Hello, everyone.
Welcome to the 10th in a series of programs
brought to you by the members of Indivisible South Bay.
I'm Lisa Farino.
Based in Silicon Valley, Indivisible South Bay
is comprised of average citizens like the three of us here
who are very concerned about the Trump agenda
and what it's doing to our democracy.
We're at a particular crisis moment where that's concerned,
so that will be the main topic of our discussion tonight.
As usual, if this show makes you wanna get out of your chair
to take action, then we will have accomplished something.
However, we are also concerned about the psychological toll
that Trump's agenda and his actions are taking
on all of us as activists, and we want to discuss that.
And not just as activists, just average citizens.
So we'll discuss that at the end of the show.
So I'll introduce our panelists.
Etan Fenson will be familiar to anyone
who's been watching this program.
He's a tech entrepreneur and executive,
co-director of Indivisible South Bay,
and a leader in different activists and electoral groups
in Silicon Valley for decades,
including Silicon Valley for Obama
and the Democratic Volunteer Center.
We're very pleased to welcome Eric Tuttle
to our show for the first time.
He's a veteran of the Army Infantry
in the 101st Airborne Division, an ICU nurse,
and a member of Indivisible South Bay.
Welcome to both of you.
Thank you.
So let's dive into this topic at hand,
which is how Donald Trump is basically dismantling
our democratic system.
Eric, what would you say is the most concerning for you
at this moment about what Trump is doing?
I would say my biggest concern are the attacks
of the independence of the Department of Justice.
In our system of government,
we've always had a wall between the politics
and the law enforcement,
and what we're seeing is Trump is just tearing down
that wall.
He just said this past week on the White House lawn,
I know I'm not supposed to get involved
with the Department of Justice,
but they need to be looking at Hillary Clinton
and the Democrats, and that's deeply concerning.
Donald Trump is also the first candidate,
at least of my lifetime,
and I believe in our history as a nation
who has suggested that his opponent
be investigated and jailed.
That is not normal behavior for our government.
That's not how we do things.
I also see the attacks on his own Attorney General,
Jeff Sessions, which are related to his recusal
from the Russia investigation.
He's been undermining and humiliating
his own Attorney General.
And lastly, I would say that the attacks on Robert Mahler.
Robert Mahler is an American hero.
He is a Vietnam veteran.
He is the winner of a bronze star
with a valor device and also a purple heart.
He was also appointed to take over the FBI after 9-11
to turn it into a counterintelligence institution.
So Robert Mahler is, he is well respected.
He has served under both Republican
and Democratic administrations,
and he's someone who, you know, he's above reproach.
I think that you've said a lot,
and it's true that it's shocking.
Every time I hear Trump talking about Mahler,
and he's actually trying to foment
some kind of attack on Mahler by saying,
people are saying, people are very, very angry
at the Mahler investigation.
And it's just, it's incredible that we're hearing this.
And it's not just Mahler.
If you think about the situation with firing James Comey,
where initially the story to the country was,
well, you know, I took the advice of Rod Rosenstein
and Jeff Sessions.
They're the ones who told me we needed to fire Comey.
And then a couple of days later,
he has the interview with Lester Holt from NBC.
He says, you know, I got a little tired of this,
investigates this Russian investigation stuff,
and I figured it's time to fire.
I made the decision to fire Comey.
It just seems to me that that's so egregious,
it's out there, but that's Trump's mode of operation.
Let me put it out there and dare anybody
to do anything about it.
It's shocking.
Eric, have we had other FBI directors under attack
in this way?
In our nation's history, we've only had one other FBI director
that was fired, and that was for cause,
and his name actually happened to be Sessions as well,
William Sessions.
He was fired in 1993 by President Clinton,
but it was for cause.
It was for egregious uses of taxpayer funds and fraud,
and so he was relieved of his duties for that reason.
But that's what makes the Comey firing so unprecedented,
is that it was not for cause.
Wow, that's really shocking.
Etan, do you have any other component
of this dismantling of our democracy
that you want to talk about?
Let me count the ways.
For one thing, the judiciary has a tax on the judiciary,
and his attempts to invalidate and really throw doubt
over the legitimacy of the judiciary.
The example I can think of was, even during the campaign,
when there was this Indiana judge of Mexican descent
who issued a ruling that was not in his favor,
and he immediately implied that somehow, because this judge was
of Mexican descent, he was not capable of being
impartial in judging Donald Trump.
I don't know if you can get more blatant
in discrediting the judiciary of this country,
and it's just totally unacceptable.
Eric, I think there's some other examples as well.
There are.
There's some disturbing examples of him
referring to the judiciary as a laughing stock and a joke
in tweets, and also when the Muslim ban ruling came down,
Donald Trump tweeted out, if there was a terrorist attack
on American soil, there would be blood on the hands
of the judge who issued the stay.
And that, as I said, let me count the ways.
There is also his repeated and unceasing attack
on the free press.
Even the words that he uses are echoes
of very troubling history.
So for example, he came out with the phrase,
the press is the enemy of the people.
That's verbatim from the rise of fascism in the 20th century.
And if that didn't scare the bejesus out
of most people in this country, it's very discouraging.
The attacks on CNN, for example, these are not just attacks.
These are inciting to violence.
The tweet that he had of the locomotive running over CNN
is, it's mind-blowing to me that something like that can,
in fact, be accepted as normal by the American people.
Wasn't there something where he was punching out
someone with the CNN?
The WWE excerpt where he's actually getting into the ring
and he's choking and punching out CNN.
This is an explicit attack on the free press.
And frankly, the only entity within the free press
that has been pretty unrelenting is CNN in response,
because I guess they figured they have nothing to lose.
But this moniker of fake news and his continued campaign
to discredit the free press is a direct attack,
while I will say an indirect attack on the Constitution.
I am also very concerned about the direct attacks
on the Constitution, on constitutional rights.
So for example, the president of the United States,
part of his oath of office, is to protect and defend
the Constitution of the United States.
And that includes protecting and defending
the rights of Americans, the rights of human beings.
It's not just Americans.
And if you look at his history, starting with Charlottesville,
with the way he reacted after the murder
of the protester, and in fact, the violence
that they erupted in Charlottesville, what he did was,
he equated, he said, oh, it's on the same side.
He equated the torch-bearing white supremacists,
whose sole objective was to proclaim other people like us,
they don't count, they don't matter, they don't have rights.
When you start belittling the rights of people
or not the white supremacists, it
is a direct attack on the Constitution.
Then going to pardoning the sheriff, Arpaio,
here is a guy who has been convicted of violating court
orders to enforce civil rights.
He is actually violating the civil rights of individuals,
turned out that they were Latino and other minorities.
And what Trump did was, he said, it's OK.
It's not just a wink and a nod.
This is, it's OK.
You don't have to know me.
It is not only sanctioning, it's encouraging and embracing it.
To my mind, that is, it's absolutely horrendous.
Finally, his speech in July to law enforcement,
to the sheriffs on Long Island, where he's, of course,
he's trying to, I'm your friend, I'm a good guy,
you wink, wink, this time there was the wink,
where he says, you know what, when you've got a suspect
and you're going to put him in your car,
you don't need to be too nice to him.
You can manhandle him a little bit.
Yeah, I think about that.
And this is straight out of some cop show,
where you're actually looking at rogue cops,
but no, this is the president of the United States.
It's just, it's mind blowing.
But he's doing this kind of thing all the time,
and it's actually taking a page out of a dictator's playbook.
Absolutely.
I think he encouraged the police to do his bidding.
Absolutely.
Even if it circumvents the rule of law.
Absolutely.
You know, this is what I find really terrifying
about our current moment.
One of the things, and maybe Eric,
you can speak to something that just came up in the news
last week, I believe, about the global spy network.
Maybe you can unpack that for us.
Yes, it's very concerning.
So what we've heard is that Donald Trump would
like to develop his own global spy network, excuse me,
with Eric Prince, who is the founder of Blackwater.
This is very disturbing, because essentially what he's saying
is that he does not entrust our own American intelligence
community.
So that's a huge issue right there.
Secondly, the major issue with this
is that Donald Trump would be asking these agents
to be loyal to him as a person.
In the military, in the intelligence community,
these Americans swear an oath to the country
and to the Constitution.
This would be completely anathema
to what our mentality is as Americans,
and this would be very dangerous.
The other concerning thing is that this
sounds like an extension of military contractors
like we saw in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The problem with that is the average person probably
isn't aware that when the US military deploys into a theater,
we are bound by the Uniform Code of Military Justice, which
is a set of rules.
There are essentially laws which guide your behavior
of how you're supposed to behave as a soldier
in a theater of war.
Well, what we found with these contractors, especially
like Blackwater, is that they were bound by no laws whatsoever.
They're not in the military, so the Uniform Code of Military
Justice does not apply.
They're not on American soil, so American laws don't apply.
And the countries that we're invading
have no government or judicial system
to charge somebody with a crime.
And effectively, they're completely unregulated.
Yeah, and in fact, talking about Eric Prince,
you forgot to mention Oliver North, who
is yet another shining example of somebody who
thumbs his nose at the Constitution.
And he's involved with this, so.
And he's involved with this as well.
And there really is, speaking of echoes of the past,
there is an echo to my mind of Adolf Hitler in his essay,
his brown shirts that he had doing his violent dirty work
for him, independent of any law enforcement,
even before he rose to power.
But once he did rise to power, his essay
was independent of the military and the police.
It was a separate entity, loyal to Adolf Hitler
and the government.
So aren't we talking about something beyond,
everyone says Donald Trump is showing us
that he's unfit for office.
He's unfit for office.
But isn't there a dimension beyond that we're talking about
here?
Oh, no question.
I mean, Eric, maybe you can speak to that a little bit.
What I see going on is this is a consolidation of power.
This is what we see when any autocrat or dictator takes over.
They begin by winning an election.
Sometimes they can be sabotaged, but they start off
by winning an election.
They start to take over, and then they
start to erode the mechanisms of checks and balances.
If you just look at all the institutions
that Donald Trump has already attacked,
the free press, the American intelligence community,
he's attacking the Department of Justice,
he's attacking truth.
I mean, this is all very dangerous,
and this is exactly what we would see in an autocrat.
I think it's something that, whether you're Democrat
or Republican, you can be equally alarmed about this.
And I think that's one of the strengths of Indivisibles,
that we're talking about attacks on our small D democracy,
not as Democrats or Republicans, but as concerned citizens.
Absolutely.
Etan, so what is our recourse for these terrible things that
are happening right now?
Or what is your impression of what we can do?
When it comes to considering recourse,
it's important to look at what the framers had in mind when
they invented our system of government.
We hear a lot from conservative politicians and jurists
that we need to go back to original intent.
Well, let's look at original intent,
and let's look at impeachment as the Constitution was developed.
In the Federalist Papers, number 65,
Alexander Hamilton described the subject of impeachment
as those offenses which proceed from the misconduct
of public men, or in other words,
from the abuse or violation of some public trust.
They are of a nature which may be peculiar,
propriety be denominated political.
And he capitalizes the word political.
As they relate chiefly to injuries done immediately
to the society itself.
This is Alexander Hamilton, one of our founding fathers.
It turns out that there were other comments
that were similar, one by James Madison responding to a.
I think maybe we should move on, because we
have a limited amount of food.
But what I focused in on and what you said
is injuries to the society itself,
and the fact that we're talking about political offenses,
not necessarily criminal offenses.
In other words, in a sense, Trump
is a smorgasbord of offenses.
And so Mueller is looking into the criminal offenses.
But we have so many other offenses that he's committing.
And I think as citizens, we need to be vocal about all of it.
And so that's one of the reasons I think we're here today.
So in terms of impeachment, I've heard
our members of Congress that we've
approached with why aren't you talking about impeachment.
A lot of them have said, we're waiting for Mueller
to issue his indictments, and we're just waiting.
And that hasn't seemed a fully appropriate response.
And I wonder what you both think about that.
I mean, should we as citizens be saying more?
And should our members of Congress be saying more?
I think that's a rhetorical question.
Because indeed, yes, of course we should.
And in fact, we are.
Our group in divisible South Bay has been very active
in our engagement with our members of Congress
and pointing out that indeed, yes, the house is burning.
We need to sound the alarm bells.
It's not OK to start looking at the color of the drapes.
And in fact, it is critical.
And I share, I think we all share, your sense of urgency.
And we'll say outrage at our representatives,
not displaying the same sense of urgency.
Well, it's a bit rhetorical.
But it's a bit like judging from history,
because you have more of a historical perspective
on Watergate and the different impeachments that
have occurred.
Well, in Watergate, it wasn't an actual impeachment.
It would have been.
It would have been.
But so in a sense, I'm asking you to look at history
and say, are we just waiting for Mueller?
No, actually, we aren't just waiting for Mueller.
And our members of Congress, I won't
say they're being disingenuous.
Perhaps they're in denial.
In reality, because impeachment is an inherently political
process and the Constitution explicitly,
it doesn't use the caps that Alexander Hamilton did.
But it does make clear that it is a political process.
Because of that, ultimately, what's
going to determine whether or not
Trump is impeached and removed from office
has everything to do with public opinion.
And if you take a look, particularly in Watergate,
I remember personally that was when
I was younger and much more fiery than I am now
and much less patient.
I had the sense, leading up even in 1974,
thinking that this was never going to happen,
that Nixon was going to survive because the Republicans were
just too apologetic, too much in Nixon's pocket.
And then his approval ratings began to go south.
And by the time they reached 28%, they went below 30%,
you saw the Republicans peeling away,
making the political judgment that they could not
survive his survival.
So they made the judgment that unless they came out
for his removal, that they themselves would
be removed by the voters.
And I expect that you're going to get
a similar phenomenon now, which, to my mind,
makes it all that much more important
that we raise our voices publicly
and use all the tools at our disposal.
And I would say that even more than Watergate,
we're in a sort of reality TV environment
where Trump is marshaling the forces of opposition
with Fox News.
He basically owns that entity to do his bidding
and to trumpet his message.
So with that environment, it's all
the more important for people in opposition
to speak out as a large group of people.
We have 6,000 chapters of Indivisible,
and we're just one of the pieces of the protest movement.
So I am actually saying it rhetorically,
what can we do?
I know there's a lot we can do, and we will do it
in the coming months.
But Eric, before we move on to the next part of it,
do you have anything to say about how imperative do you
think it is that we all speak?
I feel like that we have to lead.
I don't understand the reluctance
of some of our members of Congress
to be more vocal about it.
And I think that they look for they decide on a strategy
and they stick with it, but we're not bound by that.
And I think that we need to start the drumbeat.
And if they want to come run out in front of our parade
and say that they're leading it, I'm OK with that.
That's a good way to put it, actually.
So I think we've all agreed that we are really
needing to protest.
But at the same time, sometimes we
feel a little bit disempowered just because there's
this constant barrage of stuff coming at us from Trump
and his cronies and the Tea Party and just one
after the other.
It's unbelievable the environment we're in.
So what can we do to cope with all that and stay active,
stay engaged, and keep focused on what we need to do here?
Do you have any thoughts about that, either of you?
I can tell you personally how I respond.
And I won't claim to be representative.
But what I say, I think I would advise people
to think in these terms.
Many people are beaten down by the barrage
and the purposeful barrage.
I react differently.
I react in the opposite way.
I feel more energized because the importance of action
rises.
It escalates.
And as the importance escalates, that
generates more energy on my part.
I also keep in mind, and I've said this in previous shows,
in many respects, Trump is the gift that keeps giving.
And what do I mean by that?
I mean that this is an unprecedented presidency
on many fronts, one of them being that Trump is compulsive.
And many of the things that he does
generates that kind of response and energy.
What we've seen in the last year, the rise of indivisible,
swing left, sister district, together we will,
there has been a huge increase in engagement
on the part of people who feel the outrage.
And Trump is going to continue to motivate us.
And we need to take the energy that he tries to generate,
to put down in us that needs to energize us.
And I feel energized.
I feel the urgency.
You're a bit of a rare breed because I think a lot of us,
we do feel bursts of energy at moments
during this past 11 months of chaos and catastrophe.
But there have been moments where we feel fairly deflated
and just depressed about the situation.
So I think, Eric, maybe you can speak to that as a nurse,
as someone who handles people in emotional trauma
and as an infantry, army infantry veteran.
Maybe you can speak to this pretty well.
I think it's interesting that Donald Trump basically
bragged that he wanted to have the first reality TV presidency.
And with that, just an all-out assault on our senses,
from Twitter to the 24-hour news cycle, Facebook,
we're finding that we can't get away from politics no matter
where we go, whether that's sports, the NFL.
I mean, it just seems like politics
has encompassed everything in our lives.
And that can be overwhelming.
And I'm seeing signs of kind of that fatigue and burnout
that I'm also seeing in friends and other activists.
And so we have to find ways to be able to recharge our battery.
And I think for me personally, one of the things that I need to do
is to turn off the social media, to turn off the television,
to get away from the constant overstimulation,
because it's not good for most people
to continue that over and over again.
I just think that we're all being pushed to our limit.
And we have to find ways to connect and come together,
find support within the community,
find friends to talk to, find things
to do where you can kind of get a little break from the politics,
because we're running a marathon, not a sprint.
Yeah.
And sometimes I have to remind myself,
when I do get together with friends,
don't make it all about Trump or about the latest disaster.
Try to change the subject every now and then.
And my husband reminds me of that, too.
So I think we've come up with some pretty good ideas just
for basically how to stay sane.
But then I'll turn it around and say,
once you've had that decompression,
remember that we are under attack.
Our democracy is under attack.
And then to take the basic first step of coalescing
with like-minded friends and neighbors and forming a group.
It can be a group of five people that
decide that you're going to call your Congressperson
together, or you're going to campaign
for a particular candidate together, or something.
We worked on Alabama.
We worked on the Alabama race as a group of about 80
local citizens.
We made some phone calls for the NAACP of Alabama.
And it was tremendously energizing, actually.
Absolutely.
What would you suggest that people
could do to not only feel better,
but feel like they're making a difference?
What would you both suggest?
That will probably be our closing question today.
I think one of the things that helps bring it back to me
is finding opportunities to volunteer in the community.
I find that if I can start to help people,
I can make a difference locally, I think,
until we start to change who some of our legislators are
and who our elected representatives are,
we're a little bit limited.
We can do the outreach with the phone calls,
and we can continue to organize, and we
can continue to put pressure on them.
But I think just staying connected with the community
and trying to find grounding in the surroundings that we're in.
I also think it's really important
to have a good perspective.
What do I mean by that?
There's the expression that the antidote to despair is action.
What does that really mean?
I'll tell you how I interpret it.
When you feel beaten down by something
or the potential to be beaten down,
the most healthy response is to stand up and say,
I'm going to do something.
But it's really important not to be wedded to the outcome.
And that means when you do something,
you should not think that if you fail at it,
somehow it's a waste of time.
Because it's never a waste of time.
Taking action and being involved and engaged
is a form of self-medication, of self-care.
And that in itself makes you healthier and better
able to deal with the vicissitudes of life that
come with Donald Trump.
And we're never going to stop fighting.
We're never going to stop being active.
And no matter what the outcome, the process is what matters.
And we can reinforce that in one another as we are active.
And we do our activism.
And there's really nothing like that,
the sense of engagement and community
that we get by doing that.
Yes, I get energized every time I'm
with great people like the two of you, if I can say.
Well, that's all the time we have for our program.
Thanks very much for joining us.
To find out more about Indivisible South Bay,
you can go to www.indivisiblesouthbay.org
or our Facebook page.
Thanks again, and let's all try to stay strong,
stay active, and stay connected.
Thanks again, and see you next time.
In each of these half-hour panel discussions,
we will highlight a different aspect of our group,
sharing ideas, stories, and best practices,
with the overall goal of showing the public that
average citizens like us can take effective action
to enact true change in our society.
Thank you very much, and we'll see you next time.
Thank you very much.
