0:10

I'm Charlie Sakes. Welcome to a

0:12

new episode of To The Contrary podcast.

0:15

We survived the first 100 days of

0:17

the Trump presidency, and I'm really pleased

0:19

to be joined once again by my

0:21

good friend Nicholas Grossman, who is the

0:23

editor of Arc Digital and a professor

0:25

of political science at the University of

0:27

Illinois. Welcome back, Nicholas. Thanks.

0:30

Happy to be with you. Well, look,

0:32

I want to talk about, I know that

0:34

you focus a lot on international relations. I

0:36

want to talk about Ukraine. I want to

0:38

talk about the terror fight. But

0:40

can we just start off with

0:42

the elections in Canada a couple of

0:45

days ago? Because that was truly extraordinary,

0:47

wasn't it? The

0:49

liberal party was absolutely

0:52

dead, written off,

0:54

buried. resurrected

0:56

by Donald Trump in effect. So

0:58

Donald Trump has managed to completely

1:01

tank the conservatives' hopes. I mean,

1:03

the conservatives were basically almost assured

1:05

of winning that election in Canada

1:07

a few months ago, and

1:10

they lost. So talk

1:12

to me about that because I'm trying

1:14

to think of the last time that

1:16

an American politician or president had that

1:19

kind of an influence on Canadian politics.

1:21

If ever I can't think of a

1:24

single time. I actually can't think of

1:26

a single election anywhere where something like

1:28

this has happened that the Liberal Party

1:30

had been in power for a while.

1:33

They had the anti -incumbency stuff against them.

1:35

They were trailing in polls by about 20

1:37

points. And everyone had written

1:39

them off. And then Trump starts with

1:41

the Canada 51st state and other threats

1:43

and starts with tariffs. And

1:46

the then Prime Minister, the Liberal Prime Minister,

1:48

Justin Trudeau, stood up to it. And then

1:50

he stepped down and Mark Carney took the

1:52

spot, who just got reelected as Prime

1:54

Minister. And he stood up to it

1:57

and they shot up in the And

1:59

the conservatives then were caught somewhat flat

2:01

footed because they have a base that

2:03

likes a lot of the Trump stuff.

2:05

And then a bunch of what you

2:07

might call normal mainstream Canadian conservatives who

2:09

have basic national pride and who don't

2:11

want to be treated like that. And

2:13

then who ended up flocking to back

2:16

to the Liberals and back to Carney.

2:18

And I don't think there's been any

2:20

election, least not I can think of,

2:22

where threats from a foreign country then

2:24

rapidly flipped the of

2:26

an election that looked almost certain and

2:29

if anything this is a maybe saving

2:31

grace in that a smarter move, you

2:33

know, kind of if we had smarter

2:35

fascists, we the move would have been

2:37

to stay out of the Canadian election,

2:39

wait until a sympathetic person wins as

2:41

the polls were going and then try

2:43

to make them like, I don't know

2:45

what Hitler did to Austria or what

2:47

Putin has done to Belarus or a

2:49

North American version of that. And instead,

2:51

Trump just, I guess, couldn't help himself

2:53

making about himself even the morning of

2:55

morning of the election. He did another

2:57

like 51st state. They're so excited thing. Even

2:59

as conservatives were saying, please don't make this

3:01

about you stay out of it. And yet

3:03

he succeeded in tanking the conservative. So for

3:06

the people who are always thinking that there's

3:08

a plan, you just need to follow the

3:10

plan, there's four dimensional chess, there

3:12

was none. It was completely self -destructive.

3:14

And by the way, since we're on

3:16

all of this, and I'm reluctant to

3:18

spend too much time on polls, but

3:20

there's a couple of interesting polls that

3:22

I wanted to ask you about. Here's

3:25

the new Washington Post ABC poll

3:28

that came out on Tuesday

3:30

afternoon. Most

3:32

Americans take Trump's Canada Greenland

3:34

and third -term ideas seriously and oppose

3:37

them. See this is one of the

3:39

big questions is whether or not people

3:41

actually believe that Donald Trump is going

3:43

to do what he says. Now

3:46

in the past there's been a long pattern

3:48

of people you know Trump saying outrageous things

3:50

and very large number of voters thinking well

3:52

he doesn't mean it or he's joking or

3:54

I don't care. But there

3:56

seems to be kind of a shift

3:59

where people are now saying, you know

4:01

what? A lot of the things

4:03

that he's saying seem real. So

4:05

first of all, do you take

4:07

the Canada Greenland third term ideas

4:10

seriously? Because I'm moving on the third

4:12

term thinking that he's much more serious

4:14

about it. Where do you come down

4:17

on this? Oh, very much

4:19

so. So I think the any of the

4:21

third term talk is a very easy one

4:23

in that we already saw him and the

4:25

people around him try to keep power illegally

4:27

when they were legally required to leave. And

4:29

I see no reason why we should assume

4:31

that they will willingly give up power this

4:33

time just because the law requires them to

4:35

do so. So I expect him to lie

4:37

and come up with who knows what rationale,

4:40

but just assert it and get more and

4:42

more of the Republican Party on board, much

4:44

as he was able to do with getting

4:46

them more on board with excuse. using or

4:48

even defending January 6, for example. With

4:50

a lot of the foreign threats, I think

4:53

it is serious whether or not the United

4:55

States is really going to follow through that

4:57

whatever action they do, it makes sense to

4:59

take it seriously in part because Trump likes

5:01

to float ideas and kind of see what

5:04

the public reaction is. And so if more

5:06

of the public either shrugs or is enthusiastic,

5:08

if more of his base is enthusiastic, that

5:10

makes it more likely to actually happen. But

5:13

also because things like national security take

5:15

long term planning that countries like Denmark

5:17

or Canada. Or Panama have to readjust

5:19

their plans to right account for the

5:21

ways that the United States might be

5:23

threatening So even if the US doesn't

5:25

follow through even if Trump is just

5:28

let's just say hypothetically He's just saying

5:30

a lot just kind of to be

5:32

an asshole and put on a show

5:34

Maybe get a tariff deal or

5:36

something even if he's doing that the

5:39

difference between going from Trust that is

5:41

completely taken for granted because it's been

5:43

going for decades and is so robust

5:46

into a lack of trust like with

5:48

Canada a good example of this is

5:50

North American air command is joint Canadian

5:52

and United States. It's not just the

5:55

US. This is how we deal with

5:57

air threats coming from, for example, Russia

5:59

or over the Arctic Circle. And

6:01

the Canadians can't really trust the United States

6:04

on that anymore. And so they're going to

6:06

start making different plans, and they're going to

6:08

hesitate to share information. And they're probably doing

6:10

this already. And so it is serious, even

6:12

if it goes no further, which it could,

6:14

and I don't see why anybody would just

6:17

assume that it'll be fine, because a lot

6:19

of things that people said, Oh, he'll never

6:21

do that. He's done. And so

6:23

they should take this seriously too. No,

6:25

and I think this is an important

6:27

point that certainly one of the legacies

6:29

of that first 100 days is

6:31

the shattering of many of our

6:33

alliances and that much of the

6:36

rest of the world, some of

6:38

our closest allies. are

6:40

no longer a field that they can rely on

6:42

or trust the United States. And it's hard to

6:44

put that together. It's hard

6:47

to replace that level of trust. And I'm

6:49

trying to think of the analogy that David

6:51

Frum used. I mean, the first time that

6:53

Donald Trump has elected you, think that it's

6:55

just simply a fluke and things are going

6:57

to go back to normal. But the fact

7:00

that now that he's back in power, people

7:02

are realizing there's a pattern America

7:04

has a problem. We cannot rely

7:06

on swing voters in Wisconsin every

7:08

four years to secure our national

7:10

security. We're going to have to

7:12

move on. But the other

7:14

thing that's interesting about these polls, though, is

7:17

that there was a conventional wisdom that Donald

7:19

Trump was going to be very, very

7:21

strong on two big issues, the economy

7:23

and immigration. Let's start with immigration. That

7:26

even if he was cruel and lawless

7:28

in his mass deportations, that this was

7:30

kind of his sweet spot. But there's

7:32

growing indication that he's under water on

7:35

these issues. Most voters now have had

7:37

a number of polls. showing

7:39

that they disapprove of

7:41

his handling of the

7:43

case of the Maryland

7:46

man who was renditioned to El

7:48

Salvador. Including

7:51

when it comes to sending US citizens

7:53

convicted of violent crimes to prisons in

7:56

other countries 71 % of Americans think

7:58

yeah, Donald Trump is serious about about

8:00

that and yet they oppose

8:02

it by rather strong margins

8:05

the the idea We also

8:07

have an Axios poll showing

8:09

that most Americans now see

8:11

Trump as a dangerous dictator

8:13

Which is remarkable? So I guess that what

8:15

I wanted to ask you is the cognitive

8:17

dissonance all of these things were brought

8:20

up during the campaign. People made the warnings.

8:24

Democrats litigated the issue of

8:26

tariffs, I think, rather

8:28

aggressively, said it was a tax. It

8:30

would be inflationary. Voters shrugged

8:32

it off. They voted for Donald Trump.

8:35

But now they seem to be

8:37

taking it more seriously. What are you

8:39

seeing happening here? I

8:41

think for a lot of the voters, they either

8:44

bought into some of his lies or

8:46

the way he was selling it and

8:48

the way other people around him were

8:50

selling it. So on immigration, for example,

8:52

the pitch was not we're going to

8:54

grab a bunch of innocent either. U

8:57

.S. citizens or legal permanent residents, green card

8:59

holders or other people who have all their

9:01

papers in order. We're gonna just grab them

9:03

off the street and throw them in some

9:06

foreign gulag without due process. That was not

9:08

the pitch. The pitch was that he was

9:10

going to go after criminals and remove all

9:12

these dangerous criminals. And they're even still trying

9:14

to cling to this. You might have seen

9:16

the White House put out a row of

9:19

mug shots of just on the front of

9:21

the White House lawn. Yes,

9:24

yard signs. It's pretty gross. And

9:26

as people notice that look closely, they

9:28

don't really have the names or alleged

9:31

crimes on them. So people can't fact

9:33

check it. It is just a bunch

9:35

of photos of scary looking Latino men.

9:38

And this in part strikes me as

9:40

a sign of desperation that they thought

9:43

this was going to go better and

9:45

are trying to remind people of what

9:47

the original pitch was. And that isn't

9:50

working well when it comes to people

9:52

who, one, seem to be

9:54

innocent, don't seem to have committed a crime, that

9:56

have things like an American spouse or have a

9:58

kid who's an American citizen. And

10:01

so that wasn't who they were. You know, who get a

10:03

lot of positive things from the community. That isn't who people

10:05

pictured that were going. And the

10:07

idea of innocent until proven guilty

10:09

is one of the oldest, most

10:12

core American principles. and seeing people

10:14

then deny due process and even

10:16

having the government assert, we

10:18

don't give them any due process or the only due process

10:20

they get is being removed. And that's like, well, then how

10:23

do you know that they're actually a criminal? And

10:25

so that seems to be resonating more.

10:27

One that struck me was where Joe

10:30

Rogan was talking about Kilmurray and

10:32

saying a similar thing about like,

10:34

well, can't you put him on

10:36

trial and show the stuff that

10:38

supposedly, that he did wrong and then

10:40

you can get him out. So even

10:42

someone who was a Trump, at least soft

10:44

supporter early on, is starting to ask this

10:46

question stuff that he's turning on Trump entirely

10:49

or saying the whole thing is bad. But

10:51

it is showing that when they go against

10:53

these core American principles, things that are literally

10:56

in the Declaration of Independence and the Bill

10:58

of Rights, when they go against that, that

11:00

they anger a bunch more people or they

11:02

make some people wake up a little and

11:04

say, you know, oh, this wasn't what I

11:07

voted for. This wasn't what I planned on

11:09

or just not liking it in a visceral

11:11

reaction. And the more and more that adds

11:13

up, the harder it is for them to

11:15

operate. Although they might also end up getting

11:18

more desperate and drastic. Well that

11:20

that's right and I think that we

11:22

need to realize that that you know

11:24

as bad as the last hundred days

11:26

was You know the worst may be

11:28

yet to come because you know they've

11:30

got the they got the now have

11:32

the Infrastructure in place and we know

11:34

that they have a playbook But let's

11:36

go back to this the reaction on

11:38

undue process because I'm not sure that

11:40

that was a given I worried about

11:42

that You know, I've seen people on

11:44

the right when they push law and

11:46

order just gloss over many of those

11:48

civil liberties. And the concept of

11:50

due process is an abstraction. And

11:53

one of the things we learned over

11:55

the last couple of years is sometimes

11:57

how thin on the ground many of

12:00

those abstractions those norms are and so

12:02

Donald Trump I think was counting on

12:04

this he was basically saying look these

12:06

are bad guys you don't actually care

12:08

how we deal with them how brutal

12:10

we are how cruel we are whether

12:12

they get trials or not and so

12:15

in many ways it's one of those

12:17

it feels like a rather rare surprise

12:19

in public opinion to realize that there

12:21

is that reservoir of belief and

12:23

commitment to those as you put it you

12:26

know these fundamental American values these fundamental kind

12:28

you know what does it mean to be

12:30

an American it means the government cannot snatch

12:32

you off the street put you on a

12:34

plane and send you to a gulag without

12:36

a trial and it seems kind of fundamental

12:39

right and yet Donald Trump thought and he probably still thinks

12:41

he's going to get away with that I

12:43

think so. But I think a big

12:45

part the difference that you're right about

12:48

the defending an abstract principle, but a

12:50

big part of what happened here was

12:52

that it moved from abstraction to real

12:54

human beings. And this is sort of

12:57

another theme of maybe a saving grace

12:59

of this is we could have had

13:01

smarter fascists that if they had gone

13:03

after people who, you know, really were

13:05

criminal or really were bad and had

13:08

somehow just sort of skirted the law

13:10

a bit. And instead of having to

13:12

do this absurd stretch of where

13:15

Garcia is MS -13 because he wore some

13:17

Chicago Bulls gear and then anybody who wears

13:19

Chicago Bulls gear thinks, you know, if they

13:21

hear about it, oh wait, that could happen

13:24

to me. And with some of

13:26

the foreign students, the video of the

13:28

student named, who's last name Ozterk in

13:30

the top student, and a video went

13:32

all around the internet of something that

13:34

a lot of people thought did not

13:36

happen in America. That's the sort of

13:38

thing, you know, that happens in dictatorships

13:40

elsewhere over there. Snatched off

13:42

the street look like a kidnapping

13:44

Okay, so this is a this is a really

13:47

important point and and I do think that it

13:49

is one of the things that's shaping the new

13:51

dynamic is the fact that there are stories That

13:53

when we talk on the on the plane of

13:55

issues done on some can talk about we need

13:57

to get the bad guys out and everything and

13:59

when whatever but now we're starting to see

14:01

these tangible stories there's a human

14:03

face on these cases and I

14:05

sense that not just on the

14:08

issue of immigration but on a

14:10

lot of the issues Because in

14:12

Trump 1 .0, there was a

14:14

lot of controversy in Washington DC,

14:16

but it didn't really trickle down

14:18

into people's lives until COVID, of

14:21

course. And so I saw

14:23

one analysis, I think it was on CNN,

14:26

that at this time in Trump's

14:28

first term, the most Googled term

14:30

was Twitter. People want to know what is Donald Trump

14:32

doing on Twitter. Now the most

14:34

Googled term related to Donald Trump is

14:36

tariffs. So people are

14:39

being impacted. They know people.

14:42

who have lost their jobs or

14:44

are affected by various cutbacks, people

14:46

are thinking, okay, what's gonna happen

14:48

to Social Security? What happened to

14:50

this family that lives down the

14:53

street? And I think

14:55

that's, and I'm looking at some of

14:57

these numbers and you get a sense

14:59

that people are paying attention to those

15:02

human details and it's not playing the

15:04

way that he thought. And again, that

15:07

was not necessarily a given. given

15:10

the media climate that we have,

15:12

but it doesn't seem these stories are

15:14

breaking through. Like, for example, it's interesting

15:17

how people will spontaneously bring up the

15:19

fact that these small children who are

15:21

American citizens are being shipped out of the

15:24

country, even though some of them might be

15:26

suffering from cancer, the family separations. This

15:28

really hits people on a visceral

15:30

level. I'm

15:32

a parent. I feel it that I

15:34

mean some in the first term first

15:36

term also but the kid deporting a

15:38

kid who has cancer and not making

15:41

not even making sure he could get

15:43

his medication on the way that that

15:45

just an unnecessarily cruel thing that on

15:47

top of other cruelty that Resonates with

15:49

people and I think also on the public

15:51

opinion that it helps quite a bit that

15:53

There is no longer a Democratic president to

15:55

bash and blame a lot of things on.

15:57

There's no longer a campaign and people choosing

15:59

sides and where it's almost like go support

16:01

your team that it is just do you

16:04

approve or disapprove of the president? That

16:06

also the policies are so clearly

16:08

different. And the biggest one

16:11

we expect a lot of this to hit is

16:13

the economy and is the tariff. So you mentioned

16:15

right the way that people are starting to notice

16:17

them, but that hasn't really hit yet. That that's

16:19

the sort of thing that is going to in

16:21

the next probably few months, cause

16:23

pricing increases, maybe have some empty

16:26

shelves in stores, have people waiting

16:28

on goods or having supply chain

16:30

in a way that they didn't experience since

16:32

2020. And those are also the sort of

16:35

things that where they are unignorable because they're

16:37

happening directly to people. It's not like you

16:39

said, just an abstraction in Washington. This is

16:41

a, my life got noticeably worse.

16:44

And the obvious explanation, granted, some people will

16:46

deny this, but the obvious explanation is it

16:48

got worse because the president did it, which

16:50

also has the benefit of being true than

16:52

he did. But the president said he was

16:54

going to do it. I mean, this is,

16:56

this is the, where we had the cognitive

16:58

dissonance where this came up over and over

17:00

and over again. Anyone who's followed Donald Trump

17:02

for the last 30 years know that he's

17:04

the, no, that he has a fetish for

17:07

tariffs. I mean, the one time that I

17:09

spoke with him back in 2016, he was

17:11

talking about a trade war with China. He

17:13

brought this up. The Democrats made an issue

17:16

of it. So

17:18

why was that

17:20

not a decisive issue

17:22

in 2024? Back

17:25

then, were people

17:27

in sort of a... you know, delusion

17:30

of normalcy that he says lots of

17:32

stuff but it's not actually gonna happen

17:34

and now it's really happening. Is

17:37

that what's going on? I think so. I think

17:39

that's part of it. I think that a lot

17:41

of it is also an example of an in

17:43

abstraction and who was saying what. So Trump didn't

17:45

sell people on he might say I'll do tariffs,

17:47

but it was always I'm going to do tariffs

17:50

and everything will be cheaper and all these jobs

17:52

will come back and you'll get all these other

17:54

benefits and we're going to make so much money

17:56

and I'm going to cut your taxes as a

17:58

result. And so it was all a lie. And

18:00

but the people who are saying

18:02

otherwise were either democratic politicians or, you

18:04

know, hated media figures or egghead professors

18:07

or others that are, you know, all

18:09

stupid and wrong about everything. And so

18:11

if you take that as an attitude,

18:13

then, you know, it was the experts

18:15

having a lot of data and explaining

18:17

why it wasn't going to work. And

18:19

it was a politician, you know, charismatic

18:21

politician in Donald Trump, selling people what

18:23

was a fantasy. And I had discussions.

18:25

I remember one where I was chastised

18:27

for when I explained tariffs make things

18:29

more expensive, that a woman got angry at

18:31

me and said, well, well, maybe, but he's going

18:33

to cut energy costs in half. And that's going

18:36

to make all the costs go down. And how

18:38

do you not understand this? You're so stupid. And.

18:40

I didn't really have much of a response to

18:42

this. I mean, I think I said something about

18:44

how long oil projects take to get going or

18:46

how the United States is already the world's leading

18:48

oil producer that that had been going up under

18:50

Joe Biden. So that wasn't a problem. It

18:53

doesn't affect energy costs right away. But that

18:55

sort of thing was not an emotional argument

18:57

that I think in her situation, she wanted

18:59

to believe she liked the. the story of,

19:01

I'm going to get you something for nothing.

19:03

I'm going to wave some magic wand and

19:05

then things will suddenly get better for you

19:07

in all of these great ways. And didn't

19:09

want to think maybe too hard about what

19:12

the alternative is. And no,

19:14

I could never figure out maybe it's a flaw in

19:16

me, maybe it's, you know, people I was talking to,

19:18

but I can never figure out a way to convince

19:20

somebody like that. I even though I

19:22

had facts and evidence and truth on my side, I

19:24

don't know how to do that, except for the, you

19:26

know, analogy of touch the stove. Facts

19:29

evidence and truth. That's so old school. It

19:31

feels like so last century Well, I have

19:33

to I mean I I think the entire

19:35

business community just talked themselves into believing that

19:37

he was bluffing That this was just a

19:39

negotiating plan. There was no way that he

19:41

would actually do it or that if he

19:44

did it It would be in a targeted

19:46

way Nobody thought that he would do go,

19:48

you know hog wild on the tax and

19:50

that the tariffs just thrown him up and

19:52

by the way speaking of like like facts

19:54

and logic Can you make this make sense

19:56

for me? Nicholas? On the one

19:58

hand, he's saying that

20:01

we're going to come up with

20:03

deals so that we're obviously, which

20:06

would mean that we would remove some of

20:08

the tariffs or lower some of the tariffs

20:10

if you actually strike a deal, that these

20:12

are basically just cudgels. And yet at the

20:14

same time, he's saying that the revenue from

20:17

the tariffs will be so great that we

20:19

can have this massive cut in the income

20:21

tax. Now, first of all,

20:23

the math doesn't add up. to

20:25

be able to cut the income

20:27

tax, but also he's basically arguing

20:30

that two completely contradictory

20:32

things. We're either going to

20:34

have such massive tariffs going

20:36

forward forever that they replace

20:39

the individual income tax

20:41

or we're going to

20:43

be negotiating them in striking deals. So can you make

20:45

it make sense for me? Sure,

20:47

that seems like a lot of what what Trump

20:49

does is it's you know something or nothing have

20:52

your cake and eat it too and Not a

20:54

genuine argument in the sense that maybe you or

20:56

I might make of trying to convince people in

20:58

which case we try to be consistent and use

21:00

a same evidence in when we argue with various

21:02

people But instead just more like a salesman pitch

21:04

of what is it that you want to hear?

21:06

Well, I'll give you a bunch of things and

21:08

you can as long as you want to support

21:10

me You can kind of pick which one sounds

21:13

good to you and then when you get into

21:15

arguments with people you can say

21:17

whatever, you know, oh, we're gonna make so much

21:19

money, or, oh, we're gonna bring jobs back, or one or

21:21

the other. What I find so striking,

21:23

say, with a lot of the deals is, or

21:25

a lot of the tariffs is, get the sense

21:28

that what they thought was gonna happen, or what

21:30

he thought was gonna happen, was there would be

21:32

at least some that would do the, oh, sir,

21:34

whatever you want, you know, we're so

21:37

scared, please don't hurt me. and not

21:39

really thinking that other countries had same

21:41

thing with Canada, for example, not really

21:43

thinking other countries had agency and have

21:45

nationalism and have pride and that government

21:48

leaders won't want to look weak to their

21:50

people and in fact will want to stand

21:52

up to farm bullying and even for the

21:54

matter that trade deals take a long time

21:56

to negotiate. that there's no possible

21:58

way to get something like 90 trade

22:00

deals in a short amount of time. And

22:02

this isn't even really shouldn't be a surprise

22:04

because a similar albeit smaller version happened in

22:06

the first term of that. We had the

22:08

Trans -Pacific Partnership. It was a trade deal

22:10

with 12 countries, took about six years to

22:12

negotiate. It was all these Pacific Rim countries

22:14

and it excluded China. It was a good

22:16

long -term China containment strategy. And he called

22:18

it a terrible deal and he got into

22:20

office and he got rid of it and

22:22

he promised I'm going to get better deals

22:24

with all these other countries one on one.

22:26

and he got literally zero. And

22:29

where that takes us now is a country, a

22:31

good example. I think of this as Vietnam, where

22:33

Vietnam has been a very pro -American country, especially

22:35

this century. A lot of that is because they're

22:37

frightened of China and rather deal with the US.

22:40

And when Trump put tariffs on Vietnam, which already

22:42

has very low tariffs with the US, they announced

22:44

very quickly, we'll do zero. We'll do zero right

22:47

away, zero percent. And the response

22:49

from the Treasury Secretary was to treat it

22:51

as an insult and say, like, oh, that

22:53

doesn't really matter. What we're worried about is

22:55

all this other non -tariff cheating. Vietnamese

22:58

don't know what to do about that because they're

23:00

not cheating in any particular way. And it looks

23:02

like if you look into it, it's the fact

23:04

that the United States buys more from Vietnam than

23:06

Vietnam buys from the United States, which is not

23:08

inherently bad. It means Americans want to buy things

23:10

like, I don't know, Vietnamese rubber. And

23:13

then just that week after Trump

23:15

projected them, Vietnam signed a supply chain

23:17

and production agreement with China. So

23:20

it doesn't mean that they are about to become

23:22

a close Chinese ally But we had Trump's time

23:24

in office took Vietnam from a pro -American country

23:26

that really wanted to work with the US

23:28

and not work with China into one that is

23:31

now Has no idea how to deal with US

23:33

hostility and so is warming up to China in

23:35

response I think one of

23:37

the the real shocks that people in the

23:39

business community are experiencing is realizing that I

23:42

mean they were absolutely sure that Donald Trump

23:44

was to be the most pro -business you

23:46

know pro -growth president ever and now they're

23:48

starting to realize that he fundamentally does

23:50

not understand economics he does not

23:53

understand how international trade works and

23:55

he doesn't even understand the entire

23:57

concept of imbalance of trade right

23:59

the trade deficits you know are

24:02

somehow robbing us you know robbing

24:04

americans of wealth when in fact

24:06

that's not what it is at

24:08

all. So his lack of understanding

24:10

of the basics I think is

24:12

kind of breathtaking and has contributed

24:14

to kind of the intake of

24:16

breath of a lot of these

24:19

guys who now are faced with

24:21

the you know maximum uncertainty of

24:23

an economy that is run

24:25

by the whim of one man. I'm

24:28

amazed, amazed at the group thing that

24:31

they managed to get to where they

24:33

convinced themselves that, you know, he's a

24:35

businessman, he thinks like me, all that

24:37

stuff he's saying is just for the

24:40

rubes. And some love, I mean, who's

24:42

the Rube now, guys? That

24:44

you had somebody like Jamie Dimon, you

24:46

know, the head of CEO of JP

24:48

Morgan. who was a Trump booster in

24:50

the election and then who in January,

24:52

February was saying like, oh, tariffs, everybody

24:54

get over it. And now I was

24:57

saying like, oh, actually, I think we've

24:59

read. we've

25:01

reanalyzed what we expect and our now

25:03

growth expectations are zero or negative and

25:05

we're expecting inflation and all these other

25:07

problems and if anything it reminds me

25:09

of the stupid group think that they

25:11

had in the 2000s of where they

25:13

convinced themselves that housing would never go

25:15

down and that various derivatives and complex

25:17

financial instruments had defeated risk and so

25:19

there was really no risk of what

25:21

they were doing and they crashed global

25:23

economy with this and similarly here they

25:25

really did seem to tell themselves just

25:27

Trump will do what I would do

25:29

in office and not listen to the things

25:31

he said many, many times that he would do,

25:34

and which he also then did some of in

25:36

his first term. And yet still they told himself,

25:38

I guess maybe tempted by a tax cut or

25:40

regulation cuts. Who knows? But

25:43

yeah, either way, just went with it.

25:45

And I'm kind of floored by that

25:47

one. It's amazing that these ostensibly smart,

25:50

sophisticated investors made this sort of a

25:52

mistake. I think the key word is

25:54

ostensibly. I think part of the problem

25:56

is that at a certain point you

25:59

develop this excessive confidence in

26:01

your own. you know, talents.

26:03

I mean, Elon Musk being a pretty good

26:05

example. I mean, he has skills in certain

26:07

areas, and then you put him in charge

26:09

of, you know, slashing government, and you realize

26:12

the limited transferability of some of those skills.

26:14

Okay, I want to get to, because I

26:16

know that, you know, I want to tap

26:18

your expertise about what's going on with Ukraine

26:20

and some other things. But one last question

26:22

on the terrace, that the actual impact has

26:25

really not hit us yet. Right.

26:27

But we are seeing stories. We

26:29

started to see stories in the

26:31

last week or so about the

26:34

empty container ships coming from China

26:36

and the reports out of the

26:38

West Coast ports that they are

26:40

expecting massive drops in imports. And

26:43

I think I saw a statement from

26:45

the international longshoremen, the Union, opposing the

26:47

tariffs. But you feel, I mean, what

26:49

does it look like to you? It

26:51

looks like it feels like kind of

26:54

this. reverse tsunami where the

26:56

the goods that we were would normally have

26:58

coming into the country are not going to

27:00

be here. These ports are not going to

27:02

see these products so that where

27:04

what when is this going to hit?

27:08

So I've been feeling this vibe that

27:10

reminds me of kind of how I

27:12

felt in January and February 2020. So

27:15

COVID hadn't really made it here. It was

27:17

March that really broke here. But

27:20

it was in a number of other countries. And

27:22

I remember talking to people. I was telling people

27:24

to buy toilet paper. And I remember some, like,

27:26

oh, that's not going to happen. Or, oh, come

27:28

on. We're not Iran. We're not South Korea. We're

27:30

not China. What do you think is going to

27:32

happen? And just kind of waiting. And I remember

27:34

saying, it's no, the virus is already here. Just

27:36

people haven't. realized it yet. It just hasn't spread

27:39

enough for that to be clear. And

27:41

I'm not saying it's identical, obviously no

27:43

pandemic here, but economically somewhat similar in

27:45

that the number of container ships that

27:48

were arriving from China at major ports

27:50

like Los Angeles and Seattle are going

27:52

to dry up almost entirely within a

27:55

week or two. And that

27:57

means I've seen the numbers upwards of

27:59

a million or more contracts with truck

28:01

routes. that so those containers go from

28:03

the ships and they go onto a

28:05

semi truck and so those trucks are

28:07

out of business and the people who

28:09

are relying on that either for consumption

28:11

at a store or for especially something

28:13

like inputs into any other sort of

28:15

business that's just kind of not going

28:17

to be there. And on

28:20

top of that, we can pile things like

28:22

the economic effects of the mass firings from

28:24

Doge and others. And

28:26

both of those should plus all the

28:28

chaos that is causing an attacks on

28:30

rule of law that's causing more loss of

28:33

confidence in the United States. And all of

28:35

that combined should hit in not that long.

28:37

I mean, I don't have I'm not going

28:39

to give you an exact number, you know,

28:41

because who knows when the tsunami is probably

28:43

makes a lot of sense of the earthquake

28:45

has already happened, just the wave hasn't really

28:47

made it here yet. And

28:50

I am expecting that pretty soon, and

28:52

that with the container ships and the

28:54

loss of products on shelves and products

28:56

and inputs, being the one that should

28:58

become really evident within probably about two, three

29:00

weeks. You know what really

29:03

worries me about that is that

29:05

if things really get bad knowing

29:07

Donald Trump and you really do

29:09

understand Donald Trump's style in his

29:11

psychology in his playbook that if

29:13

things really get bad Donald Trump

29:15

will reach for a bigger distraction.

29:17

He will come up with something

29:19

different You know,

29:21

the assumption that somehow crisis brings Donald

29:23

Trump down, that may be true, but

29:25

it also makes him more dangerous. You

29:28

and I were just briefly, before we started talking, taping

29:31

today, talked about one of

29:34

his more recent executive orders, which

29:36

would basically empower or encourage the

29:38

military to get involved in law

29:40

enforcement. And this has always been

29:42

sort of hanging out there as

29:44

kind of the ultimate authoritarian nightmare.

29:46

But right from the beginning, Donald

29:48

Trump has made a priority to

29:51

get control of the military, personal

29:53

control of the military. We have

29:55

laws and traditions and norms that

29:57

keep the active military off the

29:59

streets as much as possible of our

30:01

cities. Give me some sense of what you

30:04

think is happening there. So

30:07

the order is somewhat ambiguous, as I think,

30:09

you know, somewhat confusing, as I think a

30:11

lot of these sometimes, you know, tend to

30:13

be. And though, as I

30:15

read it, it, among other things, instructs

30:17

the Secretary of Defense to put together

30:20

different ways for U .S. military, both

30:22

assets, you know, equipment, and also personnel,

30:24

to be able to help in what

30:27

the language of the order is, preventing

30:29

crime. And I don't really know

30:31

what that means, or what that would mean,

30:33

you know, in a military, that's not really

30:36

what the military does, the way that you

30:38

could... you know, you can maybe stop crime,

30:40

uh, perhaps or say catch somebody, but preventing

30:42

is that what then deploy all around the

30:44

streets and, you know, walk patrols and stuff

30:47

like that. And it seemed

30:49

also like they would put them

30:51

under the purview of the Attorney

30:53

General and the military doesn't work

30:55

for DOJ. It likely violates Pase

30:57

Comitas, the law that says the

30:59

military can't operate on the US soil.

31:01

That's a very old law. Although the

31:03

Trump administration has tried different ways of

31:06

getting around that or claiming things like

31:08

this, similar to what they did with

31:10

the Alien Enemies Act to claim justification

31:12

and deportation. And they do have the

31:14

Insurrection Act in their pocket. There

31:17

are very few checks on that if

31:19

he decides to invoke that, correct? Yes.

31:23

And there's also the problem that if he

31:26

invokes it and gives an order, even if

31:28

it's not a legal use of the law,

31:30

at minimum by the time that would get

31:32

a potential court rebuke, it could already be

31:34

underway and already be happened. I

31:37

can do sort of bigger fears,

31:39

long -term fears, is that questions

31:42

like, when faced within an illegal

31:44

order, will they follow it? If

31:46

some of them don't follow it

31:48

and others do, that's extremely dangerous.

31:50

That's a potential for politicizing the

31:52

military. The real nightmare scenario, splitting

31:54

the military over something like this depends on

31:56

how far he would go. I think that's

31:58

decently farther down the line. But

32:01

I've thought since, I mean, I think

32:03

in particular, since 2020 and reactions to

32:05

Black Lives Matter protests that Trump has

32:08

been itching to use force and to

32:10

order use of force against protesters. Nope.

32:13

And you mentioned things he's been saying

32:15

for a long time, right, with tariffs.

32:18

There's also his infamous words about Tiananmen

32:20

Square and the protests, about how much

32:22

he admired that China put it down

32:24

with so much force and so ruthlessly

32:26

how strong he thought that was. And

32:28

you can hear similar admiration for Putin

32:30

and the repression there. And he talks

32:32

very possibly about Kim Jong -un. So

32:35

these are very repressive dictators who put

32:37

down any sort of dissent with force.

32:40

And I think he's been at least itching to

32:42

try that. And the real open question is, what

32:44

will the military do that? I do not

32:46

think that all of the most senior officers

32:48

are going to want to do this. I

32:50

expect at least some of them are going

32:52

to go to lawyers and come back saying,

32:54

I'm sorry, that's an illegal order. I can't

32:57

follow it. But he's fired the lawyers, too.

32:59

Yeah, you can always fire. The first thing he did

33:02

was he fired the lawyers. Oh,

33:04

that's right. Fire the Jags. Yeah. Fire the military.

33:06

That's right. So that they don't have

33:08

people saying that. The reason I'm bringing

33:10

this up is because you want to

33:12

talk about a dark scenario that we

33:15

need to understand that the Supreme Court

33:17

does not have its own army. The

33:19

Congress does not have an army. Most

33:21

of what we think of as the

33:23

democracy movement doesn't have an army. Donald

33:25

Trump has an army now. And

33:28

I think we need to understand the

33:30

asymmetry that if things really, really goes

33:32

out, how bad things could be. And

33:34

I've talked about this with others. Including

33:37

I think was Ryan Lizard the other

33:39

day, you know our failure of imagination

33:42

About what Donald Trump is capable of doing

33:44

what he wants to do even though

33:46

Trump makes it clear what

33:48

he wants to do what he is

33:50

itching to do and yet people are

33:52

shocked when he does it but obviously

33:55

he is fixated on the use

33:57

of the military the use of

33:59

force looking strong and you know that

34:01

he's going to be absolutely too messing

34:03

when he has this giant military parade

34:06

in Washington D .C. on his

34:08

birthday, right? So, I mean,

34:10

this is something that is, he

34:13

has a number of obsessions and this

34:15

is one of them. Yeah,

34:18

I think that the failure of imagination has

34:20

been one of the big running problems, the

34:23

sort of, it can't happen here, complacency, ad

34:25

will be fine, somebody will stop it, and

34:27

we keep on seeing, okay, who? who

34:30

will actually stop it. And

34:32

so if anything, I think maybe this is

34:34

me having national security brain, but that the

34:36

way I've been trained to think about stuff

34:38

like say terrorism is to look for what

34:40

they call low probability, high impact events, meaning

34:43

if it would be a really big deal

34:45

if it happens and it is possible to

34:47

happen, we should take it seriously. And so

34:49

by that standard, if I had to ballpark,

34:51

what are the chances that Trump orders use

34:53

of force against peaceful protesters in the United

34:56

States? I mean way higher than like the

34:58

one or two percent that would cross that

35:00

threshold of low probability We need to take

35:02

it seriously a lot higher than that and

35:04

I see no reason not to Assume that

35:06

that he might if anything I think it's been

35:09

the opposite problem that people assuming that they can

35:11

was someone like like those Wall Street guys No,

35:13

he won't or never do it or someone stop

35:15

or any of those other complacent assumptions and I

35:17

don't do that Okay, so

35:19

let's switch gears and talk about what's going

35:22

on with Ukraine. Last

35:24

weekend, we had the funeral of the

35:26

Pope. Donald Trump goes there

35:28

and has that remarkable 15 minutes sit

35:30

down with Volodymyr Zelensky for the very,

35:33

very first time. You've got the little

35:35

bit of criticism of Vladimir Putin that

35:37

maybe doesn't want peace, but at the

35:39

same time, Marco Rubio is out there

35:41

saying, we may just walk away from

35:44

the whole peace process. Where

35:46

are we at right now? Because up

35:48

until this weekend, it was very, very

35:51

clear that Donald Trump has

35:53

completely aligned his rhetoric and

35:55

his positions with that of the Kremlin.

35:58

And yet, Vladimir Putin feels

36:00

like he's playing with him, that he's

36:02

not giving him the win. He's not

36:04

allowing him to come out of this

36:07

with some sort of a face -saving

36:09

deal. So what is the state of play,

36:11

Nicholas? I think

36:13

it's basically the same in that

36:15

the fundamental fact of this war

36:17

that a lot of people have

36:19

either been in denial about or

36:22

sort of refused to recognize is

36:24

that it is Russian aggression and

36:26

so the real implications of that

36:28

that Putin attacked, he didn't

36:30

have to. And, you know,

36:32

he ordered the troops to invade, certainly

36:35

didn't have to do that. He can

36:37

order them to stop at any point

36:39

and hasn't. And there has been this

36:41

misnomer among, I think, decent amount of,

36:43

you know, Trump. Musk has made these

36:45

arguments. A lot of them are right.

36:47

And also some of the some of

36:49

the left that People like well Pope

36:52

Francis was one who said this and

36:54

Lula de Silva of Brazil and maybe

36:56

American thinkers like to know Chomsky Had

36:58

argued that they're out treating the war

37:00

as if it is somehow America's fault

37:02

or it's Ukraine's fault for resisting but

37:04

basically assuming that Putin wants peace and

37:06

so that when you say something like

37:08

oh, we're gonna get the Ukrainians to

37:11

stop fighting that as if they're expecting

37:13

a reaction that Putin's gonna say oh thank

37:15

god uh you know finally we can stop

37:17

this devastating war i'm so upset about all

37:19

these people dying great i will make some

37:21

concessions if you give me some concessions let's

37:24

make a deal and instead the way that

37:26

he thinks uh is oh look at them

37:28

willing to compromise they're weak they're coming to me

37:30

because they're weak if we just push harder if

37:32

we push harder they're gonna fold and i'm gonna

37:35

get it all And this makes people uncomfortable to

37:37

deal with a murderous dictator out for conquest simply

37:39

because he wants it. That's mine and I want

37:41

it. And I don't care who I kill on

37:44

my side or the other in order to get

37:46

it. And that makes a lot

37:48

of people uncomfortable. A lot of people

37:50

thought that was left behind in history.

37:52

That's very 20th century. We read about

37:54

that. We don't experience it. And so

37:56

whenever the approach, even if,

37:58

say, I'll give Trump and team

38:00

the benefit of the doubt on this one.

38:03

Even if we do that, then they're going

38:05

into it thinking that... they're going to get

38:07

Putin this favor, and so he's going to

38:09

want to do them a favor back. But

38:11

they're doing him a favor, even if they

38:14

don't totally realize it, or whether or not

38:16

they do, but they're doing him a favor

38:18

by weakening the Ukrainians and by showing less

38:20

US support for Ukraine and Europe. And that

38:22

ends up then encouraging Russia more, that that

38:25

is what they wanted. That's what they were

38:27

banking on with the US election. That's why

38:29

I think when there was possibilities of

38:31

negotiations in 2023 -2024, why Russia

38:33

would so adamantly against them and

38:35

or would undermine them and with

38:38

bad faith in part because they

38:40

saw this lifeline of maybe a

38:42

miracle will flip. And

38:44

so there's no particular reason why they

38:46

would stop. I heard Marco Rubio made

38:48

this statement about how so oh and

38:50

just you know it's like yesterday these

38:52

innocent children were killed in Ukraine and

38:54

you know we so we need this

38:56

war to stop and I thought about

38:58

it's like that's not quite right Mr.

39:00

Secretary of State the People didn't just

39:02

die like it was from a hurricane

39:04

or some sort of natural disaster. Russia

39:07

killed them and Russia targeted civilians on purpose

39:09

and it did it because it's trying to

39:11

conquer Ukraine and they want the Ukrainians to

39:13

surrender and to bow down to them and

39:15

of course the Ukrainians don't want to do

39:17

that and Americans of all people should understand

39:19

why no we're not going to bow down

39:21

to a foreign dictator give me liberty or

39:23

give me death and you know that attitude

39:25

would make perfect sense that the Ukrainians are

39:27

choosing that on their own but the conspiracy

39:29

theory about it was the Americans tricked them

39:31

into it somehow that they wouldn't want to

39:33

resist on their own they're only doing it

39:35

at the behest of the United States So

39:37

as soon as the United States stops the

39:40

warmongering Ukrainians who are just defending themselves then

39:42

they'll be peace and as long as that

39:44

is the American attitude towards the war then

39:46

there won't be peace or they'll be at

39:48

least you know they were gonna fight it

39:50

out for a bunch longer and part of

39:52

the problem is this this means then what's

39:54

the strategy have to be how do you

39:56

get Russia to change its mind and to

39:58

agree to some sort of peace deal or

40:00

just to unilaterally withdraw or for its

40:03

military to collapse and the only answer

40:05

to that is to help Ukraine resistant

40:07

more, to thwart the Russian military's advances,

40:09

to make them spend resources, to do

40:12

as the Ukraine has increasingly been doing,

40:14

striking inside Russia, especially at military and

40:16

related industry, munitions factories, drone

40:19

factories, oil depots, things like

40:21

that, and make it that Russia either

40:23

cannot make war anymore, or reaches a

40:25

point where it decides it's no longer

40:27

worth it anymore. And that is not

40:29

a pleasant thing. It's not a quick

40:31

ending. It's not a relatively low cost ending.

40:34

it is the only way to deal with aggression,

40:36

as history has told us many times before. So

40:39

what's going to happen with Donald Trump, though?

40:42

I think you could make the case that among

40:44

all the people that are dealing with Donald Trump,

40:46

that Vladimir Putin is the only one who really

40:48

seems to understand how to deal with the bully.

40:50

Everybody else is bending the knee. It's like, oh,

40:53

we have to be nice to Donald Trump. We

40:55

have to give Donald Trump everything he wants. And

40:57

Vladimir Putin, who Donald Trump thinks is his good

40:59

buddy, He's kind of humiliating him

41:01

in public. So is there some breaking

41:03

point where Donald Trump says, you know

41:06

what? You're playing me. You're insulting me.

41:08

You're not my friend. I'm not going

41:10

to turn over Ukraine. Or is he

41:12

just stuck? Where do you think? Where

41:14

is he going to go on all

41:17

of this? Because he has no emotional

41:19

attachment. What do you mean?

41:21

Completely stuck. I also just want to say

41:23

on the other people, perhaps not pushing back

41:25

on him, that there have been a few,

41:28

we mentioned Canadians early. Claudia

41:30

Scheinbaum of Mexico is another one who just

41:32

sort of given it no and... some domestic

41:34

institutions in one way or another. I'd say

41:36

something like Harvard, for example, recently telling them

41:39

how and away the Columbia University did not.

41:41

And that's some of the big law firms.

41:44

Yeah. Some of them, right? Not others, but some.

41:46

And those ones that did the

41:48

agree to do the pro bono

41:50

work under bullying are going to

41:52

find themselves defending things like, say,

41:54

military officers that ordered people to

41:56

fire on civilians in the United

41:58

States, something like that, which I don't know

42:00

they realized they signed up for. But with

42:02

Putin of, no, I think that Trump

42:05

is is all in on this, that

42:07

it's been whether how much element of

42:09

psychological or the idea of losing face

42:11

of he has committed so much to

42:13

this for so many years so consistently.

42:16

that he cannot possibly back off in

42:18

any way while accepting exactly what Putin's

42:20

doing to him, or taking it as

42:22

some sort of personal insult, and without losing

42:24

an immense amount of faith, or maybe

42:26

even his sense of self, that this

42:28

was one of the things that was so

42:30

weird about the fantasies of people before the election

42:32

of, you know, he'll be tougher on Putin, he'll

42:34

help the Ukrainians, because he loves deals, and he'll

42:36

be embarrassed if he doesn't get a good one,

42:39

and no, no, he just really has affinity for

42:41

Russia, or heard a similar one, if he's going

42:43

to be so much tougher on Netanyahu

42:45

in Israel because you know otherwise Netanyahu will

42:47

embarrass him and it's no no he he

42:49

agrees or if anything he wants Netanyahu to

42:52

do it more. And

42:54

so he'll never drop them. This is

42:56

why you see people, both Trump himself

42:58

and others like Rubio or Hexeth, they

43:00

are working to try to blame the Ukrainians,

43:02

to try to blame the Europeans. The

43:05

fact that even Zelensky got Trump

43:07

to acknowledge maybe Putin isn't interested

43:09

in ending the war seems more

43:12

like one of those Trump infamously

43:14

agreeing with whoever he spoke to

43:16

last. rather than something that would

43:19

actually change US policy. I

43:21

don't think there's any way around it that

43:23

the way he'll do it is the same

43:25

thing he does with pretty much every foreign

43:27

policy, including the tariffs, is that the first

43:29

goal for him always is to lie to

43:31

the American people and try to make himself

43:33

look good. And after that, maybe some of

43:35

the actual policy might matter. But so

43:38

no, I expect him to bail. But did

43:40

you see the editorial in the Wall

43:42

Street Journal on Tuesday? I mean when

43:44

you lose Robert Murdock and they're saying

43:46

you know Trump 2 .0 is in

43:48

trouble and I thought the editorial was

43:50

going to be about the tariffs, but

43:52

it really zeroed in on you know

43:54

the You know, catastrophic

43:56

withdrawal from Afghanistan really was a

43:59

turning point, tipping point for the

44:01

Biden presidency. A cataclysm in

44:03

Ukraine could do the same thing for

44:05

you. And you are so narrowly focused

44:07

on this, you know, Russia first policy.

44:10

So you have people on the right

44:12

who are now warning him. That

44:14

there's significant risk and downside if

44:17

you abandon Ukraine and Vladimir Putin

44:19

goes in there and the world

44:21

sees those those those pictures Do

44:23

you think that has any influence

44:25

on him whatsoever? Honestly,

44:28

probably no one if Wall Street Journal and

44:30

other bankers can't get him to reduce the

44:32

tariffs of the economy I don't know how

44:34

they're gonna get him to change things. It's

44:36

hard to argue with that Two,

44:39

because actually doing something about the war is

44:41

hard and just kind of bailing on it

44:43

and blaming other people is easy. And

44:45

three, because one of the larger problems, and

44:47

you mentioned very early in the discussion about

44:49

how... the, with the first term that that

44:51

was sort of our, that was our mulligan.

44:54

That was the, oh, it'll just blow over.

44:56

It's just the flu. And that now the

44:58

message to the world is this could happen

45:00

every four years. That just, you know, you're

45:02

relying on the whims of American voters. It's

45:04

not going to be, the institutions can't contain

45:06

it. And so this is just another example

45:08

of that. I think that what one of

45:10

the things Trump absorbed in a lot of

45:13

his people learned was that the, the experts

45:15

who say stuff like that are wrong. So

45:17

you think of how many people told him

45:19

that if you, I don't know, if you

45:21

commit these blatant crimes, you're not going to

45:23

get reelected. If you, you should take something,

45:25

you should take one of like on the

45:27

classified documents case, take the avenue that people

45:29

like Mike Pence and Hillary Clinton did of

45:32

go, oops, you know, my bad, and return

45:34

it. And then they won't prosecute

45:36

you, but no, because otherwise you'll lose.

45:38

And they say this over and over

45:40

again. And the result was not Trump

45:42

losing, and it was him regaining power,

45:44

despite going that way. And so they

45:46

seem to be operating more with a...

45:48

Oh, those people don't know what they're

45:50

talking about. They're just weak, or they're

45:52

scared, they're holding me back, and they

45:54

can't do anything about it anyway. I

45:57

don't expect that. The Wall Street Journal talked

46:00

to him. If anything, now he's talking about,

46:02

you know, how Rupert Murdoch lost his way.

46:04

We're trying to bully Fox, bully Wall Street

46:06

Journal, bully the New York Post into saying

46:08

something different. And that is his move pretty

46:10

much all the time. Just, you know, bluster

46:12

more, bully more. And there are some things

46:15

you can maybe get to do it, like

46:17

maybe some law firms or maybe some media

46:19

organizations, but others that you can't. And that

46:21

includes Russia and Ukraine and Europe. It seems

46:23

to include China, include for that matter, Canada

46:25

and Mexico. and

46:28

especially including the bond market. You can't

46:30

just yell at the bond market and

46:32

get people to take their money and

46:34

trust that the United States will be

46:36

reliable enough to loan the US money,

46:38

that they just simply put their money

46:40

somewhere else. And so yelling at it

46:42

won't change it, but they're doing it

46:44

anyway. So let's go back to

46:46

where we started with looking at some

46:48

of these polls. Does it actually matter

46:50

that public opinion is shifting against him?

46:52

Now, I'm not saying will it matter

46:54

to Donald Trump, but just in overall in

46:57

you know drawing lines containing him

47:00

strengthening guardrails does this shift in

47:02

public opinion matter because so far

47:04

I mean the big caveat here

47:07

is you're not seeing any elected

47:09

republicans really you know peeling off

47:11

he still has solid support so

47:14

even if there is a coming

47:16

blue wave in 2026 it certainly

47:18

seems in the interim as if

47:21

congressional republicans are absolutely content to

47:23

be potted plants and absolute Trump

47:25

loyalist. So what is the significance

47:28

of the public opinion? Or are

47:30

we in an era where it

47:32

doesn't really change anything? What do

47:35

you think? I think

47:37

it matters. I think it matters

47:39

more than many assume that not

47:41

really because of the Congressional Republicans.

47:43

I think I have no faith

47:45

in them to do anything to

47:47

stand up for the Constitution at

47:49

all. If anything, I thought

47:51

January 6 was the line for that. If you would

47:53

go along with that, you'll go along with anything. And

47:56

I still can't believe that Mike

47:58

Pence's brother. voted for it even

48:00

after they tried to kill Mike Pence, where

48:02

I have brothers. I'd

48:05

like to think that they would not vote for people who

48:07

tried to kill me. But

48:09

so I have no faith in them. And on top

48:11

of even just the political incentives, so they don't seem

48:14

to either have principles or at least have to spine

48:16

to back those principles up if they have them. And

48:19

politically, they are more afraid of

48:21

Republican primaries than they are. general

48:24

elections that even in worst case scenario

48:27

for them right they they win the

48:29

primary they lose the general election well

48:31

then as long as you stuck by

48:33

Trump then you can get a media

48:35

contractor a consulting job or something And

48:38

so I don't really expect them to

48:40

change there. But the public opinion is

48:42

a hard to really, we can measure

48:44

it in numbers, but hard to really

48:46

determine the effect, but is always having

48:48

an effect on politics that more entrenched

48:51

authoritarians than this one have fallen. And

48:53

the way that they fall is by losing a

48:56

lot of the public. that

48:58

you get more people courage

49:00

can be contagious. And

49:02

people who had a sense early on of,

49:04

oh, the vibes have shifted. Everybody's

49:06

going along with this. I got to go along

49:09

too. Then start increasingly thinking, oh, you know, a

49:11

lot of this isn't going well. And a lot

49:13

of people are objecting to this. And I don't

49:15

want to get on their bad side. And, you

49:17

know, there will be a future after this. And

49:19

this goes for a bunch of business leaders of,

49:21

you know, how strongly do they want to be

49:23

associated with this when it comes to long term?

49:26

I think law firms are another good example of

49:28

that more of them instead of worrying, oh, Trump

49:30

attacking us is going to make us lose some

49:32

corporate clients that we need to work with the

49:34

government and instead start wearing things like, if we

49:36

don't even stand up for ourselves, how can we

49:38

convince clients we're going to stand up for them?

49:41

And so there's more of this

49:44

can add up over time that

49:46

things like this growing protests of,

49:48

I think the Democratic Senator Van

49:50

Hollen going to El Salvador and

49:52

getting a Braco Garcia on TV.

49:55

That seemed to have worked. getting the Salvadorans

49:57

to admit that the US was paying

49:59

them to keep them there, that that

50:01

all is valuable, and there's no real

50:03

way to see where a tipping point

50:05

is in advance. We never know exactly

50:08

where that is, where it happens, and

50:10

they will pretend to be, meaning the

50:12

administration, will pretend to be very popular

50:14

and, you know, acting on the will

50:16

of the people and calling every poll

50:18

that says otherwise fake news or anything

50:21

like that, and they'll keep doing that.

50:23

right up to the point that it

50:25

doesn't work. But with even some actions

50:27

of like, how much will they violate

50:29

a court order versus how much will

50:31

they adhere to one and maybe try

50:34

another stretching the law but not outright

50:36

breaking it path, that public opinion

50:38

is a constraint on that. It's the sort of

50:40

thing that they worry about that they have a

50:42

sense of if they lose too much. And I

50:44

don't know where that number is. I don't think

50:46

they do either. Maybe he's got

50:48

to get below 30 % something else, but

50:50

where they become less able to govern, less

50:53

able to abuse power, and more people are

50:55

either resisting or standing up to it, and

50:57

that is outside of electoral politics. I think

50:59

you just made a very, very important point

51:02

there because we tend to focus, I think,

51:04

too much on the elected officials on Congress.

51:06

At this point, you write them off. But

51:09

it is the rest of civil society. Will

51:11

they have a backbone? Will

51:13

they buy that narrative that resistance

51:15

is futile? And I think you're

51:17

going to see that in the

51:20

law firms, in the private industry,

51:22

in universities throughout the country, is

51:24

it prudent to cave in at

51:26

this point? because there are no

51:29

limits to what Donald Trump can

51:31

do. I mean, let's be honest

51:33

about it though, they are facing

51:35

this unprecedented challenge, an administration that's

51:37

willing to use all of the

51:40

levers and cudgels of power, whether

51:42

it's the FCC or the SEC

51:44

or potentially the IRS to go

51:46

after you, make your life absolutely

51:48

miserable. So I don't think we're

51:51

out of the woods yet. I don't think we're

51:53

at a tipping point yet. Because

51:56

if anything, I think the Trump

51:58

folks are going to be more aggressive. I

52:00

think it was Olivia Troy who

52:02

pointed out that the project

52:04

2025 agenda was not 100

52:06

days. It was like, what,

52:09

it was a 150 or 180

52:11

days. So we're not there

52:13

yet, even in terms of

52:15

their own blueprint. strap on.

52:19

Nicholas Grossman, it

52:21

has been great talking with you. You You

52:23

can read Nicholas's stuff at the Art and Art Digital. He's

52:25

a professor of political science at the University of

52:27

Illinois. Nicholas, thanks for coming back on

52:29

the podcast. We'll have to do this again soon. Sure.

52:31

absolutely. My My pleasure, Charlie. And

52:34

thank you all for listening to today's

52:36

episode of Do The Contrary Podcast. I'm Charlie Sykes.

52:38

You know why we do this. You know

52:40

we would do this multiple times a week

52:42

because it's never been more important than it

52:44

is right now to remind ourselves that

52:46

we are not the crazy ones. Thanks.