Ben Wittes

speaker

379 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Jul 2026 last heard 9 Jul

Ben Wittes’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 1.

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The Bulwark Daily · Ben Wittes: Talk About America in Decline · 9 Jul 2026 podcast

Right.

Which is the dog pissing and licking his balls because I can.

Yeah.

So the question this case raises is, is that legit?

If Congress can't make a for-cause protection for Commissioner Slaughter, can it still make one for Maureen Comey?

Now, there is a philosophical and constitutional answer to that question, which lives in the nature of the Appointments Clause and the inferior versus principal officer distinction.

fact that the court didn't say that worries me.

So I think we are going to see the question of how far down the civil service chain.

So all of that stuff is in litigation.

And the question of

Do they have to go to the Merit Systems Protection Board first?

And can the merit, you know, like there's a lot of procedural nonsense that we're going to have to work through.

So I think we're going to find out eventually that a huge amount of this firing was illegal.

That's what I think we're going to find out eventually.

But I believe that for only one reason, which is that I think I think I know how

the Chief Justice and Amy Coney Barrett will think about that case, and maybe Brett Kavanaugh too.

But I don't know that I'm right, right?

And, you know, I have long since developed the humility to know that my instincts about where conservative justices are going to end up is not perfect.

Yeah.

Yes, because I think it would have been so easy for John Roberts, in that opinion, to include the sentence.

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