The White House figures in these episodes chiefly as an actor that other people respond to: a report-issuing body, a petition portal, a press operation, a counsel’s office, and a workplace. The excerpts do not describe the building, its staff structure, or its budget; they describe what the institution did in specific disputes over campus sexual assault, phone unlocking, presidential deference, impeachment non-cooperation, and economic policy.
The Council on Women and Girls and campus sexual assault
In a discussion of campus due process, Cathy Young said that just before the State of the Union the White House Council on Women and Girls released a new report on sexual assault and government policy, recommending a new task force that would get roughly 60 days to produce further recommendations on handling sexual assault on campus. She described the report as tending heavily toward a presumption of guilt and as relying on phony statistics Aren’t Men Entitled to Due Process on Campus? (2014).
Young gave one example in detail. The report, she said, cites a study showing that only 2 to 8% of accusations of rape are false. She argued that even if true, 2 to 8% is not a trivial figure and does not justify assuming a charge is true. She then described the underlying study: it looked at something like ten years’ worth of rape or sexual assault charges at a large university, and concluded that something like 6% of charges were definitively shown to be false, something like 35% were found true and prosecuted, leaving over 50% where investigators could not determine whether the charge was true or not. On her account, the White House’s implicit assumption was that all the rest were actual charges — that in every case where a charge cannot be definitively proven false, it is presumed true. She called this a presumption of guilt that turns around the burden of proof, so that instead of proving a charge true, one must prove it false.
Bob Zadek framed the same material in constitutional terms, saying that protections cherished in the criminal justice system — the right to confront your accuser, trial by jury of peers in a criminal case, the presumption of innocence, the high burden the state bears — were being torn up and thrown away in the special case of a young man and a young woman who disagree about a night when both parties had emotional involvement and there may have been alcohol involved. He said nothing he and Young had said diminished the significance and ugly nature of sexual assault, and that the show’s message was about process. Young added a concern about bleed-over: if students view sexual assault this way in college, how will they think about it if they end up on a criminal jury in the real world.
The petition process and the unlocking ban
Derek Khanna described a White House petition he created with entrepreneur Sina Khanifar, whose company had offered unlocking for consumers and had been shut down. Khanna said the petition process is sponsored by the White House, that anybody can create a petition, and that the White House had just raised the threshold to 100,000 signatures — which had to be gathered on a White House website, with email addresses, within a month Derek Khanna - What’s Stifling Innovation? (2014). He said no one had ever hit the new requirement to get a response from the White House.
Zadek noted that Obama had famously promised that petitions submitted to the White House with a certain number of signatures would be read and acted upon, that the White House got so many petitions it could not do so, and that it raised the bar to 100,000. He said Khanna nonetheless accumulated well above 100,000 signatures in a short period. Khanna said the campaign got 114,000 signatures, and that he received a phone call from the White House the day of, telling him a statement would be released within ten minutes and that the White House agreed with the petition and would go further. He described that as the start of a cascade: the White House giving credibility to the issue and saying it would support legislation, the Federal Communications Commission initiating an investigation and eventually forcing the phone companies to allow consumers to unlock, and the Librarian of Congress being forced to issue his own statement. He said Congressman Jason Chaffetz tweeted him immediately after the President and said he would introduce legislation.
Earlier in the same conversation, Khanna said the Librarian of Congress decided in 2012 to ban phone unlocking in the United States, making it in practice a felony punishable by five years in prison for a consumer to unlock their own device, and that the big phone companies had lobbied the Librarian. Zadek characterized the episode as crony capitalism in which Big Cell obtained protection from consumers changing carriers on phones they own. Khanna said AT&T and Verizon are each top ten lobbying companies in Washington, D.C., and that on his side no tech company and no phone company lobbied, there was no money and no organization behind the effort, just people rising up.
Deference, the press corps, and the “imperial” presidency
Frank H. Buckley, discussing his book on crown government in America, said that a president should not be questioned — that this is treated as rude — and cited a press conference a couple of years back at which the Daily Caller sent someone who was pretty rude in questioning Obama about immigration issues and just called out questions Has America Become an “Elective Monarchy”? (2014). Buckley said Obama became visibly angry, and that afterwards it was the White House press corps who dumped on the reporter for his impertinence and want of deference to the head of state. He contrasted this with the Queen in Britain, who is not treated that way, and with prime ministers who must stand and take questions on every issue of the day from an opposition bench trying to embarrass them — producing someone better on his feet, wittier, more in command, rather than the thin-skinned, imperious person who can rise to the top of American politics. He said the current occupant could be so described.
Zadek, for his part, said he looked with envy at the British and Canadian system where the prime minister goes into the well of parliament and is confronted by yelling, angry commoners asking pointed questions, and compared that with a presidential press conference where there is protocol and respect and answers are given or questions supplied in advance. He also complained that Presidents’ Day celebrates presidents as such, when the only significance of a president is having been for a point in time the best politician — the best of a profession Americans otherwise despise. He invoked Thomas Jefferson walking around the White House in pajamas and slippers, opening the front door and letting in visitors.
Executive privilege and the impeachment inquiry
Gene Healy said the most public document about non-cooperation with the impeachment inquiry was the letter from the White House Counsel, and that if it mentions executive privilege, it is not a real claim of privilege Which Impeachment Movie Are You Watching? (2019). The bulk of the letter, he said, is that the process is unfair, that they wanted to impeach from day one, and that therefore the White House would not cooperate — which is not a claim of privilege. He contrasted this with Nixon, who at least made up the idea that the Watergate tapes contained confidential communications and possibly national security information and made formal claims of executive privilege. Healy said that unless one of the subpoenaed officials has made such a claim formally in court, the main argument being made is dislike of the proceedings, which is not a claim of privilege.
Zadek put the question from the other side, asking what is wrong with the president saying he is merely asserting his rights or prerogatives as chief executive and inviting a court to rule, noting that there is profound disagreement even among law professors about the significance of this. He observed that it is not obstruction until a court — the third branch — says do it and the president then does not.
Inside the Trump White House
Casey Mulligan, identified as a University of Chicago professor who served as Chief Economist at the White House Council of Economic Advisers for a full year between 2018 and 2019, joined the show to discuss his book You’re Hired, described in the episode as detailing his time at the Council and providing a first-hand account of President Trump’s unconventional governing style, the strategic use of Twitter to bypass traditional media, and the administration’s approach to policy-making through experimentation and empirical analysis You’re Hired! Chief Economic Adviser to Trump on What It’s Really Like to Work in the White House (2020).
Zadek introduced the segment by saying the guest would give an inside, first-hand look at the operation of one of the more unusual White Houses in American history — unusual, he said, not as a judgmental comment but as a matter of fact, given that someone in the White House had never once before held elected office. He said listeners would get first-hand views of larger-than-life figures who had been on the news almost every night, naming besides the President: Peter Navarro, John Bolton, Bernie Sanders and Jeb Bush. He described Mulligan as having served for a full year between 2018 and 2019 and as having published a book called You’re Hired: Untold Successes and Failures of a Populist President, President Donald Trump. Mulligan said he wished everyone could meet the President and that it was his pleasure to explain what it is like.
Across episodes
The excerpts do not show a single question being argued across these episodes so much as a recurring posture: the White House as the institution whose acts others must respond to. In the 2014 campus episode the Council on Women and Girls issues a report and a task force is contemplated; in the 2014 innovation episode the White House petition portal is the mechanism a grassroots campaign uses to force a reversal; in the 2014 monarchy episode the White House press corps polices deference to the President; in the 2019 impeachment episode the White House Counsel’s letter is the object of dispute; and in the 2020 episode the White House is a workplace described from the inside by a departing economist. The later treatment is not a development of the earlier one; the episodes are separate conversations that happen to share an institution as their subject.
What the sources do not cover
The excerpts do not describe the White House’s physical premises, its organizational chart, its budget, its legal authorities, or the offices and agencies housed within it, beyond the Council on Women and Girls, the Council of Economic Advisers, the White House Counsel and the White House press corps being named in passing. They do not state when the institution was founded, what city it is in, or which article or amendment of the Constitution establishes it. Several excerpts break off mid-sentence or mid-exchange — the campus episode cuts to a new segment on school vouchers, the monarchy episode cuts to a break, the impeachment episode cuts to a new segment on the Ukraine phone call, and the Mulligan episode cuts at the start of a section on joining the administration — and nothing beyond those points is reported here.