara:

I saw post after post of people thinking, “This man is incredible. What a feat of bravery and what a flex.”

Tom Nichols:

Yeah.

Preet Bharara:

What flex to fly a US military plane over the head of Vladimir Putin, by the way, also over the head of Donald Trump, as if there was some risk of harm to Vladimir… I don’t even understand what the flex. What the flex? We have a big plane?

Tom Nichols:

Or that Putin was going to look up and say, “I wasn’t crazy about a ceasefire, but God damn, that’s a big plane-”

Preet Bharara:

Yeah, I didn’t understand the flex.

Tom Nichols:

“… Let’s sit down and talk.” And of course, it was a flex for… I think that’s the other thing. We began this conversation with, “Why a summit at all?” And again, Trump creates his own reality. He went on Fox this morning and they congratulated him, “Congratulations, Mr. President.” And you have to ask-

Preet Bharara:

“Well done.”

Tom Nichols:

… for what? What happened?

Preet Bharara:

Did they have the person on who said that Trump had been steamrolled in that meeting?

Tom Nichols:

No. Remarkably, they were not part of the,-

Preet Bharara:

Oh, it was a different people. The steamroll crew had the day off?

Tom Nichols:

Right.

Preet Bharara:

Okay. So he has the meeting, and it’s always fraught to try to understand what’s in Trump’s head. But does he have any understanding that sane and reasonable people, both here and allies abroad, erstwhile or some of the straight allies abroad, feel that it was a humiliating performance? Does he have any sense of that?

Tom Nichols:

No. He thinks that they came rushing to help, as he put it, “Because we are respected again, because that’s how much they respect us.”

Preet Bharara:

So fast forward to the last couple of days, it seems like all of Europe descended on the United States. Why? Why did so many people come along with Zelensky?

Tom Nichols:

Well, I think, a few reasons. And one of them was a recent article at the Atlantic, which I didn’t write, but I will gladly recommend to people, that said Zelensky also learned from the last time he was here.

Preet Bharara:

Yeah. He put on a suit.

Tom Nichols:

He put on something like a suit. He looked better-

Preet Bharara:

Something closer to a suit.

Tom Nichols:

And he brought people with him so that there wasn’t going to be another one of these rude ambushes in the Oval Office. Because bringing a bunch of people, that’s exactly the kind of thing Trump loves. Everybody sits in front of the Resolute desk and they say, “Oh, Mr. president, it’s so good to see you. It’s good what you did, Anthony. It’s good. It’s a good life. It’s good that you didn’t wish us into the cornfield,” and then they say, “Okay. But now, let’s not do the thing that you were thinking of doing.” As I wrote right after that meeting, “Look, team Europe, kind of this team mini-NATO showed up, and they achieved their minimum goal,” which was to stop Trump from making some kind of numbskull deal that would commit land swaps and security guarantees.

Putin was this close to getting a lot of territory that he doesn’t even sit on right now. They were going to give Putin not just a territory he’d captured. But if you saw, there was a map that Trump had in the meeting room, and it was colored by occupation. It was practically colored as if the Russian embassy had done it and sent it over. And I think that’s why the Europeans rushed over to say, “You’re doing great, Mr. president. It’s really good what you’re doing, but don’t do this.”

Preet Bharara:

It was sort of like, “Status quo, don’t do any further harm.”

Tom Nichols:

And I think that’s where we are right now. The war goes on-

Preet Bharara:

Right.

Tom Nichols:

… there’s no deal-

Preet Bharara:

Trump likes it, so he doesn’t view it as a bunch of Europeans coming to harangue him.

Tom Nichols:

No.

Preet Bharara:

He views it as a bunch of Europeans coming over to sort of flock to his side and be taken a photograph with, and that’s a nice pic-

Tom Nichols:

Again, they’re telling him, “You’re doing great.” So there is this problem, as people keep pointing out, that Trump tends to reflect whoever the last person in the room was, and they want to be the last people in the room. Now, that lasted overnight this morning, so you timestamp this as Tuesday morning. He’s back on that the war was about NATO, the war was about… He found it very insulting, his exact words, that Ukraine wants Crimea back. That’s very insulting to the Russians. So for now, the Europeans have held off any further stupid thing happening. And it may be, going back to your earlier question, Preet, that some of the people around Trump… Marco Rubio, who knows what happened to that guy’s principles. But there was a time when Marco Rubio-

Preet Bharara:

Ask JD Vance.

Tom Nichols:

Yeah, and Vance. Both of them, in their earlier incarnations as more sensible men, were much more kind of Reaganite and Atlanticist about this, about America as the leader of the free world. So maybe behind the scenes, they’ve been able to take this space that the Europeans created and to say, “Well, now, we’re going to pursue this other thing of a Putin-Zelensky meeting.” I don’t think that’s going to happen. I don’t think Zelensky has any reason to step into a room alone with a guy trying to kill him without other mediators there. But I guess, it’s the next shiny object that Trump will chase.

Preet Bharara:

Yeah. Can you remind people also, now we’re taking many steps back, as to why Ukraine was particularly vulnerable to being overrun by Russia in the first place? And whether or not, that reason that you’ll describe… I’m referring to the voluntary surrender of nuclear weapons by a state. And whether the US, if there’s such a thing anymore in international relations and foreign policy, has any kind of moral or contractual or other or historical obligation for having favored the voluntary surrender of nuclear weapons, allowing them to be subject to siege, an invasion, by the neighboring country of Russia?

Tom Nichols:

Well, I’m one of the people who… To this day, I will say it was still the right decision for Ukraine to give up its nuclear weapons.

Preet Bharara:

Why is that?

Tom Nichols:

Well, let me go back to your first question about why was it so easy.

Preet Bharara:

Yeah.

Tom Nichols:

Because Soviet map makers designed the Soviet Union to be like an interlocking jigsaw puzzle, which is why the whole former Soviet space is full of these irredentist claims, where they basically drew areas, they would put lines through areas that were occupied by a particular ethnic group and then split it up administratively. Crimea, which was traditionally part of Russia, was actually appended to Ukraine in the 1950s. The Soviets did this all the time, basically as a warning to say, “If you ever try and pull apart, it’s going to be impossible because you’re all threaded together by the way we drew these maps.” Now, Putin knows this, and he always says, “Well, Ukraine’s borders are illegitimate.” Yes, all the borders in the former Soviet Union are problematic, to use that word, but Putin only seems to care about that particular border. When it comes to the nuclear weapons, you have to remember that the Ukrainian nuclear weapons were strategic nuclear weapons, long-range nuclear weapons, and they were pointed at us. And there wasn’t much-

Preet Bharara:

They’re not pointed at Moscow.

Tom Nichols:

Well, it’s a pretty short hop for an ICBM to go from Kiev to Moscow. And especially, you have to remember that the Ukraine of 1994 is not the Ukraine of today. It was a much more unstable place, much more ridden with corruption. I believe that if they’d kept their nuclear weapons, the Russians, if not assent with us politely looking away, may well have said, “Well, we can’t live next to an unstable nuclear power. We have to invade and destroy these nuclear weapon sites, and put in a government closer to ours.” I really think holding the nuclear weapons probably would’ve provoked a Russo-Ukraine war 25 years ago.

Preet Bharara:

So you don’t agree with the people who say the opposite, who say, “We are to blame in part for the vulnerability of Ukraine.” That’s not a viable and fair argument?

Tom Nichols:

I think we’re to blame, and again, I was pretty hard on the Obama administration about this. I think we’re to blame for saying things like, “We’re pivoting to Asia.” Remember? The Obama administration said, “We’re going to pivot to Asia.” Pivoting to something means you’re pivoting away from-

Preet Bharara:

Away from something else, yeah. I think we should say pivot less, unless it’s the great podcast-

Tom Nichols:

And we need to pivot to a new subject-

Preet Bharara:

… co-hosted by my friends Kara Swisher and Scott Galloway. But other than that, I think… I’m going to get in trouble with the overlords.

Tom Nichols:

But I think, pivot, we signaled that we just weren’t interested in Europe anymore. And that once the nuclear problem had been solved, we assumed that the new Russia would be better, even than the one we signed the Budapest Memorandum with. The Budapest Memorandum said, “Russia, the UK, the United States, and Ukraine, we all agree not to mess with each other’s borders, not to engage in aggression. And that if anything happens, the signatories will go to the UN Security Council.” That’s all it says. People really think the Budapest Memorandum is like a NATO Article 5 guarantee, and it’s not. It was done to say, “Yes, we still care about your borders. We’ll be there.” But we also thought we were dealing with Yeltsin’s Russia, and not this neo-fascist thing that Putin has turned Russia into 30 years later.

Preet Bharara:

By the way, you have now on a few occasions been, quote, unquote, “fair to Trump.” You replied to somebody’s tweet, I don’t know who it was, referring to what happened this past number of days as follows, “That was the most pathetic, least presidential showing by an American politician in history.” It goes on and you write, “This is unfair. Trump’s had far worse showings. Helsinki, the worst, and then his disgusting ambush of Zelensky.” When you rank these things, Thomas, what criteria do you apply?

Tom Nichols:

Damage done to American standing, damage done to American national security, damage done to our alliances and our ability to work with allies and partners to shape the world in a way that I think most Americans don’t understand is actually conducive and supportive of their well-being and basically undermining global stability. Because every time one of these things happens, Putin says, “I have more room to operate. I have more room to do terrible things.” I put Helsinki at the top, because Helsinki was a double whammy. It was a double curse. Not only did Trump encourage Putin, and again show this kind of very submissive, very beta-like kind of affection for Putin, but he did it while crapping on the American intelligence community at the same time.

Preet Bharara:

Yeah.

Tom Nichols:

He’s basically saying, “I believe Putin, and our own guys are a bunch of liars.” It’s one thing to shake our position in the world. It’s another thing to shake our position in the world and tell your own people back home that your own government can’t be trusted as much as the Kremlin can be trusted.

Preet Bharara:

That there’s a parallel to that-

Tom Nichols:

That’s the worst.

Preet Bharara:

… on this trip, which is Trump has been using Putin’s words, I think it was behind closed doors, as validation for his theory that mail-in balloting can’t be fair in a democracy. So he consulted and relies upon and touts a well-known election integrity expert in Vladimir Putin for that same principle. I’m tired of asking the same question, and I’m just maybe stupid or naive. Trump is not an imbecile, and I keep trying to understand his mind. What goes on in his head to think that that is a good argument, that promoting the idea of a person who’s a dictator of a country, who has not presided over or been the beneficiary of an election with integrity in a very long time? Why do you get that guy to blurb your campaign book or your campaign ideas?

People will disagree with me on this, Trump is not an imbecile. And it’s one thing to have a certain view of Putin. But to put out into the public square, “I have idea X. And one reason why idea X is the right idea is because this guy who’s antithetical to everything that relates to idea X agrees with me.” How in his head is he thinking that’s persuasive? And I’ll stop asking questions in this vein soon.

Tom Nichols:

He may not be an imbecile. But first of all, he is not the brightest guy, especially when it comes to complex… I mean, he has a kind of lizard brain brilliance about marketing, putting his name on-

Preet Bharara:

But he’s persuasive. Yeah, okay. So if you can see that, he does know how to be persuasive to at least large legions of people. That’s how he got elected twice, failed once-

Tom Nichols:

But he’s also aggressively narcissistic, Preet.

Preet Bharara:

Yeah.

Tom Nichols:

Part of that is the inability to see anything beyond yourself or how it relates to anything that isn’t you. And people who have met him have told me… Obviously, I met the president. People who met him said that yes, he can be very charming, but he is also very much about winning the moment. I kind of stole this metaphor years ago from somebody else, he’s a goldfish. He darts from thing to thing-

Preet Bharara:

Right, right.

Tom Nichols:

He has no memory of the past, no expectation of the future. Get through the moment, win the moment, and then deal with the fallout later, which is why I think we’re always trying to untangle things that he said. Well, yesterday he said this, but today he said that. And tomorrow, he’s going to say something else because it’s all about getting through the moment, dominating the media, dominating the conversation at that moment, and then moving on. And Putin is the guy… Trump, you’ve seen this. You’ve been a victim of it. You know how much grievance this guy carries, this huge boulder of insecurity that weighs him down. And Putin is the guy behind closed doors who says, “Donald, I am a powerful man too. You’re doing great. I understand you. I get you, and you are right about everything.” For a guy like Trump, that’s gold, man. That’s catnip to somebody like Trump.

Preet Bharara:

Is there a political lesson in this? Do intellectuals, on both the left and the right, and strategists and others have it wrong when they say and think and advocate that truly intelligent people think about their strategy over the longterm, and you have a day-to-day strategy as well or tactic, depending on the word you want to use? And the success of Trump… He’s nominee three elections in a row, won twice. You arguably could give him even extra points because he had so much baggage and indictments and unwavering unpopularity among certain segments. So he won two out of three times with a lot of handicaps. One could argue that’s a pretty remarkable political feat. And if he accomplished it by never thinking beyond the current political moment, is that what smart politicians should emulate to get elected?

Tom Nichols:

Well, if all you want to do is… I’ve said many times, the reason he ran this time was to stay out of jail. Mission accomplished.

Preet Bharara:

Well, it worked.

Tom Nichols:

It worked.

Preet Bharara:

Yeah.

Tom Nichols:

It also says, “Have some reasonably smart people around you who can thread the needle of the electoral college. And make sure that your opponent is as…” He won against Hillary Clinton and Kamala Harris, so I feel like Trump is… We keep talking about Trump’s amazing ability to win, but I would say against very damaged, very second tier candidates.

Preet Bharara:

But I would retort that before he got to Hillary, he vanquished easily 15 Republican politicians or 16 Republican politicians, some of whom were thought to be formidable. That primary was not a freak show, and the primary was not full of Andrew Cuomo and Eric Adams. Right?

Tom Nichols:

When I used to teach strategy at the Naval War College, we would tell our students about the bonus of having what we would call a cooperative adversary. This is somebody who walks into your traps, somebody who disbelieves their own intelligence. When you’re going to war, you want a cooperative adversary who’s kind of dumb. And the mistake during the primary was that all of those guys said… I think they all made the same calculation, and they all made the same mistake. They said Donald Trump can’t possibly win the nomination in any real world. American voters are not that stupid. The Republican Party isn’t that stupid. It’s not going to happen. But I’m not going to attack Donald Trump. Because when he goes down-

Preet Bharara:

I want their vote, I want his voters.

Tom Nichols:

… I will pick up his voters. So all these guys engaged in fratricide, attacking each other, not realizing until it was too late that Trump had been building up this bank of primary votes. And instead of getting together… There were moments that I couldn’t understand during the primaries, where somebody should have stopped and said, “Wait a minute. If this guy is going to be on this stage and talk this way, I’m not going to participate in this… This is shameful. The Republican Party ought to be ashamed of itself. I want to be the leader of the Republican Party, and I’m not going to stand here and listen to this guy talk this way.” And instead, you had guys like Ted Cruz going, “Donald. Use your words, Donald, use your…” and, sorry, that just made them all look weak. So I would argue that Donald Trump has never really had to deal with a political opponent at the top of their game. Because who was the obvious front runner, by the way, in 2016? Jeb? That wasn’t going to happen either.

Preet Bharara:

I don’t think you can say Jeb without making clear the exclamation mark. Jeb!

Tom Nichols:

With Jeb?

Preet Bharara:

Jeb!

Tom Nichols:

I think he was-

Preet Bharara:

People are driving in their cars and I’ve just hurt their ears. I’m sorry. Jeb!

Tom Nichols:

Jeb! But I just don’t think-

Preet Bharara:

You too have done that.

Tom Nichols:

I think 2016 was the result of a perfect storm of-

Preet Bharara:

Yeah. But then, he had a perfect storm again in 2024.

Tom Nichols:

Yeah. When Joe Biden stepped down and Kamala Harris-

Preet Bharara:

Well, that’s a lot of perfect storms, man.

Tom Nichols:

No, it’s two lucky hits, twice. It’s all-

Preet Bharara:

But a perfect storm by definition means a bunch of lucky stuff happens simultaneously.

Tom Nichols:

Yeah. I would argue-

Preet Bharara:

It’s not two things. It’s a thousand things and then a thousand things again.

Tom Nichols:

I think both of those describe 2016 and 2024.

Preet Bharara:

On foreign policy, I’m going to ask you this question kind of as a riddle, isn’t it all explainable as some people think by a thing that Donald Trump does not have? He has a lot of stuff. He’s the most powerful person on Earth. He’s a commander in chief of the United States of America, president. He’s the most probably recognizable and talked about person on planet Earth. All these things are, I think, clear goals of his. He has billions of dollars. Even if he didn’t have it before the presidency, as a lot of reporting has suggested his family have made a lot of money, corruptly or otherwise. What does he not have, Tom? I’ll give you a hint. It’s two words, and the second word is prize.

Tom Nichols:

Oh, Nobel Prize. Of course, yes.

Preet Bharara:

Nobel Prize.

Tom Nichols:

And Barack Obama has one. In a world in which the Black guy has a Nobel Prize and Donald Trump doesn’t-

Preet Bharara:

Now, you’re bringing race into this, Tom. It’s not-

Tom Nichols:

I’m sorry.

Preet Bharara:

I didn’t think that was your way. But can a lot of this be explained? Because this guy who has kind of everything, arguably, he needs that Nobel Prize? And that’s why he’s operating the way he’s operating, whether it’s foolish or not?

Tom Nichols:

Well, going back to the Black president, I think it’s because not just the Black president, but the one who humiliated him in public that, “How can this guy-”

Preet Bharara:

Hasn’t he had his vengeance?

Tom Nichols:

There’s no bottom for his appetite for revenge, Preet. He doesn’t-

Preet Bharara:

Yeah.

Tom Nichols:

There’s no moment where he says, “All right. I’ve punished my enemies enough, I feel sated, and I feel like I’m finally…” A bottomless thirst for revenge comes from a bottomless well of insecurity and neediness. To this day, he still has this sense that people are laughing at him, people are criticizing him, people are saying bad things about him. He did it in Alaska. He did it again a few days afterwards, griping to anybody that would listen. He did it in front of seven European leaders, about the worst press, and everybody thinks and… It just is to be an adult and to watch a grown man do this, every chance he gets, is so cringe inducing. But that’s where it comes from, and it’s not going to stop. He’s never going to say, “I’ve finally gotten there. I have made my point. I’ve been elected twice. I’ve shown what I am.” It’s never going to stop.

Preet Bharara:

I’ll be right back with Tom Nichols after this.

I want to ask you a specific question about troops in LA, and what’s been going on in DC and the federalization of the police there. But first, as somebody who is a teacher and student of military history and the like, can you explain why the distinction between civilian and military rule in this country is important?

Tom Nichols:

It’s a bedrock tradition of American government going back to George Washington-

Preet Bharara:

More than tradition, right? Some of it’s enacted into law, Posse Comitatus and other things. But how much of it is tradition that can be undone by the whim of a president who likes showing force?

Tom Nichols:

Lots of it. The reason we didn’t enact a lot of it into law is because we didn’t have to. You’re a lawyer, you know this. If you have to keep writing laws about things, something’s going wrong. Right? It’s like saying, “We need a law that says you have to love your kids.” You don’t have to tell people, they do that under penalty of the state. And the reason we didn’t is because, again, going back to our founding, George Washington, who said, “When we took up the soldier, we did not lay aside the citizen. And that our identity as citizens in a democracy is the most important thing.” Trump is fascinated by the military and by symbols of power. I mean, you see him, he salutes. He reminds me of that expression on how to stay out of trouble in the army, “If it moves, salute it. If it doesn’t, paint it.” Trump is fascinated by these things, and I think it’s because, again, he is a weak and insecure man who feels attracted to these symbols of power.

But our American cultural tradition is that the military is not separate from us. You get military rule in countries where the military, and particularly the officer corps, feels separate from the rest of society, where they’ve been raised on academies and military reservations. And then when they think the country is dysfunctional, they show up and take power. Our military, they’re us. The US military, they’re our brothers and sisters, our husbands, wives, sons, daughters. They’re not separate from us. We live together and they defend us from threats everywhere, but particularly foreign threats and rarely against internal threats, which is why we have police and state police and the FBI and so on. I think that militarizing these problems is… First of all, I think Trump is just fascinated by doing it, but also it’s a tool he can use. He can command the army, and it’s a way of showing that he’s… It’s like the B-52 flyover, “Look at how powerful I am. I put troops into the dark and dangerous streets of Georgetown.”

Preet Bharara:

Jeb!

Tom Nichols:

Jeb!

Preet Bharara:

Jeb wouldn’t have done that. It felt right to say… I’m just going to exclaim his name, three letters, exclamation mark.

Tom Nichols:

“I want to see peace and order reign on Wisconsin and M. Street.” Well-

Preet Bharara:

Part of the problem is, I think years ago, I had, I think it was, James Stavridis on. And every, well maybe not every, but a disproportionate, and you know this better than anybody, and you’re an erudite person yourself. Generals of extreme success and achievement are deeply educated people generally. I think it was Stavridis talked about how the best generals and the most accomplished generals and high military officers in this country believe in the civilian tradition, abhor war, but also like to learn and educate themselves and read a lot. The funny thing is that’s not how generals are typically presented in movies and in fiction, and that’s the way in which it seemed that Donald Trump gets his central casting ideas about people who have certain roles in society. He thinks they’re just B-2-flying, flexing-

Tom Nichols:

Cowboys.

Preet Bharara:

… bomb-dropping cowboys.

Tom Nichols:

Yeah.

Preet Bharara:

And in the first term, it seems to me like he was disappointed by the generals he appointed to various positions to advise him, and in the cabinet, because they weren’t cowboys. They were deeply reflective people who believed in knowledge and wisdom as opposed to whatever Trump believes in. Is that all fair?

Tom Nichols:

Well, and you see it not only from Trump, but from Pete Hegseth. I still can’t believe… I still have a hard time putting words-

Preet Bharara:

People will not like that. Some people will not like that, Tom, because it’s not like he’s from outside the service. He did serve.

Tom Nichols:

Yes. Well, when he said, “We need a Secretary of Defense who’s had boots on the ground,” and he was talking about Lloyd Austin who has had boots on a lot more ground than Pete Hegseth is ever going to see, it was really a way of saying, “We want generals who are…” as you say, like Hollywood central casting, like Jack Nicholson. It’s like, “You want me on that wall. You need me on that wall.” Real generals and admirals of whom I have known, and many, and educated a few are not like that. And I’m sure it’s endlessly disappointing to Donald Trump to have these…

In fact, the other thing I would point out is that most of the generals and admirals I’ve ever known, with a few exceptions here and there, are very soft spoken. They’re not men and women who feel the need to yell. And speaking of women, by the way, that’s the other thing is Trump wants to get rid of all of the female top officers because women don’t want to have blood in their teeth and guts all over their uniform. It’s cartoonish is what it is, Preet.

Preet Bharara:

Yeah.

Tom Nichols:

Again, and I keep coming back to this word, it’s juvenile.

Preet Bharara:

He has these visions of what a wealthy person is supposed to live like, or what a military officer is supposed to advocate-

Tom Nichols:

We’re going to be scraping gold off the Oval office for years after he’s gone. This is-

Preet Bharara:

Well, at least we still have the Rose Garden. Oh, sorry.

Tom Nichols:

Oops. The Rose Garden, which now looks like the Au Bon Pain-

Preet Bharara:

The Au Bon Pain? Now, I guess we’re not going to be able to use them as a sponsor of the podcast.

Tom Nichols:

There’s nothing wrong with Au Bon Pain.

Preet Bharara:

Thanks, Tom.

Tom Nichols:

I don’t want the White House to look like one, that’s all.

Preet Bharara:

Jeb! I don’t know why, it’s just-

Tom Nichols:

I brought up Jeb, and it’s stuck in your head now.

Preet Bharara:

It’s stuck in my head.

Tom Nichols:

The exclamation points are haunting you now.

Preet Bharara:

It’s become a verbal tic in this interview that allows me a moment to think and reflect on my next question to you. I want to talk about domestic politics. We spent some time, in this conversation and in other conversations, talking about Trump’s style and the complete and total acceptance of his belligerence, his stream of consciousness, way of communicating, his social media posts that are famously hard to understand and don’t make a lot of sense, in their belligerence and in their odd hours of posting, they’re often all caps, they’re misspelled, there’s weird punctuation, et cetera, which his people seem to love. There’s a Democrat in the land named Gavin Newsom, who people have various opinions on, strong or otherwise, who has recently been posting in the style of Donald Trump with all caps, very narcissistic, obviously as a parody.

And the response has been super interesting, Democrats and anti-Trump folks, myself included. I thought at the beginning it was kind of silly. Now, I think it borders on brilliant epic satire because there are lots of examples of MAGA people who are complaining about the childishness and juvenile nature of the Gavin Newsom tweets, not understanding that it’s a parody of their guy. What do you make of all of that? I’m really curious to know how you think about that.

Tom Nichols:

Well, I have two thoughts. One is, like you, I have constantly been astonished that Trump’s supporters and a large number of otherwise sort of unengaged American citizens have just accepted that Trump is kind of our emotionally disordered national child. And that things that they would never accept from a real president, from actual leader, they just shrug and say-

Preet Bharara:

From me, they wouldn’t accept it from you as a professor.

Tom Nichols:

Oh, I mean-

Preet Bharara:

Right?? They wouldn’t accept it from a podcast or a practicing lawyer, am I right?

Tom Nichols:

Some time ago, I was talking with Charlie Sykes and the two of us said, “He now has the only job for which he can pass the qualifications,” which is president. Because all he has to do is convince enough people, and he gets the job. Nobody would be able to do these… And I think his supporters love it. They say, “Well, he’s great. He gets away with things because he says stuff.” Yes, but it’s unhinged. The guy does have control of nuclear weapons, and he is the commander in chief. And if any other president did this, he would either be impeached or removed by the 25th Amendment for being unstable. We’ve all agreed that Trump, this is just how he is. And I think that’s a tragedy.

Preet Bharara:

Yeah. When you say all of us, it’s not just his supporters, everyone else is like, “Yeah.” I’m not going to focus on the tweet because he just set back American foreign policy by having that encounter with Vladimir Putin that we’ve been discussing.

Tom Nichols:

Yeah.

Preet Bharara:

So who’s going to get hung up on a tweet?

Tom Nichols:

There’s a problem in the media with that, of course, which is to say, “I can’t write the story that says the president of the United States just blathered for two hours about sharks and electrocution. I have to write something that sounds coherent.” So we kind of go through a buffet and we just take out the last-

Preet Bharara:

Rehabilitation of his-

Tom Nichols:

Yeah.

Preet Bharara:

Yeah.

Tom Nichols:

But they knew something is interesting because it’s not just MAGA folks or the kind of MAGA rank and file. It was fascinating to see Dana Perino on Fox getting in all this high dudgeon and saying, “This is unserious,” and just fuming about how this was juvenile and unserious. You watch that and you say, “You’re so close to getting it. You’re so close to self-awareness on this issue, but you’re not there yet.” And I think it proves to me, at least, I think the reaction to the Newsom stuff… I am not a big Gavin Newsom fan. I don’t think he’d win-

Preet Bharara:

Well, are you a little bit more today than last week?

Tom Nichols:

No, I think it’s-

Preet Bharara:

Because of social media? Is he useful? Is it helpful to have a guy like that?

Tom Nichols:

I think in one way, which is showing… The anger you’re seeing from MAGA world prove something that I’ve been saying for a long time. Deep in their hearts, they know. They know Trump is disordered. They know this is juvenile. They know it’s unseemly. They know… Yes, some of them paint Trump’s body on Rambo on their vans. He has a weird cult of personality, but I think a lot of other people look at what Trump does. Some years ago, I was talking to a guy who said he really has trouble talking to his dad now because his father is just captured.

Preet Bharara:

Yeah.

Tom Nichols:

He says, “Dad, look at what he just said. It doesn’t make any sense. It’s gibberish,” and the old man said, and I think this sums up a lot of what Newsom is bringing out of people, he said, “Well, I understood. I know what he meant.” And what Newsom is saying by doing these parodies is, “You don’t know what he means. You really don’t. You just like it. You like that he’s cruel. You like it that he makes people uncomfortable. You like that he hates the people you hate. But come on, you don’t really understand anything he said. You just like the way it was done.” And by doing these parodies in that style, he’s showing, I think, and holding up a mirror to a lot of these folks saying, “You wouldn’t accept this from anybody else, and you’re being a hypocrite basically.”

Preet Bharara:

Look, I was skeptical, and there are many issues with many politicians including Gavin Newsom, but I will admit and confess guiltily perhaps that I’m enjoying the MAGA reaction. You look at one of his tweets that is fully in the style of Donald Trump and you see the MAGA reaction-

Tom Nichols:

It is masterful.

Preet Bharara:

You see the MAGA reaction and it’s crazy. They’re losing their freaking minds. Some of them are losing-

Tom Nichols:

Because they know. They get it.

Preet Bharara:

No, but not all of them are not getting the joke.

Tom Nichols:

Oh, they get it.

Preet Bharara:

The cognitive dissonance must be jarring. There are some people checking into a hospital-

Tom Nichols:

To be a Trump supporter is to live with that level of cognitive dissonance every day except, again, for the most cultish, for the people that just really think of him as sent by Jesus to straighten out America.

Preet Bharara:

I think it also. And again, it’s a weekend. It may grow old. I don’t know how long he’s going to keep it up. The point is not for every other… Josh Shapiro shouldn’t start tweeting in that style too. But it is providing a little bit of a lesson of liberals not falling into the trap of being owned, whatever that means. Right? For example, there was one exchange I saw where someone suggested that something that Gavin Newsom said or his office said was disrespectful to the governor of Texas, who was in a wheelchair. And someone said or used the phrase, I may be getting this kind of wrong, but people will understand the point, “He rolled over,” which some MAGA supporter or some Abbott supporter suggested that was cruel or were not proper or whatever. This is not a way that a liberal ever responds. The Newsom people responded, maybe it’s inappropriate to laugh, “You sound woke. He’ll get over it,” or something like that. What do you think of that?

Tom Nichols:

It’s been an ongoing feature of MAGA world that the F-your-feelings crowd is the biggest bunch of snowflakes that ever existed. I mean, they are impossibly delicate souls. Let’s face it. They find it difficult to take any criticism. They really believe that other people should listen to them screeching. It’s always amazing too when I go into a supermarket or a super store, a BJ’s or a Costco or something, there’s always one guy who’s got to wearing the hat talking really loudly about… almost saying, “Come on, debate me, fight me,” and yet very, very sensitive about criticism. I remember, at one point, I wrote something critical of Donald Trump’s manliness, and a guy sent me a message saying, “Well, what military did you serve in? What, tough guy?” And I’m like, “Wait a minute. What military did Donald Trump serve?” It’s just this remarkable hypocrisy.

And I think what Newsom did, I will go with you this far, Preet, was again hold up a mirror and say, “This really does look stupid. It really is juvenile and irresponsible and unserious, and you see it now. You always knew it was there, but you never had to deal with it.” I will also admit, the one thing that Newsom did that made me laugh was his parodies of that painter, the guy who does the freaky, culty Trump paintings where all the presidents are gathered around Trump.

Preet Bharara:

Yes.

Tom Nichols:

He had one where he had Kid Rock and somebody else, and an angelic, passed away Hulk Hogan in the style of this painting with their hands on Trump. And I thought, “Man, that is so on the nose.” But again, you wonder, the people that will get it will be furious and the people who don’t will feel like it was needlessly cruel. But I’m going to say it. I’m just going to put in a word here. I wrote a piece a long time ago saying, “Fight like adults.” I don’t think liberals should just stand around to be owned and have to not respond. But I really hope this doesn’t become like a feature of our politics all around now, because I do think it… Newsom’s made his point. The question is how long should this go on now.

Preet Bharara:

Yeah. I think of it as a point well-made, very artfully and beautifully made. Maybe it’s lost on the MAGA people, so there’s maybe not that much value and maybe just makes Trump critics feel good about themselves.

Tom Nichols:

I’m not sure it is. I keep parting company with you on this, Preet.

Preet Bharara:

That’s okay.

Tom Nichols:

I think they look at it and they know somewhere… Remember the old slam on Goldwater? Right in your guts you know he’s nuts. They tried to push that one-

Preet Bharara:

I don’t remember that.

Tom Nichols:

Oh, yeah. No, it was a saying in the ’60s.

Preet Bharara:

I know Tippecanoe and Tyler Too.

Tom Nichols:

Yeah.

Preet Bharara:

Also, you know what else I know? Jeb!

Tom Nichols:

Jeb! This was better than Jeb. This was in your guts, he’s nuts.

Preet Bharara:

Jeb!

Tom Nichols:

I think that to be an avid Trump supporter is to live with a lot of cognitive dissonance every day. And I think Newsom poked that sore spot of saying, “Deep down, you know. You know how crazy this sounds. You know how nutty it is to have all caps,” Jeb! “triple exclamation points in these things. You know that these paintings are weird. You people know this.” But no one ever confronts them with that by saying straight up, because the answer they get, going back to my friend’s father, “Well, I understood him. I know what he meant.”

Preet Bharara:

I know what he meant. And look, and they’re not even criticizing as being bad satire. It’s pretty good.

Tom, I’ve kept you too long. I really appreciate it. Thanks for your time, your insight. And I think we owe, if not the world, ourselves a big biryani dinner next time you’re in New York.

Tom Nichols:

Absolutely. I’m coming to New York and you got to show me the next place where I’m going to enjoy-

Preet Bharara:

I got a couple in mind, maybe a double header.

Tom Nichols:

All right.

Preet Bharara:

Thanks, Tom.

Tom Nichols:

You bet. Nice to see you again.

Preet Bharara:

My conversation with Tom Nichols continues for members of the CAFE Insider Community. In the bonus for insiders, we discuss the redistricting battles happening around the country. To try out the membership, head to cafe.com/insider. Again, that’s cafe.com/insider. Stay tuned. After the break, I’ll answer a question about Ghislaine Maxwell’s transfer to a minimum security prison, and then I’ll have a question for you about Gavin Newsom’s controversial social media posts.

Now, let’s get to your questions. This question comes from a post on X from Mariam, “What are your thoughts on moving notorious predator and convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell, to what some are calling a luxurious prison in Texas?” Mariam, that’s a great question. And to be honest, I don’t know. I’m a little perplexed by Maxwell’s transfer myself, as are a lot of people. Now, to remind everyone, Maxwell was convicted in 2021 on multiple counts of sex trafficking and related conspiracies for recruiting and grooming underage girls for Jeffrey Epstein. And she engaged in abuse personally. She was sentenced to 20 years in prison, which was the statutory maximum based on the things she was convicted of.

And until recently, she was serving that sentence at a medium security facility in Florida. But on August 1, the Bureau of Prisons abruptly announced that she was being moved to a minimum security facility in Texas. Notably, they gave no public explanation for the transfer, so I think we are all correct to be skeptical and suspicious. Now, take a step back. How does a prison transfer like this happen? Under the law, there’s a particular statute that addresses this point. The Bureau of Prisons has a lot of broad discretion over inmate placement and transfers. There’s some factors they’re supposed to consider, but they have the ultimate decision-making authority. Those factors include the inmate’s offense, security classification, health needs, and sometimes proximity to their primary residence. But otherwise, it’s BOP that decides and BOP’s decisions generally are not reviewable by the courts.

From my own experience in the US Attorney’s Office, prosecutors had very little say in where a prisoner might be housed. Our involvement was generally limited with respect to where someone was housed, to transfers for a defendant to appear in court. But long-term placement decisions were always firmly in the Bureau of Prisons’s hands. Now, a mere assistant US attorney or even United States attorney might have very little power to instruct the Bureau of Prisons as to a particular inmate and their location. Maybe it’s different if you’re the Attorney General or the Deputy Attorney General, and the Bureau of Prisons is in your department, and you can make such orders for reasons that you don’t have to disclose. Now, as for the direct question about Maxwell, I don’t know if I’d go so far as to call this Texas prison luxurious.

I don’t think there are very many prisons in the United States that are in fact luxurious. But minimum security camps are generally considered far more comfortable than higher security facilities. Inmates there have fewer physical restrictions, they have more freedom of movement, greater access to programs, and often live in dormitory-style housing instead of cells. So for that reason, these kinds of facilities are usually reserved for non-violent offenders, think of white-collar criminals or low-level drug cases. It’s unusual to see someone convicted of the serious crimes of trafficking a minor, like Maxwell, placed in such a setting. Now, some have speculated that the transfer might’ve been part of a deal to help Donald Trump manage the lingering fallout from Jeffrey Epstein. Not a bad guess given the odd circumstances surrounding her imprisonment, surrounding her interview by the Deputy Attorney General, and surrounding certain statements that her lawyers have been making publicly.

Will we get to the bottom of it? Well, possibly. Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee have made an inquiry. They’ve written to the attorney general, warning that the move could be seen as an effort to tamper with a key witness or shape Maxwell’s potential testimony about Epstein’s associates. So where does all that leave us? Well, as I mentioned, the Bureau of Prisons does have the legal authority to make the transfer. But the lack of transparency, the unusual nature of placing someone convicted of child sex trafficking abruptly into a new low-security facility, and all the political backdrop, I think naturally raise suspicions. Maybe congressional oversight will shed some light on what actually happened here. Maybe not. Stay tuned.

Folks, rather than answer another question, I thought I’d turn the tables and pose a question to you, the audience. As you heard in the interview with Tom Nichols, I’m kind of a little bit fascinated by this back and forth between Gavin Newsom and his social media followers where he is satirically imitating and mimicking the form of posts favored by the President of United States, Donald Trump, the sort of misspelling, the all caps, the over-the-top, the inappropriate and unprecedented tone of those posts. Some people seem to enjoy it. Mostly they’re people who already don’t like President Trump. Other people who support President Trump seem to not get it. Some of them say they get it, they just don’t think it’s funny.

So my questions are, to you folks, is it effective? Is it a distraction? Is it stupid? Is it juvenile? Is it brilliantly satirical? How long do you think he should keep it up? Is there any value in it? Should other people start emulating what Gavin Newsom is doing? Even if you don’t like what he’s doing and you don’t think politicians generally on the democratic side should be doing that kind of thing, is it useful to have at least one person like Gavin Newsom fighting in that particular way? I’m really curious how you’re thinking about this. As always, send us your thoughts on this point to letters@cafe.com, and I’ll read some of your answers on the next show.

Let me end on a slightly lighter note. You may remember if you listened last week, we received a listener question from someone named Rob, who asked the question, “What is your favorite pasta and why is it fusilli?” Since then, on our team, we’ve been talking about pasta quite a bit. I answered Rob’s question on the last episode of Stay Tuned, and then discussed it at length with Joyce Vance during our recent Substack live broadcast. We also, because we can, ran a listener poll on Substack and the results are in. Stay Tuned listeners’ favorite pasta is linguini, spaghetti came in second, with my favorite pappardelle a close third, which shows I’m not much of an influencer, am I? One listener even got very specific about her pasta preferences. Emily wrote that her favorite is Trader Joe’s lemon pappardelle. I should also note, for Rob’s sake, apologies, that fusilli came in last place.

Priscilla wrote in with a strong opinion about bolognese meat sauce. She says, “It can only be served with tagliatelle, not pappardelle, not linguini, not any macaroni. This is a fact from mia famiglia in Bologna. Buon appetito!” As I mentioned last week, one reason I didn’t pick linguini is that I’ve yet to be able to eat linguini and clam sauce without getting clam sauce on my shirt. Patricia offered me some practical advice, “Preet, just remember a bib, unless you want to have to change your shirt.” Pretty sound advice. And finally, Nancy wrote to us, “Thank you for the pasta distraction.” You’re welcome, Nancy. And thank you all for writing to us. If you have more questions or comments either about pasta or some of the more serious things we talked about on the show, please email them to letters@cafe.com or you can leave me a voicemail at 833-99-PREET.

Well, that’s it for this episode of Stay Tuned. Thanks again to my guest, Tom Nichols.

If you like what we do, rate and review the show on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen. Every positive review helps new listeners find the show. Send me your questions about news, politics, and justice. Tweet them to me, @PreetBharara, with the hashtag #AskPreet. You can also now reach me on Bluesky, or you can call and leave me a message at 833-99-77338. That’s 833-99-PREET. Or you can send an email to letters@cafe.com. Stay Tuned is presented by CAFE and the Vox Media Podcast Network. The executive producer is Tamara Sepper. The technical director is David Tatasciore. The deputy editor is Celine Rohr. The editorial producers are Noa Azulai and Jake Kaplan. The associate producer is Claudia Hernández. And the CAFE team is Matthew Billy, Nat Weiner and Liana Greenway. Our music is by Andrew Dost. I’m your host, Preet Bharara. As always, stay tuned.