Hi, it’s Mariko Bach on the 22nd of April.
This is episode 696 of my Top Gold audio clips.
I’m in the studio of Tip FM with the main broadcaster of Tip Today, Fran Currie, and we’re talking about some things related to American politics.
Have a listen.Well, yesterday was a frantic day of diplomacy in Washington with Air Force Two ready to fly Vice President J.D.
Vance to Islamabad for another round of peace talks between the U.S.
and Iran.
Several hours later, Air Force Two hadn’t taken off.
The negotiations were postponed.
President Donald Trump announced that he would extend the ceasefire with Iran set to expire this evening to allow the regime more time to create a unified proposal to end the war.
So I’m delighted to be joined in the studio by a great friend to the show over many years, a former U.S.
Air Force pilot, Bernie Goldbach, is with me.
Good morning to you, Bernie.
Good morning, Fran.
Good to see you today.
So much stuff to unpack here, but the second term of Donald Trump, you say that it involves extravagant use of executive powers.
Are you comparing that to other presidencies, Bernie?
Yeah, to the history of the presidency, to the norms of the presidency, and to the way American democracy, an experiment for the last 250 years, has run its course.
Potentially, potentially, has run its course.
There are changes afoot.
You can see them now in the executive office, the way the Supreme Court and the Congress behaves.
So he’s pushed the edge of the envelope beyond what people thought was possible in terms of decrees, behaviors, and then an entire structure which is changing the role of America in the eyes of history and of the world.
And in the future, if we have a Democratic president, for example, there wouldn’t necessarily be, according to your argument, a rollback of anything he’s done, really.
I think he’s set a tone for how far the executive can go, and, of course, he has the Supreme Court that rolls with him and a Congress as well.
But imagine, if you will, that as early as November, then January of 2027, a Congress that has flipped, at least one house will.
So that’ll put the brakes on Trump, but immediately the blood will start to flow.
I mean, there’ll be some bloodletting.
He went through two impeachments previously, subpoenaed civil cases that he’s lost, pursued by people that he thought were chasing the wrong victim.
So that’s going to start to happen in 2027 because most people agree the Republicans will control the House of Representatives, which is where you start an impeachment.
But a few months later, in 2028, then, if the seat of government changes from Republican to Democratic, there will be plenty of quick actions done to reverse executive orders, solid legislation proposed and then enacted.
And all of a sudden you’re going to see the American Reconstruction Program start.
But part of that process will be, I think, the standards of government have been so changed by Trump that a new Democratic regime will use all those levers.
It’s like someone on a building site with a ratchet.
It’s hard to reverse the direction of the ratchet once you’ve started tightening up stuff.
So I don’t think the Democrats are going to feel obliged to go back to the way business was done as usual in a polite way in the halls of Congress with all the interns scurrying around, making sure all the ducks are lined up and all the pork barrel programs are set because they’re going to say, let’s let the executive continue romping because that’s what the Republicans did to us for four years.
What about the Department of Justice in this?
Well, the DOJ is Trump’s personal lawyer.
And that was not normally the case.
He has produced lawfare at a higher level of personal vendettas than anyone’s seen.
He actually wants the Department of Justice to award him several hundred million dollars of damages for cases that previous government pursued against him.
He wants the taxpayer to pay him for being pursued for crimes he committed.
The DOJ is a personal lawyer.
They have subpoenas out for people still, even with the change of the top, Pam Bondi going to the side and her deputy assuming control.
That needs to be calcified in its own lane somehow.
I mean, the president shouldn’t be allowed to stack the DOJ in such a way that it only serves his whims.
And the DOJ should not be allowed to eliminate career prosecutors from key offices that were in states, blue states, that would typically go after corporate criminals and fraudsters.
That’s all happened behind the scenes.
And that’s what kind of bothers me.
You let off with Air Force Two not being ready to go.
It’s not just Air Force Two.
It’s all these other things that are behind the scenes.
Make sure, are the documents ready to sign?
You can’t have a real estate agent go to the Iranians and then try to negotiate a very complex deal.
That person, Whitcoff or Kushner, would not even know about the size or the weight of the uranium, enriched uranium that they have.
I mean, all these things are technical.
And all the technocrats that used to be there that couldn’t survive the loyalty test for themselves or their spouse, they were let go.
So all the underlings in the Department of State, lots of them in Congress, and nearly every judge advocate general, a military lawyer that would advise the president or the chief of staff, no, you can’t target that way.
That target package is inappropriate.
They’re all gone.
So we’re actually being led by a man who’s a bit of a malignant narcissist, and there’s no control.
That’s where America is right now.
You have concerns over the corporations donating huge, eye-watering sums of money.
But didn’t that always go on?
Not in plain view and not to numbered accounts that were the president’s.
That’s the thing.
I mean, there’s exceptional grift going on here.
You pay his board of peace to become a member.
You know, you pay for your slab of marble directly to him because he bought the marble.
It’s not going through a clearinghouse.
It’s going directly into Trump, Inc.
or to one of his sons.
That’s the problem.
Before it was sanitized where you made a donation to Department of Education and your name and the Apple Education Cluster was put out in different charter schools.
Now it’s directly to Trump, and he’ll decide how the money is being used.
And the kind of money we’re talking about here?
Millions.
Millions a week.
Millions a week, Fran.
I mean, he’s enriched himself to more than $4 billion in one year.
And that’s known by the money, not the crypto.
There’s probably an additional $2 billion in crypto that he’s taken.
And that’s in plain view.
But the national networks can’t air that for fear of their license being pulled or their reporters being chastised, being refused entry to the press rooms.
It’s massive.
On a scale, it’s an industrial corruption scale.
What about those lining up to take over from him then?
What about that at this point?
Is there jostling for position there?
Yeah, I think that’s why maybe Vance wasn’t quite eager to go back into Pakistan for yet another failed venture.
But he was against the Iran war in the first place.
And so was Rubio, Department of State.
I mean, it’s hard to figure out.
I mean, Trump has got a hardcore MAGA following.
He defined that movement.
I mean, I know some of the 30% of people that will always stand with the man.
They just like Trump.
They like Mar-a-Lago.
They like the hat.
They like the venue.
They like performative politics.
And that’s their gig.
That’s what they like, OK?
Some people like R&B politics.
Some people like the man on the street politics.
But they like Trump for Trump.
And they fell in love with that idea from perhaps in the 80s, successful businessman for The Apprentice, for his lovely spouses, for his way to simply flip businesses, even though they were failing.
They just like this roller coaster kind of a thing.
They like someone who changes the rules, violates the rules, because that’s good.
Like Wild West politics.
For someone else to capture that mindset, they’d have to behave like him.
I don’t know anyone that’s – I mean, all the podcasters that would have been with him, with MAGA, they’re flipping away.
So, I mean, it’s hard to figure out.
There’s a big one, of course.
Yeah, who’s going to follow that?
Who’s going to try to adopt the mode?
I think what’s going to happen is since no one can be a Trump, then the hardcore 30% will quickly shrivel into a corner and wait their time for the next rising of the next persona of Trump.
He is losing all the support from, as I said, the likes of Tucker Carlson and Megan Kelly and those who – Shapiro, those who would have backed him in the past.
Right.
What is that all about?
Because he seems to be making enemies with those people who were huge supporters.
What’s it about?
I think finally some of those people – Rogan, for example, would say, I can see with my own eyes what’s happening at the gas pump, what’s happening in Iran, what’s happening with the fact that you’re more Biden than Biden and the way that you appear frail.
So I can see all that.
So they’re running for the hills, aren’t they?
They’re finally saying, I will not be gaslit.
You can’t tell me that didn’t happen, that you didn’t strike a school of girls, that you didn’t know you were doing that.
And if you didn’t know you were doing that, you’re not explaining how that happened.
So this stuff happens.
You’re not telling me that you didn’t draw that crazy birthday card to your friend Jeffrey Epstein.
They don’t believe – they’ve stopped believing what they used to reverberate as