The Lawfare Podcast: Patreon Edition

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From the birth of the republic, American presidents have communicated with the public in one form or another. The frequency and exact nature of such efforts have varied quite a bit over time due to variables ranging from the extent of partisanship in the media to each commander in chief's personal preference to travel technology. Political scientist Anne Pluta has explored this history deeply, including extensive analysis of contemporary newspaper accounts back to the late 18th century. And her insights, contained in writings like the book “Persuading the Public: The Evolution of Popular Presidential Communication from Washington to Trump,” provide plenty of surprises and even challenge some conventional wisdom about the presidency.

David Priess chatted with her about her favorite presidents and her assessment of the best communicators among them; the precedents set by George Washington; Thomas Jefferson's State of the Union delivery method; changes in the communication environment during the Andrew Jackson era; Abraham Lincoln's exceptional presidency; the importance of train travel for presidential contact with the public; Rutherford Hayes's underappreciated importance in presidential communication; Theodore Roosevelt as a speaker; Woodrow Wilson's decision to deliver the State of the Union address in person; the importance for presidential communication of radio, television, and the availability of Air Force One; the relatively brief period of national, "objective" media; the late 20th century shift to splintered media; Donald Trump's social media use; Joe Biden's communication practices; and more.

Among the works mentioned in this episode:

• The play Hamilton
• The TV show John Adams
• The movie Lincoln
• The book Persuading the Public by Anne Pluta
• The TV show The West Wing
• The TV show Veep
• The movie The American President
• The movie Air Force One
• The movie Independence Day
• The TV show Scandal
• The book The Devil's Teeth
• The book Twelve Days of Terror
• The book The Wave

Chatter is a production of Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. This episode was produced and edited by Cara Shillenn of Goat Rodeo. Podcast theme by David Priess, featuring music created using Groovepad.

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From April 16, 2019: Since November, Lawfare Contributor Michelle Melton has run a series on our website about Climate Change and National Security, examining the implication of the threat as well as U.S. and international responses to climate change. Melton is a student a Harvard Law school. Prior to that she was an associate fellow in the Energy and National Security Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, where she focused on climate policy.

She and Benjamin Wittes sat down last week to discuss the series. They talked about why we should think about climate change as a national security threat, the challenges of viewing climate change through this paradigm, the long-standing relationship between climate change and the U.S. national security apparatus, and how climate change may affect global migration.

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Thursday was sentencing day for some senior Oath Keepers, and Lawfare Senior Editor Roger Parloff spent the day in court listening to and watching the sentencing of Elmer Stewart Rhodes III and Kelly Meggs, two Oath Keepers chieftains who were convicted of seditious conspiracy in connection with the Jan. 6 insurrection. They got a lot of time: Rhodes got 18 years; Meggs got 12. They also got a terrorism enhancement. It was a bad day if you're an Oath Keeper and a really bad day if you're a Proud Boy. 

After the sentencing, Lawfare Editor-in-Chief Benjamin Wittes sat down with Roger to talk through it all. What does it mean for future Oath Keeper sentencing? What does it mean for Proud Boy sentencing? When are we finally going to see the white collar defendants as well as the blue collar defendants in Jan. 6 cases? And can we finally begin to predict what Jack Smith may be up to regarding Jan. 6?

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At 9:02 a.m. on April 19, 1995, a bomb built by Timothy McVeigh exploded in front of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in downtown Oklahoma City. One hundred sixty-eight people died and hundreds more were injured in what remains the deadliest act of domestic terrorism in U.S. history.

Jeffrey Toobin has a new book about the bombing and trial called, “Homegrown: Timothy McVeigh and the Rise of Right-Wing Extremism.” Toobin joined Jack Goldsmith to discuss the new and revealing information his book draws on concerning McVeigh’s motivations and trial strategy, Attorney General Merrick Garland's consequential role in the McVeigh trial, and the long-tail impact of the trial on right-wing domestic terrorism in the United States, including the Jan. 6 attacks on Congress.

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The Supreme Court last week issued the biggest opinion in the history of the internet—except that it didn’t. Rather, it issued an opinion in a case involving the Anti-Terrorism Act (ATA) and the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act (JASTA), finding there was no cause of action and thus dismissed for further consideration the biggest case in the history of the internet.

Lawfare Editor-in-Chief Benjamin Wittes sat down with Lawfare Senior Editors Scott R. Anderson,  Alan Rozenshtein, and Quinta Jurecic to talk about Section 230, Taamneh v. Twitter, and Gonzalez v. Google.

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Hacking and cybersecurity are evergreen issues, in the news and on Lawfare. Scott Shapiro, the Charles F. Southmayd Professor of Law and Professor of Philosophy at Yale Law School, has a new book on how and why hacking works and what to do about it, called “Fancy Bear Goes Phishing: The Dark History of the Information Age, in Five Extraordinary Hacks.”

Scott joined Jack Goldsmith to talk about how his pre-law-professor obsession with computers combined with his recent work in international law led him to write the book. They also discussed the lessons that the five hacks discussed in the book teach, including the limits of technology and solving cybersecurity problems, the importance of the human dimension to cybersecurity, and why we shouldn't be panicked about the state of cyber insecurity.

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In November 1919, President Woodrow Wilson came out in opposition to a compromise that would have resulted in Senate ratification of the Versailles Treaty and thereby put the nail in the coffin of an international agreement that he had spent months negotiating and would have secured U.S. participation in one of his greatest legacies, the League of Nations.

Wilson's self-defeating decision shocked many who had been involved in the treaty negotiation, including a young diplomat and journalist named William Bullitt. Deciphering what about Wilson's psychology led to such a monumental decision became an obsession for Bullitt, one he pursued with an unlikely partner, Sigmund Freud, the father of modern psychoanalysis. Yet the original text they authored on the subject remained unpublished for decades, as Bullitt pursued a career in diplomacy and politics, until it was finally unearthed in 2014 by scholar Patrick Weil. Weil's new book, “The Madman in the White House,” tells the unlikely story of the Bullitt-Freud analysis of President Wilson and the lies it intersected with.

Weil joined Lawfare Senior Editor Scott R. Anderson to discuss Bullitt’s exceptional life and career, what he and Freud truly thought of one of our most complex and controversial former presidents, and what it tells us about how we should think about the role psychology plays in the modern presidency. 

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This week on Rational Security, Alan and Scott were joined by co-host emeritus (and Washington Post star reporter) Shane Harris to talk over the week's news! Including:

• “Flight of the Valkyries.” Recently leaked U.S. intelligence reports allege that Wagner Group owner Yevgeniy Prighozin—who has privately and publicly feuded with the Russian military leadership in recent weeks and even threatened to pull his mercenary troops from the conflict—has been in contact with Ukrainian intelligence and offered to share Russian troop positions in exchange for concessions around the disputed city of Bakhmut. Is Prighozin trying to find a path to retreat? What do his actions tell us about the conflict?
• “Jerkiye Boy.” Twitter owner Elon Musk has come under criticism for the company’s latest bad call: censoring certain content at the request of the Erdogan government in Türkiye, just prior to national elections there. How should Twitter have responded to the demands of Turkish officials? And how has Musk’s erratic leadership affected the company’s approach to such issues?
• “BootLichter.” CNN and its CEO Chris Licht are experiencing blowback from the decision to host a town hall with former President Donald Trump before an audience of his supporters, at which he repeated an array of lies about the 2020 election results, the recent judgment finding him liable for sexual battery, and his potential legal exposure for retaining classified documents, among other items. Was CNN in the wrong? How should it handle Trump (and other candidates)?

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