Even Republicans object as Trump DOJ nominees are disturbingly noncommittal on obeying courts

The Rachel Maddow Show

MSNBC

Madow, Washington, Rachel Maddow, Congress, Campaign, Policy, Election, President, Nbc, Public, News, Government, Maddow, Politics, Issues

4.5 • 34K Ratings

🗓️ 28 February 2025

⏱️ 45 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

A bright red line before a country loses democracy entirely is when its government loses respect for the rule of law and feels free to ignore rulings by judges. So when some of Donald Trump's nominees to be senior DOJ officials gave soft answers on whether a president can ignore judges, alarms rang for many senators present, even Republicans. Senator Dick Durbin, leading Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, talks with Rachel Maddow about the peril Trump poses to the essence of America's identity.

Transcript

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0:00.0	At the end of last night's show, you might remember, we were counting down to a midnight
0:04.3	deadline that had been given to the Trump administration by a federal judge.
0:08.7	A judge had ordered the Trump administration to restart funding on foreign aid.
0:13.8	Now, this is a judge who had previously ordered the Trump administration to restart that
0:17.6	funding, and they had not.
0:19.1	He had then brought Trump administration lawyers back
0:21.6	into his courtroom this week and said, it doesn't seem like you're complying with my earlier
0:25.8	order. Can you tell me what steps are being taken to comply with my order? The Trump administration
0:32.2	lawyer then responded by basically going, how many, how many, how many, how many, how many, how many,
0:37.2	the judge at that point, we got, we got the transcript actually, the judge
0:41.6	at that point said, quote, hey, I guess I'm not sure why I can't get a straight answer from
0:48.1	you on this. Hey, after that just humiliation of the Trump administration's lawyer unable to explain why the Trump administration was defying this lawful order, that judge issued what's called a motion to enforce.
1:04.7	And he set this midnight deadline for midnight last night by which the Trump administration had to do what he said, had to
1:12.2	restart that aid funding.
1:16.1	So that's what we were talking about last night at the top of the show.
1:19.1	And then just as we were going off the air at the end of the show last night, the Trump
1:24.2	administration ran to the U.S. Supreme Court.
1:27.1	And just before we went off the air, just before the end of last night show, the Trump
1:30.9	administration obtained an order from the Supreme Court saving them from that midnight
1:36.8	deadline.
1:38.1	Right.
1:38.3	So they're less than three hours away from that deadline.
	...

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