three years to kind of reach for extreme ideas to keep people out of the country. more than that, i mean, there are multiple incidents as reported in your book of the president essentially not viewing the law as a binding constraint. he says do a thing against the law and people say that s not lawful and he basically doesn t care. right. i mean, they pushed back against him when things weren t legal, when they thought things weren t moral or ethical and when they thought things weren t practical. closing the 2,000 mile border isn t practical. and the president sometimes could be talked out of things and sometimes pushed forward. one of the things that everybody told us as we interviewed folks for the book was they would talk him out of something, they would think that he had sort of let it go, and then he would come back to it again and again, the idea of an electrified fence, the idea of spikes on the top of a wall that could pierce human
back and forth. he says, okay, i won t close the border down, but as he is traveling to a photo op at the wall turns to mcaleenan and says, you know, we ll just, you know, keep people out. we just won t let the asylum seekers in, any of the people that are trying to get in come in. just turn them away. the country is full. and he says to mcaleenan, if you return into any legal problems, i will pardon you. it was a part of this effort that he did for much of the last three years to kind of reach for extreme ideas to keep people out of the country. more than that, i mean, there are multiple incidents as reported in your book of the president essentially not viewing the law as a binding n constraint. he says do a thing against the law and people say that s not lawful and he basically doesn t care. right. i mean, they pushed back against him when things weren t legal, when they thought things weren t
outside the country supposed to be part of our spying on other countries. after 9/11 the bush administration reportedly told the nsa to start vacuuming up that kind of stuff inside the united states as well not just a broad turn those sensors inward, not just abroad. every five days president george w. bush would give the nsa a military order as commander in chief directing them the surveillance they were doing internationally, they should do it inside the country, too. that s a big deal. if you re at the nsa and get an order like that it raises the question whether that very big deal order from the president is actually legal. can the president legally tell us to do that? john ashcroft with pancreatitis kind of decided, no, those orders weren t legal, at least not the way they were trying to justify it at one point during the bush administration. that is what led to the big dramatic standoff in that hospital room in march 2004 when the bush administration s program to have the nsa spy
that s what they do, and they re supposed to be doing it outside the country supposed to be part of our spying on other countries. after 9/11, the bush administration reportedly told the nsa to start vacuuming up that kind of stuff inside the united states as well not just a broad turn those sensors inward, not just abroad. every 45 days president george w. bush would give the nsa a military order as commander in chief directing them the surveillance they were doing internationally, they should do it inside the country, too. that s kind of a big deal. if you re at the nsa and get an order like that it raises the question whether that very big deal order from the president is actually legal. can the president legally tell us to do that? john ashcroft, with pancreatitis, kind of decided, no, those orders weren t legal, at least not the way they were trying to justify it at one point during the bush administration. that is what led to the big dramatic standoff in that hospital room in mar
every five days president george w. bush would give the nsa a military order as commander in chief directing them the surveillance they were doing internationally, they should do it inside the country, too. that s a big deal. if you re at the nsa and get an order like that it raises the question whether that very big deal order from the president is actually legal. can the president legally tell us to do that? john ashcroft with pancreatitis kind of decided, no, those orders weren t legal, at least not the way they were trying to justify it at one point during the bush administration. that is what led to the big dramatic standoff in that hospital room in march 2004 when the bush administration s program to have the nsa spying on all of us by presidential order needed to get its periodic legal rubber stamp from the justice department and john ashcroft was wicked sick. in the hospital. he appointed big tall james comey to be the attorney general instead. it would be comey who was going