Podbit · The Bulwark Podcast
Trump has told people repeatedly he will issue preemptive pardons to anyone who has come within 200-250 feet of the Oval Office. Multiple aides are personally counting on their own pardon. It's not just bravado — it's a governing philosophy.
Where this was said
At 9:13 · chapter starts 6:50
The conversation moves to one of the book's most vivid early scenes: Trump wanted to announce sweeping J6 pardons in his inaugural address. An aide warned that Democrats would walk out on camera, and Trump relented — his last concession to decorum. Hours later he pardoned roughly 1,500 people anyway, including those who attacked police officers. The immunity discussion then expands to the Supreme Court's presidential immunity ruling, which Trump has internalized as a simple, all-encompassing phrase: 'I'm immune.' Haberman reveals that Trump has repeatedly told associates he will issue preemptive pardons to anyone who has come within 200 to 250 feet of the Oval Office — what she calls a 'pardon radius.' Several people who have spoken to Haberman and Swan are personally banking on receiving one. It creates, she notes, 'a certain mindset.'
Trump issued roughly 1,500 grants of clemency on Inauguration Day, including pardons for Jan. 6 rioters who attacked police officers.
Trump has repeatedly told people he will issue preemptive pardons to anyone who has come within 200-250 feet of the Oval Office.
Musk rejected his cramped West Wing office and set up shop in the grand Secretary of War suites in the EEOB, playing video games late into the night and calling Trump to propose new cuts. He was essentially a co-president — Trump's own staff often found out about Musk's decisions after the fact.
Fei-Fei Li went back to Stanford from Google in 2018 specifically to build a multi-stakeholder governance framework for AI. Her argument: market forces are not societal norms. Just as biology uses IRBs and cars have safety laws, AI needs layered oversight from educators, governments, and the public — not just a few industry titans.
Andrew Santino's personal MCU of political villains is collapsing. He and Bobby speculated that a circulating photo of Mitch McConnell with a Chinese official was AI-generated compositing two separate images.
Mass surveillance is here to stay. The real battle isn't stopping cameras — it's ensuring judges and laws keep that data out of family court and civil disputes, admitting it only for violent crimes and national security. The surveillance economy currently yields more upside than downside, but only if we build the legal guardrails now.
When people cite Scandinavia as proof socialism works, Galloway says they've got it backwards. Northern Europe runs highly competitive free-market economies with more competition in many sectors than the US — they just make sure taxes are actually paid and redistributed. Billionaires and universal healthcare can coexist.
Two percent adjustments to income tax and stamp duty tweaks are deck-chair rearrangements. The UK's competitiveness hinges on four structural levers: currency valuation, energy costs, regulatory burden, and tax rates. Devalue the pound, build 56 nuclear plants, slash red tape, introduce a flat tax — and the country transforms.
Lisbon had one of Europe's worst heroin crises. Then Portugal legalised drugs and redirected all enforcement money into rehabilitation and housing. Crime collapsed. Addiction fell. Then politics moved the money elsewhere, and the problem started creeping back. Chesterton's Fence: you forget why you were spending that money.
Congress passed the Boland Amendment 411 to 0, explicitly banning CIA and Defense Department funds for the Contras. Reagan signed it — then immediately moved the operation deeper underground, essentially responding to a bipartisan prohibition by going more illegal.
The CIA planted mines in Nicaraguan commercial harbors, wrote the Contras' press releases taking credit, and promptly blew up ships from four allied nations. The Wall Street Journal broke the story, Congress erupted, and the Boland Amendments multiplied.
Oliver North was a decorated Marine and devout Catholic with zero covert operations experience. He ran the entire shadow war against Congress — planes, airstrips, arms shipments, shell companies — learning on the job. And by every operational measure, he crushed it.
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