Glasser: Okay, first of all, take a deep breath…and let’s just say, here we are asking the same questions again: Are we going to take Donald Trump literally and seriously this time? What more does it take for his detractors to understand that even if he doesn’t mean 100% of everything he says, he means most of it? And if there’s one thing we know about Trump’s next term, it’s that he campaigned on an agenda of vengeance and retribution that is consistent with many of the themes he has emphasized during his first term, even if he wasn’t. always able to fully follow them. So it seems to me that one of Donald Trump’s strong guidelines has always been the desire to use the tools and institutions of the federal government as essentially personal weapons and to ensure that they are used as instruments to punish his enemies, to punish people he sees as disloyal, and to carry out his personal whims.

For example, Greg, people haven’t paid enough attention to the fact that even one of Trump’s transition co-chairs, Howard Lutnick, the Wall Street billionaire charged with selecting staff for the new administration, explicitly said repeatedly that appointees in the new Trump administration will be evaluated not only for their loyalty to Donald Trump’s policies, but also for their loyalty to the man himself. This has always been the caseWhat sets Trump apart, I think, from other presidents: the idea that he essentially represents the whole of government, that people should answer to him personally and be there at his pleasure rather than serving, as their oath says, the Constitution and people of the United States. And if you don’t want to take this seriously, you will misinterpret the intentions of this new administration.

Sergeant: You raised a really critical point here, which is that Trump openly and explicitly campaigned on a promise to violate his oath of office. This is something he sold to his subscribers as a plus. Coming back to your other point, Trump tried to use the Justice Department to investigate his enemies during his first term, and it largely failed. But in your article, you alarmingly report that Trump has actually learned to navigate his way away from bureaucracy.And that this time he will be surrounded by loyalists – like this guy – who will not have the qualms about abusing power like some of those who surrounded Trump did the first time. Can you talk about this? What will this look like in the real world, in the context of the Justice Department and other agencies targeting its enemies in various ways? What can we expect?