--:-- [Scene: National Mall, Washington D.C. on Inauguration Day 2025. Noelle King and Sean Rameswaram are standing on the National Mall, surrounded by a sparse crowd.]
--:-- Noelle King: It's Today Explained. I'm Noelle King on the National Mall alongside...
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Hi, I'm Sean Rameswaram for I'm here in Washington, D.C. It's Inauguration Day 2025 and Sean, it is cold.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: What do you see?
--:-- Noelle King: I see negative 2025 degrees. I see snow underfoot here on the grass we're standing on. I see the odd tourists taking a photo with a MAGA hat. I see the U.S. Capitol. She's all dressed up. Flags. She's wearing U.S. flags, ad hoc amphitheater. It looks ready for inauguration, but Noelle, I'm very concerned.
--:-- Noelle King: There seems to be no one here. We are among the very few people on the National Mall at this time.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Not sure. We've got porta-potties for everyone. Woodstock 99 levels of porta-potty, but not enough people here to use them. I'm worried about the porta-potties.
--:-- Noelle King: Can we figure it out on today's show? Let's try and figure it out.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: What else are we doing? We're going to talk about how this year's inauguration is very, very different from 2016.
--:-- [Scene: A commercial break]
--:-- [Scene: National Mall, Washington D.C. on Inauguration Day 2025. Noelle King and Sean Rameswaram are standing on the National Mall, surrounded by a sparse crowd.]
--:-- Noelle King: Support for Today Explained comes from Adio. Adio is an AI-native customer relationship management platform that Adio says is built for the next era of companies.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: A powerful data structure adapts to your business model, syncs in all your contacts in minutes, and enriches your business with actionable data.
--:-- Noelle King: Adio says it also allows you to create those email sequences, those real-time reports, those powerful automations, which they claim can help you build what matters most, your company.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You can go to adio.com slash todayexplained to get 15% off your first year.
--:-- [Scene: National Mall, Washington D.C. on Inauguration Day 2025. Noelle King and Sean Rameswaram are standing on the National Mall, surrounded by a sparse crowd.]
--:-- Noelle King: Support for this show comes from strawberry.me. Be honest. Are you happy with your job? Or are you stuck in one you've outgrown? Or never wanted in the first place?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Sure, you can probably list the reasons for staying, but are they actually just excuses for not leaving?
--:-- Noelle King: Let a career coach from strawberry.me help you get unstuck. Discover the benefits of having a dedicated career coach in your corner.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Go to strawberry.me slash unstuck to claim a special offer.
--:-- [Scene: National Mall, Washington D.C. on Inauguration Day 2025. Noelle King and Sean Rameswaram are walking towards the U.S. Capitol.]
--:-- Noelle King: Today explained, Noelle King and I have made it through security to Constitution Avenue. People appear to be heading north, Noelle. We are heading with them.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: What's coming up on the show?
--:-- Noelle King: Susan Glasser, reporter for The New Yorker, is going to tell us about how 2024 is very different from 2016.
--:-- [Scene: An interview with Susan Glasser]
--:-- Susan Glasser: I've been to a lot of different inaugurations here in Washington, going back to Bill Clinton's. And, you know, 2016 was like nothing I've ever seen in Washington, D.C.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It was almost like an alien invasion. You know, the streets were deserted. Definitely not the largest inauguration crowd ever in Washington.
--:-- Susan Glasser: It was just nobody knew what to expect. It was Republicans as well as Democrats who not only didn't know what to expect, but had a profound sense of disruption and concern about it.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Remember that Trump had been opposed by the vast majority of his own party in the Republican primaries in terms of the establishment types, the elected officials.
--:-- Susan Glasser: And, you know, for many of those elected Republicans here in Washington, They viewed this correctly, I think, as a sort of a hostile takeover by an outsider of their own party.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And remember the famous comment from George W. Bush, who was sitting on the platform in his role as former president for the Trump first inauguration.
--:-- Susan Glasser: And he turned to Hillary Clinton, who was sitting next to him in her role as a former first lady, not in her role as the defeated opponent of Donald Trump.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And he said to Hillary Clinton, that was some weird shit, referring to Donald Trump's famous American Carnage inaugural address.
--:-- Susan Glasser: This American Carnage stops right here and stops right now. I was sitting there like just wow. Couldn't believe it.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And George W. Bush says to me, well, that was some weird shit.
--:-- Susan Glasser: So eight years ago, everything is eerie and what the heck is going to happen? And the crowds are not out in the same way that you might expect.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: In 2025, who is coming out to support Donald Trump that wasn't there last time? Who is notable this year?
--:-- Susan Glasser: Well, there is a big change. First of all, we can talk about the opposition to Trump or the lack thereof.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And that's the other important point about 2016, right, is that, you know, immediately a sort of resistance paradigm kicked in among Democrats, among people who were upset and appalled and worried about Trump's victory.
--:-- Susan Glasser: There was almost immediate sense that we, you know, we've got to resist this. We've got to stand up to this.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: There was the Women's March, as you'll recall, immediately after the Trump inauguration. More than a million Americans, women, men, children among them, sending a message to President Trump on the day after his inauguration.
--:-- Susan Glasser: Women leading marches across this country and really around the world. The size of the crowd, surprising even organizers.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But this question... It had huge participation here. And so there was a sense of action being taken, I would say.
--:-- Susan Glasser: And, you know, that this was something that, you know, could or would or would have to be gotten through for the next four years.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And I think that that, for me, is the biggest difference now, eight years later.
--:-- Susan Glasser: Not only is there no such massive public kind of acts of resistance planned for the immediate aftermath of Trump's inauguration, but you have Democrats still embroiled in a game of finger pointing and blame game among themselves about why they lost the election.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You have many business leaders and other types of people who would have—establishment Republicans who would have considered Trump anathema back in 2016. who are not only openly supporting him, but I think they've come to the conclusion that this is the new normal, not only of the Republican Party, but to a certain extent of the country, that Trumpism is not some one-off aberration, but an important factor for a long time to come in this country's politics.
--:-- Susan Glasser: Tell us about the types of corporations. So we hear that big business is getting behind Trump, at least symbolically, in this inauguration. What kinds of big business are we talking about and who represents them on Inauguration Day?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Since Trump's election in November, you've seen many of America's corporate leaders of many blue chip corporations, really, certainly ones that are not associated exclusively with Red America, chipping in announcing one million dollar contributions either from the corporation or from the CEO personally or from both of them
--:-- Susan Glasser: Mark Zuckerberg donated million to Trump inaugural committee A day later Jeff Bezos and OpenAI founder Sam Altman each donated million of their own
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Other tech giants have too, including Google, Microsoft, and Apple. Toyota joining other major auto companies like Ford and General Motors in making $1 million donation to President-elect Trump's inaugural fund.
--:-- Susan Glasser: It's almost like it's a concerted message that's being sent to America's corporate elite, which is that if you don't pony up at least a million dollars for this inauguration, you do not have a seat at the table in this future administration.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You are an esteemed political reporter, so I don't know how much you've been paying attention to the cultural figures who are coming out for the inauguration, either to perform or celebrate.
--:-- Susan Glasser: But do you have a sense, again, having seen this eight years ago, of who in the culture will be present and how that may differ from the way it was last time?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I certainly don't remember seeing, you know, the village people reuniting to do, you know, covers of YMCA at inaugural halls. eight years ago.
--:-- Susan Glasser: And that speaks again to the fact that eight years on, Trump has created almost a whole alternate, not just alternate facts, but a sort of an alternate MAGA celebrity universe in which he has his favorite music playlist at his rallies that, you know, are as readily identifiable, very quirky, very unique to him as not just the village people on YMCA, But, you know, he's playing opera hits at his rallies and when he has gatherings at Mar-a-Lago and he's wielding the iPad himself to play the music.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So, you know, there's a set of MAGA celebrities now to go along with a much more clearly defined MAGA political fan base that helped him win this election.
--:-- Susan Glasser: Yeah, Carrie Underwood was the one who got me because Carrie Underwood is a popular country singer who probably eight years ago would have benefited from not letting anyone know what her politics are and perhaps even not associating herself with someone like Donald Trump.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Maybe next time I'll pay for each one. trade as, right?
--:-- Susan Glasser: In just a number sense, this was one of the closest presidential elections in the last 100 years.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So, you know, that's important to note. But he's become just acceptable enough to a much larger chunk of the electorate than was the case in 2016.
--:-- Susan Glasser: Let me ask you, lastly, my co-host Sean and I are running around all day. You're going to be running around all day, for people who don't live in Washington, D.C., but want to be able to take away something from what they see today, what do you urge people to keep an eye on?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: One of the things about Donald Trump is how much people tend to not really listen to what he's saying and to not really take him both seriously and literally.
--:-- Susan Glasser: And I think if you listened to his inaugural address in 2016, you know, you really had some insight into the kind of disruption and the kind of negative political figure that Donald Trump would prove to be over the next four years.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And this is a moment, I think, that that should draw all of our scrutiny and understanding. Who shows up? Which Donald Trump shows up?
--:-- Susan Glasser: Thanks to her. Okay, thanks to the cold, I can't feel my hands.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Noelle and I are on the parade route, Pennsylvania Avenue. It's about quarter to ten, and it's like still more police than people.
--:-- Noelle King: I don't think he's going to have a super populated parade, Sean. I'm worried. We have not found the crowd just yet.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Sean, what's coming up in the second half of the show?
--:-- Noelle King: Oh, you'll be happy to hear our old friend Ian Millheiser is coming up.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: What did the Supreme Court do? They did something about six months ago, Noel, that might be very key to this Trump presidency.
--:-- Noelle King: We're going to ask Ian all about it.
--:-- [Scene: A commercial break]
--:-- [Scene: National Mall, Washington D.C. on Inauguration Day 2025. Noelle King and Sean Rameswaram are walking towards the U.S. Capitol.]
--:-- Noelle King: Support for Today Explained comes from Built Rewards. These days, it seems like everybody has a rewards program. You swipe your card and you get one cent on the hundred dollars.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But with your rent, frequently, you just pay month after month. You never get anything from it other than that roof over your head.
--:-- Noelle King: Not anymore, says Built Rewards. Built Rewards says it lets you earn points on your rent.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: By paying rent through Built, they say you can earn flexible points that can be redeemed toward hundreds of hotels and airlines, perhaps a future rent payment, your next Lyft ride, and so much more.
--:-- Noelle King: Your home isn't just where you sleep. It's your community. And Built wants you to go out and do things in the community.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You can eat at your favorite local restaurants, then earn more points. You can get VIP treatment at certain fitness studios. You can enjoy exclusive experiences just for Built members every month.
--:-- Noelle King: When you're ready to travel, they say Built points can be converted to miles or hotel points all around the world.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You can earn points on rent and around your neighborhood wherever you call home by joining Built.com slash Explained.
--:-- [Scene: An interview with Ian Millhiser]
--:-- Ian Millhiser: The Supreme Court last July said that essentially Trump is allowed to commit crimes while he is president.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It says that he is immune from prosecution for virtually any criminal act he commits using the powers of the presidency.
--:-- Ian Millhiser: So there's going to be far fewer checks on Trump because there's a court that is extraordinarily sympathetic to him.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And this court has already said to him that if he uses his office to engage in crimes, that's fine.
--:-- Ian Millhiser: Now, to be fair to the Supreme Court of the United States, which I know you love being, they didn't say Donald Trump can commit crimes. They said the executive, the commander in chief, the president of the United States can commit crimes.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: In theory, in July of 2024, they were saying Joe Biden can go ahead and commit some crimes.
--:-- Ian Millhiser: That's right. And then Joe Biden pardoned his son for committing crimes. No, that's unrelated. Sorry.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: What exactly did the Supreme Court say, Ian?
--:-- Ian Millhiser: Essentially, they divided the sorts of crimes that the president can commit into three boxes.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So the first box is anything involving his constitutional authority as president.
--:-- Ian Millhiser: OK. So like the power to veto, the power to pardon, anything that the Constitution says that the president is allowed to do. And there he's basically has total immunity.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: A president would not be prohibited by statute from perjuring himself under oath about official matters, from corruptly altering, destroying or concealing documents to prevent them from being used in an official proceeding, from suborning others to commit perjury, from bribing witnesses or public officials.
--:-- Ian Millhiser: You know, one of the powers of the presidency is the commander in chief power. and like although the dissent pointed out like hey wait a second this opinion seems to say that Donald Trump could send the military to kill his enemies.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: If the president decides his rival is a corrupt person and he orders the military or order someone to assassinate him is that within his official acts that for which he can get immunity?
--:-- Ian Millhiser: It would depend on the hypothetical but we can see that could well be an official act. It could.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The majority opinion did not repudiate that.
--:-- Ian Millhiser: Another power that the court said explicitly is one of the president's constitutional authorities is the ability to investigate and prosecute crimes or investigate and prosecute wrongdoing.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I think that the president could potentially order other agencies with investigative power.
--:-- Ian Millhiser: So like if he doesn't like something that I write or something that I say on Today Explained, he could potentially order the IRS to open a tax investigation into Vox Media and nothing can be done to him.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Buy in. So like things involving his official powers, if it fits within his constitutional powers, he has basically complete immunity.
--:-- Ian Millhiser: And then if it fits with some other power that the president has, the court said he has what's called presumptive immunity.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It's unlikely that anyone's going to bring a prosecution anyway because it'd be such a pain to get over this hurdle that the Supreme Court hasn't defined.
--:-- Ian Millhiser: and then to win in a Supreme Court, which has already said that Donald Trump is allowed to do crimes. OK, so essentially the president has immunity to do the things that the Constitution says he can do, correct?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Yes. And then he has pretty broad immunity as well for basically anything involving his presidential power.
--:-- Ian Millhiser: So like Congress passes a wall saying that the president has the power to decide what the tariff should be.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: If like Donald Trump finds out that like one of his enemies is importing bananas and he imposes a bunch of tariffs on bananas in order to hurt this enemy, then like that would fall into that second box where it's not constitutional but it's still a presidential power.
--:-- Ian Millhiser: And what the Supreme Court has said is that second box is it's not total nothing you can do immunity, but it basically is. It's what they call presumptive immunity.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: OK, so total immunity on constitutional power, presumptive immunity on presidential power.
--:-- Ian Millhiser: Yeah. You said there are three boxes or buckets here. What's the third?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The third bucket is any crime he commits not using the official powers of the presidency.
--:-- Ian Millhiser: And so like if he were to shoplift, if he were to cheat on his personal taxes, maybe he wants to go like falsify some more records in order to cover up a payment he made to a porn star.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Like anything that he does that is a crime that you or I could commit, in theory he could still be prosecuted for that.
--:-- Ian Millhiser: But there's two caveats to that.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: One is that the opinion also said that you can't use any evidence at trial that comes from things he did as president.
--:-- Ian Millhiser: So like if there's a meeting with a presidential aide where they're discussing a bunch of presidential stuff and he also says, oh, by the way, I want you to help me cheat on my taxes. You probably can't get that presidential aide to testify against Donald Trump.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And then like the second caveat I'll just say to that point is the things that we're afraid of about Donald Trump aren't that he's going to commit normal crimes.
--:-- Ian Millhiser: I mean I think that I going to go out on the street and that Donald Trump is going to mug me What I afraid of is that he is going to use the powers of the presidency to commit crimes
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: That is what makes him uniquely dangerous and that is the area where the Supreme Court has said the president basically can do whatever the hell he wants
--:-- Ian Millhiser: Even in this era where we have a convicted felon becoming our president today, some of the things you're saying probably sound outlandish to people, that Donald Trump is going to jail you, Ian Millhiser, personally, or perhaps order the military to execute his enemies.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And yet since this decision came down last summer, the president has been trying to use it in court, right? Can you tell us what's happened since July?
--:-- Ian Millhiser: Yeah. So two things have happened.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I mean, first of all, I'll just say like I don't think it's very likely that the president is going to personally try to – is going to try to jail me.
--:-- Ian Millhiser: But like he is said that he might try to jail someone like Liz Cheney, who's a former Republican congresswoman who spoke out against him.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And Cheney was behind it. And so was Benny Thompson and everybody on that committee.
--:-- Ian Millhiser: For what they did, honestly, they should go to jail. I think Hillary is very weak. I think she's pathetic. I think she should be in jail for what she did with her emails.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: There's something wrong with Kamala. And I just don't know what it is, but there is definitely something missing. And you know what? Everybody knows it. She should be impeached and prosecuted for her actions.
--:-- Ian Millhiser: Where there are ambiguities is, again, what happens in that third bucket? What happens in that space where Trump is not using the powers of the presidency?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So his actual conviction in New York, the specific crime he was convicted of there was falsifying business records in his personal business in order to cover up the fact that he used his personal funds to pay hush money to a porn star before he was elected president.
--:-- Ian Millhiser: So nothing he did there has anything to do with his official actions as president.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But during the trial, there were presidential aides who testified against him.
--:-- Ian Millhiser: I believe that there might have been some documents that were produced while he was president that were used against him.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And he was just in the Supreme Court saying that his New York conviction should be thrown out because the whole trial was invalid because the presidential aides testified and because there was evidence that was related to his presidency that was brought in at the trial.
--:-- Ian Millhiser: The good news there is that five justices decided to basically kick the can down the road on that case.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Like they didn't rule against Trump. They just said we'll deal with this later.
--:-- Ian Millhiser: Four justices would have given him immunity. So like he already has four votes and he only needs five for the proposition that we should toss out his conviction for personal actions he took with his personal money using his personal business before he became president of the United States.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Like that's how much sympathy for Donald Trump there is on this Supreme Court.
--:-- Ian Millhiser: But does he have a point that some of this investigation involved the presidency?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I mean here's the thing. Like talking about this presidential immunity doctrine is a bit like asking like if your daughter's imaginary friend likes ice cream.
--:-- Ian Millhiser: It's just something someone made up. Like the presidential immunity doctrine did not exist until July 1st of 2024.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It's just something that six Republican justices made up and they made it up recently.
--:-- Ian Millhiser: Why would the judiciary give the executive so much extra power? Doesn't the judiciary like its own power? Is it ceding power to the presidency?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I mean I think that the most sympathetic take I can offer on the Trump for United States decision is that there are six justices who have a very strong belief in a philosophy known as the theory of the unitary executive.
--:-- Ian Millhiser: Which says that essentially like all powers that belong to the executive branch are situated to the president.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Nothing can ever be done to limit the president's ability to exercise those powers.
--:-- Ian Millhiser: And so that explains why they said that the president is allowed to order the Justice Department to round up his enemies because Congress or the courts, if you believe in the unitary executive theory, aren't allowed to limit the president's control over the prosecutorial process.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I think it explains why they said – I mean there's a whole bunch of language in their decision about, well, if the president had to worry about being charged with a crime, he might do his job with less enthusiasm.
--:-- Ian Millhiser: He might be reluctant to do things because he'd be afraid of criminal charges.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And I mean the response I have to that is that there were 46 other presidents and none of them committed crimes while in office or at least were charged with crimes while they were in office.
--:-- Ian Millhiser: Nixon is the one exception. And so it's a very poorly reasoned decision.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Why did the Supreme Court say in the Dred Scott decision that black people are, quote, beings of an inferior order?
--:-- Ian Millhiser: Why did they say in Korematsu that President Roosevelt was able to round up hundreds of thousands of Japanese Americans for the sin of having the wrong ancestor?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Why did they say in Plessy v. Ferguson that separate but equal is OK?
--:-- Ian Millhiser: Like sometimes the justices reach decisions that – I just cannot understand the value system behind it.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I mean, I can tell you because I have studied this thing called the unitary executive, you know, what the theory is behind it.
--:-- Ian Millhiser: But I can't imagine how someone who has grown up in American schools and been taught American values can think that that decision is consistent with them.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Ian Millhiser, Vox.com
--:-- Ian Millhiser: Sean Rameswaram from Noelle King In line In line with about 400 other people For the Capitol Arena, Sean
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: We're going to see Kid Rock sing Babu Tabah God Bless America He's going to do all the hits
--:-- Ian Millhiser: Maybe we'll see Hanyam Wadi and Abishai Artsy
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: They produce today's show
--:-- Ian Millhiser: Maybe we'll see Amna Alsadi. Who edited.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Maybe we'll see Laura Buller. Laura Buller. That's her up there.
--:-- Ian Millhiser: Oh my goodness. Andrea Kristen's daughter, Patrick Boyd.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The whole team's here.
--:-- Ian Millhiser: Four more years of Today Explains. Four more years.
