- 10 months ago
The United States Marine Corps, the country's main foreign expedition force, has been deployed to Los Angeles – this on top of the US president enrolling the National Guard in a show of force against pockets of violent protest against the arrest of undocumented immigrants at their place of work.
It's a fight that Donald Trump wanted to pick for a long time, going over the head of the Democratic governor of California just days before another first: a US president staging a military parade in Washington on his birthday. In his first term, Trump's Republican Party was the party of states' rights, regularly accusing the federal government of overreach. How did it all change so fast?A nation with a determined far right that's up against a splintered mainstream sounds a lot like the situation in France, where the next presidential election is in two years' time. As Marine Le Pen's party harks back to its trademark anti-immigrant rhetoric – a topic where a majority of US citizens back Trump – what lessons can be drawn from the seemingly fast-changing form of democracy in America?Produced by François Picard, Maya Yataghene, Juliette Laffont, Ilayda Habip, Alessandro Xenos.
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It's a fight that Donald Trump wanted to pick for a long time, going over the head of the Democratic governor of California just days before another first: a US president staging a military parade in Washington on his birthday. In his first term, Trump's Republican Party was the party of states' rights, regularly accusing the federal government of overreach. How did it all change so fast?A nation with a determined far right that's up against a splintered mainstream sounds a lot like the situation in France, where the next presidential election is in two years' time. As Marine Le Pen's party harks back to its trademark anti-immigrant rhetoric – a topic where a majority of US citizens back Trump – what lessons can be drawn from the seemingly fast-changing form of democracy in America?Produced by François Picard, Maya Yataghene, Juliette Laffont, Ilayda Habip, Alessandro Xenos.
Visit our website:
http://www.france24.com
Like us on Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/FRANCE24.English
Follow us on Twitter:
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NewsTranscript
00:00The Marines have landed. The United States' trademark foreign expedition force deployed to Los Angeles.
00:08This on top of the U.S. president enrolling the National Guard in a show of force against pockets of violent protest
00:15against the arrest of undocumented immigrants at their place of work in Southern California.
00:20It's a fight that Donald Trump clearly wanted to pick for a long time,
00:24going over the head of the Democratic governor of that state just days before another first in Washington,
00:31a U.S. president staging a military parade on his own birthday.
00:35In his first term, Trump's Republican Party was the party of states' rights,
00:39regularly accusing the federal government of overreach.
00:43How did it all change so fast?
00:46A nation with a determined far right that's up against a splintered mainstream?
00:50Well, that sounds a lot like France, where the next presidential election is in two years,
00:55as Marine Le Pen's party harks back to its trademark anti-immigrant rhetoric,
01:00a topic where a majority of U.S. citizens, by the way, back Trump.
01:05What lessons from the seemingly fast-changing form of democracy in America?
01:10Today in the France 24 debate, we're talking about Trump's militarized response
01:14to those L.A. anti-deportation protests.
01:17We're joined by our Los Angeles correspondent, Wacim Corneille,
01:22who will be giving us an update in a moment after a short night.
01:25Thanks for being with us.
01:29Hi, Francois, good to be with you.
01:31From Washington, Robert Weissman, co-president of Public Citizens.
01:36I believe you're one of the groups behind next Saturday's No Kings rallies across the U.S.
01:41Tell us what that's about.
01:44Yeah, we are. It's great to be with you.
01:45Americans across the country are going to be turning out next week,
01:50except not in Washington, D.C., under the banner of No Kings,
01:54to protest the authoritarian nature of the Trump regime.
01:59We're going to stay away from D.C. and Trump's military parade.
02:02All right.
02:03We have a surfeit of Weissman's, although it's not spelled exactly the same way.
02:07He's a former federal prosecutor and FBI general counsel.
02:10Andrew Weissman, professor at NYU Law School.
02:14Thank you for joining us.
02:15Nice to be here.
02:16Columnist, communication strategist, Philippe Morochevrolet,
02:19senior partner at Political Consultants, Iconic.
02:22Thanks for being with us.
02:23Thank you, Francois.
02:24And thanks to Hint Zian, founder and CEO of Consultants,
02:28I pronounce it the French way, Génération Politique.
02:31As you wish.
02:31Thank you so much for having me.
02:33Reminder, you can always listen.
02:34That's right.
02:35Listen to the France 24 debate wherever podcasts are streamed.
02:39Their mission, strictly to defend federal property and personnel.
02:42Some 700 active-duty Marines called in on top of the National Guard.
02:47Reinforcements to Los Angeles.
02:49Emily Boyle has more.
02:492,000 additional National Guard troops and 700 U.S. Marines.
02:58A clear escalation and the latest deployments of the Trump administration
03:03after a weekend of protests in downtown L.A.
03:07U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth announced the move on social media.
03:12He claimed they would be sent to restore order and protect federal law enforcement.
03:16The deployment is unprecedented.
03:19Marines have not been mobilized within the U.S. since the 1992 riots in Los Angeles.
03:25The announcement means that the 700 Marines would join a total of 4,000 National Guards.
03:31Local officials have called the move authoritarian and unnecessary.
03:35We didn't need the National Guard.
03:38Why on earth?
03:38What are they going to do?
03:40Do you know what the National Guard is doing now?
03:42They are guarding two buildings.
03:44They are guarding the federal building here in downtown and they are guarding the federal building in Westwood.
03:51That's what they are doing.
03:52So they need Marines on top of it?
03:54I don't understand that.
03:55That's why I feel like we are part of an experiment.
03:58That we did not ask to be a part of.
04:00No, National Guard!
04:02It is still unclear what exactly the U.S. Marines will be authorized to do once on the ground.
04:09Like National Guard troops, they are prohibited from conducting law enforcement activity, like making arrests.
04:15This is of course unless Trump invokes the Insurrection Act.
04:19I wouldn't call it quite an insurrection, but it could have led to an insurrection.
04:23I mean, that was a serious, that was a lot of, that was a lot of harm that was going on last night.
04:28I watched it very closely.
04:31And it was amazing that the job that the National Guard did.
04:35And by the way, the police were working very hard also.
04:38On Monday evening, smaller clashes between protesters and law enforcement were reported close to an ICE detention center in downtown L.A.
04:48Police dispersed crowds by using weapons like rubber bullets and tear gas.
04:54Governor Gavin Newsom announced on Monday that California is suing the Trump administration,
04:59accusing the president of unlawfully bypassing the governor's authority
05:03and sending in the National Guard into the city of Los Angeles.
05:08And we'll be asking about that lawsuit, but first let's cross, as promised, to Wassim Corne in Los Angeles.
05:16Wassim, earlier in the day at the White House, the U.S. president speaking,
05:20talking about a Los Angeles under siege before he called in the National Guard and the Marines
05:28and saying that the city would have been burning.
05:32Tell us from what you experienced firsthand, how big are these protests?
05:38I mean, let me just say right off the bat that a city under siege is just a little bit of an overstatement.
05:48You know, this is Santa Monica Boulevard, one of the main thoroughfares through Los Angeles.
05:52This is regular traffic on a Tuesday morning.
05:55The city seems to be operating completely normally.
05:58My usual coffee shop is open.
06:00There are no traffic restrictions except for the immediate, really, heart of downtown.
06:05And really, those are just mainly for cleanup operations.
06:08Cleanup crews from the city have been working very hard since this morning to clear up graffiti,
06:13to clear up any damage left.
06:15There were a few burned vehicles and also a few stores that were unfortunately ransacked and looted late last Monday night.
06:21But for the most part, this is a city that is operating normally.
06:23And you heard it in that soundbite, in that story that we just watched, the disbelief from the mayor of Los Angeles,
06:31Karen Bass, saying, what are these troops doing?
06:34What are these National Guards doing?
06:35They're guarding two federal buildings, the downtown federal building and another building in the neighborhood of Westwood.
06:42So that really translates sort of the atmosphere here as to why exactly are all these people here.
06:47If you count the 2,000 initial mobilized National Guard troops and the additional deployment of 2,000 other National Guard troops
06:55and then the 700 Marines, that's more than triple the number of protesters that were in downtown yesterday.
07:01So a bit of an overreaction here, at least when it comes to the situation on the ground here in L.A.,
07:07because the protests yesterday were really confined to, at most, a 10-block radius around the historic downtown, historic little Tokyo area.
07:14Donald Trump asked how long the Marines would stay, saying, until there is no danger and that all I want is safety.
07:23Wassim Korné, just very briefly, is there a sense that the presence of these federal troops is contributing to keeping the peace or to stoking tension?
07:39Well, here's the thing.
07:40I mean, if these troops are fully deployed, because as of this morning, that was not yet fully the case.
07:47Just yesterday, for example, authorities were saying that of the initial deployment of 2,000 National Guard troops,
07:52they were only seeing 300 on the ground.
07:55If these troops are all fully mobilized and these protests end,
07:58then Donald Trump can use that as a soundbite, saying that essentially he restored law and order into the city.
08:04And we saw that on his social media this morning, saying that if he hadn't intervened, this city would have been burned to the ground.
08:11However, if, you know, if these cities, if local population reacts angrily to the deployment,
08:17which is really the predominant feeling and emotion here in L.A.,
08:21then the president will likely use that as saying this was very much needed and I will send in additional reinforcement.
08:27So there's really no way to win against this attempt of a huge show of force from the federal government.
08:35Wassim Kornay, so many thanks for that live update from Los Angeles,
08:39keeping us posted on what's now the fifth day of all of this.
08:44Robert Weissman, why did Donald Trump deploy federal forces?
08:48He deployed federal forces because he's been intending to do it since he took office again.
08:55It's part of his plan to expand his authoritarian reach.
08:59It's doing an injustice to the word pretext to say this is pretextual.
09:03There was nothing going on in Los Angeles.
09:06A little bit of scuffing that has occurred is entirely initiated by the Immigration Enforcement Agency
09:13and now with this additional deployment by Trump.
09:17The only purpose of this is to lay the groundwork for increased militarization of our society,
09:24increased deployment of military, not just against immigrant communities, as serious as that is,
09:30but is against protesters, against his authoritarian regime.
09:33That was the intent the moment he took office and now he sees an imaginary opportunity to start the process.
09:39There is something we can do about it, which is to not accept it and protest.
09:43And I think that's what we're going to see increasingly, especially across the nation here in the United States this weekend.
09:50Increased militarization.
09:52Andrew Weissman, we heard the U.S. president again in those remarks a little while ago,
09:58harking back to regrets, a grievance that he had over the way the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020 were handled in Minneapolis.
10:08Is it a grievance or is it a plan to militarize the United States?
10:13Well, I do think that there is a real interest in having more military on the ground because he has been saying that since the first term.
10:23He's been saying it since he was out of office.
10:26And so I think I totally agree that that's what we're seeing now.
10:29I think that's why you're hearing language about a rebellion and this sort of this sort of overhyping of what's going on,
10:36because the statute at issue here requires for it to be lawful, requires that there is an invasion or a rebellion or a complete failure of law enforcement to be able to carry out its functions.
10:49He's yet to invoke this law from 1807.
10:51Well, that's the Insurrection Act. That's true.
10:54But he invoked a law that requires there to be a rebellion or invasion or a complete failure of law enforcement.
11:01That is not what is happening.
11:03That's why it was so good for you to have somebody who's there in Los Angeles,
11:07because nobody in the right mind would say, oh, look, where there's a rebellion going on against the government.
11:13And I do think it's important to compare this to what this administration said about January 6th.
11:21January 6th, in their view, where there was an actual insurrection attempt going on,
11:26was viewed by them as a glorious day and not an insurrection.
11:30So I think contrasting the failure to bring any sort of law enforcement on that day to what I think it agree is pretextual in terms of what is going on now.
11:41And I think there's a reason that Gavin Newsom has brought this lawsuit is because it does not comply with the law.
11:47But again, to rebound on what Robert Weissman says, is this a grievance or is this a plan to militarize the United States?
11:56Well, I don't know that it has to be an either or.
11:59I mean, I think you could have it be both.
12:03Hinsian?
12:05It's a big question.
12:06And I think it's hard to objectively say.
12:10Going back to what you were saying, Andrew, so what Donald Trump said basically was under the Title 10 of the U.S. Code section inside the Title 10,
12:21if there is, in a specific state, an invasion, the risk of an insurrection or the incapacity for the federal government to enforce public order and to enforce American law,
12:35then there should be what is called sending of the National Guard.
12:41So in America, technically, there's this 1878 Act that says you can't send in troops to have missions of law enforcement, local civil law enforcement.
12:56Now, the U.S. Code, the Title 10 section, Title 10, doesn't actually go back on that.
13:04It just says that those troops, National Guard troops, can be sent and those troops are going to be protecting federal law offices and federal officials.
13:13So what you're saying is, Hinsian, there are laws that are so far back, hundreds of years old, that you can point to whichever law you prefer.
13:22It's insurrection laws in America are a little bit hard to interpret because they were laws that were made at the beginning of the Union.
13:31And the goal of those laws, the Insurrection Act, which is like a little bit older in 1807,
13:37was to protect the country from factions and militias that are trying to take power, like from actual rebellions.
13:43So those laws are a little bit dangerous today, specifically because it is so hard to interpret them.
13:48And what the Trump team and Trump administration is saying is, well, there wasn't an insurrection, but we were going towards an insurrection.
13:57And so that law gives me the right to actually send national guards.
14:04So everything lies in the interpretation.
14:08Then we're going to see what the courts are going to be saying, maybe even the Supreme Court is going to be saying.
14:12But these are, by essence, laws that are difficult to interpret and that could lead to people actually saying,
14:20well, because we believe that there is a risk of insurrection or there's an actual insurrection,
14:24we're going to send in more troops and there's not going to be necessarily an end to that.
14:30However, for now, he hasn't actually invoked the Insurrection Act, but it was invoked in the past.
14:36And it could be something, if it keeps going, that could be invoked.
14:39All right. And language does matter.
14:41So let's take a look at the language.
14:44The L.A. protesters have been waving Mexican flags out of pride for their community, they say.
14:51But it is enough for the vice president, J.D. Vance, to hint at a foreign invasion.
14:57His short version of what's been happening, insurrectionists carrying foreign flags are attacking immigration enforcement officers,
15:06while one half of America's political leadership has decided that border enforcement is evil.
15:13This while the defense secretary actually employs the term invasion.
15:20Pete Hegseth, in a tweet, where he makes the unsubstantiated claim that there is a dangerous invasion facilitated by criminal cartels,
15:32posing, Philippe, a huge national security risk.
15:37Philippe Moreau-Chevrolet, this painting of a foreign invasion.
15:42You know, there was a movie called Invasion Los Angeles.
15:46It's a B-rated movie.
15:48It's not a very good movie, but still, it's part of the popular culture.
15:52And what we are seeing is a TV show produced by Donald J. Trump.
15:57And everything he does, he's being a TV anchor, a TV guy, a TV host, producing a TV show for the MAGA crowd.
16:06This MAGA crowd is uncycled and contained into a cognitive bubble.
16:12And they will believe the fiction that he wants them to believe.
16:15And they believe, I think, even in Paris, I have some MAGA friends in Paris.
16:20There are MAGAs in Paris too, François.
16:22They don't know what to believe.
16:24Because what they read is that there is a huge, huge problem in Los Angeles.
16:29The city is under siege, under fire.
16:31You've got Mexicans raising flags and destroying cars, which happened maybe once or twice.
16:36And it happened a lot in French riots, in riots everywhere around the globe.
16:42There are things like that.
16:43And it's not significant because it's not.
16:46Nothing really happened in Los Angeles, as we saw with your correspondent.
16:50And on the other hand, this reality...
16:53So, hold on.
16:54They have trouble believing it.
16:56Again, I go back to what Robert Weissman said at the beginning of our conversation,
17:00which is this militarization of democracy.
17:04You're saying, no, it's Donald Trump who wants to keep us entertained and that's how he...
17:11He's in trouble.
17:12He wanted to do that from the beginning, that's for sure,
17:14because he targeted California from the beginning.
17:17He threatened California to suspend the federal aids, to which the governor replied,
17:26OK, if you don't give us money anymore, you know what, we have a surplus.
17:29We give you 19 billion surplus for your federal budget.
17:34If you don't give us any aids, if you suspend all the payments, we won't give you any money.
17:38So we are that close to a civil war.
17:40That's the reality of it.
17:42There is no real...
17:43A civil war?
17:43The city is not under siege, but there is a governor threatening the president
17:48and the president threatening the governor to cut budget ties.
17:52That's the reality of the situation.
17:55And it's always like that with Trump.
17:56He's starting from nothing and creating a huge, big problem in the end.
18:02And that's where we are heading at.
18:04But there is nothing in Los Angeles.
18:05Nothing is happening in Los Angeles, except that we have a democratic governor.
18:10And, you know, in the press, what we read is that Trump's aides are congratulating themselves
18:16because they're saying we are forcing the Democrats again in supporting the 20 percent,
18:23you know, of the population that is anti our immigration stance.
18:28We are on the side of the 80 percent that support our immigration laws.
18:32So everything is good for us.
18:34They are playing politics, François.
18:36It's only a political thing.
18:38There is nothing real except the fact that Trump wants to control the political situation in the state with the army.
18:45Robert Weisman, are we reading too much into it?
18:49You heard Philippe Moschravolet, a personal grievance against this democratic governor of California.
18:54And it's good for ratings, as he said, after that blow up with Volodymyr Zelensky.
19:01Or, as you're suggesting, a cognitive plan to alter the shape of what is U.S. democracy.
19:09Yeah, well, I think what what's pretend is that there's some actual issue going on in Los Angeles
19:18where there's very small protests, very little conflict.
19:23And what conflict there is is being initiated by law enforcement.
19:26I think that's what we're saying is there's not there's no there there.
19:30There was there's no remotely plausible justification for bringing in military or National Guard,
19:38leaving aside what the law says, just as a matter of common sense.
19:42There's no possible reason to do it.
19:44I think everybody agrees on that.
19:46What I'm suggesting, though, is they, in fact, are deploying thousands of National Guard and hundreds of Marines.
19:53And that is serious.
19:54It's not part of the American political tradition.
19:57And it is part of an intentional plan by Donald Trump and his allies to start doing this on a much more widespread basis.
20:06Their legal order authorizing the deployment in Los Angeles is actually not geographically limited to Los Angeles or time limited in any way.
20:15It's an open ended order suggesting they can do this anywhere in the country where there's either violence or even the perceived threat of violence.
20:23And we know they intended this as part of their authoritarian move.
20:27Coming in, and now they're beginning to carry out that plan.
20:31It's on us to respond and not let it go forward.
20:34And Philippe Moreau-Chevrolet saying that there is this jousting over money between the state of California and the federal government.
20:44So how far could this go, Robert?
20:46There is a multi-chapter authoritarian playbook that they're deploying.
20:55And early on, the withholding of grants to states across the country, in particular to California, was one exercise of that authoritarian power.
21:05This issue is going to be litigated between the governor and the Trump administration, and it will tease out however it does.
21:12It is the case that the president has a lot of authority in this area and a lot of potential to abuse that authority.
21:21I think that's what we're going to see.
21:22I don't think California is on the verge of seceding from the country.
21:26But I do think that this is a grave moment for the nation because this is not a one-off.
21:32It has nothing to do with what's going on in Los Angeles and everything to do with the president's desire to militarize the country, deepen his authoritarian control, and intimidate and threaten not just immigrants, but anyone who's protesting and standing up to his policies.
21:49Andrew Weissman, a lawsuit filed by the governor of California evoking the 10th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which talks about the rights of states to manage their own affairs, something in the past Republicans evoked a lot.
22:05But legally speaking, again, it comes back to the gray areas that Hind was talking about earlier.
22:13How strong is the governor's case against the Trump administration?
22:17He can deploy federal troops.
22:20Well, it depends.
22:22It depends what the justification is, what the law that is being used, and it depends what they're doing there.
22:29The law that was invoked here, as I noted, requires there to be either a rebellion that was found, an invasion that was found, or that all law enforcement essentially can't do their work.
22:40It also requires that the order go through the governor of the state.
22:45None of those things, in my view, are true here.
22:48I mean, I think, in other words, that I think the governor has a really good argument.
22:52He also has a really good argument that goes to exactly what was just pointed out, which is that the order that was issued by the president is not targeted to California.
23:02It is a nationwide order, meaning that there's no finding of a sort of global invasion of the United States or rebellion against the United States or that law enforcement can't do its work in the United States.
23:16But this order, just to be clear, is not about just being able to send troops into California.
23:23It is saying they're allowed to do it anywhere in the United States.
23:27And I think that is a real weakness for the administration in defending what the president did.
23:33All right.
23:33And we heard the U.S. president speaking last Sunday.
23:39And he was asked about more domestic deployments like the one in California.
23:45We're going to have troops everywhere.
23:49We're not going to let this happen to our country.
23:51We're not going to let our country be torn apart like it was under Biden and his auto pen.
23:57What is the bar for sending Marines?
24:00The bar is what I think it is.
24:01I mean, if we see danger to our country and to our citizens, we'll be very, very strong in terms of law and order.
24:08The bar is what I think it is.
24:11Hen Ziyan, what's going on in the United States?
24:14I'm just going to try to take a different perspective and maybe to play a different tune.
24:20We have to see this in a certain context.
24:23You have a president who, while he was running for the presidency, while he was campaigning, said,
24:29when I get to office, I'm going to make sure that all people that are troublemakers, we're going to send troops to make sure that they respect this country and that they respect its laws.
24:40So if you really look at Trump as a person, as a president, and also sort of this guy who's been able to make a comeback based on his base, the people who've been voting for him for years,
24:53but also new people who are unhappy with things, with the system, with how things are working, you have sort of the recipe of somebody who would say someday,
25:03yes, we're going to send troops because it is unacceptable for us to see people who are destructing, yeah, making any type of destruction on cars or buildings or not letting IC workers,
25:20immigration officers execute the order that was given by the White House.
25:27So you have a specific context that have brought to this.
25:30It's not, it doesn't come out of nowhere.
25:33That's what I'm trying to say.
25:35And what's interesting is in the order, they said something like, acts of violence inhibit the execution of the laws.
25:41Therefore, they are an act of rebellion.
25:43So their definition of what an act of rebellion is, is a very broad one.
25:48And so do they get to make that?
25:49Do they get to make that?
25:51We're going to have, we're going to have to see what the judges say.
25:54But I just have to remind everybody that there are a lot of lawsuits currently in like waiting for trial or waiting for a judge to make a decision against this administration.
26:07And it's always been hard.
26:08Like when he's the president and he's issuing executive orders, what type of, what type of counterpowers do you have?
26:17And it's not always that easy because it ends up always going to what the Supreme Court and the Supreme Court can always say, we actually can't say much about this because this is how the law was made and the law is not particularly clear.
26:32So I think in advance, it's hard to say how it's going to play out.
26:35Let me turn again to the former federal prosecutor here, Andrew Weissman.
26:37There's a difference between unprecedented, which is what this is, and illegal.
26:43And when Donald Trump says the bar for sending Marines is what I think it is, is it illegal?
26:50So just to be clear, that is not what the law says.
26:54The actual statute that he invoked does not say it is whatever the president says.
26:59There are specific things that Congress said have to be found.
27:04This issue about sort of an invasion and rebellion, there is a good analogy here.
27:09This is exactly what the president tried to say when he did summary extractions of immigrants and sent them to El Salvador.
27:17So far, four federal courts have said that was illegal, that there was no invasion by this Venezuelan gang.
27:27It does not meet the definition.
27:29And that is a thing for the courts to decide.
27:31That is the court saying, we will interpret the congressional law and there are limits on executive power.
27:38So I know the president wants to say, I've got full power to do whatever I want.
27:42And the courts in the United States have pushed back on that.
27:45And I point out, the Supreme Court of the United States has found that this president violated due process 9-0.
27:55When is the last time that you've seen the Supreme Court of the United States decide anything 9-0, given how sort of fractured it is politically?
28:03And that gives you a sense of sort of how off the charts what it is that the president is trying to do here.
28:10And while things go through the courts at a deliberate pace sometimes, the administration, using a lot of muscle, Marines deployed to Los Angeles.
28:20We've been talking about it.
28:21Tanks will be rolled out in Washington on Saturday, already being rolled out there.
28:26You see those Abrams tanks on Monday in preparations for the big parade to mark the 250th anniversary of the U.S. military.
28:35This is also, by the way, just a coincidence, says the president, that it's also on his birthday.
28:43And this is where you'll be organizing, as you told us at the outset, Robert Weissman, not in Washington, but in plenty of other cities, no King's Day rallies.
28:53Here's a question for you, though.
28:55Earlier, describing what was going on in Los Angeles, Donald Trump talking of some bad people, quote, paid troublemakers, insurrectionists.
29:09If there is violence on Saturday, how do you handle it?
29:13Well, we're committed to nonviolent protests everywhere across the country.
29:20We now have more than 1,800 planned across the nation.
29:24We are training our leaders in nonviolence and de-escalation tactics.
29:30It's going to be a family-friendly event.
29:32There's not going to be any violence.
29:34If I could say one thing, though, about this issue of troublemakers, it's a little bit off point, but it does throw things into relief.
29:41The president says he's got zero tolerance for anyone who violates the law and so on.
29:45He's tough on crime and so on.
29:47It just so happens that today or yesterday, his Justice Department has announced a policy that it will no longer enforce the criminal bribery statutes for overseas bribery by U.S. corporations.
29:59And that follows a project by this administration to dismiss case after case after case after corporate criminal wrongdoers.
30:07So the idea that he is tough on crime that he's trying to put forward is a complete fiction.
30:13He's tough on vulnerable people.
30:16But when it comes to the powerful who have the ability to both follow the law and inflict major harm on regular people when they don't, he's a patsy.
30:25All they have to do is make a contribution or buy some Bitcoin, and he's going to let them off.
30:30So I just think we should be really clear that this is nothing to do with some objective effort to be tough on law enforcement.
30:39He is an authoritarian.
30:41He's out of the authoritarian playbook.
30:43All this deployment of the military is part of a plan, just as his selective use of law enforcement, including the selective non-enforcement against corporations and billionaires, is also part of his authoritarian plan.
30:57Philippe Boruch-Avrolet.
30:58Philippe Boruch- We see an accelerated version, a tick-tock version of the authoritarian Putin playbook.
31:05The Putin playbook?
31:06Yeah, the inside, you know, the invasion from the inside, the people attacking the institutions.
31:13Putin did pretty much the same.
31:14But at the time, at least, there were real troubles going on with Chechnya, for instance.
31:22But that's not the case.
31:23That's a complete pure fiction.
31:25But he has an inside thing going on with, you know, people, bad people that he wants to go against.
31:32And then there is the military parade, and that's uncanny at best.
31:39I mean, it's really, from the outside, what we see is an accelerated version of Putin taking power, taking charge.
31:45We have a military parade on Bastille Day.
31:47It's a national holiday.
31:48I'm sorry to say, that's not programmed on the very birthday of our president.
31:53That's always July the 14th in France.
31:56And maybe we will have a president one day born on July the 14th, but it will indeed be an accident.
32:02That's not been happening for them.
32:04And what we see is that he wants to, he's a dystopian president.
32:10He wants to govern inside of a fiction.
32:13And the problem that he has, the main problem is that he has lawyers in front of him.
32:18And he has trials, he has a lot of, you know, things that are, you know, not good for his fiction, for the fairy tale he's telling to his mega crowds.
32:29And these friction points, I don't know how long they will last.
32:33That's the real thing.
32:35How long will we have trials, judges, people that are able to go against his will?
32:42And what happens if there are a hundred condemnations of what he did and nothing happens?
32:46And, you know, that's, that's so sad to see so, the U.S. are the beacon of democracy for people, countries like ours.
32:56And it's, that's really uncanny and sad to see that.
33:00In the end, who outlasts who?
33:05The judiciary or the executive branch of government in this?
33:09I mean, it's going to be hard for me to make a bet.
33:11But I just think that, I mean, we're probably going to see a president who's going to push as much as he can to enforce his vision of government, of politics.
33:22And it's, it's larger than, than just somebody who was elected once and who's just doing business as usual.
33:31He promised, he vowed to bring about cultural change.
33:36So it's going to be interesting to see how much judges are going to be able to, to resist to that.
33:42But my take on it is that he's been elected for four years, maybe more, I don't know.
33:50I hope not, but he's been elected at least for four years.
33:54And we're going to have, with time to see how judges are adapting to his way of ruling.
34:00Are they going to say, because you have some judges who are saying that, but you have people also around him who are making the case.
34:06Well, he's the president. There's a way for presidents to govern this country.
34:11It is usually through executive orders.
34:13So he has the right to enforce those executive orders because he is the representation of the people.
34:21So it's, I think, beyond if it's good or bad or if it's immoral or not.
34:26Is this a new definition of democracy in America, which is like, I have those people behind me who are supporting me, who are supporting what I do.
34:35We have a CBS poll that actually says more than half of Americans, 54% of Americans, support his policy of deportations.
34:43Like, we can think that it's terrible.
34:45We absolutely think that it's wrong.
34:48But then you have people who support it.
34:50And it's more than half of the population.
34:52Has democracy in America changed forever, Andrew Weissman?
34:55Yeah, I think it has.
34:56I mean, I don't think you can put the genie back in the bottle.
34:59And I think the answer to the question of which, who outlasts who in terms of the courts versus the executive branch is it's worth noting that while we're all talking about this, there are scores of people in prison in El Salvador.
35:14And the Supreme Court of the United States has said unanimously twice that they are there in violation of the Constitution, that their due process rights were violated.
35:26They're still there.
35:27So one of the things that Donald Trump has learned is courts are slow.
35:31They do not have an army to enforce their rules.
35:33And there is a standoff right now going on in the United States where you have court order after court order, and you don't see the administration complying with it.
35:44And the question is, is there a playbook for Europe?
35:47While Trump was sending in the Marines, France's presidential front in our elections in 2027 was, on Monday, welcoming 6,000 like-minded souls to the Loire Valley village of Mormont-sur-Vernisson, the far right's Marine Le Pen,
36:02who, in three runs for president, has gone to great lengths to make her movement seem more mainstream,
36:08harking back in her speech to bashing Brussels and to bashing foreigners who've come to replace French civilization.
36:20This Macron-Merkel migration pact, the one that Interior Minister Bruno Retaio boasts of enforcing,
36:28It's a pact with the devil, a pact of being submerged in migration in Europe,
36:34a pact of demographic dilution, a pact of cultural extinction of Europe.
36:41With us, an anarchic immigration without limits.
36:45It's a no, no, no.
36:46It's a no, no, no, and no.
36:49Philippe Moreau-Chevrolet, French political pundits were surprised a little bit to see Marine Le Pen hark back to a message that was more associated with her late father,
36:59you know, talking about the great replacement.
37:02Before, she was mostly dog whistle messages of late.
37:05Is there a Trump effect in Marine Le Pen's strategy looking ahead to 2027?
37:12I think so, yes.
37:12There is a globalized far right that actually the U.S. are leading.
37:16And there is a huge influence in terms of, you know, money, political support, media power, even media literacy.
37:27The far right has benefited from your experience in the U.S.
37:29All the knowledge of the social networks that have been gathered during the campaigns on the Republican side have been, you know,
37:38shared with people around the globe and especially in France.
37:42The far right is much more advanced in that department.
37:44And, you know, networks such as X or TikTok are, the algorithms are pushing the content of the far right.
37:51So she is into that predicament.
37:53She is between what she really would want to achieve, which would be to be a kind of a normal president,
37:59much more on the right than the others, but not that much.
38:02You know, a kind of a president that could be like a far right version of Jacques Chirac, for instance.
38:11She wanted to do that for a while.
38:13But then she was condemned and she couldn't be a candidate anymore.
38:17She can't be a candidate.
38:18She's appealing.
38:19Yeah, but we don't see that happening.
38:21And she's under the influence of what is happening globally.
38:25There is a global far right.
38:27Political communication is not happening in one country anymore.
38:29It's global, globalized.
38:31You have to get that.
38:32And Bardella, a younger one, Bardella is, you know, maybe the next candidate.
38:38And he's very different.
38:39He's much more attuned to what is happening in the States.
38:43You know, and it has consequences.
38:44She's pushed to be that hard because she's fighting for political survival.
38:48And is it too early or too late for there to be a credible opponent for 2027 from the mainstream parties?
38:59Yeah, no, it's not too late because Bardella is young.
39:02It's not that we, he's very popular, but he's really young.
39:05And we had a young president and people are kind of dissatisfied with this young president.
39:10And you have to understand that the voters in France, they are leaning increasingly on the right, on the far right.
39:15But they are still old and they want to preserve a kind of, you know, a stable situation.
39:22And they may not be willing to vote for a young candidate that they don't really know anything about.
39:27And so there is a place for a mainstream candidate, absolutely.
39:30In the end, people saying, oh, what happens in the United States?
39:34Could it happen here?
39:36You mean the riots and the...
39:37No, I mean that we have a far right president who pushes the levers and pushes how much authority they have.
39:46Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely.
39:47I think we're very close to that option, not just in France, but in other European countries as well.
39:52And it asks a question, and going back to your question about mainstream parties, what credible option is there?
39:59Are we able to actually build a strong candidacy by then, like a unified candidacy that's going to be able to stand up to those options?
40:08I think, I don't really see it in France.
40:10It's going to be a very difficult 2027 cycle for us.
40:14But going beyond that, I think this is also something that ties us back to the topic for today's debate, which is liberal democracy and the traditional political system that we've been having for a couple of hundreds of years in Europe and the West.
40:32What is the future of liberal democracy?
40:35And I think today it's fair to say that it's not going to be the same as what we've seen this far.
40:39Robert Weissman, the election in 2024, that issue of liberal democracy, Kamala Harris put it on the ballot.
40:49People's eyes sometimes glazed over.
40:51They instead said that they were more concerned about inflation and thought Trump would do a better job there.
40:56If you were to give advice to the French mainstream candidates for 2027, what is the issue you would tell them to run on?
41:06Well, I can give advice maybe better for American candidates.
41:09I don't think it's the case that Americans rejected democracy in the 2024 election.
41:14I don't think it's the case that Kamala Harris centered a campaign around that at all, actually.
41:19I think when we see polling in the United States, people do care about democracy.
41:25They want a democracy that works for them.
41:28And part of what that means is they need to see a democracy that delivers responsibly to what people want, not to what big corporations demand.
41:39So I think this path forward is coupling not just the defense of democracy, but a deepening democracy with a substantive agenda that's responsive to people.
41:50People in the United States ask if 90 percent of the country supports lowering drug prices, which is the case, how come it doesn't happen?
41:57And they know what the answer is.
41:59The answer is big pharma has too much political power.
42:02So for them, a working democracy has to not just have the mechanism of a formal democracy, but also has to deliver and not be captured by big corporate interests.
42:12And to me, that's the path forward, a deep commitment to an expanded and deepened and more profound democracy and a commitment to deliver an agenda that works for everyday people.
42:24I have to think that's a message that works in France and around the world.
42:27I know it's the right message for the United States.
42:29We're out of time, Andrew Weissman.
42:31Do you agree?
42:32I do.
42:33And I think one advantage that you have in France is you have a history that makes you more aware of the evils of authoritarianism that, you know, we haven't had that history in the United States.
42:47So I think you have an electorate that is more educated about those concerns.
42:52We'll have to leave it there, unfortunately.
42:54Many thanks for being with us, Andrew Weissman.
42:56And I want to thank Hintzian, Philippe Moro-Chevrolet, Robert Weissman in Washington, D.C.
43:02Thank you for being with us here in the France 24th.
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