‘Once You See the Wolf’ — 5 Questions with Tom Carter
A Q&A with Tom Carter — a veteran Washington DC reporter, who spent 15 years trying to warn America about the danger of Leonard Leo and the remaking of SCOTUS.
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“Once you see the wolf, you can't unsee it”.—Tom Carter
Over breakfast at Ted's Bulletin, I listened to story after story from my friend Tom Carter. Veteran reporters are good company. I have been on a tour of heroes. We may have lost this war for America, but Tom is one of my personal heroes for relentlessly pursuing truth. He spent 15 years trying to get America’s political reporters to warn about the danger of lobbyist Leonard Leo, who installed six Catholic extremists on the Supreme Court, leading to a judicial coup, which led to a decapitation strike on democracy.
He was largely ignored, and he wrote about it.
In that guest op-ed originally published in spring 2024, he wrote:
“Coming up on November 2024 and a possible Leonard Leo Christofascist takeover of the United States, as detailed in his 900-page Project 2025, it looks like 1930s Germany to me”.—Tom Carter
I have been reporting on 1930s Germany, because history offers suggestions, as Dr. Marci Shore taught us.
After breakfast, I asked Tom for his thoughts in this pre-inaugural moment. Here is that interview…
‘Once You See the Wolf’ — 5 Questions with Tom Carter
Me: Tom, you worked so hard to make sure this would not be the outcome we have. How are you feeling right now?
Tom: Thank you for saying that. I'm feeling pretty bad. A lot of people are thinking, ‘well, we've got two years until the next election, and we can take this back, or we've got four years until Trump is gone, and we can take this back.’ My feeling is, the next two or four years, they will change the laws for voting. They will gerrymander. They will do so many structural things that the guardrails will be completely gone. And because of the Leonard Leo Supreme Court, so many young people on it, Coney Barrett, Kavanaugh, and so forth, I think it will be 40 years before we can really start putting this behind us. So my grandchildren will have grandchildren before this is done. Sorry to be so negative.
Me: We're keeping it real here, because that’s what we do. Can you share your wolf metaphor for Bette readers?
Tom: In order to understand what's going on in Washington, DC, it's important to understand the Leonard Leo, far-right Catholic web, who run the Supreme Court, six out of nine Supreme Court justices, a number of lower Federal bench jurists, Project 2025, JD Vance in the White House, the Republican attorneys general association around the country and so forth. Most people look at this and see one lobbyist doing what lobbyists do to try to get their position. But to me, it's more like an optical illusion. Most people see sheep. A very few of us see the wolf and how it underlies everything. And if you really want to understand the Leonard Leo web, I strongly recommend Gareth Gore's book Opus. It's a 300-page book with 200 pages of source notes and footnotes, and the last 100 pages is all about Leonard Leo and the Opus Dei takeover of Washington, DC. And once you see the wolf, you can’t unsee it.
I think another way of looking at this is like a virus — you have either the common cold or you have Ebola. Both of them on the first couple of days present the same way — you're achy, you're sniffly, you don't feel good, and so on and so forth. But if the doctor doesn't diagnose the right virus, with one of them, you're over it within a few days. The other one kills you. Leonard Leo is the Ebola.
Me: Tom, we're two weeks out from a decapitation strike on America. Is there anything that anybody can do at this moment?
Tom: I used to say facetiously, you can move to Portugal or Spain or somewhere else in Europe. If that's not feasible, I really don't know. I mean, I want to be hopeful. I want to see programs and so forth where we can fight back. I'm hoping there are, I don't know what they are.
Me: The tone in DC at the moment is muted, right? Like, what do we expect to see protests or something, it's very quiet here.
Tom: Well, I think people protested the last time and that did nothing or didn't do enough, whether it was the Women’s March or the Black Lives Matter movement. Now, you're right. It's very muted. I mean, the parties I went to over Christmas and New Year's, people are still shell shocked. I'm still hoping we find some leadership.
Me: Any final thoughts?
Tom: Find small ways to resist.
Me: Thank you Tom. Thank you for being a hero.
Tom Carter spent 25 years as a print reporter in DC. After leaving journalism, he got work in the federal government and Leonard Leo, a GOP political appointee and the Opus Daddy of the Supreme Court, became his boss. He can be found at ‘thcarter123’ on Bluesky.
He has been interviewed re Leonard Leo and quoted by Craig Unger, Andrew Seidel, Gareth Gore, Katherine Stewart, Daily Beast, Washington Post, Politico, New York magazine, ProPublica, Financial Times, Byline Times, RADICALIZED Truth Survives, and numerous other outlets and podcasts.
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