CNN Panelist Warns if Trump Disregards Judge’s Order in Migrant Case, the U.S. Will Become ‘A Totally Lawless State’

CNN anchor Dana Bash spoke to never-Trumpers Sarah Longwell and Jonathan V. Last on Monday about concerns in political discourse that President Donald Trump may start ignoring court orders. The conversation took place in the wake of a judge pausing Trump’s deportations to Central America, but the administration carrying them out regardless — arguing that the flights were already in international waters when the ruling was issued.

Bash introduced her guests, noting that both have long been “highly critical of what they call the Trump administration’s lawlessness.”

“The publisher and editor of the Bulwark, Sarah Longwell and Jonathan V. Last. Thank you both of you for being here. And to our viewers who don’t know, and I’m sure there are none of them who don’t, you are both, I would say never-Trump Republicans. I didn’t even know if that’s still a thing, but let’s just let’s just leave it there,” Bash continued, adding:

Sarah, you will you both have been talking about the lawlessness. And I want Sarah, you to look at, and I’m sure you saw it at the time, Stephen Miller put up the following tweet, which I think was prescient for this week. ‘Under the precedents now being established by radical rogue judges, a district court in Hawaii could enjoin troop movements in Iraq. Judges have no authority to administer the executive branch or nullify the results of a national election. We either have a democracy or we do not.’

How do you think that plays into what we are seeing, just, I mean, on a number of issues, but just the disregarding of judges’ orders, not just on immigration, but on other aspects of what is happening right now?

“Look, I think for a lot of us who were really concerned and alarmed by Trump’s second term, one of the things that we thought may very well happen is that Trump was going to set himself up to deny court orders or just ignore them,” Longwell replied, adding:

And you know, the courts have become, in this moment, one of the last refuges of sort of being able to hold Trump either accountable or stop some of the things he’s doing. He is going so fast to try to dismantle the government or implement his deportation policies that he’s showing a lot of disregard for the law.

And so the judges, whether they’re setting up injunctions or trying to slow him down, temporary restraining orders, like there’s gonna come a point, we always thought, where Trump might just say, ‘I’m gonna start ignoring these court orders.’ And one of the things that he’s doing is trying to pick the most unsympathetic people to do this, right? People that, a lot of people are gonna be like, I don’t care about deporting gang members. These are bad people.

Now… We don’t know exactly. We’re not sure that they’re gang members. We’re just taking their word for it. But they do seem to be hitting the point now where they’re trying to get by on a technicality, but it looks like they’re starting to be at the point where they want to ignore what judges say, which once you get to that point, once you have a president who’s just disregarding what judges say, you’re in a totally lawless state.

“So what you both do so well isn’t just sort of analyzing what Donald Trump is doing, but you talk to voters on a regular basis who were swing voters who voted for Trump eventually in 2024. And Jonathan, you made the argument that many who voted for Trump this past election did so not in spite of authoritarianism or those tendencies, but because of it. Do you still stand by that and do you think that any defiance of the judiciary or Congress will move the needles with those voters?” Bash asked Last.

“Yeah, I mean, I think that at least some large percentage of his voters this past time did it because of the authoritarianism. They heard what he was campaigning on, and they said, yeah, I want to go get me some of that,” Last replied, adding:

What made me really depressed over the last 55 days was the fact that his poll numbers really remained remarkably buoyant, given how he was converting. He was doing all the authoritarian stuff and his polls weren’t dropping. That started to change over the last three weeks or so.

We’ve seen his standing deteriorate. And you know, one of the reasons I think he’s moving so fast to have this showdown with the courts is because when you look just historically at these authoritarian attempts, at the end of the day, they are reliant upon some form of popular support. It becomes much, much easier for a guy who is like net plus seven favorable to defy the court than it is for somebody who’s like net minus 13. And for looking from the other side of it, the courts are gonna feel much more able to assert themselves if the president is unpopular.

So I think the acceleration we’ve seen of him over the last three weeks or so has been precisely because his standing publicly is starting to deteriorate.

Watch the clip above via CNN.