good evening from los angeles, i'm tavis smiley. in light of the litany of executive orders that donald trump signed last week and all the attendant pushback and protests, it's hard to know exactly where to start tonight. we'll try to unpack the long-term cost to the soul and safety of our national with the head of maldef thomas saenz, maldef president thomas saenz coming up in a moment. ♪

and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. ♪ whatever you think of president trump, he is doing exactly what he said he would do. many think his actions are at best xenophobixenophobic, at wo unconstitutional. thomas saenz is head of one of the leading civil rights organizations. i'm pleased to have him back on this program. how are you today? >> under the circumstances, i'm doing okay, buddy. it's been a busy week. >> it has. what do you make of all the protests, all the signs, all

chants in places across the country, indeed around the world? what do you make of what you saw? >> i think it apes strong indication that there is -- it's a strong indication that there is no mandate for the actions donald trump has taken so far. i hope that it will cause him and his legal advisers to slow down a bit. there are serious constitutional problems about what he's done and what he intends to do. i think we're going to see more protest unless there's a more considerate approach to all of these issues. >> i take your point that there may not be a mandate. his press secretary sean spicer echoed others in the trump administration that the president is doing what he said he was going do. all vote for him, and he's doing exactly what he said he was going do. what's wong with the politician doing what he or she said they would do when elected? >> what he was saying was so dangerous to the safety of our nation, so dangerous to the progress of our nation, and so untrue to our constitutional principles, that's the problem. one would hope that after a

candidate campaigns, once they're in office and have access to additional information and advice, they would recalibrate their approach to issues to better reflect the best interests of the country. >> what's your sense of whether or not there are americans tonight watching this program and others who are this early on already having buyer's remote. they thought donald trump would be better than hillary but didn't expect this. >> i think have to think there's a great deal of buyer's remorse already because he's not considered the implications for our nation, considering the implications of information he has access to. moving forward without much thought to the law as well as the impact on people. >> thomas, you do this work every day. clearly there's an issue with the way immigrants are being vetted. we're talking about from which countries these persons are being mall treated. and the countries not on the list.

interestingly as you know, the countries have that have caused the most damage are not not on the list. that's another conversation. what your sense of when the immigrants being vetoed, whether or not it will hold up constitutionally given that courts have been a state on the executive actions? >> i think the administration has reacted to the court numbers an unproductive fashion. the truth is there's reason behind several federal court orders. that is that the executive order doesn't seem to have a lot of connection, as you've suggested, to what are the best interests of the country. putting in place a moratorium as quickly as this without any basis for the countries on the list, indeed any basis in what we should be vetting folks for rather than simply where they are from. that is too close an approximation to a muslim ban or a ban based on race or national origin. that's going to end up with long-term problems in court. we should be making decisions based on national security, our

interests in foreign affairs. obviously this has a negative effect in that regard, not based on pledges in a campaign or based on religious or racial discrimination. >> you used the term muslim ban. the president has pushed by on that vociferously. mr. spicer pushed back in a briefing saying it is not a muslim ban. they say it's not. you say it is. what is it? >> if it looks like a muslim ban, if it is implemented like a muslim ban -- >> if muslims are being -- >> it's a muslim ban. we know already that mr. spicer has a rich history of creating alternative facts. and i think this may fall in that category. it seems the only think behind the sinking of this executive order was an interest in a muslim ban. >> there are at least two ways to read this in terms of how republicans have responded to this president. this is going to be the most fascinating part for me over the next four years, to see the box he puts them in on any number of issues and how they navigate the relationship. we know what we think of

president trump. we know at that left and progressives think. yours is a nonpartisan organization. i'm curious to see how republicans handle this. on this issue, this muslim ban that ain't a muslim ban, there are two ways to read this. you have people like lindsey graham, john mccain, and others who have pushed back on this aggressively. this is not who we are. this is not the way this ought to be done, et cetera. others have been silent. and others who have take ten the middle ground, taken the middle road, whatever that is. paul ryan, not nearly as strong in his language as was mccain or lindsey graham. what's your sense of how republicans are going to navigate this particular wish this president? >> i think this is a precursor for what they're going to face time and time again with this president. when i think about it, this is going to be an exhausting four years for republican leadership in the house and senate. they are going to be in the exact situation you've described. some are going to i think correctly say we don't want to be described this way, the way this policy depicts us. others are going to tow a more

traditional, supportive line just because donald trump has the same party affiliation as they do. and there are others who are going to struggle. it's going to happen help just on this issue but every time the president puts forth a proposal or order or implements a policy that will is in contention with principles, particularly those of nondiscrimination, that our country strongly supports. >> i asked this of a guest about a week ago on this program. and before all this stuff kicked in. the question i asked then which i want to ask again now although i think i have my answer, is whether or not this is going to be the most litigious presidency we've seen. that is to say that there will be more lawsuits filed every day for something that he does. what's your read already of how litigious the next four years will be? >> there's no question. there's going to be a lot of court action where the defendant will be the united states of america and the trump administration. it's clear that he is going to aggressively embark on policies that folks with better legal advice would say you should

opinion be pursuing. it's going to land in court for that. it a lot of public policymaking may be made by judges and in courts because we have a president who recklessly pursue the policies that have constitutional problems written on phlegm top to bottom. >> and to that end, we are told that tomorrow at 8:00 eastern time, the president will make his announcement of who his supreme court nominee will be to fill the seat left vacant by the death of antonin scalia. everybody's speculating. we know what the short list looks like. to your point about stuff to be headed by the courts, how happy can we be on what the nominee is going to portend? >> we can't be happy about the fact that this nomination should have acted on close to a year ago. justice scalia passed away last february. and president obama within his authority put forward a nominee that -- >> and duty. not just authority, duty. obligation. >> absolutely. and the obligation on the senate was to give advice and consent to that nominee. they just derogated that

completely and held off and held off in order to hand an appointment to donald trump. one would hope that having effectively stolen the seat the way the leadership of the senate did, they would look for someone who would be more moderate. but it doesn't appear that that's what we're going get. that's going to be troubling in a number of ways, especially if this is not a justice who grows on the court. we've had justices, it as you know, who started out from a particular ideological perspective. but with the additional input of the next come before them have changed over time. we've had others who have not changed. we've got some there now who haven't changed at all. we've got to be looking for a justice who is more moderate and more responsive to what's going on around them. we are looking at a just who's probably going to -- a justice who's probably going to sit for decades and have to learn from the court. >> before i go forward, thomas, there are any number of nominations starting with jeff sessions for attorney general,

we had senator cory booker on this program a week or so ago who broke all sort of ranks and decorum by testifying against a fellow, a u.s. senator. there's pushback against jeff sessions as a. g. there are concerns about the education secretary nominee. ben carson knows now about housing, most people believe. you watched the hearings, you get scared about this guy being the hud secretary, although i respect his brilliance as a brain surgeon. i'm not sure that's the right position to for, but i digress. you have cabinet fights, the muslim ban that ain't a muslim ban that to push back on. you got a nominee that's about to be announced in a matter of hours that there's going to be a fight about. i wonder how long or whether or not you think at some point democrats, the left, progressives, people of good conscience, are going to -- are going to experience resistance fatigue.

there's so much to resist, you get fatigue. and rather than resistance it turns into acquiescence. >> i think we've got to guard edens it. we've got to keep the energy up and realize we cannot compromise on basic principles no matter how many times they may be challenged. the danger is we come to accept things that four, 10 years ago, 25 years ago would have been completely unacceptable in political discourse in this country. we cannot allow our discourse to be diminished in that way. i'll tell you, one of the things i don't think is getting enough attention, it you alluded to it. we've got a cabinet that apparently has a latino ban. the first time since ronald reagan in the 1980s that there has not been a latino in the u.s. cabinet. it comings at a time when loontsd -- it comes at a time when latinos are the margest minority group in the country and have been so for a decade. that is a tremendous step backwards and one that hasn't gotten enough attention. i can't imagine another president who would have been given a pass for not having the largest minority group represented in his cabinet appointments. now it's on the senate.

any senator who votes to confirm every one of his nominees is effectively saying that that senator thinks it's okay and appropriate to have a cabinet at that does not have a latino or latina in it at all. >> clearly the largest slice of latino voters in this country voted for hillary clinton. there were -- i don't need to call their names, you know them personally. i know them through my work here -- prominent republicans of latino origin who did, in fact, support donald trump. what do they say? in a moment where there's not a single latino nominated, what do those persons have to say? how do they defend this? >> i've got to tell you, i don't know. i haven't talked to them. i think they volleyball to be disappointed. >> buyer's remorse? >> buyer's remorse. they have to believe that part of the reason they chose to support him which was to ensure that latino voices were heard and could maybe moderate the more extreme latino rhetoric. they've got to be discouraged by that development. out the gate, his first set of steps to "make america great

again" involved not having latinos in the cabinet. that's not my definition of great. >> yeah. so symbolism is one thing. and that's in part what you get with a cabinet secretary is symbolism. symbolism does matter. i believe substance matters more. he's fallen short of the symbolism of putting a latino in the cabinet. to the substance, the sanctuary cities, he's also falling short. for those who don't know what a sanctuary city is, explain that, and we'll go a step further and talk about his pushback against sanctuary cities. >> i think sanctuary city is a misnomer. it means cities that have taken steps to ensure that local law enforcement is distinct and separate from immigration enforcement. they do that for good reasons. the police need the cooperation of everyone in the community, regardless of their immigration status. and it doesn't do them any good to have a huge cohort of the community afraid to interact with police, when they're victims or witnesses of crime. don't want to come forward because there's too close a connection between local law enforcement and immigration

enforcement. so having that clear line of no cooperation is what appears to define the sanctuary cities that trump and others are interested in going after. to me that makes no sense. it undercuts public safety in those cities where they depend on cooperation from the immigrant community. >> there are a number of big city mayors including the city we're in, the city i sit in every night, it los angeles, eric garcetti, and others. mayors who said clearly they're not going to be cowtowed, not going to be buffaloed by the trump administration on this matter. they're not going to have their police departments running around trying to round up undocumented workers. undocumented immigrants. there's already some pushback on that from these leaders of these municipalities. yet the trump administration's response essentially has been that we'll cut your money off. the money that you get for the federal government, we cut it off. where is this fight headed? >> that is an impotent threat in his executive order. donald trump cannot on his own decide to cut off money to cities based on their having

policies to separate local law enforcement from immigration enforcement. that requires congress. and it is -- going to be one of those areas like the one you describe would earlier where i think there's going to be distance between trump and leaders of his own party in the house and senate. and it's not clear how that's going to come out. i understand that there have already been moves, as you know, in congress to try to target some of these cities. when folks sit back and look at what the facts indicate and the facts, it as i've described them, accurate, that is local law enforcement needs cooperation. and it doesn't help anybody to undercut that cooperation. i think he's going to have a tougher road to get congress to approve cutting off money in those circumstances -- >> let me play devil's advocate. the states have a majority of republican governors, but big cities tend to be for most part as you know, run by democratic mayors. why does donald trump care? why does he care what eric garcetti thinks in l.a.? why does he care what the mayor of boston thinks? >> he should care, and i think

the other leaders in the house and senate -- >> why should they care? they're republicans. why should they care? >> there's a lot of folks in those cities and folks go into the cities who tonigdon't live . when they go in and realize lack of commitment from the community is going to affect public safety -- it's going to impact everybody. when there's not cooperation with the cops, it means that citizens, visitors who are citizens, all kinds of folks are going to have their public safety implicated. that's why i think there will be mushback politically. beyond -- pushback politically. beyond that, there will be constitutional questions about taking money away from cities for adopting policies. localities have the right to adopt their own policies particularly with respect to things like law enforcement. so this is not by any means going to be easy. that executive murder is suggesting there was some real immediate threat to sanctuary cities was an overstatement. >> all right. at the top of the show, there's so much that happened over the last week, it's hard to know where to start, how to navigate

this. we're talking about the sanctuary cities in the u.s. what did you make of the president of mexico pulling the president trump? of course the president jumped in and said we mutually agreed not to meet. that's not what he happened. he pulled the plug, the president of mexico. >> i think that president pena nieto had no choice. there's hot tilt in -- hostility against president trump from the campaign and dramatically reinforced by the executive orders that he planned to issue before meeting with the president of mexico. if that doesn't demonstrate faulty reasoning whether it comes to foreign affairs and foreign policy, i don't know what would your first week in office. >> the president of mexico at the moment happens to be our neighbor. i'm curious as to your take -- what happens long term when he continues to, for lack of better phrase, ruffle the feathers of world leaders and they start

pulling the plug on important meetings, on important collaborations, what is -- what does that land the country when the president has tet-a-tetes with other? leader -- in other leaders? >> a society so connected worldwide, it's a major problem when you precipitate those kind of fights with other countries. more important than the problems with prime ministers, the problems with foreign ministers, the problems with presidents of other countries, it generates opposition in the populus of those countries around the world which will generate hostility toward the american government at least with potential implications for our economy, particularly our ability to successfully market goods made in the united states around the world. >> there are clearly implications for our economy. they're also to my mind, helpth,

irchl cas implications to our safety. i wonder what you about the booring moves by the president is creating a greaters sense of hostility -- around the globe that could contribute to a terrorist attack? >> that is my fear. the steps he's taking to alienate the rest of the world, particularly portions of the world where there are resentments toward the united states, can only exacerbate the problems. i go back to when former president bush had his "bring it on" moment, and it ended up that we were mired down for years and years into the obama administration. it's that kind of hubris, that kind of overstatement, that kind of defiance that creates problems for us around the globe. it is not an appropriate way to run foreign policy in this day and age. >> you mentioned earlier that the president doesn't have a planet to do the stuff he's doinging -- a mandate to do the stuff he's doing, there's no

mandate. trump's argument is he would have had a mandate to the extent he believes heap doesn't, he would have had a mandate had he won the popular vote and electoral college. his argument is that he did not win the popular vote, as you know. there are millions of illegals who cast votes against him. and that's the only reason why he didn't win the popular vote. i'm laughing, but he said it's -- what do you make of of this? >> that's just an alt facts, alt-right fantasy. there's no other way to describe it. there's not a shred of evidence that there's kind of voter fraud going on. to the extent there's any demonstrated voter fraud, we're talking about isolated instances of a few voters. to say nothing of his assumption that the voter fraud only goes one direction. he's never explained how that is the millions of votes only went against him and not in his favor. i'm not clear on how that works that way. it's all -- simply a fantasy designed to intimidate voters, designed to intimidate potential voters from participating in the

future. that's why we've got to push back against it. there's absolutely no basis for taking further steps to suppress participation. there's no basis for saying to certain potential voters that there's some danger for them in exercising their right to vote. so we've got to ensure that the message is the opposite. we've got to have more participation, not just in the 2020, but in 2018 at the midterm elections and in the local election in states like virginia and new jersey. we've got to have folks participating in higher and higher numbers, had not to be intimidated by this alt-fact fantasy that they put forward. >> speaking of alternative facts, when the president's spokesperson is pressed on data, pressed for those facts to back up the insane arguments that they advance, and the press secretary's response is the president believes what the president believes. that's a quote, the president believes what the president believes, how do you fight back?

how do you push back when it's not really about the facts, it's not about the truth, it's about the president believing what the president believes? >> well, you push back by hoping that there are other officeholders in positions of authority in congress, for example. in the states. also hopefully among those he appoints and puts in position of authority that will base their decisions on facts and not ungrounded beliefs. making decisions on ungrounded beliefs is irresponsible. i think we know that. you've got to get the intelligence. you've got to get the facts. you've got to get the science and make your decisions based on the best interests of the country using those facts, science, intelligence, at your disposal. one of the greatest things about our country and being president of the united states is that you do have access to so many important facts, so many sources of intelligence, so many good sources of advice. if you're not acting on those available sources, then you are disserving the country. and we should all recognize that. >> so i want to go back in the

two minutes i have left to an issue we raised earlier. that is this notion of how long before many fellow citizens just are burdened by this resistance fatigue because he's doing so much stuff so fast. one of my beliefs is -- i don't have data to back this up, my own -- tavis believes what tavis believes. and what tafits believes is simple -- tavis believes is simply this -- one of the reasons the president is moving so fast on this is strategically about wearing them down. wear them down. if you keep hitting them every day with tweets and executive orders and keep hitting them, you wear them down. at some point, they get weak, and you win. >> i think that he's going to get worn down. and some of those who are supporting him currently are going to get worn down, as well. i also think he's underestimating the resiliency and strength and the hope in our communities across the country. we saw it in the women's march. we're going to continue to see it manifest. the women's march was 2.5 months

after the election. we'll keep seeing this. i think they're underestimating the american public if they believe there's going to be any letup in defending constitutional principles and values fli countin this country. >> the question is whether or not you think the pushback could be sustained until the midterm elections when you have a chance at the national level at least to send a strong message to the white house. >> i don't think we have a choice. i think we can sustain it. i think we're seeing levels of involvement and engagement that are unprecedented. and that will just continue to ratchet up. it's a long road ahead. you are ready. we can do this. and -- you are right. we can do this. and as a nation we will preserve our constitutional values and principles against any president or worother who threatens them. >> on that note, so much more that talk about in the days, weeks, and months ahead. if this is the pace he's going to operate at, we'll be having these conversations it seems like nightly. tonight we thank the president

and general counsel of maldef, thomas saenz. thanks for watching. good night from los angeles. and as always, keep the faith. ♪ >> for more information on today's show, visit tavis smiley at pbs.org. hi, i'm tavis smiley. join me next time for a mary tyler moore tribute with dick van dyke. that's next time, we'll see you then. ♪

>> and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. ♪ >> be more, pbs. >> be more, pbs.

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