Gaming the Scenarios for Political Violence: A Conversation with Patrick Eddington

Donald Trump could provoke local warfare in mixed red and blue communities

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Aaron Ross Powell: Welcome to ReImagining Liberty, a show about the emancipatory and cosmopolitan case for radical social, political, and economic freedom. I'm Aaron Ross Powell.

The January 6th insurrection demonstrated the Trumpist right's willingness to use violence to advance its political interests. My guest today is worried that that was just the start. Patrick Eddington is a former CIA analyst and a senior fellow in homeland security and civil liberties at the Cato Institute. In a series of essays at his newsletter, The Republic Sentinel, he's been exploring the risks of more widespread political violence should Trump be removed from the ballot, convicted of a crime, or lose the November election. Trump's followers sometimes talk of a new civil war, and it's important to assess their seriousness and what it might mean to see a sudden increase in violent acts from the far right. 

With that, let's turn to my conversation with Pat.

The following transcript has been lightly edited for flow and clarity.

Aaron Ross Powell: As we are recording this on Jan. 30, over the last several weeks, we have seen an increasing number of state governors pledge support to the governor of Texas, who is in a confrontation with the federal government over, effectively, the federal government not being cruel enough to immigrants for the tastes of the governor of Texas. And other GOP governors are signing on. And this is all happening at a time when there's lots of talk of violence on the right, both those of us worried about violence on the right talking about it and people on the right themselves talking about how violent they're going to get if they don't get their way. This all seems very troubling. And you've been writing this series of articles on your newsletter about Civil War 2.0. So I guess I'll start there. Are we headed to a second Civil War?

Patrick Eddington: So for those who are a glutton for punishment on this kind of thing, you can find this publication. It's called the Republic Sentinel. It is on Substack at this stage of the game. I started this publication at the beginning of this month, literally on New Year's Day. The focus at the end of the day is looking at both the political threats to the survival of the republic and the institutional threats. The political—as I noted in the first piece—the political can drive and often does drive the institutional threats. And by institutional, I mean the actual agencies and departments of the federal government that engage in the use or can engage in the use of violence: elements of the Department of Justice, the Department of Homeland Security, and in extreme cases, the Department of Defense.

I was motivated to do this, obviously, by the 45th president of the United States, once again being a presidential candidate, and having spoken in great detail sometimes and definitely frequently about his desire for revenge against his political opponents and what he would do and so on and so forth in a second term.

And so with the memory of Jan. 6, 2021 and the events leading up to that very fresh in my mind, as I like to tell people, it is literally the first thing I think about when I wake up in the morning and the last thing I think about before I go to bed at night. I wanted to explore this question, as a former military analyst, as a former CIA analyst. I wanted to take that skill set and just try to apply it as rigorously as I could to this question of ... are we heading towards an 1861 to 1865 kind of conflagration? I think the short answer is yes and no. I think that the possibility is real, but as I noted in one of these earlier pieces, the United States is configured very differently now than it was just prior to the Civil War. We were largely broken down along geographic and cultural lines at that point with free states and slave states. It made it pretty straightforward. But if you actually take a look at a map of the popular vote from the 2020 election, what you see is a map that has an awful lot of blue, representing folks who voted for Joe Biden in an awful lot of these red states. That's where things kind of diverge in terms of exactly how this would all go down. So instead of a war between the states, so to speak, what I worry about are wars or miniature wars within states, essentially within communities and an awful lot of this, of course, being driven by Trump.

Now there are a lot of basic, I think, economic factors among others that maybe militate against this becoming a true force on force, organized military kind of thing. An awful lot of the supply chain for our food and for other things, yes, a lot of that is concentrated in states that were won by Trump. But at the same time, the folks who own those companies have a vested interest in wanting to keep the dollars flowing. So you have consumers that need food, we have consumers that need clean water, all manner of supplies and so on and so forth. So it gets very sticky and very messy in that respect if you kind of look at this in a relatively rational actor model kind of way. The problem is a lot of our fellow countrymen are not acting terribly rationally right now. And that's exactly what causes me to have this anxiety about the possibility of some very, very ugly things happening. And there are different kinds of scenarios, and I started to walk through those different kinds of scenarios. And for me, of course, the most frightening scenario, beyond all doubt, is a Trump victory and what that would potentially mean, not so much for white people like me, but what it could mean for a lot of the non-white population in this country and the non sexually binary segment of the population and so on and so forth.

So I don't think there's any doubt that the prospect is there. And you opened our segment, Aaron, by talking about this de facto secessionist kind of confrontation that Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas engaged in right now against the federal government. And for the benefit of our listeners, earlier in January, the Supreme Court in a specific order made it very clear that Gov. Abbott, and for that matter any other governor, cannot interfere with the federal government's responsibilities for dealing with immigration related problems and border security and so on and so forth. And Gov. Abbott has continued to defy the Supreme Court by ordering up the Texas National Guard to put down razor wire and other barriers in the Eagle Pass area of Texas and possibly some other sectors to try to stem the flow of folks coming into this country illegally. And I want to make it very clear, I believe we need to have a comprehensive solution to the immigration problem. There's no question about that. It needs to be addressed. But using razor wire and letting human beings drown in the Rio Grande river is absolutely not the way to do it. So it's going to be very, very interesting to see how this all plays out over the course of the next several weeks.

Aaron Ross Powell: Let's bracket for a bit the particular dangers of Trump winning in November and look at either violence between now and then or threats of violence should Biden defeat him in the general election, which I am probably more optimistic in this regard than you are. I think that Trump has actually a relatively small chance of winning in November.

How much of this is … there's obviously a lot of anger on the right. There's a strong sense, they often talk about … they imagine that their country has been invaded from within and from without, that the immigrants coming in are portrayed as invaders who are not just violating our laws, but are dangerous to the fundamental features of our country as these people on the right imagine them. And so the more immigrants, the less America looks the way that they want America to look. And it also is invaders internally in the sense of, say, people like you and me. I would say coastal elites, but I've moved to Denver, so I'm very much not on the coast, but in spirit, coastal elites and others who they see as dragging America in a direction that is not true to its authentic principles and values—whether that is what they imagine to be the founding principles, whether that's white nationalist ideas that they prefer and so on. So there's a lot of anger. We've seen some violence. We saw, obviously, Jan. 6, but Jan. 6, as you point out in one of your essays, was only maybe 3,000 people involved; a vanishingly small fraction of, say, everybody who voted for Trump in 2020.

And so it seems like we could look at this and say, this is just like a lot of talk. It's a lot of angry, mostly white, mostly working class guys who are upset about their declining social status in a changing America that's changing both culturally and demographically. And as often happens, they're basically cosplaying tough guys. They're the kinds of people who imagine that behaving belligerently is a sign of strength. But when it really comes down to it, you might get a handful of lone wolf attacks, crazies who blow up something, but they're not going to take to the street and take up arms against the government because they just ultimately don't have it in them.

Patrick Eddington: So I think we would be unwise to necessarily write off the prospect of one or more events convincing a lot of the folks that you've described that the system is irredeemably rigged against them and they have essentially nothing to lose by choosing to burn it all down. What I do think really kind of matters here are potential triggers, right? And I've outlined some of those in the piece that I published.

Among those triggers, of course, are the court decisions that are pending right now. One of those being in front of the DC Circuit Court of Appeals. This is Trump's interlocutory appeal related to his Jan. 6 related case in which he's claiming, “No, no, no. I was acting in my official capacity as president, therefore I cannot possibly be prosecuted for this crime.” His attorneys, when they made their oral arguments, went much further than that, essentially claiming that absolute presidential immunity is a thing, that it applies, one of the judges said, so in essence, I'm spitballing here a little bit, but pretty close to what was actually said, “So if the president ordered SEAL Team 6 to go out and kill a political opponent, he would not be, he would not be prosecutable?” And the attorney replied, “Well, only if Congress impeached and convicted him.” And of course there is no constitutional basis for that position whatsoever, but we get a sense of what Trump is trying to argue here and what he essentially is trying to do to shield himself from any kind of accountability. So, a trigger could be the appeals court comes back and say your acts as a candidate are not remotely immunized. They do not constitute immunized conduct. And then the J-6 trial can go forward and so on and so forth.

The Supreme Court decision, if it were to come down against [Tump] in that way, that might well lead him first and foremost to say, “We have to burn it all down, the system is completely rigged. It’s completely corrupt. We're gonna have to just take matters into our own hands.” Would he do it? Would he be willing to go that far?

Based on how his supporters have reacted or essentially not reacted in the on-site violent way that I think we're talking about here, I tend to doubt that that ruling in the immunity case that goes against him would actually really be a trigger. He would fundraise off of it, he would scream on Truth Social and other friendly right-wing outlets and all the rest of that, but I don't believe that alone would necessarily do it. What I do believe could actually be the spark that essentially sets off the powder keg would be if the Supreme Court were to rule in favor of the state of Colorado, which of course its Supreme Court ruled late last year that Mr. Trump was not eligible to be on the ballot because he did in fact engage in insurrection. If the Supreme Court were to affirm that and that then opened the way for other states to just systematically disqualify Trump from the ballot—the state of Illinois is wrestling with this right now—that would make it more than likely at a certain point, literally mathematically impossible for Trump to actually get enough electoral votes to be elected president. And I worry, even though I believe he should be disqualified on the basis of his actions, that kind of Supreme Court decision, if it were to come down against him in that way, that might well lead him first and foremost to say, “we have to burn it all down, the system is completely rigged. It’s completely corrupt. We're gonna have to just take matters into our own hands.” Would he do it? Would he be willing to go that far? I honestly don't know.

If he were to do that, if he were to call for essentially an effort to burn it all down, that would be a fresh call to insurrection. It would be an unambiguous call to revolt. And he would be subject to arrest. So that is the scenario, I think, that worries me more than anything else. The more likely series of occurrences, or at least what I hope will be more likely, if it's going to happen, are the kinds of localized, relatively internecine type engagements that might spring up between pro-Trump and anti-Trump elements, right? I think that's probably the most serious concern that I have.

But then a secondary concern that I have, and I don't think this one should be dismissed either. And this circles us back to this whole immigration related debate and the use of the Texas National Guard and now other Republican governors pledging to send at least some law enforcement and or National Guard elements from their states to the state of Texas. Outside of an actual declaration of emergency or other appropriate legal instrument, the deployment of those particular Guard elements to try to interfere with a federal immigration-related and border security-related mission, in my mind, would clearly represent a violation of Article 92 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, which is codified at 10 U.S. Code, Section 892, if I recall correctly, actually in the Federal Code. So they would be obeying an unlawful order. And I'm sure that most of the troops that are in these units have no clue. I mean, they're just relying on their chain of command to tell them what needs to be done and when to do it. But that's what we're talking about here. And so when I see Trump successfully persuading governors outside of the state of Texas to deploy even a small number of additional personnel, it demonstrates Donald Trump exercising a measure of command and control over those troops while being a civilian, while not being there. So that's another scenario that I worry about in terms of how to potentially escalate.

Aaron Ross Powell: A background concern in both of those scenarios is the men and women in uniform. And by that, I mean both the people in the military and police officers. Because one of the things that we witnessed throughout the Trump years, although people who were more on the ground knew about this long beforehand, they had friends who were involved in Antifa protests who were just ... in sense that people had not noticed all of this earlier is how fundamentally kind of right-wing and reactionary a lot of those American law enforcement often is, not the officers in the military, but the enlisted tend to come from Trump country, that there's a real appeal to, you know, if you're a cop, you like the tough guy and an arguably fascistic angle of Trumpism because it's something that empowers people like you and is based in the kind of attitudes that you certainly—not all cops, but many—hold.

And so on the one hand, when you're outlining these kinds of scenarios, the response could be, okay, sure, so some of these people get upset because Trump, say, is kicked off the ballot or mathematically can't win or is convicted of a crime and they decide they're going to go and try to burn down the state Capitol in Illinois and maybe they do a little bit of damage but they're arrested really quickly, prosecuted, you know, in the same way that the Jan. 6 insurrection was handled, those people were prosecuted. Or the governors of these states, the governor of Texas, might saber-rattle some but they're not actually going to try to stand up to the U.S. military if it's brought in to put down their kind of petty insurrection. But that all assumes a sufficient will among law enforcement and military to, I guess, take the “Unionist” side in this. Is that something that worries you? Is that something that ought to be worrying to us when we think about possible responses to violence, even isolated instances of violence?

The Institute for Defense Analyses, which is one of these federally funded research and development centers of the federal government, issued a report that was commissioned at the behest of the Pentagon leadership looking at this issue of right-wing, but especially white supremacist type extremism, within the ranks. And what I found chilling in reading that report was an unattributed, anonymized comment of a senior defense department official, basically expressing real concerns about the potential loyalty of individuals in Guard and Reserve units.

Patrick Eddington: I think it's very telling that not quite a decade ago, in what we have in terms of a leaked version of the FBI's Counterterrorism Policy Guide and Policy Directive, that they explicitly remind agents in this document that when they're working essentially, you know, right-wing sovereign citizen, militia type cases, that they should be cognizant of the fact that there are state and local law enforcement personnel who are actually members of those organizations. And so if you're going to be sharing information on an investigation into one of those particular entities within a given state, that you have to take some additional measures to make sure that individuals who may be in law enforcement and also in those right-wing elements are not cognizant or not made cognizant of the investigation. So the FBI has been concerned about that problem for a very long period of time.

Now, as I noted in one of the previous pieces I published on the Sentinel earlier this month, in December, the Institute for Defense Analyses, which is one of these federally funded research and development centers of the federal government, they issued a report that was commissioned at the behest of the Pentagon leadership looking at this issue essentially of right-wing, but especially white supremacist type extremism within the ranks. And what I found chilling in reading that report was an unattributed, anonymized comment of a senior defense department official, basically expressing real concerns about the potential loyalty of individuals in Guard and Reserve units. I tend to think probably more Guard than Reserve because Army, Air Force, Navy, and Marine Corps Reserve tend to be tied into the whole Pentagon structure, the whole overarching DoD structure a little bit more tightly on a day-to-day basis at least than Guard units are. But I found that chilling. And it certainly is a very real cause of my concern because at least in Texas so far, the Texas National Guard has been more than willing to carry out Greg Abbott's orders up to this particular point in time.

Now, if push really came to shove and you actually had, let's say, some regular Army units for Fort Hood show up under a presidential order and you had an actual federalization order issued, not just for the Texas Guard, but for any other state guard elements that have been deployed to Texas on this. I think that's when we find out whether or not the folks on the right side of the aisle there, on the Trump side, are playing chicken, or whether they're actually really willing to potentially truly go toe to toe, maybe even in an armed way against the federal government. I would like to think that Greg Abbott is not that stupid, but we live, in my view at least, in extremely unsettling times and, in many respects, unpredictable times. So when emotions are running high like that sometimes things can happen that you just normally wouldn't expect to see happen. So I'm not sure.

But back to your larger question: There is no doubt that we have a major problem in law enforcement in this country with respect to a level of penetration by these white supremacist groups. I mean, the Oath Keepers, of course, were the ultimate manifestation of this. Stuart Rhodes, the founder of the organization, who now is doing a multi-year sentence for seditious conspiracy for his role in the Jan. 6 attempted coup, made it very clear publicly and to the Jan. 6 committee for that matter that every member, you know, his organization was either current or former law enforcement or current or former military.

And I know on the basis of my own work at Cato looking at what the FBI gathered on the Oath Keepers prior, well prior to Jan. 6 is that they had a very aggressive and relatively, for a small organization, well-funded advertising campaign and recruitment campaign to try to get folks into their ranks. So organizations like that are still out there. The Three Percenters, of course, still exist. Patriot Front, basically an armed, organized white supremacist element, very active here in Virginia and elsewhere. They're live, they're in the game, there's no doubt about that. And it wouldn't surprise me if other elements like that wind up springing up as we get deeper into the year here. So yeah, my concerns there are deep and they are profound.

A decade ago, in what we have in terms of a leaked version of the FBI's Counterterrorism Policy Guide and Policy Directive, that they explicitly remind agents in this document that when they're working right-wing sovereign citizen, militia type cases, that they should be cognizant of the fact that there are state and local law enforcement personnel who are actually members of those organizations.

Aaron Ross Powell: Is part of the worry a cascade? Because even discussing all of that, it is the case that the vast majority of Americans are not among those groups. You know, we've seen the polling of “How does Trump poll now versus if he's convicted of any of these enormous number of felonies that he's been charged with. Will you support him?” and his support just absolutely plummets because most Americans, even the ones who like him, see a level of legitimacy in the decisions of courts and aren't going to vote for a convicted felon. He did not win the popular vote. As you said, in many of these states, there aren't really red states and blue states, there are just kind of red and blue districts or communities and the major cities in very red states tend to be quite blue. The economic engines of a lot of these states too are quite blue, are quite plugged in, and don't want this sort of violence. So all of those seem like pretty strong forces against this.

And there is an element to a lot of the Trump right that is performative. You know, they're gonna freak out about Bud Light. They're going to shoot up their coolers. They're going to make promises that they backtrack on very quickly. Trump himself seems to quintessentially be a coward. Lots and lots of talk, but he tended to back down fairly quickly. But that doesn't mean that there's gonna be nothing, right? That doesn't push back against any of it. And so is there a worry that social systems are … have some instability in them, they're unpredictable, and all it takes is say one Texas National Guard troop getting overly excited and discharging his firearm when those Fort Hood guys show up or something like that and it can cascade? Or do you think that the pressures against that I just mentioned kick in at some point? So we're not likely to get to full on Civil War 2.0.

There is no doubt that we have a major problem in law enforcement in this country with respect to a level of penetration by these white supremacist groups. The Oath Keepers, of course, were the ultimate manifestation of this. Stuart Rhodes, the founder of the organization, who now is doing a multi-year sentence for seditious conspiracy for his role in the Jan. 6 attempted coup, made it very clear publicly and to the Jan. 6 committee for that matter that every member in his organization was either current or former law enforcement or current or former military.

Patrick Eddington: Yeah, I think the risk of miscalculation is extremely high. My Cato colleague Alex Nowrasteh believes that the best thing that Biden could do is essentially not federalize the Texas National Guard in this circumstance, that that would likely play into, at least according to what I've read of what he's had to say so far, would potentially be needlessly escalatory. And of course, I have a diametrically opposite view. And that comes from my time serving in the military and understanding that any time there is a major threat to good order and discipline, that's when really terrible things can happen. And that's what I worry about with respect to Texas right now, because Greg Abbott has got his troops in the field, literally. They are armed … these guys are armed. I've seen the video. I've seen the stills. They are absolutely armed. No question about it. And I'm making the assumption that live ammunition has been issued to these troops. I think it would be a bad call not to assume that. It would be unwise not to assume that.

So should we be concerned about a circumstance where Biden finally makes a decision, “Yes, I'm going to go ahead and federalize the Texas Guard” … or, “I'm actually going to send active duty troops,” or whatever … and that Abbott, feeling like Trump has got his back, will go ahead and order them to block any regular army units from, or refuse an order to federalize? Abbott could just simply say, “No, you don't get to have them.” He would be in violation of federal law then too. So I think it's a question of, at least within that immediate regional conflict, how far does Abbott think he can go and how much cover is he going to get for Trump? And how much further are his Republican governors going to be willing to back him the deeper this crisis goes? 

I do think that the scenario that you have described, unfortunately, is a real possibility. Somebody basically making a mistake, reacting out of an excess of emotion and on impulse. And it leads to things literally, as you indicated, kind of cascading out of control. Is it possible that it all starts in Texas? This is where it really all kind of begins? Unfortunately, I do think it's a real life possibility.

And you see what Trump is doing here. He's doing everything he can ultimately to stoke it because Senator James Lankford of Oklahoma, he had been working very closely with a number of other members on a bipartisan basis to come up with a pretty harsh but bipartisan immigration-related deal that would largely give, you know, the Republican conference, at least in the Senate, what it was looking for. And Trump, of course, immediately came out and put the kibosh on that. And so literally just using it to fundraise off of, right, and using it as a wedge issue. So no real effort there to solve it. Of course, Lankford publicly was just almost apoplectic. But Lankford has also now learned just exactly how much of a hold Donald Trump has on the Republican Party and particularly members of Congress.

And that's what I worry about with respect to Texas right now, because Greg Abbott has got his troops in the field, literally. They are armed. These guys are armed. I've seen the video. I've seen the stills. They are absolutely armed. No question about it. … So I think it's a question of, at least within that immediate regional conflict, how far does Abbott think he can go [to confront the Biden administration] and how much cover is he going to get from Trump? And how much further are his Republican governors going to be willing to back him the deeper this crisis goes? 

Aaron Ross Powell: What's one of the things interesting about a lot of this is how fundamentally cynical it is that very few people involved in this at the higher levels, particularly in in like the GOP political classes, is a true believer in the sense that say, the Proud Boys were or some of the white nationalists are, but is instead just … for Trump, he has no awareness of any interests other than his own and he is worried about going to prison for the federal crimes that he's quite clearly committed. He sees regaining power as a way to prevent that from happening. He also likes status and prestige and money and feeling like people are paying attention to him and that he's a real powerful dude. And so acting in these belligerent ways makes him feel more powerful. Having governors jump when he tells them to makes him feel powerful, but there's no, there's no, like, ideological stridency there.

And, and so I wonder how much this means that if things get really bad, he backs down because if everything is Trump's self-interest, he's not willing to go to prison or die for a cause the way that many others might be. So either he backs down, or because Trumpism has always been this kind of fraud of basically a movement of people who have been conned by this guy into believing that he is an ideologically consistent representative of their interests versus simply a grifter who is quite obviously using them to to advance his own interests, that when he, if and when he, say, loses in November or otherwise is removed from … there's no longer kind of holding out hope that he will himself regain all of the levers of power and be able to then direct the federal government's power for our interests, to punish our enemies and reward our friends, that that will just dramatically take the wind out of a lot of these sails. Because there's always been far-right movements in the U.S., but they have not really had someone to kind of organize around. And so they've been these kind of disparate, often just like sad little groups that occasionally do some violence, but more often just mess up or dissipate due to infighting and so on.

So does effectively Trump's lack of ideological consistency and principle, even if in a corrupt way, offer us hope that that kind of this will evaporate when he is no longer like a real threat to retake power?

So there were certain limits, you know, that [George] Wallace even was not necessarily willing to cross in that respect. He did not call into question the legitimacy of the results of the 1968 presidential election.

Now, his followers, though, they've stuck around and successive generations of these kinds of people have continued to come down the pike.

Patrick Eddington: It's an interesting question. The closest historical analog that I can draw upon, certainly in the American context, would be the late Governor George Wallace of Alabama. This is the last guy who is actually able to command double-digit wins in the Electoral Colleges, of course, as in the 1968 presidential election. Wallace, a rabid racist, the champion of segregation, unquestioned champion of it—and yet when he lost, Wallace played by the rules of the game and went back and ran successfully for governor of Alabama again. So there were certain limits, you know, that Wallace even, you know, was not necessarily willing to cross in that respect. He did not call into question the legitimacy of the results of the 1968 presidential election.

Now, his followers, though, they've stuck around and successive generations of these kinds of people have continued to come down the pike. So for me, you know, when I look at this underlying issue of … just a deep-seated racism that we see within a certain slice of the American public is going to be very difficult to extirpate. The issue of Trump himself and essentially these dreams, these fears, these hopes that his followers have kind of grafted onto him mentally, right? Would an actual demise on his part, and I don't mean physical demise, but an actual political demise on his part, have the effect of breaking the spell? Would the fever break, so to speak? It might.

I'm trying not to project here, I'm trying to deal with this on the basis of actual objective data, not my hopes, not my desires, but actual objective data. And if the polling right now is to be trusted in terms of how people respond to these things, to these kinds of questions, it does seem pretty certain that if Trump were convicted for crimes related to the attempted coup of Jan. 6, 2021, it does seem fairly certain he would in fact lose the election. He might not lose it by a lot, which I find deeply disturbing, but I think he would lose it.

For me, Aaron, the larger and longer term question is, even if he does lose, the damage that he has done and the precedents that he has now set, are the kinds of things that could be exploited by the next would-be demagogue that comes down the pike. And that's why I think if we're able to take Trump out of the picture politically after 2024, the number one task before us is doing whatever is necessary to make our institutions as coup-proof and as demagogue-proof as we possibly can. I've written about this. I know Andy Craig has written about it. A number of folks are writing about this. But that for me, at least, if we can get past Trump, if we can literally put him in the rear-view mirror, that's the task before us. But I still have this tremendous sense of foreboding about the country in terms of what I've learned about so many millions of my fellow citizens as a result of this experience over the last decade. It has made me question some things fundamentally that I never thought I would have to about the long-term resilience of our institutions and of the republic itself. And it's just very sobering. It's very sobering to have to contemplate this stuff.

The larger and longer term question is, even if [Trump] does lose, the damage that he has done and the precedents that he has now set, are the kinds of things that could be exploited by the next would-be demagogue that comes down the pike. And that's why I think if we're able to take Trump out of the picture politically after 2024, the number one task before us is doing whatever is necessary to make our institutions as coup-proof and as demagogue-proof as we possibly can.

Aaron Ross Powell: Yeah, I think that's the big thing that we, more of us have to grapple with is how much more widespread than we thought a genuine dislike for freedom and democracy is among Americans. And not just the kind of people who show up for Trump rallies, but also, I mean, the Heritage Foundation, which is the, you know, next to AEI, the big conservative think tank for decades that set policy for the American conservative movement has their new Project 2025, which is an incredibly systematic, thought out, serious plan to install an autocrat the next time there's a Republican holding the White House. It is a plan for overthrowing American democracy. And that's terrifying that like the commanding heights of the conservative movement are—not all of them; there are your Never Trumpers—but so much of it is all-in on not just Trump himself, but the basic project of destroying American liberty.

Patrick Eddington: And enjoying tax exempt status while they plan it.

Aaron Ross Powell: So if Trump loses in November, yes, we should be working to protect our institutions from future attempts. But between now and November, what can we be doing? And I mean, we as you and I, as effectively public intellectuals, but also people listening to this who are just, they're voters, they're concerned citizens, they're politically engaged and so on, and worried about not just the immediate threats, but the long-term threats that the very fact that we got here represent.

Patrick Eddington: So you and I probably are in slightly different places in terms of the value of the individual vote. But I will just say as someone who's been politically active most of my life, for anyone listening to this program, if you value what we have and what we want to preserve, it is absolutely imperative that you get out and do everything possible on your own behalf to make sure that Donald Trump never reaches the White House. I think that's item one. We have to keep banging away on that.

And then the second thing is, and Aaron, you're doing a lot of this, the folks at The UnPopulist are doing a lot of this, the folks at The Bulwark and elsewhere are doing a lot of this kind of thing, and it's incredibly valuable, and that is exposing these illiberal elements that are seeking to undo everything that we have all come to value. Exposing that stuff, bringing it out into the daylight, is a critical way of holding these folks accountable. You know, one of the interesting things is when the Fox News Corporation went completely in the tank for Trump, in the end, it wound up costing them $787 million in a defamation judgment, a libel judgment brought by Dominion Voting Systems.

It is possible to hold these entities accountable. And the interesting thing about all of this is that there's still another case that's ongoing. The other voting company, Smartmatic, still has their action against Fox underway right now. So that story is not even over yet. But the one interesting thing about what's happened to Fox here—and for those of you who maybe are not aware of, or maybe have never listened to, the Focus Group podcast with Sarah Longwell (I'll just put in a plug on this program for her and what she's doing over there), one of the most important episodes that she's had was just recently with former CNN media analyst Brian Stelter, where they talked about the fact that Fox getting this defamation loss in court has forced News Corp to basically go in a different direction. So in the end, you know, Tucker Carlson gets the axe, their biggest star, and the biggest purveyor of the lies, essentially. He winds up getting the axe. And that's caused an awful lot of traditional Fox viewers to stop watching the network. 

So where are they going? Well, they're going to things like The Blaze. You know, they're going to all this other, you know, Truth Social, all this other kind of fragmented stuff. And they followed Tucker, he's doing his little thing on Twitter or wherever it is now, it's atomizing, I think is the best way that I can put it. And that atomization, I think, is possibly part of the key to victory. Because if they fragment along these lines where they begin to kind of pick out their own little right-wing grifting falsehood peddlers that they want to go ahead and follow because it simply reinforces their priors, that's going to dilute their overall strength. And to kind of put it in raw military terms, it's a lot easier to defeat an enemy in detail than it is to necessarily take them on en masse. So that's, that to me is like part of the good news, part of the silver lining, because when I see this atomization taking place whether it's, you know, outlets that have been around longer, like Epoch Times or some of the newer stuff, like we've just talked about, the fact that it's being atomized, that it's not nearly as national in scope, I think that's a cause for hope. And the longer the rest of us can stay out here telling the truth, dealing with objective reality, dealing with provable facts, and continuing to educate everyone else around us who is actually willing and able to listen and to embrace it, that gives us a pathway. A difficult, long pathway, but a pathway ultimately, I think, out of this morass. It's going to take a while, but I do believe that there is hope.

Aaron Ross Powell: Thank you for listening to ReImagining Liberty. If you like the show and want to support it, head to reimaginingliberty.com to learn more. You'll get early access to all my essays as well as be able to join the ReImagining Liberty Discord community and book club. That's reimaginingliberty.com or look for the link in the show notes. Talk to you soon.

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