National Park Service v. National Trust for Historic Preservation

We have to let the President build a ninety thousand square feet of ballroom. If you're not a 5-4 Premium member, you're not hearing every episode! To hear this episode ad-free and listen to Premium-only episodes, access to our Slack community, and more, join at fivefourpod.com/support http://fivefourpod.com/support. 5-4 is presented by Prologue Projects. This episode was produced by Alli Rodgers. Leon Neyfakh provides editorial support. Our website was designed by Peter Murphy. Our artwork is by Teddy Blanks at Chips NY, and our theme song is by Spatial Relations. Transcriptions of each episode are available at fivefourpod.com http://fivefourpod.com Follow the show at @fivefourpod on most platforms. On BlueSky, find Peter @notalawyer.bsky.social, Michael @fleerultra.bsky.social, and Rhiannon @aywarhiannon.bsky.social. Our Sponsors: * Check out Mint Mobile and use my code mintmobile.com/fivefour for a great deal: https://www.mintmobile.com * Check out Quince and use my code FIVEFOUR for a great deal: https://www.quince.com Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:05Speaker 00

  Hey, everyone. This is Leon from Prologue Projects. On this week's episode of Five to Four, Peter, Rhiannon, and Michael are talking about National Park Service v. the National Trust for Historic Preservation in the United States. Folks, we are talking ballrooms. In October of 2025, Donald Trump ordered the demolition of the White House's historic east wing to make room for a 90,000-square-foot ballroom and, underneath, a military bunker. To try and stop construction on the ballroom, the National Trust for Historic Preservation filed a lawsuit on behalf of one of their volunteers. They argued that Trump couldn't build his ballroom without congressional approval, and that their volunteer, an architectural historian, would suffer professional and

• 0:49Speaker 00

  personal injuries if the ballroom were constructed. In a five-to-four decision, the Supreme Court granted an emergency request by the Trump administration, ruling that the National Trust for Historic Preservation did not have standing to sue, and allowing construction to continue while the case moves through the courts. This is Five to Four, a podcast about how much the Supreme Court sucks.

• 1:13Peter Shamshiri?

  Welcome to Five to Four, where we dissect and analyze the Supreme Court cases that have left our civil rights weak and dilapidated, like Michael's immune system. I'm here with Pete. I'm here with Peter. I'm here with Peter, always. I'm here with Rhiannon.

• 1:31Speaker 02

  Hey, everybody.

• 1:32Peter Shamshiri?

  And Michael. How you doing, buddy?

• 1:35Michael Liroff?

  Better, better. I was pretty sick. I had a big weekend.

• 1:40Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:41Michael Liroff?

  Saturday night, I'm in Charleston.

• 1:43Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:44Michael Liroff?

  I've been drinking all day.

• 1:45Speaker 02

  Uh-huh.

• 1:46Michael Liroff?

  I haven't had anything to eat since 1:00 PM, except some mushrooms and chocolate. Some, like, chocolate bar mushrooms. And it's, like, 10:30. I'm with these two girls that I don't really know.

• 2:01Peter Shamshiri?

  Oh, my God, man.

• 2:02Michael Liroff?

  And we're trying to get an Uber to another bar.

• 2:04Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 2:05Michael Liroff?

  And this girl's like, "Oh, that's our Uber." And it's this black Escalade, tinted windows. So I was like, "Oh, she opted for Uber Black," or whatever, like, fancy.

• 2:14Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:15Michael Liroff?

  I walk over. I open the door, I put one foot in, and go, "For Samantha," you know, making sure it's our Uber.

• 2:23Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:24Michael Liroff?

  And the driver turns to me and says, "I'm fucking police. Get the fuck out of my car."

• 2:29Speaker 02

  Holy shit.

• 2:30Peter Shamshiri?

  Jesus Christ.

• 2:31Michael Liroff?

  And I see that it is an unmarked car, but not a plainclothes police officer. He's in uniform.

• 2:36Speaker 02

  He's in uniform inside those tinted windows.

• 2:38Michael Liroff?

  He's got the tac vest on, you know, over the uniform. He looks like he's going to tear my head off.

• 2:44Speaker 02

  Why are his doors unlocked?

• 2:46Peter Shamshiri?

  Yeah.

• 2:47Michael Liroff?

  Seriously, seriously.

• 2:49Speaker 02

  Idiots.

• 2:50Michael Liroff?

  I fucking panicked. I ran away. I, like, closed the door. Closed the door and immediately, like, I was like, "I'm out of here."

• 2:58Peter Shamshiri?

  I feel like that sound's crazy to some degree, but it's the safest thing. It's just get as far away as possible before they have an opportunity to escalate and do anything stupid.

• 3:07Speaker 02

  We've done the case on this, though. Unfortunately, that is reasonable suspicion, and after that, he can tail you and arrest you.

• 3:13Peter Shamshiri?

  It is, but he's got to catch you.

• 3:15Michael Liroff?

  Oh, disaster.

• 3:17Peter Shamshiri?

  That's funny.

• 3:18Michael Liroff?

  Anyway, yeah, I got sick.

• 3:19Peter Shamshiri?

  If it was Samantha, he would have let her in the car. Come on in, sweetie.

• 3:23Speaker 02

  That's the lesson. Always let the girl open the Uber door first.

• 3:27Michael Liroff?

  Right here, in front of a gentleman.

• 3:29Peter Shamshiri?

  Right. Anyway, that's what you get for hanging out in Charleston.

• 3:33Speaker 02

  I've ever been.

• 3:34Peter Shamshiri?

  In many ways, it's very nice, but there is a deep, dark energy. I think I told you guys this, that we went for, like, a little honeymoon trip, and we get to the hotel, which is like an old mansion, and the lady at the front desk, she's like, "Oh, this is for your honeymoon." She turns to my wife and is like, "I can be the first person to book you under your new name." And she's like, "No, I didn't. I'm not changing my name."

• 3:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 4:00Peter Shamshiri?

  And the energy in the room, like...

• 4:03Michael Liroff?

  The immediate, like...

• 4:05Peter Shamshiri?

  The lady and, like, the bellhop boy who, like, gives you a tour of the mansion. They're like, "Ah."

• 4:11Michael Liroff?

  Oh, these fucking big-city liberal atheist pigs.

• 4:16Peter Shamshiri?

  Give them the gay room, then. That was a microcosm of my experience in Charleston, which, like, it was a very nice hotel. It was lovely in many ways, but there's just a dark undercurrent in that city.

• 4:28Speaker 02

  Started the Civil War?

• 4:29Peter Shamshiri?

  A little bit, yeah, a little bit. Started the Civil War, started slavery, started the fight with Michael in the car.

• 4:36Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 4:37Peter Shamshiri?

  Many of America's...

• 4:40Michael Liroff?

  Great battles.

• 4:42Peter Shamshiri?

  Great conflicts. Some good museums, but, Michael, I feel like you didn't get to those, based on what I'm hearing.

• 4:50Michael Liroff?

  That is correct.

• 4:52Speaker 02

  It wasn't that kind of trip.

• 4:53Michael Liroff?

  No, no museum stops.

• 4:55Speaker 02

  Different kind of trip.

• 4:56Peter Shamshiri?

  More of a do mushrooms with strange ladies kind of trip, huh? All right. Today's case, National Park Service versus National Trust for Historic Preservation in the United States. It's the ballroom case, folks. Talking ballroom here. Last fall, Donald Trump, on nothing but a whim, demolished the east wing of the White House. He planned to replace it with a ballroom, a space for boys to dance. Construction began, but some folks at the National Trust for Historic Preservation, which is a nonprofit, sued to stop the construction. They said, "This is illegal. Donald Trump does not have the power to do any of this."

• 5:38Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 5:39Peter Shamshiri?

  But the Supreme Court, in a five-to-four decision, said that those folks cannot sue.

• 5:45Speaker 02

  I mean, this is one of the more ridiculous, sort of absurdist Trumpian stories that has dominated the headlines. So people will remember, Trump demolished the east wing, the historic east wing of the White House, last fall, and this has been on his mind for years. Apparently, in 2010, he called a senior advisor to President Obama, and he offered to build them a ballroom.

• 6:09Michael Liroff?

  A modular ballroom.

• 6:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. He said, like, "Put it together and take it apart."

• 6:14Michael Liroff?

  Yeah.

• 6:15Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 6:16Michael Liroff?

  And so, of course, now he's like, "I need to build it for real. I need to build a permanent one."

• 6:20Speaker 02

  Yeah. Let's start demoing.

• 6:22Peter Shamshiri?

  Unequivocal funniest thing he's done. Unequivocal funniest thing he's done is just knock down a huge chunk of the White House without notice.

• 6:30Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 6:31Michael Liroff?

  Yeah.

• 6:32Peter Shamshiri?

  Sorry to the folks at the National Trust for Historic Preservation, but we differ on this.

• 6:35Speaker 02

  I got a chuckle out of it. Sorry you were offended. Yeah. And why was he doing that? Well, he announced that his administration was going to be building a big ballroom. Let's talk a little bit about the plans for the ballroom, which actually were not released at this point, when they were demolishing the east wing of the White House, or even right after the demolition had happened. But in the subsequent months, the plans for this ballroom have come out. It is a proposed 90,000-square-foot structure, now estimated, at least Trump is admitting, to cost $400 million. Meanwhile, The Post is reporting that it's more like $600 million.

• 7:19Speaker 02

  There's a New York Magazine article that estimates this at $800 million for cost. The ballroom is supposed to seat 1,000 people, have 40-foot ceilings, there will be a commercial kitchen built, there will be a movie theater built, and we'll get into how even these plans have expanded, let's say, since the initial announcement. Now, $400 million. Where the heck does that come from? Well, Trump is saying that it's coming from him as a private donor, not in his capacity as president, I guess, but him as a private donor and, quote, "other patriot donors."

• 7:55Peter Shamshiri?

  I gave what I could, you know?

• 7:57Speaker 02

  I'm sure you did, Peter. And so, about a month after this was announced, meaning the ballroom, but also, like, the demolition happening, Trump's pick for head of the National Capitol Planning Commission, this is the federal agency that's tasked with approving construction work and renovations on government buildings in DC, the head of that federal agency, Will Scharf, of course, handpicked by Trump, said, "The demolition of the east wing doesn't require this agency's approval." He said, "We only have to approve vertical builds. You getting rid of something, you demolishing something, you planning a construction site, I don't have anything to do with that," he said.

• 8:37Peter Shamshiri?

  Right.

• 8:38Speaker 02

  In October of last year, Trump hosted a dinner at the White House for donors who had agreed to contribute to the ballroom. Guests there include executives from Amazon, Apple, Coinbase, Comcast, Google, Lockheed Martin, and Meta, just so you know. And the White House also, in the same month, like, around the time of this dinner, they shared a list of 37 ballroom donors. Of course, they included those big tech companies, et cetera, but also some individuals of note, oil tycoon Harold Hamm. The Winklevoss twins are on this list of private donors, and Blackstone CEO Stephen Schwartzman. Blackstone, not to be confused with BlackRock, et cetera, but they're all evil, you know? I don't need to go into the details.

• 9:20Peter Shamshiri?

  Blackstone's worse.

• 9:21Speaker 02

  We could argue about it, I guess. I mean, it's a real race to the fucking bottom, isn't it?

• 9:26Peter Shamshiri?

  Private equity always worse than hedge funds, in my mind.

• 9:29Michael Liroff?

  Yeah.

• 9:30Peter Shamshiri?

  It's a personal feeling I have.

• 9:31Speaker 02

  All right, all right, yeah.

• 9:32Peter Shamshiri?

  Not to bring politics into it.

• 9:33Speaker 02

  J'accept. So, last December, the National Trust for Historic Preservation, this nonprofit organization, sued the Trump administration to halt construction of the new ballroom, their argument being, "Whoa, you guys have skipped all of the necessary steps. The National Capitol Planning Commission, that federal agency, never got plans filed, even for the construction, for the new build, forget the demolition. No environmental impact statement was prepared, no congressional approval was given for this construction, and there was no public comment, period. All of these things are required, necessary for construction of this size that the federal government is overseeing, much less the fucking White House."

• 10:15Speaker 02

  So, it's after this lawsuit is filed, and after, importantly, the district court in DC ordered that construction had to stop until the project, like, got congressional approval, it's after that that Trump announced that a massive military complex was also being built underground. It was a new, quote, "presidential emergency operations center." He said to reporters aboard Air Force One back in March, "We have bomb shelters that we're building, we have a hospital and very major medical facilities that we're building, we have all of these things." So that's called "I'm allowed to continue building."

• 10:56Speaker 02

  Meaning, now he's brought, of course, that, you know, age-old argument, national security into this, to justify the continued construction.

• 11:05Peter Shamshiri?

  You might have thought this was just a ballroom. No, it's like a fucking transformer situation. There's a military base under here.

• 11:11Speaker 02

  Yeah. So then, again, his handpicked head of the National Capital Planning Commission goes ahead and approves the ballroom design. Timing of this, though, when did that approval come through? That was during the public comment period that they did later open up. And just a broad look at that comment period and the messages that came in. The New York Times found that 98% of the more than 32,000 messages received in the public comment period were negative. Meanwhile, while all of this is going on, that case that the National Trust for Historic Preservation had filed is making its way through the courts with injunctions being issued,

• 11:52Speaker 02

  injunctions on the construction, then a temporary stay on the injunction to say, no, construction can continue while the appellate court reviews the case, decides the case, then an injunction being reissued. And when it comes to the Supreme Court, the Supreme Court also issued a temporary stay, allowing construction to continue while the case was pending at the court. That's how we get to this per curiam opinion where the Supreme Court says, you're good to go, keep on building.

• 12:22Peter Shamshiri?

  So let's talk about the law here. As the court repeatedly reminds us in this case, this is not about whether the ballroom is legal or illegal. This is about whether the National Trust for Historic Preservation has the ability to sue over it, whether they have standing. This is a per curiam opinion, like we mentioned. That means no single justice is listed as the author. We've talked about this, but like historically, this has been used to signal unity in the court, often in like uncontroversial situations. But now you see this almost inverted where they use it almost cynically, like in controversial cases, as if to pretend that the court's unified when it's not. It's also possible that they're using it because like no single justice wrote the opinion, that they like shared writing duties.

• 13:06Speaker 02

  Group project.

• 13:07Peter Shamshiri?

  Although this is pretty clearly Neil Gorsuch, right? Am I, am I crazy here? Or is this?

• 13:10Speaker 02

  Reads that way.

• 13:11Michael Liroff?

  I get that, although there weren't any rhetorical questions, so.

• 13:15Speaker 02

  Hmm. There is one paragraph that's like, and consider this, period. Like that's, it starts like that.

• 13:21Michael Liroff?

  That's true, that's very Gorsuch.

• 13:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's like three words and yeah.

• 13:25Michael Liroff?

  Okay, I'm sold, I'm sold.

• 13:27Peter Shamshiri?

  Yeah, that is Gorsuch, right? There's no, at least that section is, has got to be Gorsuch. So there, there's a very interesting framing throughout this opinion. The opening line is, in October 2025, the federal government started a project to replace the east wing of the White House. The federal government.

• 13:47Speaker 02

  I noticed this too.

• 13:49Peter Shamshiri?

  When Trump started tearing down the east wing, he did that without any authorization from Congress, right? He did it without authorization from the National Capital Planning Commission, the agency that provides guidance and oversight over these planning projects. And of course, there's no judicial approval of any type. Trump took the position that he didn't need any authorization, that all of that was superfluous. It's his prerogative as president to do this. Even if you think that's correct, pretty dishonest to say that the federal government started this project.

• 14:18Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 14:19Michael Liroff?

  Right.

• 14:19Peter Shamshiri?

  It's not like an aesthetic complaint, right? This is the whole substantive underlying case here, right? That there's been no authorization, that the federal government has not properly authorized the demolition and construction. So like Trump is functionally abrogating congressional power to himself. Like, that's the whole question here. And to start off the opinion like this, pretty wild stuff.

• 14:42Michael Liroff?

  Right.

• 14:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, for five justices of the Supreme Court to sign on to say, well, President Trump is the federal government, basically.

• 14:49Michael Liroff?

  Yeah, I was gonna say, if you don't believe in unitary executive theory, it's not even right to say the executive branch started this project. It's clearly just Trump.

• 15:00Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 15:00Michael Liroff?

  But even if you do buy that, that anything Trump does is the will of the executive, that's not fucking Congress, that's not the federal government. Like, what are you talking about?

• 15:11Peter Shamshiri?

  It's so weird. It's so weird. It's creepy.

• 15:13Michael Liroff?

  Fucking bizarre.

• 15:14Peter Shamshiri?

  The gist of the narrow legal question here is whether the National Trust folks have the standing to sue. In order to have standing, you have to be able to show that you are injured in some specific way. These folks are saying, well, look, we have an interest in historical preservation. That's our jobs, that's our personal interests, this affects that. And the court is basically saying, that's a little bit too tenuous. Now, on its own, I don't think that's super indefensible from the court. This is definitely like a thin claim to standing relatively, right? Like, a strong claim to standing would be like, you hit me with your car and my leg is broken and now I'm suing you, right? Specific injury. This is pretty clearly a gray area.

• 15:59Peter Shamshiri?

  However, there is some solid precedent that supports the trust's argument. This is pointed out by the dissent. The court has said that environmental organizations can sue over regulations because those regulations might limit their ability to, say, observe an animal that they want to observe, which seems pretty similar to what the trust is arguing here, right? This is some shit we love to look at. This is our vibe, dude.

• 16:23Michael Liroff?

  Yeah.

• 16:23Speaker 02

  This is our bag, this is what we do.

• 16:26Peter Shamshiri?

  Right. And there's also another thing here, which is often ignored by conservatives in standing cases, but the question should, in my mind, be twofold. One is like, does it make sense for these people to be able to sue? Two is if they can't sue, who can sue? Because it's not actually clear here who could. Presumably, Congress could. If you could imagine a situation where Congress was unified enough to like challenge Trump on this, which is sort of ridiculous, but it's not 100% clear who actually could stop this, which in my mind would mean that you have to give these folks a little bit of a shot, right? You have to say, well, that weighs in favor of them getting standing because someone needs to be able to sue, right?

• 17:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, because who else has standing?

• 17:11Michael Liroff?

  If your answer is, one branch of government has to sue the other branch of government in order for laws to be enforced, I kind of think your definition of standing is too narrow, right? Like, there's gotta be somebody else, right? Other than Congress, who can sue to enforce the laws. There's gotta be.

• 17:32Peter Shamshiri?

  What about me is just like a guy who wanted to use the ballroom? Right? Like, like a guy who loves to dance, you know? I feel like I should have input.

• 17:43Speaker 02

  I love to dance and I love to dance around gold tassels.

• 17:46Michael Liroff?

  Peter, Peter intervening as, as an interested party on the side of the ballroom.

• 17:52Peter Shamshiri?

  A footnote that's like, we are also dismissing the case of Peter Shamshiri, who loves to dance. So that's like part one, which is like, are these people directly harmed? And it's sort of this gray area. But then there's another part of the analysis, which is about irreparable harm. The trust is seeking an injunction, a court order to halt construction of the ballroom. In order to make the case that you need an injunction, you have to argue that you will be irreparably harmed if the construction continues. The idea being like, once it's built, the damage has been done. To the extent that they did not want it built, once it's built, fuck, right? What do you do? If the court allows construction to continue, then it will be finished at some point in the near future, and then it's unclear what could actually be done about it.

• 18:36Peter Shamshiri?

  So that's to me what doesn't make sense about the court's opinion. Like, throughout the opinion, they're like, look, this isn't about whether this is legal.

• 18:45Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 18:45Peter Shamshiri?

  This is just a procedural issue. This is about standing. But by the time they rule on legality, the ballroom could be finished. If they decide that it's illegal, are they gonna order the demolition of the ballroom? No, no. Are they gonna order it to be rebuilt like it used to be? No, of course not. No court has the balls to do that. Usually when people ask me about injunctions, I use like construction and demolition as the archetypal example of irreparable harm, right? Someone will be like, there's a dispute where one, one party wants to demolish a building and one party doesn't. Courts will very frequently, in that exact circumstance, intervene and be like, no,

• 19:28Peter Shamshiri?

  no, no, no demolition, don't build anything. That will create irreparable harm. This is literally like the archetypal example of irreparable harm. And the court is like, no, no. The court basically ignores this and they spend almost all their time talking about the harm to the Trump administration.

• 19:48Speaker 02

  Yes, how that's irreparable if they can't build this.

• 19:52Peter Shamshiri?

  The administration has various like senior security leaders submit affidavits saying that this is a security issue. It's sort of absurd because it's not clear what type of security concerns would arise from just waiting a few months. Like, they, they're like, no, like every day, this is not built. That's a big security threat. But like, they don't actually specify, like, what do you, well, what do you mean? What are you talking about, right?

• 20:13Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 20:14Peter Shamshiri?

  It's also notable that whatever security concerns they have, those concerns are the result of the fact that they demolished the east wing without notice or warning.

• 20:23Michael Liroff?

  Right.

• 20:24Peter Shamshiri?

  So they demolished the east wing and then they're like, oh my God, you can't prevent us from building this ballroom because that would be a security problem. It's like, well, you created that security problem, right?

• 20:34Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 20:34Peter Shamshiri?

  And by the way, we were sort of dancing around this a little bit, but there's two projects here. One is the ballroom, but one is the military base below. So they keep, they're like, we need the ballroom to be built to protect the military base below. And it's like, what the fuck are you talking about, dude? None of this used to be there.

• 20:52Speaker 02

  We need a gilded palace to protect us.

• 20:55Peter Shamshiri?

  It's very stupid. It's a continuation of this trend with this court where Trump not getting to do what he wants is irreparable harm. But anyone else being like, hey, I think this harms me, they're like, what are you kidding? You're just a nerd who loves looking at old shit. This doesn't count. No, Donald Trump is in danger. And we're just like dancing around the.

• 21:15Speaker 02

  Dancing.

• 21:16Peter Shamshiri?

  Pun intended, all right? We are dancing around the fact that this is about Donald Trump wanting a place to, to dance. He wants a ballroom because he thinks ballrooms are nice and classy and cool. When the generals tell him, like, sir, the Iranians have closed the strait again, he wants to go do the Footloose scene in the, in the ballroom, right? He wants to like. Just, just alone in the ballroom, dancing it out. That's what Trump wants. That's his actual interest here.

• 21:42Speaker 02

  He wants a place where his beautiful boys, he's always pointing out, the beautiful men in his life can get tuxed up, dolled up, and show up to do choreograph dancing together.

• 21:54Michael Liroff?

  Yeah.

• 21:55Peter Shamshiri?

  Yeah.

• 21:56Michael Liroff?

  He, he does love his beautiful boys, but he also, he also loves construction. There's this great article published in New York Magazine about the ballroom and the details about Trump just being like a construction boy are so good about him.

• 22:11Speaker 02

  He's doing it for the love of the game.

• 22:13Michael Liroff?

  Yeah. He's like, he's like other presidents, you know, people are like, other presidents relax by doing exercise, but Trump, he says, most of my time is doing other things like the markets, Iran, Venezuela, the military. A lot of people who don't do construction, it drives them crazy. For me, it's actually relaxing because I'm really good at it. Of course, of course, of course.

• 22:33Speaker 02

  This article, which everybody should really check out, it is hilarious. It is chock full of amazing quotes. It starts with him talking about the columns, the columns that are gonna be on the ballroom.

• 22:42Michael Liroff?

  Yes.

• 22:43Speaker 02

  He says, these are Corinthian columns. And then he criticizes sort of like maybe a previous version, or that like he intervened and made them Corinthian columns. He says, those columns, Corinthian columns are your highest level. There are levels of columns, Corinthian, Doric. And to be honest with you, the White House should have used Corinthian. It's a luxury house, a house of luxury, and they use Doric, which is not as nice. Maybe I'll fix that, too.

• 23:07Michael Liroff?

  Then the article points out that they're not Doric. They're what, Ionic, right?

• 23:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. They're not Corinthian on the ballroom. They're actually Ionic.

• 23:14Peter Shamshiri?

  You're reading it and you're getting the vibe of someone who's bullshitting about columns, even though you're like, you know what I mean?

• 23:19Speaker 02

  Right, right.

• 23:20Peter Shamshiri?

  It's so good.

• 23:21Speaker 02

  It's the materials. He's like going into like, this is nuclear grade concrete. And you're like, what the fuck does that mean? He also says that gold is God's favorite metal.

• 23:31Michael Liroff?

  Incredible, incredible.

• 23:34Peter Shamshiri?

  My favorite anecdote from the whole thing is that they pull a quote from John Ossoff, who's like, you know, likely presidential contender in 2028. And Ossoff says like, you know, he's just doing this because he wants to spend his time building monuments to himself and no one's gonna bother doing it after he's gone. And then the reporter asked Trump about that quote and he's like, yeah, that's true. No one will do it once I'm gone. That's right.

• 24:00Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 24:01Michael Liroff?

  I gotta do it.

• 24:02Speaker 02

  So he's gonna do it.

• 24:02Michael Liroff?

  You gotta do some things yourself.

• 24:05Peter Shamshiri?

  You're sort of like, this, this, this is a great Trump thing where you will confront him with the psychoanalysis and he's like, that's correct.

• 24:12Michael Liroff?

  That is, yes, yes.

• 24:14Peter Shamshiri?

  Aren't you just doing this because you feel weak and this reminds you of your own competence of an, an area where you feel competent? And he's like, absolutely. Things aren't going well in other parts of my presidency.

• 24:26Michael Liroff?

  But I do feel strong.

• 24:28Peter Shamshiri?

  But now I feel, I feel good.

• 24:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, I feel pretty. And who else is going to build like a gilded monument to my own ego but me? So I'm actually perfect for this.

• 24:38Michael Liroff?

  That also reminds me of the last thing I want to mention, which is, this magazine has an anecdote, the day after Charlie Kirk was assassinated.

• 24:45Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 24:46Michael Liroff?

  Trump was asked how he was coping and he said, I think very good.

• 24:51Michael Liroff?

  And by the way, right there, you see all the trucks? They've just started construction on the ballroom.

• 24:57Peter Shamshiri?

  Oh my God. Even, dude, even if he hadn't mentioned the trucks, there's something so Trumpian about answering, like, how are you holding up? We're like, real good.

• 25:08Michael Liroff?

  Yeah, I'm crushing it. We're making the fucking ballroom. It's, it's great.

• 25:13Peter Shamshiri?

  Even if you're doing fine, when someone asks you that question, you have to be like, it's been tough, you know?

• 25:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 25:17Peter Shamshiri?

  Because people want to see that you're empathetic, that you care about stuff, even if it's just like some random person and you're not, don't, not particularly concerned. But Trump, like the, the idea that he's not doing something well, it, it can't, it doesn't sit with his brain.

• 25:32Speaker 02

  Including coping.

• 25:35Peter Shamshiri?

  So, so he has to be like, yeah, no, I'm doing great.

• 25:37Michael Liroff?

  I'm doing great. We're crushing it. Ballroom coming right along.

• 25:41Peter Shamshiri?

  Phenomenal.

• 25:41Speaker 02

  Loss, what loss? Assassination? What assassination? We're doing great. I'm in my bag. I'm building gold tasseled fringes, Corinthian columns.

• 25:49Michael Liroff?

  Charlie Kirk, he's dead. One step backward. Ballroom continues. Two steps forward. That's how you gotta look at life.

• 25:59Peter Shamshiri?

  All right, all right. So if we could sort of step back into our lawyer brains and just think about how fucking absurd this all is. The White House is not the personal property of the president. No one in their right mind actually thinks it is. The idea that like any president could just level the White House and like rebuild whatever they want, right? Replace it with whatever they want. No one actually believes that that's the case. But you see like two things happening here at once. One is that Trump just like bends his followers to his will. You have the conservatives, sans Roberts, which we'll talk about in a second, all pretending that maybe there's some merit here. Yeah, it's like national security concerns and let's just sort of analyze this as if this isn't ridiculous, as if it isn't ridiculous that like one day we all just like woke up

• 26:42Peter Shamshiri?

  and they're like, by the way, they demolished the White House.

• 26:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, they didn't ask anybody. And now they're doing a privately donor funded, massive construction project.

• 26:52Peter Shamshiri?

  They destroyed the White House and then Facebook is like sponsoring its replacement. What are you talking about, dude?

• 27:01Peter Shamshiri?

  And then the second thing is like, you can see how the law launders these ridiculous things.

• 27:07Michael Liroff?

  Right.

• 27:08Peter Shamshiri?

  This thing that is transparently ridiculous, transparently illegal, gets reduced to a discussion about the standing of some nonprofit you've never heard of before, which allows the justices to sort of like hem and haw and ignore the central issue, which is that Donald Trump definitely doesn't have the power to do this, right? There's no actual constitutional power to do this.

• 27:30Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 27:30Peter Shamshiri?

  And they could just jump in and say that, right? They could jump in and be like, look, almost certainly does not have the power here. So let's just halt this, right? That's the safest thing to do. That's the most reasonable thing to do. They could absolutely do that. That's why other courts did do that.

• 27:45Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 27:46Peter Shamshiri?

  But no, no. Instead, we get this prolonged jerk off where we have to pretend that this is normal because the justices of the Supreme Court are in the business of laundering this shit for Donald Trump.

• 27:57Speaker 02

  Exactly.

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• 31:16Michael Liroff?

  So Roberts has a dissent. It's okay. He really leans into the fact that this is obviously illegal. He leads with, not only is there no congressional authorization or agency action or anything like that, there are actually statutes forbidding this. Like, this is expressly forbidden by statute to just raise public buildings and start building on public grounds without congressional authorization.

• 31:41Peter Shamshiri?

  Which I was actually surprised to hear about because, like, this is the kind of thing where when it happened, you wouldn't be surprised if there was no law against it, because like, who could have thought of this? Like, the last person to try was the Canadians in the War of 1812. Like, did we really need a law? But apparently, there are laws, yeah.

• 31:58Michael Liroff?

  Yeah, there are laws for just about everything. You know, Roberts' dissent, I think he's right to lean into, you know, what Peter mentioned, that sort of environmental group, associational standing line of cases where it's like, hey, if an environmental org has even one member who enjoys fishing on a river, or looking at a crocodile, or whatever, that is a cognizable interest in a concrete, particularized harm that is good enough for standing for the individual and therefore for the association that they're a member of.

• 32:29Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 32:30Michael Liroff?

  There's one thing that I will say he's a little lazy with, which is, the majority says, hey, even if we grant that, like, gazing upon the historic visage of the East Wing is a cognizable interest, which is part of the standing requirement, they say it's not concrete or particularized, that it's more sort of abstract. And I don't think that's right. I'll just say, my understanding of this, it's always been sort of like, if you live in Montana and have never seen a crocodile, and have no plans to go to Florida to see a crocodile, or anything like that, and are like, just sort of the abstract, like, one day I'd like to see a crocodile, that might be a cognizable interest, but it's not a concrete and particularized one.

• 33:13Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 33:14Michael Liroff?

  On the other hand, when you live in DC and walk by the White House every month to look at it, that is concrete and particularized, right?

• 33:23Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 33:23Michael Liroff?

  It's not just that you like looking at it, you do it. You go and you do it.

• 33:27Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 33:28Michael Liroff?

  All the time.

• 33:29Speaker 02

  And you're part of an association that prioritizes these things, works on these things, thinks about these things. Yeah.

• 33:35Michael Liroff?

  I thought that was worth saying. Like, he let this point go unanswered, I think, from the per curiam, and it should have been answered, that, you know, he just sort of conflates cognizable interest and particularized harm, and is like, look, if you can look at a crocodile, and that's cognizable and concrete and particularized, then looking at the White House is too. And it's like, yeah, I agree, but you could be a little more precise about this.

• 33:59Speaker 02

  There's even more you can say.

• 34:01Peter Shamshiri?

  Right.

• 34:01Michael Liroff?

  Yeah.

• 34:01Speaker 02

  There's even more that's wrong with the opinion.

• 34:03Michael Liroff?

  But ultimately, he hits the appropriate point, which is like, now we live in a world where I want to look at a crocodile is good enough for standing, but I want to look at the White House is not. And that doesn't really make a lot of sense, which I do think pretty squarely puts this in the Trump is a special boy category of cases. And so, despite my nitpicking, I think Roberts does that pretty well, highlights that this is Trump is a special boy jurisprudence going on here.

• 34:33Peter Shamshiri?

  By the way, we're pretty deep into this episode, and no one here has used the term "the people's house." I want to pat us on the back for that.

• 34:40Speaker 02

  Do they say it in the opinion? They don't in the per curiam.

• 34:44Peter Shamshiri?

  No, no, it's in the discourse. The people's house is like a nickname for the White House. I can't remember exactly where it traces to, but sometime in the relatively early republic, they were sort of debating the relationship of the White House and the president and the people, and...

• 34:58Speaker 02

  And is it a king's palace, or...

• 35:00Peter Shamshiri?

  It became like colloquially referred to as the people's house, right? And so, you're seeing a lot of people being like, Trump can't do that, that's the people's house.

• 35:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. He doesn't own it.

• 35:09Michael Liroff?

  And did you guys see in this New York Mag article, the Democrats all like, offering their different takes on what should happen to the ballroom, and just each one in their own little particularized loser way?

• 35:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, like, why do they have to be so goofy? Goofy ass Ro Khanna says, "The ballroom should be turned into an economic war room to lead the renewal and the industrialization of our nation, a room to support the working class, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah."

• 35:37Peter Shamshiri?

  What are you talking about, dude? What are you talking about? It's just a room where economics are discussed?

• 35:41Michael Liroff?

  I can't even hear that without doing a jerk-off motion, like...

• 35:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, I know.

• 35:45Peter Shamshiri?

  First of all, it's like, it's like a 20,000 square foot room. There's just like a conference table in the middle of it, where they're talking about economics?

• 35:54Michael Liroff?

  Every economist in the country in that ballroom.

• 35:58Peter Shamshiri?

  And then AOC said it should be a soup kitchen.

• 36:01Michael Liroff?

  I love AOC, but come on, come the fuck on, come on.

• 36:05Peter Shamshiri?

  That's the most pandering AOC. Like, this is how you know she's running, right? Like, one of many things, but she starts saying shit like that. They should turn it into a soup kitchen. What if they turned it into a place where homeless kids can dance?

• 36:17Speaker 02

  Right. What if they turned it into a place where we could all reach for the stars?

• 36:25Michael Liroff?

  Yeah.

• 36:26Speaker 02

  No, but the funniest one, of course, and I'm really glad this quote was included, Jamelle Bouie, friend of the pod, said it should be taken out by drones.

• 36:33Michael Liroff?

  Hell, yes. Hell, yes.

• 36:35Peter Shamshiri?

  Take it out with a drone strike. Congrats to Jamelle for getting that in New York Mag. The only pundit who was like, sort of intellectually came of age in the podcast era, right? So everyone's like, what's the coolest, most interesting idea for it? And he's like, blow it up with drones, dude.

• 36:49Michael Liroff?

  And he's absolutely correct. Absolutely correct.

• 36:54Peter Shamshiri?

  I mean, it's the funniest thing to do.

• 36:55Speaker 02

  Is there something to be made of Roberts and dissent here? It doesn't strike me as like, all that surprising necessarily, but I also don't think this is some big, like, stake in the ground that Roberts is doing.

• 37:07Peter Shamshiri?

  Yeah, it's hard to know why Roberts sort of bounces back and forth, other than, yeah, he's just sort of like ideologically in the middle, right?

• 37:16Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 37:17Peter Shamshiri?

  In the literal sense that he is between the three libs and the furthest right justices. But I don't know that I have a coherent theory of like, why dissent here, but not an immunity. One thing I've never been able to pin down with John Roberts is like coherent jurisprudence, right?

• 37:35Speaker 02

  Oh, exactly.

• 37:36Peter Shamshiri?

  You can see independent trends. You can be like, not a fan of voting rights, doesn't give a fuck about voting rights, but like, I don't think he has a theory of executive power, right? Or something like that. I don't think any of that applies to John Roberts.

• 37:47Michael Liroff?

  I do wonder if he's just sort of, I mean, offended, like, his sensibilities are offended by the ballroom.

• 37:53Peter Shamshiri?

  Right.

• 37:53Michael Liroff?

  In a way that does not move the other conservative justices.

• 37:57Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 37:57Peter Shamshiri?

  You know, when we started this podcast, we were like, we're talking about how the Supreme Court's jurisprudence affects actual people. Like, how has it come into contact with real human people?

• 38:06Michael Liroff?

  Yeah.

• 38:07Peter Shamshiri?

  And that's not novel, but it is not the way that most lawyers approach the law. It's not how they think about the law. However, they are a little bit more concerned about how the law impacts buildings. That is something that historically lawyers have been slightly more concerned about.

• 38:23Speaker 02

  And you see this in Chief Justice John Roberts.

• 38:26Peter Shamshiri?

  At the end of the day, he cares a lot about buildings.

• 38:29Speaker 02

  I actually thought you were gonna say something different.

• 38:31Peter Shamshiri?

  Whatever smart thing you thought I was gonna say, I was gonna say that as well.

• 38:34Speaker 02

  Not that, not that stupid-ass thing you just said.

• 38:38Michael Liroff?

  I was like, where is he? What is he doing?

• 38:42Peter Shamshiri?

  No, this is correct. Lawyers care about buildings, not people, is correct. Sorry that you guys aren't there yet, but in a couple of years, you'll be there with me.

• 38:50Michael Liroff?

  I was not saying he was offended because it's a building. I'm saying he's offended because it's a fucking historical monument, dude.

• 38:55Peter Shamshiri?

  No, but I'm taking it to a more interesting place.

• 39:01Speaker 02

  What I thought you were gonna say is that our podcast is different now because we're in a Trumpian era.

• 39:11Michael Liroff?

  Yes.

• 39:11Speaker 02

  Like, the Supreme Court cases are different now, you know? And obviously, we were covering, you know, at the beginning of the podcast, much more historic cases. And today, you know, there's something sort of interesting about headline cases that are like ongoing controversies with the Trump administration. But we talk a little bit less about like, the little guy that's affected, because the Supreme Court is handling cases now that are actually resolutions in favor of Trump, certainly, but also like, the ultra wealthy, the elite, like, this kind of corporate stuff. And it is, it is fuck everybody else. I mean, obviously, we're like, in this age of like, you know, authoritarian immigration enforcement,

• 39:55Speaker 02

  all of this stuff. And we cover that too. But it is interesting, I think, that like, a subsect because of Trump, because of what Trump represents, in terms of like, his approach to being the president, his approach to, like, the Trump administration has a theory of executive power, right? And, and because of that, there's like, a subsect now of Supreme Court cases that are just about this.

• 40:19Peter Shamshiri?

  I think another way to look at this is like, a lot of how lefty legal analysts used to think about the law, is that like, normal people, indigent folks, people of color, get squeezed between the margins in the interpretation of law. But that's almost not how I would look at the court's jurisprudence today, because it's built around expressly oppressing those people, right?

• 40:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 40:46Peter Shamshiri?

  It's no longer that, you know, the average person is sort of injured in the normal course of the Supreme Court's work. It's that the Supreme Court is part of a political project designed expressly to injure them, right?

• 41:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly. And injure them as classes.

• 41:03Peter Shamshiri?

  Yeah.

• 41:03Speaker 02

  And injure them as groups of people, right? This is like systemic oppression, actually. And so, it's actually about, you know, class systems, group, group dynamics, and power, rather than an individual was harmed in this way that the law can or cannot see as arbitrary on the basis of something that we are asserting legally as unfair, like race.

• 41:27Peter Shamshiri?

  Right.

• 41:27Speaker 02

  You know?

• 41:28Michael Liroff?

  The court's an active participant in the oppression of these groups.

• 41:31Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 41:32Peter Shamshiri?

  30 years ago, you might have seen cases about immigration procedure, where the court... Was talking about due process and what due process is owed to immigrants and come to a conclusion that was harmful to the due process rights of immigrants. Now they're like, you can discriminate based on race, by the way.

• 41:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, exactly.

• 41:53Michael Liroff?

  I think this is also like a good example also of how Trump has operated and how this entire era has operated in a lot of ways where Trump just does things and is like, who's gonna stop me? And then everyone's left scrambling sort of in the wreckage to figure out what to do. He gets away with a lot just by being like, well, fuck you. Good luck getting to claw this back now that I've already done it. He's the classic ask for forgiveness, not permission. But he doesn't even ask for forgiveness. He's just like, I'm just gonna do it. And then I'm gonna say I had every right to do it. And who's gonna fucking stop me? I'm gonna tariff the shit out of whoever.

• 42:34Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 42:35Peter Shamshiri?

  He knows that he will be granted forgiveness by his followers. Trump is both Christ and the follower. He is the godlike figure. He will also always receive forgiveness for his sins.

• 42:45Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 42:46Peter Shamshiri?

  Two years ago, if you had polled Republicans on demolishing the east wing of the White House, I guarantee you it wasn't polling well.

• 42:56Speaker 02

  It wasn't popular. Yeah.

• 42:58Peter Shamshiri?

  But then Trump is like, I want to do it. Poll them now. And they're like, yeah, yeah, that's, I've always wanted that.

• 43:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, absolutely. That's a good idea. And absolutely, the president can do what he wishes on this.

• 43:09Peter Shamshiri?

  There's a little minor piece of this case that I wanted to talk about a bit, which is that in the course of this opinion, the per curiam is going through the affidavits that have been filed by members of the executive agencies, senior members being like, we must do this for national security purposes. We have to dance. And it's kind of bizarre because on one hand, this is like a very normal, proper way to do law. You're looking at the affidavits. People are like, hey, here is what I think about this. And I'm an expert and I'm in a position to weigh in on this. And I'm weighing in. And the court's like, okay, yes, that is a very normal way to do law. I'm not sure that I have

• 43:51Peter Shamshiri?

  a good alternative. But when you look at like, the political landscape now.

• 43:57Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 43:57Peter Shamshiri?

  What is the value of that evidence in an era of like profound bad faith? Like, what does it matter to me that like, the Secretary of the Army is like, every day that passes is a new security threat, when I know that he's lying because Trump asked him to say that, right?

• 44:13Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 44:14Peter Shamshiri?

  What's the value of that? And what is the court's role in being like, well, this is fucking bullshit?

• 44:18Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 44:19Peter Shamshiri?

  I don't even know, right? The bad faith permeates the entire system so thoroughly that the whole thing's poisoned.

• 44:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. No, we should go through, like, just so listeners can hear some of the quotes from these affidavits that the per curiam opinion like relies on in, in, in sort of ruling that this is so, so important as a national security issue. In the opinion, the cabinet, these, these experts have asserted that every day during which construction is delayed impairs the Secret Service's protective operations. In the past, they say, presidents and their visitors had to meet in soft tents or offsite when gathering in large numbers. In the government's application for this stay, asking the Supreme Court to take this case, this is Sauer, General Sauer, the guy with the voice, you know, writes about

• 45:11Speaker 02

  how President Trump has been the target of a growing number of recent assassination attempts. Growing? Why do you know? Why do you know if it's growing or not? That seems a projection into the future. Why is, why are you asserting that this is on a growth trajectory?

• 45:27Peter Shamshiri?

  I mean, it's increasing over time. You have to admit.

• 45:30Speaker 02

  I guess. So he names the instances, obviously, of assassination attempts on Trump that we know about. But he also says some that are made up, for sure. He says there was a conspiracy to deploy drones armed with explosives at the UFC Freedom 250 event. I don't know, believe that or not, but I'm gonna go ahead and say that that's fake. And also, he says that the threat.

• 45:54Peter Shamshiri?

  Was he gonna flee to the ballroom? I don't.

• 45:57Speaker 02

  Right, exactly. And then the threat of a missile.

• 46:01Peter Shamshiri?

  To the ballroom.

• 46:02Speaker 02

  To the ballroom immediately. To the gold tassels. Hide behind the gold tassels.

• 46:06Peter Shamshiri?

  Behind the giant gilded horse.

• 46:09Speaker 02

  And then he also talks about the threat of a missile attack against Air Force One on July 8th, the one that there are photos of Trump, you know, escaping in the, in the bar cart or whatever.

• 46:21Peter Shamshiri?

  Right, right, right.

• 46:22Speaker 02

  But, you know, there's been lots of reporting that that was.

• 46:25Peter Shamshiri?

  Not real.

• 46:25Speaker 02

  Fake. Yeah.

• 46:27Peter Shamshiri?

  And also, I guess, if you're just like, here are these assassination attempts, right? And you're going through some real ones, some fake ones, some in between, some of them should be at the White House if you want this to work, right?

• 46:39Speaker 02

  Right, right. How's the ballroom helping Trump on Air Force One in Turkey?

• 46:43Peter Shamshiri?

  Right.

• 46:44Michael Liroff?

  Right.

• 46:45Peter Shamshiri?

  It's, yeah, I, this is, it's just so stupid and fake. Even at face value, it's a problem of their own creation. How do you deal with this world? How do you deal with this? Like, everyone is bullshitting. Everyone in this conservative political ecosystem is a complete lackey. How do you even analyze information in this environment?

• 47:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 47:06Michael Liroff?

  Right. And to that point, I also, you know, I feel like I've, I've made a similar point in a few episodes recently. But now that we live in the era of the unitary executive, I'm going to keep sort of hammering how stupid it is. I don't see the value of members of the executive branch filing multiple affidavits explaining things when according to the conservatives on the court, like, literally, all you would need is an affidavit from Donald Trump being like, there are national security reasons to build.

• 47:37Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 47:37Peter Shamshiri?

  Yeah.

• 47:37Michael Liroff?

  The ballroom.

• 47:38Peter Shamshiri?

  Yeah, who cares what the Secretary of the Army says? He's the commander in chief, right? He's in charge.

• 47:41Michael Liroff?

  Right. He's, he's the guy. And if he says that, then the Secretary of the Army has to operationalize that. According to unitary executive theory, the CIA has to operationalize that. He's in charge and he tells them what to do. And his will is the will of the executive. And everybody in the executive branch executes his will. It's all just the same thing. It's just President Trump talking through these puppets, right? Like, it's like eight different puppets that are all President Trump's words, in essence, according to unitary executive theory. There's no value in hearing from underlings, because the only thing they do is give meaning to the executive's will. So who gives a shit?

• 48:26Michael Liroff?

  It makes no sense, once you turn them into hacks of the president, to then rely on their expertise.

• 48:32Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 48:32Michael Liroff?

  As if it's something independent of the will of the president.

• 48:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, totally. It's a completely hypocritical weaponization of this. Like, here for this case, these are sort of like independent experts and we can value their assertions in these affidavits as sort of independent and also supplemental, supportive of Trump's claim. But, you know, when these cabinet members, agency heads are getting fired, well, that's Trump speaking as the unitary executive.

• 49:00Peter Shamshiri?

  Right.

• 49:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, they're sort of like a limb of Trump's power that Trump can do whatever he wants with.

• 49:07Peter Shamshiri?

  Yeah. And maybe the last thing we say about this is like, the symbolism is almost too on the nose that like, the gilded tackiness of this is so reminiscent of like, the most pathetic strongmen across the globe, right?

• 49:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. Especially like a, a construction project of this magnitude, you know? And you see the pictures and the plans and the gold tinged everything. And, I mean, like, look at Mar-a-Lago. This wing of the White House is being created in that image. And it's just so reminiscent of, yeah, like, this dictator in whatever, the 70s or something, built this huge ass palace in whatever country. It was like a massive drain on the country's wealth. Like, all of this, you know, totally out of arrogance and image and because I

• 50:03Speaker 02

  can, I will. And like, decades later, you look back at them as absurdities, reminders of abuse of power, the garishness, the tackiness, the absurdity of authoritarianism.

• 50:17Peter Shamshiri?

  The performativeness is so obvious.

• 50:19Michael Liroff?

  Yeah.

• 50:19Peter Shamshiri?

  I mean, it's obvious right now, but it's, it's even more obvious as time passes.

• 50:23Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 50:23Peter Shamshiri?

  Like Ashkabat in Turkmenistan, like these capital cities that are just like gilded monstrosities, like soulless nothings. All the Emirates States. This is such a type of guy. And I feel like if you're someone who's ever read a book in your life, you see stuff like that. And you're like, yeah, those guys are just like, performing wealth and power.

• 50:46Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 50:46Peter Shamshiri?

  Because they're insecure about their wealth and power and they don't actually know how to run a country, right? That's just like, the second level of analysis. But the first level is like, oh, sick. I like all that white and gold. That's where Trump is. Trump can't even get to like, the basic level two of just like, and obviously, it's performative.

• 51:05Michael Liroff?

  Right.

• 51:06Speaker 02

  So Producer Ali has teed up a clip for us to listen to of Trump talking about this damn White House project. So Ali, let it rip. Let it roll.

• 51:20Speaker 04

  I built a lot of great things, but there will never be anything like this, Bill. I think you can see the complexity. All of these columns go directly up to the roof. And the roof is a barrier. It's a shield because it's made out of, uh, the side walls are steel, impenetrable steel, and also impenetrable, uh, glass. The glass is approximately four inches thick, uh, and yet it's amazing. You can see through it as though it didn't exist. It's amazing. And it can stop just about anything, just about anything. So all of this was paid for by myself and, because I keep hearing like, I'm not, we are making a gift of this. Well, this is a gift.

• 52:04Speaker 04

  This is not going to be paid for by the taxpayer.

• 52:06Michael Liroff?

  There's a lot there. I, I want to start with the columns go all the way up to the ceiling.

• 52:12Speaker 02

  The columns go all the way up to the roof.

• 52:14Michael Liroff?

  All the way up, dude. Those columns, they're not, they're not half assing it. They don't stop at eye level. They don't, they don't stop there. They go, they go all the way up.

• 52:23Peter Shamshiri?

  They're supporting the, this is, I, I, here's the thing, not to do too much psychoanalysis here, but I think that Trump is so used to non-structural fake columns that the idea that they would go up to the ceiling, that they're like doing supporting work.

• 52:40Speaker 02

  It's impressive.

• 52:41Peter Shamshiri?

  He's like, yeah, these, these, yeah.

• 52:43Speaker 02

  Are you seeing this?

• 52:45Peter Shamshiri?

  If you've ever had any proximity to the real estate industry, this is such a fucking type of guy, like the financier who is looking for investors usually, and he's giving the tour and he's, he's so fucking happy, like, because you get to sell the bullshit vision, right?

• 53:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 53:07Peter Shamshiri?

  In reality, every construction project is a nightmare. Everything, it's, it's full of problems and unforeseen costs and shit like that. But there's one glorious moment where you're giving the tour to investors and you get to talk about the columns and the glass.

• 53:20Speaker 02

  You get to say, impenetrable steel, impenetrable glass.

• 53:24Peter Shamshiri?

  And also impenetrable glass. You don't even need both, but we, we have them anyway.

• 53:28Speaker 02

  And also it's such amazing glass.

• 53:31Michael Liroff?

  You can still see through it.

• 53:32Speaker 02

  You can see through it.

• 53:33Peter Shamshiri?

  Yeah. This is also such perfect Trump in that he pitches corruption as like the obvious answer. Like, of course, like the taxpayers don't even have to pay for this because we've got private investment, dude. Like, can you believe that some people don't think that this is good?

• 53:50Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 53:51Peter Shamshiri?

  That we are reaching our grubby little hands out for private investment from major corporations to build part of the White House? Like, some, some people think taxpayers should have to pay for this. Why should they?

• 54:04Michael Liroff?

  I'm saving you money.

• 54:06Speaker 02

  Yes, you should be thanking me. It's a gift.

• 54:08Peter Shamshiri?

  It's so good. He, like, to hit, he's like, this is efficiency. Corruption is efficiency, right?

• 54:15Speaker 02

  Exactly, exactly.

• 54:16Peter Shamshiri?

  This is something that conservatives believe. We've talked about this in like corruption cases, but like, that is very conservative. Like, you can see that there is like a real appeal to that line of thinking where people are like, yeah, the taxpayer is saving money because Meta is paying for the reinforced steel.

• 54:33Michael Liroff?

  I do like the idea of like White House tours now being like, and now, welcome to the East Wing sponsored by Meta, you know?

• 54:40Peter Shamshiri?

  Yeah.

• 54:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, totally.

• 54:42Peter Shamshiri?

  Dude, put on your Meta glasses and it's start to, time to begin your tour, right?

• 54:46Speaker 02

  Thousand percent.

• 54:47Michael Liroff?

  Exactly.

• 54:48Peter Shamshiri?

  Mark, you listening? I know you are. Mark has an AI agent listening to every podcast on earth for, and, and trawling for ideas. And there you go. There you go, Zuck. You're welcome. No fee needed. We do it for you. Oh God, dude, the ballroom.

• 55:06Speaker 02

  Fuck the fucking ballroom.

• 55:07Peter Shamshiri?

  All right, folks. Next week, talking to friend of the pod, Josie Duffy Rice, about her new podcast, The Backfire Effect. Follow us on social media, at 54Pod, subscribe to our Patreon, patreon.com/54pod, all spelled out for access to premium and ad-free episodes, special events, our Slack, all sorts of shit. We'll see you next week.

• 55:32Michael Liroff?

  Bye, everybody.

• 55:33Speaker 02

  Bye, y'all.

• 55:34Michael Liroff?

  Five to Four is presented by Prologue Projects. This episode was produced by Alison Rogers. Leon Nafok provides editorial support. Our website was designed by Peter Murphy. Our artwork is by Teddy Blanks at Chips NY, and our theme song is by Spatial Relations.