Now, it is no secret that the former president lies nearly all the time. What's also becoming clearer, though, is that when he talks about what he would like to do to people he perceives as his enemies, he's often not lying. There's new reporting to that effect tonight and coupled with several other recent reports that suggest that he meant what he said over the weekend when he said this. We pledge to you that we will root out the communists, Marxist fascists and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country that lie and steal and cheat on elections. Vermin, the former president on Veterans Day, no less, he went on to say, quote, The threat from outside forces is far less sinister, dangerous and grave than the threat from within. Our threat is from within. After that, he praised foreign dictators, calling the leaders of Russia, China and North Korea, quote, capable, competent, smart and tough. The Washington Post story on his speech ran under the headline Trump Calls Political Enemies Vermin Echoing Dictators Hitler, Mussolini. CNN presidential historian Tim Naftali telling the Post the language is the language that dictators use to instill fear. That's what dictators do. Other historians and scholars of fascism echoed that assessment to which the former president's campaign spokesman responded in words that also kind of sound an awful lot like things dictators might say. Quoting now, those who try to make that ridiculous assertion are clearly snowflakes grasping for anything because they are suffering from Trump derangement syndrome and their sad and miserable existence will be crushed when President Trump returns to the White House. So crushed vermin enemies within is probably the starkest, clearest version of other sentiments he's expressed in the past year. In 2016, I declared, I am your voice today. I said, I am your warrior. I am your justice. And for those who have been wronged and betrayed, I am your retribution. He's a warrior that's never served, but he's a warrior. The former president back in March, it is tempting to write off what he just said is as some kind of shtick, like lock her up or build the wall or reciting lines from that poem, The Snake. The concern, however, is that his motivation for retribution is now connected to a dehumanized target people he calls vermin and is coupled with the means for making it happen. He's the leading Republican candidate for president. There's new reporting on that in Axios under the headline Trump Allies Prescreen Loyalists for Unprecedented Power Grab. Quoting from it now, if Trump were to win, thousands of Trump first loyalists would be readied for legal, judicial, defense, regulatory and domestic policy jobs. His inner circle plans to purge anyone viewed as hostile to the hard edge, authoritarian sounding plans he calls Agenda 47. Separately, The Washington Post, citing people who've spoken to him, reports the former president and his allies, have begun mapping out specific plans for punishing critics and opponents with him, quote, naming individuals he wants to investigate or prosecute, something he talks about out loud and doesn't even bother denying. They call it weaponization and the people aren't going to stand for it. But yeah, they have done something that allows the next party. I mean, if somebody if I happen to be president and I see somebody who's doing well and beating me very badly, I say go down and indict them. That sounds reasonable. Back during the Nixon administration, then attorney General John Mitchell, who later went to prison for his role in the Watergate affair, told reporters to watch what we do, not what we say. That was his way of kind of reassuring the public that some of Candidate Nixon's harsher campaign trail rhetoric would not become administration policy. The question tonight, how comforting would those same words be now? Joining us now is Axios CEO and co-founder Jim VandeHei. So, Jim, walk us through your reporting. Tell us more about what the former president's allies are actually planning. Yeah, if you go back last time when he won, there was a lot of the same language, a lot of this bombast, a lot of the tough guy routine. But when he got into office, he was surrounded by people who would put restraints on him. And he didn't really understand how many levels of the bureaucracy could gum up, kind of some of his instincts and often his worst instincts. They learned from that. And what we found is when you talk to people at the Heritage Foundation, when you talk to people around Donald Trump who used to work for Donald Trump, who understand the machinery of government, they've now put together a very well-oiled machine. One year in advance of potentially winning the election, that's allowing them to vet and screen people for their loyalty to Trump and their belief in stretching the rule of law in ways that Donald Trump would like them to stretch it if he were in office. And the reason that I think this story is very important is it's one thing when he uses this language and then doesn't put it into action. But when you listen to him and he tells you what he's going to do, punish political enemies, round up illegal immigrants, you potentially get rid of a million or so people who live in the United States. Try to maybe even go after flag officers and generals who he doesn't consider to pass the loyalty litmus test. If you know how government works and you can figure out how to purge ten, 20, 30,000 people from all those positions that make activities like that possible, that turn those policies or those ideas into action, you could have a much different administration and really you would see restraints lifted that we've had on the previous 46 presidents. Now, anybody who's a Trump supporter who's listening to this are like, hell, yes, we love that. That's what we want. We want the administrative state purged and we want a new order. We want sort of the tough guy, sort of the strongman routine because they feel like crime is high and immigration is surging. But I think if you're not a Donald Trump supporter, you're concerned because this would be uncharted territory. We're talking about doing things that he's saying. We're not saying this is anonymous sources. He's saying this. These are the things that he's saying he's going to do and they're going to have the machinery to do it. And I think that just shows the stakes of the election. And I wouldn't fall for this stuff where people think, oh, he's just surrounded by clowns. Right. There's some clowns around him, no doubt about it. But there's going to be some really serious people who are involved in this process, who understand government, who are going to have a government in waiting, ready to roll. The Trump campaign has put out a statement saying in part, quote, Policy recommendations from external allies are just that recommendations. Who are the groups who are pushing this overhaul and how close are they to the former president? The Heritage Foundation. Heritage Foundation is definitely doing a lot of the work, a lot of the vetting there. They've sent out questionnaires. They've already talked to 4000 different potential applicants, asking them their favorite political figure, their favorite political book, what is their ideology. But then you look at the people who are advising both the Heritage Foundation and some of these other outside groups that are involved, and they're all the Trump people, right? Johnny McEntee, who is the head of presidential personnel, who's really one of the architects of trying to figure out the purge and the latter days of the first term of the Trump presidency is an adviser to these efforts. Stephen Miller talks with these people all the time. So sure. Like. Yes, the Heritage Foundation. What they'd say is this will be available to anyone, but everyone knows that Donald Trump is likely to win the nomination, and they know that they can't make the mistake that they made before, which is just roll into town and not have a team ready to rock and roll. They're going to have it this time, and I think we'll be pushed almost instantly into uncharted territory. Yeah, I do think the second term, if he were to win, would be much more like the final days of of the Trump presidency than the first two years. Really trying to push the boundaries, really trying to see if you can stretch the rule of law to do things, whether it's punishing political enemies or getting rid of people who you don't feel. Share your political beliefs, punishing media entities that report things you don't like. How would that work? I mean, like the Department of Justice? I mean, you have, you know, career law enforcement, if you will. I mean, how would something like that work? The DOJ. Right. And any of the agencies. So basically not to get too in the weeds, but there's one of the ideas that they had at the end of the presidency was this idea of re categorizing people into government as Schedule F, which would allow them basically to get around union laws, get around things that make it harder to fire people who are kind of permanent civil servants enter in government. And that's what much of government is. You hear about cabinet secretaries, you know, the president, you know the vice president, a lot of the work and whether it's at DOJ or whether it's at the Department of Homeland Security's done below that. It's done by people who often will serve both parties well. If you can suddenly just in mass, get rid of them, which they would try to do, maybe the courts step in and say, you can't do it. Maybe they say you can. There's a big debate about whether or not he could do what he wanted to do under schedule f a lot of people think he could, but even if he didn't, as long as you have the people waiting, you can reassign anybody that you want to reassign. You can put people in the gigs that that, you know, have the power that support your agenda. And I think that's what would be radically different this time from last time. Because for everyone who didn't like Donald Trump or if you liked Donald Trump and you wanted more of it, the truth is he wasn't very good at governing, particularly in the early years, because he didn't have people who shared his philosophy around him and he didn't understand how to pull the different levers of government and Trump himself has no interest in this. His brain doesn't work that way. He's not sitting here thinking about who am I going to put where and how is the second term going to work. He's very thematic and he loves the rhetorical part of the job. But beneath him there's going to be a much bigger, well-oiled, sort of prescreened, pre trained group of people ready to come in. Jim VandeHei, it's fascinating. Thanks so much.
