How to Test Negative for Stupid, page 16
Kash Patel: I commit to you, if confirmed, Senator—every single day, 24/7/365—the FBI will be the premier law enforcement agency in the world.
I liked these answers.
Not long after I had that exchange with Kash Patel, he was confirmed as our country’s FBI director. I voted for him. I’ve largely been pleased, as of this writing, with the actions he has taken. He has done what he said he’d do in his confirmation hearing, and I think (and hope) he will continue to get rid of the bad employees at the FBI who use their job to advance their political preferences and lift up the good people at the bureau who are impartial. I am, you see, an optimist. But I’m a paranoid optimist. I’m an optimist who worries. That’s why, during the first months of the second Trump administration, when the president was filling out his DOJ as well as other parts of our country’s legal infrastructure, I used all my power as a senator to sound the alarm about the degradation of our judicial system in a partisan political environment.
To be fair, this degradation didn’t start with Joe Biden, but he and his allies elevated it to a new level. Regardless of what you think about Trump’s behavior (and everyone is entitled to his opinion; I’ve already admitted that he exists loudly), many Americans thought these prosecutions of the former president were acts of political retribution. Most Americans did not believe that the charges against him would have been brought against anyone except Donald Trump. And the danger was, or should have been, obvious: There are thousands of criminal laws in our country that provide ample opportunity for an ambitious prosecutor to create mischief by picking a person to prosecute and then searching the law to find an offense to pin on him, thus undermining the legitimacy of the system. If this is done often enough, that behavior becomes routine. And gradually, the unthinkable becomes the tolerable. And then the tolerable becomes normal. And chaos follows.
Other examples abound. After the United States Supreme Court returned the issue of abortion to the people and the states in 2022, in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organizations, Democrats introduced several bills to “pack” or add new members to the Supreme Court to dilute its current composition, move it to the left, and reverse Dobbs, a cynical effort that President Biden could have discouraged but chose not to. I also remember well when Democratic majority leader Senator Chuck Schumer stood on the steps of the U.S. Supreme Court and threatened it about abortion by yelling: “I want to tell you, Gorsuch. I want to tell you, Kavanaugh. You have released the whirlwind and you will pay the price. You won’t know what hit you if you go forward with these awful decisions.”
Schumer, to his credit, later apologized, but no apology can erase the words. I heard what everyone else heard, and I’ll never forget it. Nor can the American people forget what President Biden said on June 30, 2023, just days after the Supreme Court overturned his student loan forgiveness plan: “I believe that the court’s decision to strike down our student debt relief plan is wrong. But I will stop at nothing to find other ways to deliver relief to hardworking middle-class families.”
And he did. But he did it by pursuing new student debt forgiveness plans that were substantively identical to what the Supreme Court had struck down.
The message he sent was unmistakable: It’s okay to disobey a court order if you disagree with it.
The same thing happened when the Supreme Court warned President Biden in 2021 that he could not extend his moratorium prohibiting evictions during COVID without congressional approval. The president openly acknowledged before he did it that the move was likely unconstitutional, admitting, “The bulk of the constitutional scholarship says that it’s not likely to pass constitutional muster,” but he did it anyway. Just three weeks later, after the Supreme Court had to overturn his extension of the eviction moratorium, the court said, “Our system does not permit agencies to act unlawfully even in pursuit of desirable ends.”
To this behavior from the most powerful person in the world, add the lies about Russian collusion, the lies about the Steele dossier, the lies about Hunter Biden’s laptop, the rogue national security experts who said the laptop wasn’t real, the rogue FBI agents, the lawsuits, and the criminal prosecutions, and you get a splendid recipe for hollowing out the rule of law. President Biden and his allies talked a lot about undermining democracy. I can’t think of better examples than their own behavior.
I voted for Donald Trump in 2024 because, in my judgment, the choice between him and Kamala Harris was one between hope and more hurt. Many times in the campaign I said that if Vice President Harris wins, you have nothing to worry about unless you are a taxpayer, a parent, a gun owner, a cop, a person of faith, or an unborn baby.
Trump can be cruel, sometimes he is wrong, and he and I are unalike in many ways. I’ve acknowledged that. But we are alike in our appreciation of candor. However, I don’t always say what I’m thinking, and I don’t get nearly enough credit for the things I don’t say. As I mentioned earlier, President Trump, on the other hand, grows anxious when he has an unexpressed thought, and what he says and the way he says it makes some people mad. The president and I are both willing to work near a hot wire, but the president sometimes touches the wire. As I’ve also mentioned, he asked me one time how I liked his tweets. My response, which I thought was diplomatic, was “Mr. President, I like them. I also like steak. But I don’t like eating eight of them at one time.”
I’m not sure he got it, which might be for the best. Maybe I should have just told him that the substance and frequency of his rhetoric can sometimes be disconcerting. Or that eruptions from Mount Trump are not always helpful.
Trump’s critics say he secretly wants to shred the Constitution and install himself as an authoritarian czar. I don’t agree. Like every president in modern history, he has tried to expand and consolidate his power at the expense of Congress and the courts. Our Founders anticipated that presidents would do this—after all, what every president has in common, if nothing else, is that he is self-assured—which is why they created Congress, the courts, and our Madisonian system of checks and balances. I think these tendencies have been especially strong for President Trump, who has reason to mistrust some of the institutions in our government, given that a few members of those institutions tried to impeach him, take all his money, and put him in jail. You don’t need to approve of Trump’s behavior to be appalled at the precedent that was set. These actions were bathed in politics and the Democrats and Trump haters who took them were gambling with the integrity of our nation’s institutions. That’s why it was important to me that the second Trump administration not confuse rooting out the bad actors with retribution. That it not confuse righting the ship with continuing the rabid cynicism of the Biden years.
In late February 2025, I got the chance to make this point again. I was given the opportunity in the Judiciary Committee to question three more of President Trump’s nominees for the DOJ: John Sauer, who would serve as solicitor general; Aaron Reitz, who would serve as assistant attorney general for the Office of Legal Policy; and Harmeet Dhillon, who would serve as assistant attorney general for the Civil Rights Division. All three had stellar credentials. No reasonable person could look at their academic pedigree and public and private sector experience and say they weren’t qualified. But I also knew that their credentials wouldn’t be the primary topic of discussion at the hearing on their confirmations. Senators, mostly Democrats, would want to know whether these nominees would comply with the orders of federal courts even if those orders contradicted President Trump’s agenda. I wanted to know too. As I’ve discussed, there was precedent for such behavior now. President Biden had ignored judicial opinions he didn’t like, and he and his allies had undermined due process and the rule of law in their attempt to destroy Trump. They said they were trying to save democracy. I guess they were willing to destroy it in order to save it. I still worried that Trump and the people in his administration might be tempted to return the favor, and I believed passionately that they had to resist this temptation. An eye for an eye makes both people blind. And it could destroy our country.
The questions were asked, as I knew they would be. The nominees gave very evasive answers. So, near the end of my time for questioning them, I went off script.
“You’re all adults,” I said. “You’re all officers of the court. So I’m going to give you some advice. I may be wrong, but I doubt it. Don’t ever, ever take the position that you’re not going to follow the order of a federal court. Ever. Now, you can disagree with it; within the bounds of legal ethics, you can criticize it; you can appeal it; or you can resign. For four years, I have watched people in this town—not everybody, but many—try to undermine the legitimacy of the federal judiciary. And it triggered, each and every time, my gag reflex. . . . All our judiciary has, as an equal branch of government, is its legitimacy. It doesn’t have an army. Don’t ever say you’re not going to follow the order of a court. You may not agree with it. But that’s my advice. And I think you ought to take it.”
Some from both sides of the aisle praised my remarks. But that’s not why I made them. I said what I did because I believe that in the arc of time, America is a young country, that our grand experiment with democracy is working well but still fragile, and that most countries die from suicide, not murder. I did it because the universal principles and accepted institutions we Americans have all agreed on have to be protected from the harsh forces of partisan politics. Sometimes that means passing bills or voting no on jellyhead nominees. Other times it means warning people who are about to assume key positions of power, hoping these people will heed my warning, and letting them know I will be watching them.
Of course, the preservation of our democratic republic has not been the only thing on my mind in recent years.
There are others, and I’d like to tell you about them now.
Ten
Speed Round
Over the course of this book, I’ve given you my thoughts on a wide range of topics. Most of them came up naturally as the stories unfolded—some of them big, some of them small, all of them things I thought were worth saying.
Now that we’re at the end of the line, though, I realize there are still a few subjects I didn’t get to or didn’t say enough about. And rather than inventing some convoluted story to justify including them at the last minute, I figured I’d just be honest with you and lay them out, one after the other, in plain English.
Consider this section a speed round—a quick-reference guide to some of the issues that didn’t get their own chapter but still deserve a word or two. If you’re curious where I stand on something, take a look at the headings below. If you don’t see the topic you were hoping for, you’re welcome to write or call my office.
Immigration
Unless you are serially stupid, you know what a country is. A country is a group of people who’ve agreed to form a government inside a defined geographical space. And why do people do that? Well, maybe they share a language. Maybe they share a culture or history. Maybe they want to be left alone to run their own lives. That’s how the United States got started. A bunch of brave freethinkers decided they’d had enough of King George III and his overbearing foolishness, and they risked everything to tell him so.
Every country has borders. That’s not controversial—it’s just geometry. The continental United States has borders with Canada and Mexico. Alaska shares one with Canada. Borders don’t mean you hate everyone on the other side. It just means you have a front door, and you monitor it—sometimes you even lock it—because you want to know who’s coming in and out. Countries have immigration laws to spell out how someone can visit, live, or become a citizen. That’s not mean. That’s common sense.
America has been enthusiastically pro-immigrant since its founding. I’ve said it before—some people say America was born on a farm, but the truth is we were born all over the place. Europe, Asia, Africa, South America—you name it. Even Native Americans got here from somewhere else, crossing over into Alaska long before there were lines on a map.
Our immigration system is too complicated and too inefficient. But when we follow the laws on the books, the system works. More people legally immigrate to the United States each year than to any other country on the face of the earth. And we welcome them. Why? Because the American people may not be perfect, but we are good. America is so good that even the people who claim to hate it never seem to want to leave it.
We let folks in through a legal process. That’s the key word: legal. Maybe it’s a Nigerian doctor or a German engineer or a Bulgarian plumber. They tell us who they are, why they want to come here, and we vet them. Slowly. Bureaucratically. But we vet them.
Why do we do this? Because we understand that different doesn’t mean “bad.” We understand that souls don’t come in colors. Legal immigration brings fresh perspectives, energy, and prosperity. Sometimes we need labor we can’t find at home. In Louisiana, a lot of folks love to eat crawfish, but not many want to sit around peeling them. So we bring in folks who will.
More broadly, our birth rate is shrinking, our population is aging, and there are fields—like technology—where we need talent we don’t always have. Other countries have the same problem, whether they admit it or not. Japan, China, Italy—you get the idea. (I don’t remember where I read this, but here’s a plea for you to ponder: America needs more young people. Go make a baby. I’m pretty sure it’ll be more fun than anything you’re doing right now. Babies are great. And they’re easy to beat at chess.)
But the real reason we let people come here legally is that we believe in something bigger than ourselves: the idea that you can rise above your circumstances, that the rule of law matters, and that freedom is a gift worth sharing.
Now let’s talk about the opposite of that: illegal immigration. It’s right there in the name—illegal. But some people don’t seem to get the distinction. A few even try to paint supporters of legal immigration who oppose illegal immigration as racists or bigots. That’s nonsense. It’s a cynical way to shut people up by accusing them of something awful they didn’t do.
This bears repeating: borders are like doors. Someone once said that Americans view the border like their front door. You lock your door at night, not because you hate everyone on the outside—but because you love the people on the inside. You want to know who’s coming in, and why. Most Americans feel that way about their country. They want to know: Is this person coming to build or to break? Are they a terrorist? A gang member? A criminal? A welfare tourist? Or are they ready to help keep America exceptional?
Back when Joe Biden was president, we were letting in illegal immigrants at a clip of up to nine thousand people per day. That’s not a border—that’s a welcome mat with no vetting. When I visited the border myself, agents told me they were encountering people from over fifty countries—and that was just in one small sector. The rest? Who knows.
This mess doesn’t just disrespect the rule of law. It hurts the people who are doing it the right way. Legal immigrants—doctors, engineers, tradesmen—have been patiently waiting in line for years to come in the right way. Yet we were giving a free pass to anyone with a backpack and a coyote. That’s not compassion. That’s chaos. That’s unfair.
The last Democratic administration before Biden had a strategy: catch, release, forget. Most people weren’t deported, even after losing in court. When President Trump came in, he did what any responsible leader would do—enforce the law. He gave us the most secure border we’d had in years. And on day one, the next president tore it all down. The wall. The Remain in Mexico policy. So-called Safe Third Country agreements, which require a migrant to stop and seek asylum in the first safe country they enter. Even deportations.
Why? Your guess is as good as mine. Maybe President Biden really believed in open borders. Maybe someone put it on his teleprompter and he just announced it. Maybe the folks in charge of securing the border weren’t qualified to run a snowball stand. Either way, the result was the same: total dysfunction.
There’s a federal law, Title 42, that lets us deny a person entry into our country during a public health crisis. The Trump administration used it to turn away over two million people. The Biden team stopped using it. Maybe they thought illegal immigrants were immune to the COVID virus. Or maybe, just maybe, they didn’t want to turn anyone away.
Let me be clear: I don’t think most illegal immigrants are bad people. But I do think they’re breaking the law. And I think the government’s job is to enforce that law, not look the other way.
The solution isn’t quantum physics. Go back to what worked. Start by enforcing the law. If you sneak in, you’re out. If you lie about being a refugee, you’re out. Reinstate Remain in Mexico. Bring back the Safe Third Country rule. Tighten the asylum definition. Finish the wall. That’s what President Trump did at the beginning of his second term and, predictably, it worked.
A wall doesn’t mean we don’t like Mexico. I love Mexico. But right now, too many parts of Mexico are being run by drug cartels, which have made millions smuggling people and fentanyl into the United States, and their president isn’t doing enough about it. She has allowed the cartels to do what they want, and to get rich doing it. I don’t know if it’s fear or complicity, but too many Mexican politicians live in the cartels’ left front pocket.
Biden chose not to confront Mexico. He also chose not to do what works. And he lied about both. He kept saying there was no crisis at the border for reasons clearly stated on the teleprompter. The American people knew otherwise. That’s one of the reasons Biden ended up with less credibility than a Jussie Smollett police report.
I was willing to help the Biden administration. I said I would support the resources, the policies, the programs. But I also worried that any bill Congress passed would be a bait-and-switch. Biden and his people would take the money and make excuses for not providing the security. That would just reward lawbreaking and encourage more of it.
