← Deadline: White House
Deadline: White House
“From a bang to a whimper”
00:41:36
Nicolle Wallace covers how Donald Trump went from threatening genocide earlier in the week to being in a tactically, politically, and morally weaker position now than he was on Monday.
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We are no longer in the land
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of the free and the home of the brave.
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We are now America, the reckless, unpredictable, predatory rogue nation that is administrations. And it will be this president's legacy.
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And that's happening now.
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Honesty, honor, humility, truth, compassion, thoughtfulness, morality, true strength and decency. Don't let anybody tell you that these
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things don't matter anymore.
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They do.
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Bruce Springsteen taking it upon himself to refill and refuel the soul of our nation. Hi again, everybody. It's five o' clock now in New York. From a bang to a whimper. A week that started with Donald Trump's throwaway threats of mass murder and complete annihilation and a deliberate weakening of our global alliances is ending now. The only way that it seems it could, with Donald Trump somehow putting America in a weaker position today and Donald Trump being in a weaker position today tactically, politically and morally than he was on Monday. In normal times, in a healthy, functioning democracy, that would be, politically speaking, curtains, Right? Lights out. Any politician in a democracy having failed so spectacularly, having been suddenly abandoned by huge and very high profile members of their own political coalition, a person in a democracy might recognize the inherent weakness of his or her position and retreat. Or recalibrate or improve or not. But it would come down to the same thing, a limping along to the sunset of one's political power or political lifespan. But as we've been telling you for a long time, right, these are not normal times. And our democracy isn't completely healthy. And Donald Trump isn't that sort of leader anyway. He has proven through word and through deed that he's instead an aspiring autocrat. And when an autocrat fails and is humiliated and is exposed as weak. He doesn't correct right. He doesn't let go. He doesn't abandon the calamity. Instead, he tightens the grip. Remember the last time Donald Trump lost his grip? He incited an armed insurrection. He had an armed mob of his supporters march on our very seat of government. And we didn't know it at the time, but that was really just the beginning. What followed that was years now of undermining faith that his supporters and many Americans feel in our institutions and our very system of government, in democracy itself. And he did all that without any of it being true to some extent. Tragically, some of those efforts were successful. The question now is this, what's Donald Trump going to do this time? Well, lucky for us, he's telling us and showing us the answer is right in front of us. He's going to cheat in the midterm elections. The scaffolding of that plan is already in full view. Last week, Trump tried to disenfranchise voters through perhaps illegal modifications to rules on mail in ballots. His administration has refused to rule out sending ICE agents to polling places. He's pushed for federal control over our elections. And he has reportedly been presented with a draft executive order alleging Chinese interference as a predicate or basis to be able to do so. In the same way athletes are taught to throw to where their target is going to be, not where they are. It is on us to examine where all of this is heading, where this is going to be in November. An aspiring autocrat, humiliated, diminished, but ready, willing, and perhaps still able to seize the reins of our democracy. That's where we start the hour with me for all of it. Voting rights attorney, founder of democracy docket Mark Elias is here and Protect Democracy Executive editor Ian Bassin is here. Ian Bassin, how do you see this moment?
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A
Well, I think our gift from Donald Trump is not only his incompetence, but his predictability. And you just laid it out, Nicole. We know what he's gonna do because he telegraphs it very clearly to us, and he's told us before. And he has a very clear playbook for trying to interfere with the elections in a way that is designed to help him when he is unpopular and is on track to lose catastrophically. And that playbook, to borrow from Sesame street, involves the letter of the day being d. He will deceive, he will disrupt, and then he will deny. And by that, I mean he starts by deceiving, because in our system, a autocratic president doesn't control all of the levers of our elections, in fact, they control none of the levers. We have a system where it's very distributed. And so he needs accomplices throughout the system to help him corrupt it. And to get them, he has to trick people, he has to deceive people into thinking that the elections are rigged, broken, rife with fraud, dead Chinese people voting. So he's going to go through deception in order to then persuade people to disrupt it, in order to get secretaries of state, state legislators, local clerks, members of Congress, judges, to tilt the playing field. And if that doesn't work, then it will be denied. It will be like he did in January 6th of 2021, saying, actually, it's not that I lost, it's that I won. The good news is, because that is so predictable, we can prepare for it. We, we know it's going to happen, and that's how we can defeat it.
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B
Marco Elias, how do you prepare for that?
- [06:49]
D
Look, right now we're litigating 90 cases in 45 states around the country. I mean, that will come as a surprise to people how much litigation is already going on. But Donald Trump, you know, runs a, an enterprise to take away your voting rights to make it harder for you to vote, and also simultaneously, an enterprise to make it easier for him to cheat. And we have to, you know, there are days where, Nicole, we focus more on the first, and there are days where we focus more on the second second. But we need to understand these are integrated holes. The same efforts to try to disenfranchise your ability to vote by making it, for example, very hard for married women to change their last name, to be able to even register to vote, by making it harder for people to vote by mail. That just feeds into the, the efforts at the end of the process where Donald Trump wants to take over the tabulation and the counting of votes. That's not my words. Those are his. That, that, that it becomes easier for him to do those things if, in fact, he has begun by suppressing voting rights. We all have a part to play. We have a part to play in calling us out in public. We have a part to play in organizing everyday Americans against this. We have a part to play in making sure that the political leadership of this country are focused on it. And then we also have a part to play in the courts to stand up and make sure that, that we do not give a free pass, do not give an inch to Donald Trump's voter suppression election subversion.
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B
How do you, Mark, assess the advantages of Trump trying to rig the elections as the head of state.
- [08:16]
D
Oh, he's got. Look, you and I, I think, first started talking about these issues in 2020 when I came on your show. So it has been six years now. And in 2020, we talked about the fact that too many people were complacent and that Donald Trump was not going to go peacefully from power. And what he has learned since then is that he can abuse the powers of the federal government to a much greater extent than he did in 2020. In 2020, he was to seize ballots, but he didn't do it. Well, now he's president. He has gone back, and he has seized ballots from Fulton County. He has subpoenaed ballots. His Department of Justice has subpoenaed ballot images from Arizona. He has an attorney general who is way more compliant. I mean, Todd Blanche, you know, is even making, you know, Pam Bondi look like a pillar of strength against Donald Trump. He gave a speech. He gave a speech the other day in which he said it is Donald Trump's duty to go after his political opponents and that he, Todd Blanche, it was his job to. To purge the administration from anyone who does not do the job of who he referred to as his boss, Donald Trump. So we're up against much tougher opponents. We have the Department of Justice right now in court in 30 places trying to get access to sensitive voter data. So it is much harder this time, Nicole. It is going to be rougher this time. The elections are going to be, you know, they're going to be rockier periods. But, you know, that just means that we all have to work harder.
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You know, Ian, how do you see the politics? Because there's a lot of tendency in political journalism to cover politics as static. And I think they're erratic, dynamic, and they're changing by the second. And we don't cover the MAGA coalition because they're injecting any sanity into that side. That ship is like. There's not even a ship. This is like in another universe. Donald Trump's autocratic practices have been enabled by the strength and durability of his political coalition when it fractures spectacularly. I guess my question is, how can that best impede practices that are not democratic, small d democratic at all?
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A
I mean, look, as I said, he needs accomplices throughout government if he really were to be successful at subverting an election. And he reached for them in 2020. He reached to Brad Raffensperger to try to get him to interfere. He tried to get the Republican leaders of the state houses in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan to interfere. And with the exception of 147 Republican members of Congress, every time he turned to those accomplices, he didn't get them. And I think the danger, as Mark alludes to here, is that he has more accomplices within the executive branch. And the question is whether he having really purged the Republican Party of those people who were willing to stand up to him before, whether he will have more accomplices within the Republican Party now. And one interesting dynam dynamic you're seeing is that oddly, it's some of the fringe characters, the Alex Joneses of the world, the Candace Owens is of the world, but Tucker Carlson's of the world, who are fleeing from him now, whereas some of the more mainstream Republicans are the slower to move. I mean, it is a wild sort of Alice in Wonderland where Alex Jones sounds sane in response to what Donald Trump was saying about Iran. But Todd Young, the senator from Indiana. And so I think the question here for the Todd Youngs of the world is when are they going to read the writing on the wall that the Donald Trump ship is sinking and their future political fortunes? This is, I'm not even appealing to their altruism or their oaths of office. I'm appealing to their self interest. Their self interest is to get off that ship as fast as possible. And if they do, not only will it serve their self interest, but it will also serve the American Republic. Cuz it will mean that when Donald Trump reaches to Republican members of Congress like he did in, he doesn't get 147 of them to say, sure, we'll try to steal the election on your behalf. He basically ends up with a handful of sand.
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B
I mean, Ian, I want to understand how you see the role of the public because I feel like perhaps one of the most dramatic shifts between 2020, when Mark Elias and I first started having these conversations and today is you have a lot of people who understand that pro democracy isn't sort of one party or the other isn't right left. It's against tactics that Donald Trump seem to be flirting with, deploying against members of his own coalition. Right. It seems like the public is waking up to the idea that we are not in a right left moment in America, blue state, red state moment in America, that there's something different going on. And I wonder how you see sort of the public waking up to the very real threats to the midterms.
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Well, look, the public played a key role in 2020. If you remember, in the lead up to the 2020 election, we knew again, because Donald Trump is incredibly predictable, that he was gonna try to use the so called red mirage, the fact that the ballots that were counted earliest in 2020 were gonna likely favor Trump, and the later counted mail ballots were gonna favor Joe Biden. And he was gonna use that the night of the election to claim that he had won. And all the late counted ballots were fraudulent. And the public got wise to that, including through shows like yours, to know that that was gonna happen. So when Trump tried it, they were inoculated and said, yeah, no, that's not right. And so he is gonna try to deceive people. And I think that especially people like those watching the show, in spreading the word in everyone's communities about the fact that he's gonna do that. And how can you learn about that? Well, Mark's got a wonderful publication, Democracy Docket, that is detailing that deception in real time. So you subscribe to that, you read about what's going on and you share that information. We've got a whole report on Deceive, disrupt, deny@protectdemocracy.org DDD that's step one. Then when he tries to do the disruption, when he tries to get the Senate to pass a bill that would make it much harder for people to vote, including, as Mark alluded to, married women, that's when you've got to stand up and states, red states, blue states, purple states, call your members and get them to reject those sorts of efforts. And that's true when he tries to do it at the state level as well. And when Mark's fighting in court, the people need to be fighting in their legislatures and in the court of public opinion. And then finally, should we get to the deny stage? Right. And let's make sure people also know voting and voting early is going to be key. But if in fact he ends up losing and he gets to the deny stage, then people need to follow the model of the people in Minnesota where Bruce Springsteen was speaking and say, we will not allow an election to be stolen on our watch. At the end of the day in Minnesota, what got the administration to back down was the Minnesota people going out there in negative 20 degree weather and saying, we simply will not accept this autocratic takeover of our state. And we may need that at a national level come December.
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B
Yeah, I mean, it gives me chills. Thinking back to being live on Minneapolis and Minnesota in those temperatures, minus 20, I think with wind chills, it was even colder. And watching the people take to the streets, not just against Trump, but for their neighbors and for their community and for the country. And I wonder if you, how do you see, how do you sort of rate, in terms of positive signs and worrying signs, the level of awareness among the public right now about the threats to our elections and our democracy?
- [15:50]
D
Look, I agree with everything Ian said, including subscribing to democracy docket, by the way. But I think that we are in an era, Nicole, which will be remembered for the great bravery of so many and the enormous cowardice of the few. And the few who could have done so much. The people who had every advantage, the people who were civic leaders and corporate leaders and had every opportunity to risk very little to do so much good, did absolutely nothing. And on the other hand, we saw extraordinary acts of bravery by ordinary Americans in Minneapolis. And by the way, we have seen those acts of bravery around the country. It's not just in Minneapolis. We saw them in Chicago, we saw them in la. We see them every day with people standing up for the rule of law in the no Kings protests and in everyday acts. And so look, I, like Ian, am optimistic. I mean, I fight like hell, and I think we have to do that. And we can never lose sight and be anything other than clear out about the threat that Donald Trump is. But I am optimistic that if every person watching this shares with their circle, their dinner clubs, their. Their lunch groups, their coffee clocks, they're the people they work with, the people who they socialize with, if everybody shares the threat that we are facing and the things that they can do to stand up, then we'll be okay at the end of this. But if not, if instead they are defeatist because they think Donald Trump is just too powerful, the threats are just too great. That is when I start to worry.
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B
Yeah, or that's when I want to send him to a Bruce Springsteen concert. Right. I mean, I think the other part of this is it started with the American people. It started with people in Minneapolis and Chicago and Oregon and other places. But culture is now following the public, and that feels like an important piece of it as well. I want to ask you about that. No one's going anywhere. We have much more with Ian and Mark on how a dangerous and weakened and cornered Donald Trump is a threat to America's democracy. Also ahead for us this hour, those conservative media figures we're talking about, who Donald Trump attacked yesterday aren't backing down. Instead, they're escalating their fight with their one time all powerful political leader. We'll show you what that looks and sounds like later in the hour. Devin White House continues after a quick break. Don't go anywhere.
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- [19:18]
A
Look, I get this strategy that says, look, this stuff about the collapse in the rule of law and democracy, you got to save that for another day. Because right now it's about the economy. And look, I talk about the economy everywhere I go. But we also need to connect the dots. Part of why everyday life is getting worse in this country is because those institutions are broken. And it's not just that the law isn't being followed. It's that so many nakedly corrupt things turn out not to be against the law. There's so many things that turn out to be perfectly legal, especially the way money is being spent to manipulate the outcomes of elections in this country. And again, it's one of those kind of gradually then suddenly things, right? We have accepted this for so long that we may have forgotten that it doesn't have to be this way.
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One of the things that is so distant from how voters make decisions is this idea that a voter can only process one thing, that they're either gonna go with you because you talked about the price of eggs or they're gonna go with you because you talked about the rule of law. I mean, the truth is the economy has been destroyed by a felon. I mean, they're one and the same. And I wonder, Ian Bassin, how we sort of follow the voter. I mean, just like the last conversation we were having. I mean, culture has followed music and sports have followed the People, they started in the largest numbers in Minneapolis, but to everyone's point, they've been out in the streets in other places. Democratic leaders, I think, are following their voters who have been desperate since the morning after the election for fighters. And I wonder what you make of sort of the way our conversations are still catching up with the voters. They understand that you can't have an economy that serves everybody if you are grifting and breaking the law.
- [21:04]
A
You know, I have some vulnerability on this and some confessions of error, which is that, you know, Mark and I both, I think, probably would have identified before the Trump era as being democracy reformers. We thought that there was something fundamentally broken and wrong with a system that allowed people to buy so much influence and make it so hard for people to vote and have their will actually turned into government policy. Our system was fundamental gerrymandering and red rampant. We really believe that the system needed to be reformed. And then Donald Trump comes along, and perhaps this is one of his little brilliant insights, would say, people are sick of the system. And he says, okay, I'm going to go and destroy the system that you don't like. And everyone says, yeah, yeah, got to do that. Right? But the problem is destroying a system that's broken doesn't fix it. And what Donald Trump is incapable of doing is actually building something better. But perhaps, perhaps we have to go through this moment of accidentally putting in power a destroyer in order to get to the side where now we can come together again and say, okay, now let's build something that really works. And, you know, I would just point out the fact that in every great prior advance in this country to make our democracy more responsive, more equal, more inclusive, more resilient, those all came on the back end of some sort of crisis. Right? The Constitution came out of the revolution. The Reconstruction came out of the Civil War, the Civil rights movement, and the New Deal came out of the Depression and World War II and the era that preceded it. And I think hopefully the Donald Trump crisis will lead to a fourth founding moment where we do fix a lot of these things that Pete was just talking about, where our system is not responsive enough, it's not resilient enough, it's not inclusive enough, it doesn't really respond to the people. But we're gonna need someone who can actually make those reforms work and actually fix it. And Donald Trump is purely a destroyer. And that's all.
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B
Yeah. You know, Mark, there's an effort to take Donald Trump completely out of the equation. Right? He's run three Times. Republicans picked him all three times and the country picked him twice. I wonder if you think the thing that made him magnetic to enough Americans for him to win twice has been dulled or how you sort of assess the state of a poll toward nativism, racism, isolationism. I mean, is this coalition fracturing because he didn't deliver on those dark forces, or is it fracturing because everything's more expensive and the economy blew up?
- [23:34]
D
So I think the first thing is it's exploding because it was never actually that popular. I mean, we say that Donald Trump won twice and he did. And I am the first one to say to people on the left who try to say he didn't win that that's not true. He won twice. But in 2016 he lost the popular vote, right? So, so he was never a popular figure in 2016. He obviously was not a popular figure in 2020, and in 2024 he won. But I believe he won a plurality of the vote. So this is not someone who has ever been a toweringly popular figure, number one. Number two, you know, as you know, because you've worked in White Houses, the first thing about governing is just basic competence. And so part of what has always been true about the Trump movement is it just isn't competent. Like it doesn't do things that serve the American people. And I don't just mean like a philosophical way. I mean that in like the, you know, the basic services of government, like Doge was just an effort to destroy government and make it less responsive and less competent. So I think that's the second thing. And then the third thing is, you know, and I do think this is a place where Democrats need to be more confident in themselves. I mean, the fact is the American people care about the rule of law. The American people care about the Constitution. They care about basic freedoms and civil liberties. I mean, the number of non lawyers who, you know, regularly say things like, you know, proven an innocent till proven guilty or I have First Amendment rights. They may not even be using it in the exactly proper context, but there is a sense of what it means to be an American and have there be fair play. And Donald Trump is not for any of those things. And you are entirely right. We should be self confident enough to say that we can both be talking about the prices of goods and gasoline and also be saying that Donald Trump is an authoritarian who does not believe that the rules apply to him. He believes he's above the law. He doesn't believe that justice should be blind. He doesn't believe that he should be bound by the Constitution. And I think those things do resonate with the public.
- [25:36]
B
And there's a benefit politically that has accrued to Donald Trump of the volume of garbage that he puts into the system that feels like it's catching up with him. But some stories aren't. And there have been some staggering headlines about insider trading. Financial Times had some reporting about Pete Hegseth, financial advisor, trying to get in on a fund investing in defense contracting and equipment ahead of the war in Iran. The polymarket stuff is raging all over around all these issues, if not illegal, highly unethical. No one even asks the White House about Hatch act violations because it feels laughable. They pardoned. Trump has been joking about pardoning anyone that comes within 10ft of the Oval. Why would anyone ask them if they're abiding by the Hatch Act? But I wonder if you think there's been a cumulative impact to the grifting and the grinding down on norms and the illegality and the pardoning of allies and cronies and the concurrent efforts to punish and use the Justice Department to investigate and prosecute political foes.
- [26:45]
A
You know, the Greek myths have lessons for us, right? And the myth of Icarus was that he was so confident in his ability to fly above gravity that he flew too close to the sun and his wings melted and he fell to the ground. And I think that there's a lesson there in American politics. And when Trump got reelected in 2024, I was trying to imagine what sort of prior historical analogies could help us see what paths we might be on. And one was a normal political analogy, that there had been two prior times in American history when a president had been reelected, either having lost the popular vote the first time and then winning it the second time, or having been out of office for four years, having lost, returning to office after four years out of office. The first, obviously, was George W. Bush lost the popular vote in 2001 and 2004. The other one was Grover Cleveland, left office in 1892, or sorry, in 1888, came back to office in 1892. And in both of those cases, as Mark alludes to, those presidents were reelected not with overwhelming mandates. They were really reelected not because even of personal popularity, because of background context. Things were happening at the time. A rally around the flag effect in 2004, and they overread their mandates and they tried to do things thinking that they had more public backing than they did, and ended up seeing a political whip sawing where the Democrats won in 2006 and again in 2008. And in the Cleveland example, the Republicans won in 1894 and 1896. And the question was, would this Trump return to power be like that, where he would overread his mandate and get a massive political backlash, or would it be more like the Viktor Orban model in Hungary of an autocrat who comes into power and is able to defy the laws of political gravity and create an authoritarian system in the country? And I will say that right after 2024 I was worried it was the latter. And you and I had conversations about this, that Trump was going to be able to create an Orban like authoritarian rule in this country. And I will say right now the evidence is that he has actually been much more like Icarus. And the corruption you talk about, the incompetence that Mark talks about, it is creating the political backlash that I think is going to throw him out of power like a normal failed politician.
- [29:02]
B
Well, you've perfectly set up this next conversation because when we get back we're going to talk about that. Trump can't even sort of use his muscle to silence his once besties, his critics within the MAGA movement, his former allies with massive platforms where Trump seems to feel it the most in media places. Trump was wrong when he thought his post yesterday as deranged as anything he said over the last seven days. Days would quiet them down. Those former MAGA allies and media stars are not backing down at all. We'll show you what they've said in response after a short break.
- [29:41]
C
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- [30:17]
A
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- [30:23]
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- [30:42]
B
so if Donald Trump thought he was going to get his former allies, people like Tucker Carlson and Alex Jones, to stop calling him out and shut up and be quiet by calling them, quote, low IQs, they're stupid people. They know it, their families know it, and everyone else knows it, too. Donald Trump is mistaken. While those kinds of attacks and threats might still work on members of Congress, it might have gotten members of the MAGA sphere to back down in the past. In another sign of just how politically weak he is and how much Trump's support with his own base has weakened, they have barely seemed to flinch. Here's how Alex Jones responded.
- [31:26]
D
At the end of the day, I just feel sorry for him and pray that God touch his heart and soul
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A
and free him from the demonic influences that he's under.
- [31:33]
D
I mean, it's just that simple.
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A
This is a nightmare.
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B
Now, when Alex Jones is the one praying for you to be relieved of your demonic influences, that's next level. Then there's Candace Owens. Here's how she responded. Oh, she said it may be time to put grandpa in a home once Candace has come back. Tucker Carlson seems to be trying to play a statesman in all this and may have sensed that more and more of his followers might view drawing the ire of Trump as a badge of honor. He released his own version of a red hat that says low iq. I wanna bring in political analyst Molly Zhang fast. She's the host of Fast Politics. She's the New York Times contributing opinion writer. Mark and Ian are still here. Now, again, I don't agree with any of those people on anything. They've done despicable things in the political arena. But we are here with Trump as our president because of them, and they are now breaking with him and seeming to revel in it.
- [32:32]
E
Yeah, I mean, it's true. And these are the people who most responsible for making Donald Trump the nominee in 2016, which I think is really ironic. Right. People like Tucker Carlson, who was sort of traditional maga, and people like Alex Jones who was fringe MAGA at that time. And I think so. I think that's worth remembering. And here's what I would say. I do not think these people are having a come to Jesus moment. I do not think they are having a moment of consciousness. I think. And I would cut out Tucker Carlson because I do believe he is genuinely anti war. But I think these other people are reflecting the comments and the feeling their
- [33:13]
B
audience, they're paying subscribers.
- [33:16]
E
Exactly. And so they are trying to serve their audience. And that means that Donald Trump is in more trouble than we think.
- [33:23]
B
Well, I mean, and that's why it's a political story, right? I mean, the front runner for the Republican nomination in 2028 is Tucker Carlson, not Marco Rubio.
- [33:33]
A
Yeah. You know, I look at this and I think, you know, you want to understand Donald Trump, understand the world he came from, right? Which is New York in the 1980s. And there were sort of three dominant influences on him. One was real estate, one was the Mafia, and one was wwf. And if you understand that, you kind of understand everything about him. Right. Because real estate is why he sees everything is about a land acquisition. It's why he talks about Greenland and the Panama Canal and Venezuela, you know, and the mafia is how he sees everything through the lens of how do I intimidate people to be loyal to me? And the WWF was all about sort of one time someone's my ally and friend, and then, oh, my God, it's theater. I'm turning on them. And, you know, I look at the fights between Alex Jones and Candace Owens and Donald Trump as basically like WrestleMania 1986. And the thing that, you know, and I was actually not a big wrestling fan, but I understood enough about it that at some point in time, the person who dominated those rings and those shows and got all the ratings got old, and the McMahons understood that after a while, Hulk Hogan was kind of no longer the thing that was gonna get people to tune in. And I think what's happening now is Donald Trump is like Yesterday's news for WrestleMania, and he's gonna find out that the circus that put him there is gonna want someone else because he just isn't able to command the same level of audience that he used to.
- [34:49]
B
And Mark Elias, I think it's important that we sort of take the right lessons from this. Right? I mean, one, it is, as Molly said, not about certain people coming to Jesus, aligning themselves with our warnings for. About Donald Trump. No, again, let me say that again. That is not why they are newsworthy. They're newsworthy because they represent where Alex Jones, Megyn Kelly and Tucker Carlson, who are all business people, see their followers going, where they will continue to pay to go to live events, to go to conferences, to subscribe to podcasts, to pay for speaking engagements where they think
- [35:24]
A
the energy is tune into their WrestleMania.
- [35:27]
B
Exactly. But I think the other piece of it is, is where MAGA has been successful is in co opting the culture around the political movement to keep the wrestling thing going. And I think I've started to notice that Democrats seem to be at least aware or cognizant of the importance of keeping an eye not just on people, but on culture. I think the Springsteen concert is really important. I think athletes feeling that there's a permission structure to speak out as they did at the Olympics. There's a lot of, of NBA players did, WNBA players and coaches have been strong through every chapter of our politics. But I wonder what you think the lessons are in this breakup other than sort of beating popcorn and reveling in its gory nature.
- [36:14]
D
Yeah, I think it's two things. I think first of all, you pick three people who are the perfect weather vane of the grifting right wing. So you're right, they are looking where they can turn based on where their audience wants them to go, where the next dollar is to be found, where they can you, where they can sell snake oil and lies to the people who follow them. So I think that's part of it. The second is, and you know, since we're giving credit to, you know, despicable right wing figures, I mean, let me shout out Andrew Breitbart who said that, you know, culture is downstream, that politics is downstream of culture. And he was entirely right about that. And you know, I sometimes talk to recording artists or actors or people who are, you know, very famous on the left and I tell them, them that, you know, the right wants you to think you are a liability. They want you to think that, you know, coming out because, because, because they don't want you to be effective. But the fact is politics is downstream from culture. And these large cultural figures who have a lot of cache pay, do lend both a, a sort of quasi endorsement, but even more importantly, they lend a cool to it all. I mean, when Bruce Springsteen is, is talking about these things, it is not just the words he is saying, but it is the fact that an iconic music legend is talking about these issues and he is just an iconic music legend. And so I think that we make a mistake when we seed culture to the right and think that left wing, you know, or left of center cultural icons, you know, are better off, you know, not speaking out. I think every athlete should speak out. I think every recording artist should speak out. I think every actor, actor should speak out and do their part for standing up for democracy. Because we're gonna need all of them when we get down to the moments where Donald Trump is using the power of the federal government to try to rig elections and we need people, the people to stand up against it.
- [38:07]
B
Let me just say one other thing about this. The proof that the right wing disinformation around this has worked is I saw an actor on a right wing athlete saying, I know no one cares what actors they think. You know, who knows? That's not true. Donald Trump, every time Robert De Niro opens his mouth, he loses his flipping mind. He loses his mind. Donald Trump is obsessed with whatever anyone famous says about him anywhere. He seems to have some search device. He knows what everyone famous says about him. And the reason, I think the other reason it matters is politics being downstream from culture feels like a map. It's not. It's an emotion. And where Democrats have come up short, it's because they've been right, but they haven't made people feel it. Anything. What culture does is it plugs. I mean, what the Bruce Springsteen concerts do is they make you feel this love for America that people have been feeling like they didn't have anywhere to say it or what to do with it because they don't love the person leading it. And so I think this is so important. I think this could be a regular, I think with the three of you, this has to be a regular conversation leading up to the midterms and the presidential beyond it. No one's going anywhere. We're going to sneak in one more break. We'll all be right back. Back on the other side. We're back with Molly, Mark and Ian. Molly, your thoughts on where the Democrats go from this week?
- [39:25]
E
I mean, you could not have asked for a better week for Democrats. Right? You got MAGA in disarray. You have the, you know, you have just this very unpopular war. You have gas prices. I mean, there's just a lot to run against. And you also have these. The special in Georgia where the Republican 4.6.
- [39:45]
C
Exactly.
- [39:46]
E
So, you know, I think they need to do the thing that Amanda Lippman from Run for Something always talks about. They have to run for every seat. They have to say everything's on the table and they have to run in every in, you know, what works in different places. So in Texas, it's gonna be a different candidate than in New York or. And I think they're gonna have to do all of that. And I think this is the genuine problem of a shrinking mainstream media is that these candidates are gonna have to articulate their voices, articulate their priorities in ways that they haven't had to do it before. And what we've seen with the mayor is that he is very good at transmitting the nuts and bolts of being the mayor. And that's what he's had to do. And I think it's been very, you know, it's been good for his approval rating. So I think more of this kind of show not tell about governing and explaining to people like, your gas just went up. I mean, the gas this month. These are crazy numbers. And you have to explain like this went up because of these straits that you've never heard of in Iran.
- [40:46]
B
Yeah. I mean, the economic headlines alone, Marc Elias could be the one thing that has everyone shifting lean Republican races to toss up, you know, toss ups to lean Democratic. What do you make of all the political forces in the system right now?
- [41:03]
D
Now, look, I've lived through the good years and the bad years of midterm elections. You know, I was, I was helping represent House incentive campaigns in 2006, which felt pretty good. Didn't feel so good in 2010. And we're in one of those years that there's just going to be a big wind at Democrats back. And so what Molly just said is vitally important. Democrats need to invest in candidates up and down the ticket and be in states and in districts that you may not normally think of as in place. The candidates need to believe in themselves and be everywhere and get their message out. Don't count on anyone else to be their messenger, be their chief spokesperson and development officer, as I like to say, you know, raise money and then get your message out. And then, you know, we just have to fight for free and fair elections. And if we do that, I think Democrats are going to have a good night.
- [41:52]
B
I love talking to the three of you together about all this stuff. Let's do it again. Molly, Jong Fest, Mark Elias and Ian Bassin, thank you so much for spending the hour with us. A quick break. We'll be right back. My guest this week on the new episode of the Best People podcast is amazing. She's one of the first people we ever talked to and we were lucky that she came back. She is a real truth teller, someone who pulls no punches covering the threats facing our democracy and our industry and tech. We are thrilled to have Kara Swisher back at this moment. Here's what she told me about what she thinks Americans are looking for right now in this moment. Trump has gone, he's gone so overboard in the things that are unpopular he's left available for Democrats, the things that are more popular, which is to secure the board. What in your gut and from being out in the country and all over, do you think people want look, people just want a decent life.
- [42:49]
C
They want good health care. They want their kids to not like what's gonna happen with AI. They want help. They want solutions from our public officials, whoever they happen to be. I think they're tired of the yelling and they're tired themselves of it doing it. They're tired of feeling isolated.
- [43:05]
B
I think they're tired of being extremely online.
- [43:09]
C
I think they're worried about their kids. Whether it's boys with too much porn online or girls with the self esteem. I think they just, they want to have a good working wage. They want to feel good about their lives. And one of the things that is happening is they want to return to Community. You've seen all these stories of young people going into church. More young people people are seeking out connections.
- [43:30]
B
Premium subscribers can listen to the entire conversation with Kara Swisher on the Best People right now. To subscribe, you just scan the QR code on your screen. The episode will be available to everybody starting Monday. And a reminder, we're hosting a special live taping of the Best People podcast with the amazing documentary filmmaker Ken Burns that happens on Tuesday, May 12th with the 92nd Street Y right here in New York. If you're here or you want to be in the audience, just scan the QR code on your screen right now to buy tickets. One more break. We'll be right back. Thank you so much for letting us into your homes for another week of shows. We are grateful again. There's live coverage tonight for the homecoming of the Artemis 2 crew as they splash down to earth. We'll see their return starting in about an hour.
- [44:20]
C
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