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Lawfare Daily: Claire Meynial on ‘La Guerre des Amériques’

Roger Parloff, Claire Meynial, Jen Patja
Monday, December 2, 2024, 8:00 AM
Discussing a French perspective on American politics

Published by The Lawfare Institute
in Cooperation With
Brookings

Lawfare Senior Editor Roger Parloff speaks with Claire Meynial, U.S. correspondent for the French news weekly Le Point, about her recent book, “La Guerre des Amériques,” or “The War of the Americas.” Meynial discusses how she came to write her book about the political divisions in America, based on hundreds of interviews across the country over the past three years. They discuss the results of the 2024 election, Jan. 6, Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio, Jan. 6 defendant Guy Reffitt and his family, the New York criminal cases against Trump, and how the French public responded to all these events.

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Click the button below to view a transcript of this podcast. Please note that the transcript was auto-generated and may contain errors.

 

Transcript

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[Intro]

Claire Meynial: Now, for example, the terrorism enhancement, or even for that matter, the seditious conspiracy, the fact that, as I mentioned at some point, they're like, yeah, you need to understand that we're not going to find any moment when they all gathered around the table and drafted a plan to get inside, but it's a meeting of minds.

Roger Parloff: It's the Lawfare Podcast. I'm Roger Parloff, senior editor at Lawfare, and I'm with Claire Meynial, U.S. correspondent for the French news weekly magazine Le Point, and author of the recent book, “La Guerre des Amériques,” The War of the Americas.

Claire Meynial: The banner, Appeal to Heaven, for example, which is very clearly Christian nationalist, it was on my pictures of January 6th, and of course at the time I didn't know what it meant. But then reviewing it, and so now, I have a more cohesive view of it as being an organized movement that I didn't have initially.

Roger Parloff: Today we're talking about Claire's book, how it came to pass, her coverage of January 6th, the Proud Boys, the Trump trials, and the French reaction to it all.

[Main Podcast]

So, Claire, the book is called The War of the Americas, “La Guerre des Amériques.” So, tell us what it's about and how you came to write it.

Claire Meynial: So, I think I came to write it because the French have a skewed or, let's say, partial vision of the U.S. You know, they probably know the U. S. through Hollywood and TV shows. So, I guess a lot of people find it completely credible that five twenty-something would live in a flat in Manhattan working at the GAP and being a masseuse, like Friends would, you know, they have no clue that it's a little bit more complicated than that.

And when they travel, and they do travel a lot because, as you know, they have a lot of vacation, they usually buy packages that will take them to New York for a week or maybe to San Francisco or a tour on the West coast, including San Francisco and LA and the parks, like going to Grand Canyon or-. But they have no clue about the rest of the country.

And I used to get questions about, honestly, how can people vote for Trump? Who are they? And I kind of thought, ahead of the election, they're going to be surprised, I'm not saying he's going to win, but they're going to be surprised that the campaign goes that way. And this is just trying to give them tools to understand that other America that people don't know in France.

Roger Parloff: Yeah, well, it sounds like the French people have the same skewed view that Democrats have.

Claire Meynial: Well, you know, I mean, that's always the questions I get when I cover a Trump rally or talk to people from that side of the aisle is that they think we're all communists, right? Which is not true, but certainly, but being right wing in the U.S. and in France is not exactly the same.

Roger Parloff: So the book covers quite a bit, really. And correct me if I'm wrong, but it begins late 2020 and comes up to about August or September of this year?

Claire Meynial: Yes, exactly.

Roger Parloff: So it leaves off where Kamala Harris has become the candidate.

Claire Meynial: Yes.

Roger Parloff: And it covers gender wars and critical race theory and transgender and abortion and a lot of stuff that's outside of Lawfare's bailiwick. But a lot of stuff that is in Lawfare's bailiwick, including January 6th and the Proud Boys and Enrique Tarrio and the New York trial and so on. But before I get into that, I do want to ask since you crisscrossed the country writing this for three years, were you surprised by the outcome of the election?

Claire Meynial: I was not. I was really not. I—but to be fair, if she had won, I would have been like, oh, okay. I mean, it was going to be a close election anyway. But because of those four years crisscrossing the country, as you say, and especially because there is all that is not included in the book.

I spent the weeks from the end of August until November 5th in the swing states and it became pretty clear it was going to be very difficult. I spent some time with the Arabs and Muslims in Dearborn and Hamtramck, you know, the Yemeni mayor of Hamtramck endorsed Trump and they were really, really decided to make her lose. Like they didn't care who won the election, but they really wanted her to lose. And they were very organized and very like, you know, I interviewed a man who told me he'd lost eight relatives in three days in a bombing in Beirut. And so I was like, okay, Michigan's going to be difficult.

And then I went canvassing with a culinary union in Las Vegas. And there was a woman who told us, you know, I've been voting Democrat my whole entire life and now I'm switching red. And canvassing was really, I had already done that in 2022 before the midterms with them, and it felt really different.

Pennsylvania, I talked to a lot of people who were very worried about the fracking issue. And so, and then Arizona, the fact that they had 13 ballot initiatives meant that some people were telling me I'm voting for Trump and the economy, but I'm also voting in favor of the proposition that would enshrine abortion in the constitution. So I think, somehow, that kind of actually helped Trump.

Roger Parloff: It diffused that issue.

Claire Meynial: Yeah. I was like, okay, so she's not winning Michigan. Pennsylvania seems difficult. She's not winning Nevada. Arizona seems really difficult too, so. And then you started hearing all those experts saying because of the numbers the likeliest is that one of the candidates will win the seven swing states. And so I was like, well, that's probably not her then.

Roger Parloff: Yeah. Yeah. And actually, before I get to the more Lawfare-y questions, you did also, in the, and I should be, I haven't read the whole book. I read slowly and I read French very slowly, so I've skipped around, but you do talk about how a lot of Latinos seem quite alienated from the Democratic Party. Could you discuss what you were finding there?

Claire Meynial: So I used to cover Latin America a lot and I covered what we call the Bolivarian countries. So, after Simón Bolivar, which Hugo Chavez used to invoke for his new constitution, et cetera. So those are the very, the left wing countries, Venezuela, Bolivia, Cuba, et cetera.

And so the people who came out of those countries and who usually go to Florida, for example, those ones, it's going to take them generations to ever vote for the left again, even though, of course, you know, the Democrats have nothing to do with Chavismo. It's completely different, but that's the way they perceive it.

On the other hand, people who came from Guatemala or from Mexico, where they, or, you know, where they've had a difficult experience with right-wing regime, you're going to have a different reaction, but for sure people-. And, you know, also the values of a lot of Latino families, at least first generation, it's education, religion, and work. And so, it's not really far from Republican values. They're just more conservative than some Democrats sometimes understand. And you've seen the results in the Rio Grande Valley this time in 2024.

Roger Parloff: Yeah. Have you had any reactions to your book yet in, from France or is it too early, would you say?

Claire Meynial: Yeah, and people are surprised, of course, they tell me what I was telling you at the beginning. It's an America they didn't know existed.

Roger Parloff: Yeah. So, tell us about where you were on January 6th?

Claire Meynial: Well, you know the building now. I was by the, under the West Terrace. I must have been, except I arrived a bit late because I listened to the whole, you know, speech at the Ellipse, so time to walk there. I was probably just under where Guy Reffitt trekked on those stairs. Just by the wall where they were all trying to climb to get on the terrace.

Roger Parloff: The West Stairs.

Claire Meynial: The West Stairs.

Roger Parloff: Did you see him?

Claire Meynial: No, I did not. No, no, I did not. But then, learning about the whole case, watching the videos. There is actually, have you seen, there is a video where he is with Jacob Chansley?

Roger Parloff: We should explain who Guy Reffitt is for, he's actually, he's going to be resentenced next week, actually, or actually on December 6th, they'll resentence him. He is, he was the first January 6th defendant tried, and he was unusual in some ways, but typical in others, and he went up the West Terrace. He led the crowd. He had a gun. It was holstered, a .40 caliber Smith & Wesson. That was unusual, at least so far as we know. And he had body armor plates which helped him get that far. And he had some more things. Oh, he had zip ties.  

Claire Meynial: And I think he had an AR in the car, that he left in the car, so. 

Roger Parloff:Yes, he and his buddy who drove each had an AR-15 and the buddy had another handgun, a .45 in the car.

But anyway, he was sentenced to 87 months and you spent some time with him, which we can talk about. How long did you stay at the January 6th?

Claire Meynial: So, I think a few hours? Thing is, by the time I got there, the stairs were already full. I would have really climbed up the stairs if I could have, but then it was full of people. And I absolutely did not consider the option of climbing on that wall, thinking it would be absolutely illegal.

And also, I do a lot of climbing in the mountains, I'm a mountain girl, And I saw people falling, it was like, no, this is absolutely dangerous. This is not a good idea. So, yeah, I stayed at least a couple of hours, and it was interesting, but I don't think at that time I realized the scope of it.

Roger Parloff: Yeah. Now, I guess since we mentioned Guy Reffitt, you got to know his family. Tell us a little bit about that because, that's, he's sort of become fairly famous among the January 6th defendants because of his unusual family situation.

Claire Meynial: Yes. So, well, that's actually where I met you, at the D.C. District Courthouse.

His wife, Nicole, who's a very polite and smiling and nice lady, has been coming to, obviously, his hearings. But she's coming for a lot of January 6th cases now at the courthouse. She befriends the families of the other people who are accused of entering the Capitol.

The daughters have testified, and the son too. And of course the son is a major character in the story because he's the one who told the FBI that his dad went to the Capitol on that day. So, yes their family situation I thought was an extreme example of how Trump and Trumpism had divided the country, and in some cases families in the country.

Roger Parloff: Yeah. The two daughters are pretty supportive, are very supportive of him. The politics of one is a little more complicated and the wife is, of course, as you say, very supportive. And the son, as you say, turned him in. In fact, tried to turn him in before January 6th, because he was so alarmed at his rhetoric.

Claire Meynial: On Christmas Eve.

Roger Parloff: Yes, yeah. Now she leads a group, help coleads a group called Freedom Corner. Can you tell people what that is?

Claire Meynial: So, yes, they hold a vigil by the D.C. jail, which some call the D.C. gulag, where people who are January 6ers, as they call them, call from the inside of the jail, they call them. So what they will do is put the phone by a loudspeaker and you can hear them talk. And they've been doing this every day since Guy Reffitt was sentenced. So that, that it's been,

Roger Parloff: Since 2022.

Claire Meynial: Since 2022. Rain, snow, sunshine: they do it absolutely every day. And they sort of see themselves as the resistance against political imprisonment.

Roger Parloff: Yeah. Hostages, political prisoners. And Trump has visited in some fashion?

Claire Meynial: He has not visited, but he called some of them. And, of course, now they're all expecting pardons for their relatives. It's not completely clear what's going to happen. We don't really know, but yeah, he made that promise.

Roger Parloff: And did he, did any of them speak to Trump directly or indirectly?

Claire Meynial: Yes. Yes. I think so. I think Nicole, he called Nicole, yes.

Roger Parloff: And she expects, she's optimistic of her pardon.

Claire Meynial: I mean, I don't know if you've ever talked to Nicole. She really knows the cases really well. She knows the law now. And what she told me is she tries to not be too optimistic, but obviously she, yeah, she's hopeful.

Roger Parloff: You also spoke to Danny Hodges, who's the Metropolitan Police Department guy that we've all seen trapped in the door in the Lower West Terrace.

I think there's a lot of, I mean, these people you're talking, some of the people you're talking about before at Freedom Corner would like to see some retribution and would like to go after some of these police officers who were victims and have said so and have testified. Did he express any concern about that or was it too early?

Claire Meynial: Not really, because at the time, yeah, I think I spoke to him even before the Supreme Court decision on 1512(c)(2), on the obstruction to legal proceedings.

Roger Parloff: Corrupt obstruction, yeah.

Claire Meynial: And no I don't think he was worried at the time. He, those people are still very scarred, very hurt and so, I can imagine that the election was very upsetting.

Roger Parloff: Scarred mentally, emotionally, or also physically?

Claire Meynial: Yes, yes, both. I mean, yeah. The, after the Supreme Court decision, for example, Aquilino Gonell, who was another officer who was hurt badly that day, was in front of the Supreme Court. He was really upset.

Roger Parloff: Aquilino Gonell.

Claire Meynial: Yeah.

Roger Parloff: Yeah. Let's go back, you were also, even before January 6th, you were following the Proud Boys. So, you met, you spent some time with Enrique Tarrio, and he eventually got 22 years for his role in the riot. He wasn't present in Washington on January 6th, but as the, sort of, head of the Proud Boys and an organizer. Let me ask, did that seem like the right sentence to you?

Claire Meynial: I don't know. Did it to you? I mean, the way I tell it, I completely understand how difficult it is for a country and a justice system to send the right message that you can't do this, that it's wrong to, you know, interrupt a legal proceeding, to enter an official building, et cetera.

Now, for example, the terrorism enhancement, or even for that matter, the seditious conspiracy, the fact that, as I mentioned at some point, they were like, yeah, you need to understand that we're not going to find any moments when they all gathered around a table and drafted a plan to get inside, but it's a meeting of minds. And it seemed pretty novel. But I understand that's the way a country has to try to come to terms with a painful and completely unheard of event in its history.

Roger Parloff: I think what you're referring to is the fact that there was no proof they had a specific plan for that day. There was, you know, about, we're gonna meet at the Peace Circle at 12:53. It was more, the proof was there was an overarching goal to stop the election.

Claire Meynial: And there was a mindset, and there was a mindset. We've seen months of messages that prove a mindset.

Roger Parloff: And a willingness to use force to achieve that goal. And what about him as a person? What was he like as a person?

Claire Meynial: So, I think that's, that was very interesting about him. He's a very complex character. I still don't really know why his lawyers didn't put him on the stand during the trial. You know, he, remember he didn't talk.

He is, and I don't know if you had read his testimony with the January 6th committee, going out of those hours of talking with them, he was certain he had charmed them. Because he sometimes has this power over people.

He's somebody who can be friendly, funny, polite. And it was really interesting to see the difference between this and his persona on Telegram because I was always reading what he was posting at the same time, which was a completely different person. Advocating, you know, violence, for example. So I think his past, his history as, you know, being a young Cuban in Little Havana in Miami has a lot to do with who he is, who he became.

I also think it's interesting that he's not a veteran, as opposed to a lot of people in the Proud Boys, and I think his quote unquote charisma made up for this. He didn't have this kind of legitimacy of being a veteran, of having fought in combat or being in combat zones. But he, he's a smooth talker and I guess that's also why he became the quote unquote chairman at some point.

Roger Parloff: Yeah, and after he got the sentence, he called you, right?

Claire Meynial: Yes.

Roger Parloff: How soon after and what was that like?

Claire Meynial: A couple of days, maybe? He still thought that because he wasn't there that day, and that's what he thought since the very beginning, that the mere fact that he was not even in D.C. would protect him. He felt it was completely unfair.

Roger Parloff: A lot of defendants don't understand the conspiracy concept.

Claire Meynial: Yeah, yeah. And I think he was angry at D.C., you know, saying this whole thing about you can't get a fair trial in D.C. And I think I got a feeling of how it's like for some of them, being in those jails with other January 6ers, as they call themselves, I think they're cultivating a spirit of somehow resistance.

Roger Parloff: Yeah, I think you have something like that in France.

Claire Meynial: Oh, yeah.

Roger Parloff: Yeah. And you spoke to Reffitt as well. 

Claire Meynial: I spoke to Reffitt, yes.

Roger Parloff: Did Tarrio seem to expect a pardon? Did he say anything about that?

Claire Meynial: He said he'd heard Trump mention it, but didn't, he was not really lingering on it. Reffitt? So what was interesting about Reffitt is that he, that was the moment, that was in the middle of Trump trials.

And I was asking him how he would feel about Trump getting out of all his legal troubles when he, Guy Reffitt, was in jail because of Trump, and he completely rejected that notion. He said, you know, we have free will, all the people who went to the Capitol that day, we were not sent by him, which I thought was really interesting, he would absolutely not put the blame on Trump.

Roger Parloff: And one of his daughters does put the blame on Trump, you know, pretty squarely.

Claire Meynial: Yes, yeah.

Roger Parloff: Yeah. You also went to the New York trial. You were there for almost all of it, right?

Claire Meynial: Yes. Yes, I was.

Roger Parloff: So, tell me about your perspective on that and also the perspective in France. Was it a mistake to bring that case in your view, or what?

Claire Meynial: So, first of all, as you know, my obsession, as is some of, all the crew of journalists who are in the D.C. courthouse, is the January 6 cases. So, I was really not interested in the New York case. I thought it was a bit trivial. It didn't seem very political or very interesting. And so, I thought I would just go for the beginning because I thought it would be interesting to see the jury selection in New York for a man like Trump. Because obviously New York is very liberal, but also it has this kind of fascination for Trump because he's a local character. He's been forever.

And so the idea, what I told the magazine is, yeah, I would, I will go, you know, jury selection could take a whole week, I guess, cause I was thinking of the Proud Boys. Remember it took 12 days, I think? The jury selection?

Roger Parloff:  Yeah, yeah, yeah, at least. Yeah.

Claire Meynial: So it was like, this is going to be much longer. And so everything I saw, I thought, turned out to be completely false. Jury selection was pretty fast because Judge Juan Merchan has this new theory of whoever doesn't want to be in the jury, feel that they won't be able to stay neutral, just, you can go. We won't go through voir dire with you. So that was faster.

And then it turned out to be incredibly interesting. I, because it offered a window into Donald Trump's world, which I did not suspect. And so, the magazine initially wouldn't have sent me, you know, a hotel room in New York is expensive. For seven weeks, it's really expensive. I was coming back on the weekends to D.C., so that's also the train rides, etc., and eating in New York.

But, those articles worked really well on the website, because everything that was said was completely unbelievable. I mean, having a tabloid editor-in-chief say we were doing checkbook journalism. We would invent lies on any of Trump's opponents who were running against him in the primary in 2016, that was-

Roger Parloff: Who were all Republicans. I mean, talking about Ted Cruz, and yeah…

Claire Meynial: Who were all Republicans! Ted Cruz, Ben Carson.

So, every day was crazier than the other. And then you had the character, Stormy Daniels, who I thought was extremely complex and interesting. The whole thing was a lot more interesting than what I initially thought. And yes, I'm not sure that the magazine initially would have asked me for a story in the paper, in the print version, but they did because everything was so surprising and so unheard of for a French audience that they did. Yeah.

Roger Parloff: Yeah. Yeah, the things you write about in the trial are some of the things that I also would have focused on and to some extent did focus on. And which seemed to have no impact on anybody. But you know, you're sort of clobbered by the seamy-ness of it.

You know, you can argue, well, okay, should this have been a misdemeanor instead of a felony? And if it's a misdemeanor, should the statute of limitations, you know. But it's just so seamy and there's the scene where she comes out of the bathroom and he's disrobed into his boxers and t-shirt and she doesn't want, she says, no, this isn't what I had in mind. And he says something to the effect that,

Claire Meynial: I thought that's what you wanted to get out of your trailer. If you want to get out of the trailer.

Roger Parloff: Yeah. Get out of the trailer park.

Claire Meynial: Yeah.

Roger Parloff: I mean, it was so offensive and there were all these Republicans doing the pilgrimage, as you say, you know, JD Vance and Mike Johnson.

Claire Meynial: Matt Gaetz!

Roger Parloff: Who else? Matt Gaetz.

Claire Meynial: Matt Gaetz. who tweeted “Standing back, and standing by, Mr. President,” which was a direct allusion to what Trump told the Proud Boys during the debate with Joe Biden in 2020.

Roger Parloff: Yeah. September 2020.

Claire Meynial: Yeah.

Roger Parloff: Was there any sense that, I mean, the Republicans were showing their solidarity. Did any hint of disgust at what they were watching ever evince?

Claire Meynial: No, no at that time. So at that time I was just before and after I was still covering a lot of Trump rallies, no one believed a word of it. So it didn't, it just didn't register.

Roger Parloff: Because they would dismiss her, they would dismiss Cohen. They were just incredible.

Claire Meynial: And there were, so people were mixing up the different trials. You know, the New York case could have been also the civil case with the Trump organization. So yes, it really had absolutely no impact.

And there was even a Trump rally in the Bronx, by the end, when we were awaiting the sentencing, I think. Not the sentences, the verdict. Do you remember that? I think it was by the end.

Roger Parloff: I didn't remember, no.

Claire Meynial: That was very striking. It was a lot of minorities. Lots of like, I interviewed a Haitian woman who was crying with joy because she was praising Trump. Lots of black people, lots of Latinos, all loving Trump and saying, do you know what's happening at the courthouse in Manhattan? And they're all like, oh yeah, that thing, no. And they did not believe a word of it.

Roger Parloff: Mhm. And just since you were there, I'll ask you your thoughts. Was Trump sleeping or feigning sleep during the testimony?

Claire Meynial: I think both. So, okay, I have to admit, I also fall asleep when I'm cold. I, and that's something that happened to me.

So, I didn't fall asleep. But at the courthouse in D.C. when it's so cold, when they put up so much AC, I have to. add on layers. So, and I guess he complained that he was cold. So maybe some of it was real. I guess a lot of it was just to get out of it and show that he's, he was somehow not present from it.

Roger Parloff: Now you have in France, maybe even today, I think Marine Le Pen was finishing her, finished her testimony. And maybe she'll get a verdict in the spring, and unlike in our country, if she's convicted, I think it's an embezzlement charge?

Claire Meynial: Yeah fake, fake jobs. I don't know what you call it.

Roger Parloff: She can be declared ineligible to run for a period.

Claire Meynial: Yes.

Roger Parloff: Yeah. Do people think she's a martyr or is this?

Claire Meynial: I don't think so. I think, but again, I'm not in France, so I don't know if talking to my family or friends is very-

Roger Parloff: Representative?

Claire Meynial: But no, generally speaking, people really don't like the idea of spending—people I talked to at least, again, so it's a small portion of people—but they don't like the idea of spending taxpayers’ money on fake jobs for the European Union when you don't go attend any of the work at the EU, because you don't believe in that whole organization anyway, you know. She always, they always said they wanted to withdraw from the EU.

So, yeah. And that's really interesting, cause that was a few weeks ago in a MAGA event and people were asking me about this. They love Marine Le Pen. And I said, well, no, I mean, she has this case of fake jobs. And somebody told me, but that's very common! Everybody does it. It was like, well, but okay, we don’t like, I mean, I don't like that too much.

Roger Parloff: Let me go a little, I'm skipping around and now I'm gonna go back to something on January 6th. Because it's a little hard to talk about and you discuss it some, it's what we call Christian nationalism, even though I don't think…

Claire Meynial: It's Christian?

Roger Parloff: Well, no, I wasn't going to say that, but it's, I don't know, it's hard to, people don't, I don't think the people themselves say, I am a Christian nationalist.

Claire Meynial: Some do now.

Roger Parloff: Some do? Okay.

Claire Meynial: Yeah. Yeah.

Roger Parloff: Cause it's a very decentralized…

Claire Meynial: Yes. But yes and no. There, there is, there are events, everything around Michael Flynn, for example, is a place where people can gather. And I think it pretty openly advocates for a United States that would be Christian and not, with no separation of the church and state.

Roger Parloff: The reason I bring it up is that, you know, we talk about the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers at January 6th. Tiny groups really compared. And similarly, even QAnon is maybe less than 8 percent or, if that. But Christian nationalism? I mean, it's about, I had the impression it was about 95%. I mean, it was huge.

Claire Meynial: It's huge. And I, so I started being interested after I went to the anti-immigrant convoy at the border in last February, in Eagle Pass, in a ranch, in Texas and I suddenly realized the role of religion during that rally. It was not really a rally. It was a Trump gathering without Trump.

And so first of all, I was, I thought it was really striking that there were so many people without Trump. Usually a Trump event without Trump wouldn't be that big, but this was a grassroots event without Trump with a lot of people, and a lot of goodies that you would usually see at Trump rallies, t-shirts, new t-shirts, all kinds of stuff that you could buy. And there was one of the vendors who I see at every Trump rally, he's a guy from Florida, obviously didn't have the usual, like his usual MAGA hats and t-shirts were not the right ones because it was way more religious than usual.

And it's like, oh, okay, that's interesting. It's, it has this, lots allusions to God, and they're praying more than usual, and they were doing baptisms in this, in a plastic pool. And then I started to review everything I had covered, and I realized it was in front of my eyes the whole time, the January 6th pictures, I reviewed them and I saw all those flags, which to me, because I'm French, and we, as you know, we're very serious about the separation of church and state.

And so we have a tendency, At least I had a tendency to think, yeah, but that's because they don't have that very strict separation, like you don't necessarily put religion in the private sphere the way we do, because during the French Revolution, getting rid of the kings meant getting rid of the Church that was literally in bed with the kings. And I said, literally, because there were some cases of, you know, very weird stories. And so it was all the same power to the French Church and monarchy. So then, you know, we push all this aside, they headed a few people and the idea was like, you can be as religious as you want, but it has to be in the private sphere.

So, freedom. A religion in France is more freedom from religion as, and in the U.S. it's freedom of religion. And so I think initially I, when I saw all those flags about God, I just thought, yeah, but that's a different thing.

They just, they do have religion in the public sphere, but then the banner, Appeal to Heaven, for example, which is very clearly Christian nationalist, it was on my pictures of January 6th, and of course at the time I didn't know what it meant, but then reviewing it, and so now, I have a more cohesive view of it as being an organized movement that I didn't have initially.

Roger Parloff: Yeah, yeah. Well, we're gonna leave it there. The book is “La Guerre des Amériques” published by Plon, P-L-O-N. The author is Claire Meynial, M-E-Y-N-I-A-L. Thanks so much, Claire, for coming on the show.

Claire Meynial: Thank you so much, Roger.

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Roger Parloff is a journalist based in Washington, D.C. For 12 years, he was the main legal correspondent at Fortune Magazine. His work has also been published in ProPublica, The New York Times, New York, NewYorker.com, Yahoo Finance, Air Mail, IEEE Spectrum, Inside, Legal Affairs, Brill’s Content, and others. An attorney who no longer practices, he is the author of "Triple Jeopardy," a book about an Arizona death penalty case. He is a senior editor at Lawfare.
Claire Meynial is the U.S. correspondent for the French newspaper, Le Point.
Jen Patja is the editor and producer of the Lawfare Podcast and Rational Security. She currently serves as the Co-Executive Director of Virginia Civics, a nonprofit organization that empowers the next generation of leaders in Virginia by promoting constitutional literacy, critical thinking, and civic engagement. She is the former Deputy Director of the Robert H. Smith Center for the Constitution at James Madison's Montpelier and has been a freelance editor for over 20 years.

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