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- [00:00]
A
Gabe Fleischer. How's it going?
- [00:01]
B
Going good. How are you, Galen?
- [00:03]
A
I am pretty good. Strong start to the year, at the very least, when it comes to having topics for you to write about and for me to podcast about.
- [00:14]
B
Exactly. If that is the only criteria we care about, then it's certainly, certainly fulfilling that quick start to the year, but not a, not a quiet long weekend. It's just go, go, go, go. Foreign.
- [00:37]
A
Hello, and welcome to the GD Politics Podcast. I'm Galen Druk. Trump has now been back in office for a full year, and to make sense of the past year, on Tuesday, I hosted a live substack conversation with friend of the POD and author of the Wake up to Politics newsletter, Gabe Fleischer. We began by assessing Trump's accomplishments and failings by the standards he. He set out himself at the beginning of his second term. We also discussed how Americans have reacted and took a closer look at the areas where Trump's new assertions of presidential power have been allowed to stand and where they've been batted down. One of the themes that we discussed is that there's often so much going on that it can be hard to actually follow a single story from beginning to end. So we tried to tie up some of those ends with where possible. I think this was a worthwhile discussion for everyone to hear, so I'm not going to paywall it. But as always, paid subscribers make this independent podcast possible. So please consider becoming a paid subscriber@gdpolitics.com you'll get about twice the number of episodes, and Lord knows that there'll be good ones in 2026. All right, here's the conversation. I know that right now we're actually competing with a Trump press conference. He's been going strong for well over an hour at this point. He has a binder full of all of his accomplishments in his first year in office, and he's going through and just reading them and engaging with the press corps as he goes. You actually tried to attend that, didn't you?
- [02:08]
B
I did, yes. I was there. I have the packet. I can. Everyone's a visual effect. I can try. I was at the press conference in the very back and I left because A, yeah, I figured I'd have to come to this, and B, I could barely see, but I have the packet. We could just go through. We have 365 wins in 365 days. Should we just read through all of them and go through? There's quite a lot of material here.
- [02:29]
A
Well, maybe, Maybe we can Save it towards the end and hopefully get to something. My first question is, how would you describe year one of Trump 2.0? So, I mean, it sounds like you have your answer right in front of you.
- [02:38]
B
Yeah, I mean, President Trump says President Trump's return marks new era of success, comma, prosperity. So there's President Trump's answer of these past 365 days, I would say. I think there's a lot you could say about this last year, for sure. I think I tried to write about this in my newsletter this morning, and I'll be writing more about this later this week. The kind of mental model I've been trying to use and tell me if this makes sense. I'm workshopping this a little bit, so tell me if this makes zero sense at all. But I think is of a presidency that has been, to an unprecedented degree, unleashed in the process of. If you take a presidential decision and you go from everything up to when a president speaks and says aloud a decision, we have never seen a president who's been more unleashed in that sort of period of everything from coming up with an idea to saying it out loud. Normally, obviously, we see rounds and rounds of agency discussions, advisors meeting with the president, and they talk to Congress and they consult economists and experts and bureaucrats and all that. And I think a presidency that has been to an unprecedented degree unleashed in that degree, but then everything after that of the decision point to everything after, I don't think has necessarily been uncommonly unleashed. I think has been perhaps more than usual in terms of the constraints that the Congress has prepared have put on him, I think has been more unleashed than usual, but still, I guess, leashed in significant ways. So that's kind of the way I've been thinking about this last year, if that makes any. If that kind of division makes any sense at all, because I do feel like a lot of people are collapsing those two kind of parts of the axis.
- [04:12]
A
You mean to say that the deliberative process used to be different than. I'd like to tweet something out. Can you compose it for me and tweet it out at 2 o' clock in the morning? Precise, is that what you're saying?
- [04:23]
B
A little bit faster. You Traditionally, when presidents have imposed tariffs or declared war or done other things, generally there's been a little bit more conversation than that, historically speaking.
- [04:34]
A
What do you think the effect of that has been? Because, like, we're sort of making light of it. You know, last night in particular, he was up late at night, basically leaking messages that he had received from President of France Emmanuel Macron, posting AI figures of him planting an American flag on Greenland and the like. But what do you think the, the, the main effect of that new paradigm is?
- [04:58]
B
I think it's been just like a chaotic swirl. And I think, because those two things, I think those two things are true and I think those two assessments of everything up to a decision and then everything after, I think should be looked at through two very different analytical frames. But because there's so many decisions coming at such rapid fire speed, and because he seems so unleashed, at least in terms of the output coming out of the White House, even if that isn't always, even if the follow through isn't always there, that it leads to just, I think the effect has been of immense chaos and strain on kind of, you know, our governmental system. You know, immense kind of chaos. Obviously blazing through the federal agencies has been immensely kind of disorienting for I think a lot of members of Congress who I think really even a year in, still don't really know what their place is in like a Trump second term. Washington, obviously very confusing cadict for a lot of Americans. I think, you know, obviously we've just seen the last few weeks something close to literal kind of clashes between, you know, members of the military and American citizens in cities like Minneapolis. And so I think the effect has been, I think, really disorienting for a lot of people and for people trying to figure out what's going on. And even in the cases where Trump has been constrained and where Trump's power isn't as so total as he claims to be, I think because he claims it to be so much and because I think a lot of people make it out to seem so much that I think people are missing half of what's going on and often not even following through the other half. But it's just been this kind of chaotic, constant swirl.
- [06:29]
A
I think that's a really important point and where I want to begin when I talk about my understanding of the past year, which is it felt like by the end of the 2024 elections, the speakers had already been blown out. I mean, I think the speakers were nearing blowout levels by the end of Trump's first term, but I think now they're completely blown out. And I mean, I was thinking this morning about what's going on in this moment. Trump has threatened NATO allies, suggested that military force is an option in Greenland, and it's all sort of coming to a head as he heads to Switzerland for The World Economic Forum, like you couldn't have written the screenplay any better. Now he has to go meet the people face to face that he's been threatening untruth social. And it seems like for however weird this moment is, when you look at society at large, the you know what his approval ratings look like, you see a story of a deeply unpopular president, but you don't see something totally ahistoric. You don't see something that maybe matches the level of how different or how strange or how, you know, sui generis Trump is. You know, and I was even wondering, like, are the speakers blown out to the point where we aren't seeing a resistance movement like we did in 2017 and beyond? According to the numbers. That's not the case. According to the numbers are there are more protests now than there were during his first term. So maybe why does it not feel that way? Why does it feel like there is less resistance? And I think it's probably comes more from our institutions than less resistance from our institutions than the people at large. Also, those numbers of protests and people who attend protests, that's really hard stuff to track. And so I wouldn't believe the numbers that we see out of these, you know, crowd counting consortiums at face value. But from the media to business elites to Republicans in Congress, there has been a lot less resistance. And so while on one hand you read all of these headlines and it seems more abnormal than ever, it seems like it's all being processed in a more normal way than the first term, which the juxtaposition has been a little bit odd. And I do want to talk about what the actual numbers are in terms of how the public is reacting. But. But I'm curious if you feel that too.
- [08:58]
B
Yeah, I think, I think I do feel out of that. I mean, I think, you know, obviously there's one degree to it. Why does this in some ways feel less different or urgent or, you know, like shocking than the first term? And of course, that's because it's the second term and we've been through four years before. And even though I would say Trump's first four years, in retrospect, after having gone through this last fifth year, if you take the actual actions that he's been able to do or at least tried to do in this last year, really, there's very little from the first term that compares to that. So actually, in retrospect, it was sort of mild, I think, compared to this year. But I think we lived through it before and it felt like everything was already at a 10. And at least that's, at the very least, certainly that is how his Democratic opposition, how a lot of the media had already declared that the dials had been turned up to 10. And then now I would say in many ways the story of 2025 is that the dials actually were kind of dial of 10 that way, but already people had felt they were or been told they were. And so it doesn't feel, you know, it just feels like it's still at 10 or, or, you know, or even maybe a decline or a lot of.
- [09:59]
A
People have even left the concert, like the volume has turned all the way up, but nobody's still in the room listening.
- [10:04]
B
I, I think that a lot of people definitely have disengaged. I, I hear from people all the time who feel like they kind of followed every little micro movement of Trump won and they're like, I just can't do that anymore. You know, that's just not how I want to spend my life in the second term. So I do think there's a lot of people responding to differently.
- [10:18]
A
And I also want to talk about this from the perspective of people who are enthusiastic about the Trump agenda, because this is in some ways Trump's impulses or agenda or whatever on turbocharged. So you might think in an equal and opposite way that more than ever, Trump supporters are very excited about his second term in office. And that also actually doesn't seem to be the case. His numbers amongst high levels of approval, you know, you can sort of strongly approve, somewhat approve. You don't know, you can somewhat disapprove or strongly disapprove in a lot of these polling questions. And the number of people who strongly approve of Trump hasn't really gone up as the Trump levels have been dialed up to 10, in a sense. And maybe, maybe we can start there. I think a lot of times in the media, Trump is assessed from, I don't know, the perspective of what you would expect it from a normal president or from a left wing perspective. But I think maybe you get the most bang for your buck when you judge Trump from what he's actually promised and what the people who voted for him saw in him and expected from a Trump second term. So, yeah, I guess starting there, how would you judge Trump according to his own standards?
- [11:30]
B
I think it's a mix. I mean, I think there are basically two issues. I would say, or I'll say there are three animating themes that I think really brought Donald Trump back to the White House in 2024. And I think those are inflation, immigration and kind of the general sense that we, you know, that fueled Trump the first time in 2016 too, of, you know, kind of backlash against elites, backlash against the establishment, dissatisfaction with the status quo. And I think if you take those three, those three issues, you see three different stories, I think on immigration, you know, and obviously there, I think you can even make a cut between immigration moves within the kind of interior of the United States and moves at the border. But certainly, I mean, there's no question, I mean, it's very high up on this list for Trump. And I think that the signal success of Donald Trump's second term, again judged against the metrics of what he promised to do, are if you look at the chart of illegal border crossings from the Biden administration and certainly the first few years of the Biden administration to the last year under Trump, it is incredibly stark just to see the kind of complete dip to kind of near zero levels of illegal border crossings. And I think that to me is kind of the number one accomplishment. And that, that was, that's a promise made, promise kept. Donald Trump promised to close down the border and that happened.
- [12:43]
A
Looking at the polling, just to chime in here, that is the one area on which Trump still gets net positive approval ratings. On immigration overall, he's underwater about net negative 10 according to silver Bulletins averages. But on border security he is net positive. We can talk about some of the other issues, but I just want to say that is a promise made promise, Captain. And Americans on board.
- [13:05]
B
Yes, and I would agree completely. And yeah, and it's very, it's fascinating to see that, like you said, be moving not in concert with the numbers in immigration where I do think clearly voters are responding differently to a very successful effort at the border. Then obviously on immigration, I would say he is keeping his promises. If anything, we've seen fewer deportations than promised. I mean we've seen extraordinary numbers of deportations and an increase from Biden era levels and Trump won era levels, but still, if anything, even fewer than kind of the mass deportation campaign that was promised. But either way, I mean that is a promise made and he is enacting on it. But clearly it's not as popular as, I don't know if you mean you hear stories obviously from places where there's Trump supporters who, you know, supported depredation campaigns and then know someone who was deported and oh, but I didn't mean so and so that I knew. So I think that is clearly something people voted for. Less clear whether it's being executed exactly as they envisioned. But is a promise being carried out?
- [13:59]
A
I think there's also a bit of a wishy washy area here, which is that when Trump talked about mass deportation, he didn't always make the distinction between people who had criminal records apart from crossing the border illegally, and people who were in the country illegally but, you know, had been law abiding citizens while here. And when you look at, again, there are caveats that come with this data because the Department of Homeland Security has not been the most transparent in providing data on deportations and in some ways have has tried to trump up the number of deportations to say like, promise made, promise kept. But as a proportion of deportees, it does not look like Trump has been successful in increasing the proportion of those people who have criminal records. In fact, it's a smaller proportion than under past administrations. The Biden administration was not really focused on deportations anyway. But when you look at the Obama administration, which was more focused on deportations of people in the country illegally, it looks like the Obama administration was doing a better job at deporting people who had criminal records. And so against that sort of standard, if, if what Americans were hoping for was a prime focus on people with criminal records, I don't know that they necessarily got that. But Trump didn't always make that promise. It's sometimes people ancillary to Trump like other Republicans in Congress or people at DHS or Carolyn Leavitt or other folks who are saying, you know, the focus is on people who are in the country illegally who have criminal records. But clearly that's not exactly the case when you look at the date.
- [15:31]
B
And that's been, you have the polling from the very beginning of the administration. I mean, it's so complicated to ask people about deportations because that means so many different things to so many different people. People, there's so many different people that someone might imagine. When you think of undocumented immigrants, illegal immigrants being deported, there's a lot of different people, different people might go to in their heads. But that's been the case all year. When you ask in polling, yeah, deporting illegal undocumented immigrants with a criminal record, polls that, you know, it's like 80, 20, you know, it's a hugely popular. If people are here illegally and they've also committed especially violent crimes while they're here, that is near unanimous support for those deportations. But then the more kind of caveats you add, you can watch as the polling support kind of dips undocumented Immigrants who have been here 10 years, undocumented immigrants who have been here 20 years, undocumented immigrants who've been here 20 years and never committed a crime. And you kind of, you layer on more and more, or who also are employed or don't have public benefits, whatever. You kind of let layer on and on. And then suddenly what starts out with 80% support for deporting people with criminal records actually becomes net unpopular to deport some of the exact people that Trump has been deporting. To your point, people who have been here a long time, have not committed crimes, are working in the U.S. i think there's obviously interest, I think for a lot of people, not that this is likely to happen through Congress, of kind of creating some sort of pathway to citizenship or some sort of legal status to these people, so they're not living in this limbo. But the sport is not to deport those groups of people and never was. But you're right, but Donald Trump never made that distinction and has not governed with that distinction.
- [16:59]
A
Yeah. I think another important database story when it comes to understanding immigration in the first year of Trump's second term is attitudes towards ice. I think that by the end of Biden's term in office, there was a lot of regret amongst Democrats for how liberal they had grown on immigration and things, you know, things like abolish ICE and, you know, many other things like default on the police or whatever became bad words within the Democratic Party and an acknowledgement that the Democratic Party had to get in line on some of this stuff. Now, I will say that Republicans are still trusted more than Democrats on the issue of immigration. So overall, net negative on Trump approval when it's just a referendum on Trump, but when it's a choice between Democrats and Republicans, Americans still choose Republicans on the issue. But there has been a real turnaround in how Americans view enforcement of immigration. The people actually enforcing immigration to the point where I'm sure you've seen now a plurality of Americans say they support abolishing ice. And you even saw Ruben Gallo, senator from Arizona, who has been one of the more hawkish Democrats on the border, use that language in talking about ice. And so I'll say thermostatic public opinion is a well documented phenomenon in American politics, which is that Americans say they want something. Once they get it, once they elect a president who enacts that, they turn against it. It's become almost trite to say, but part of the reason it is so predictable in a sense, is because of the degree to which I think oftentimes executives over interpret their mandate totally. And if, you know, I mean, Biden absolutely did this, Trump is absolutely doing it now. Trump has way overplayed his hand to the point where in the span of a year, it has gone from immigration is an issue where Republicans can almost do no wrong. They can promise mass deportations and all of these different things. And Democrats just kind of have to bite their tongues because of how poorly Biden handled the border, to where a plurality of Americans are supporting abolish ice. And some of the more careful Democrats on the issue are siding with the, the activists of 2018 who said abolish ICE.
- [19:21]
B
And not just that. Right. And you see that immigration and then the economy, too. We've gone from a case one year ago where that was right up there with immigration as one of Donald Trump's best issues and where, where voters overwhelmingly trusted Republicans in the economy more than, more than Democrats. Not only were they dissatisfied with the Biden economy, voters had incredibly fond memories of the Trump economy from his first term. I mean, immigration, the economy, or at least border security in the economy, those were like, I mean, Donald Trump, to be clear, was also deeply unpopular in his first term. But those were always the two kind of issues, the kind of guiding lights for Republicans where exactly, as you say, kind of no matter what would happen, and even if Trump made unpopular moves on both issues in his first term, those were kind of the things throughout Trump's first term and then throughout Biden's term, the economy and immigration, where Donald Trump always was most trusted, always his approval numbers were highest. And that's just not the case anymore. And I think the point you make about thermostatic public opinion is exactly right, because I do think a lot of people treat that as just some sort of, like, fact of nature, like, ah, Republican gets in and then Democrats do better in the midterms and polls, you know, do better for Democrats and vice versa when Democrats get in. But it's not like it's not just some gravity, law of gravity that just happens. It's exactly, as you say, presidents overreach. And I do think one interesting thing you mentioned also earlier, you know, all the kind of business elites and members of Congress who I think saw, I think the Trump victory in 2024 was really kind of shocking to a lot of people who kind of did think that, you know, after being impeached twice in his first term and being indicted and after January 6, that even though the polls showed a very close race all through 2024, a lot of people, I think, especially a lot of establishment figures, did not believe that Donald Trump could ever be elected again. And then he was. And not only that, he was elected almost with a majority. Suddenly, his polls at the very beginning of his term were above 50%. He was not underwater for the first time in his political career. And I think not only did Trump really overread that mandate, but a lot of people in the business world, in academia, in law firms, in all sorts of different places in elite American life looked at that and were like, wow, Donald Trump has this huge kind of majority. We better get bored on this quick. And I think if they had spoken to any sort of political scientist or historian, they would have told you, just wait, just wait. You can get on board if you want with him, but it's not gonna last, and these numbers are not gonna last, because inevitably, he will, in some cases, do the things he promised that will end up being very unpopular, or not do things he promised and that will be unpopular and kind of public opinion will turn. And it has. And very quickly, he took what was really a remarkable thing. Donald Trump, after all the scandals and controversies and everything that came in his first term and first three campaigns for president, after all that was, for the first time, had a majority coalition in American politics in terms of people supporting him and approval rating, and he completely squandered it so quickly with tariffs, with deporting many more people or many different types of people than people were expecting. He did not govern nearly in the way that I think a lot of his voters imagined. And just like that, that coalition kind of evaporated. And I think, to get back to what you're saying before, for why doesn't it feel that way? I think still a lot of those kind of same business elites and certainly Republican lawmakers are still living in the world of Donald Trump. January 2025, having a 52% approval rating wherever it was. And as we saw this past November, as we're gonna see this next November, that's just not the world we're living in anymore. And maybe that's the world Donald Trump is still governing from. But the facts on the ground of his support have really changed as a direct result of the things he has done and the fact that on nearly every issue, in some cases on the economy, he's done in some ways the exact opposite of what he promised. Promising to lower prices and now imposing tariffs that economists say will raise prices in terms of immigration, going way farther than people expected, as you said. Just as Joe Biden did in different issues. And then you see the inevitable backlash that starts to floor.
- [23:22]
A
You know, one thing, and I, I asked you to sort of judge Trump's success according to his own parameters. And if I cut you off, I do want to get back to that. But one thing that that brings up for me is when you Compare this to 20, you know, 17. The end of the first year of Trump's first term, we saw in generic ballot polling that Democrats were leading by 8 to 10 percentage points. When you asked Americans if the midterms were today, would you support a Democrat or Republican for Congress by I think it was honestly eight, it fluctuated a little bit, but around this time of year was a 8 to 10 percentage points, Americans preferred Democrats. That's not the case right now. If you look at generic ballot polling today, Americans prefer Democrats by 4 percentage points. Now, things get a little bit weird because when you actually look at Democratic over performance in special elections compared to 2024, according to the data that down ballot tracks, Democrats are overperforming where they were in 2024 by about 14 percentage points. Obviously, Republicans did better than Democrats in 2024, but if you were to even that out a little bit, they would still be overperforming the baseline by something like 11 percentage points or in that range. So, on one hand, Democrats aren't doing as well on the generic ballot. In actual special elections, which have become a little bit less predictive of the midterms, they're still doing quite well, more on par with where they were in 2017, 2018. And then on the issues, when you ask again if it's a referendum on Trump, Trump basically performs poorly on every single issue. I'll just go down the line. According to Silver Bulletins, on immigration, net negative 10. Trade, net negative 16. Economy, also net negative 16. Inflation, net negative 25, like I mentioned, border security, still net positive. But then when you ask Americans do you prefer Republicans in Congress or Democrats in Congress on these exact same issues, you see on foreign policy, Americans prefer Republicans. You see on the economy, Americans prefer Republicans. On immigration, Americans prefer Republicans. Now, at the end of the 2024 campaign, Americans preferred Democrats on almost nothing except for, like, abortion and LGBTQ rights. Now, at the very least, they prefer Democrats on things like healthcare, on fighting for the middle class. And I, I wonder if part of the reason that it doesn't feel like such an overwhelming backlash is that there's still a hangover amongst Americans from the Biden administration, right? Like Obama left office, relatively popular. And so when you were comparing Trump against something, against the alternative party you were comparing him against. Obama had left office with a 57% approval rating and, you know, relatively minimal scandal and, and the likes. And so you were comparing him to an opposition party that still looked pretty appealing today. I think Americans are compare when. When they're forced to turn it into a choice rather than a referendum. They're still comparing Republicans and Trump to a party that they really didn't like and that they lost faith with on a lot of the most important issues to them.
- [26:43]
B
I think a lot of that is true. Can I offer one complication, though? And I do think, and I don't want to sound too, like, overly Pollyannish for the Democratic Party, which has a lot of issues under its hood. And you just named a lot of them, including the fact that their most recent Joe Biden, incredibly unpopular, same with Kamala Harris, no obvious leader to take their place. All of that applies, and yet certainly is not a party with this wealth of goodwill among the American people on issues like immigration, on issues like inflation that Joe Biden really performed poorly on, at least in the American people's eyes. So all of that is true. And you can correct me if I'm wrong, because I know you spend a lot more time in this data than I do. But I do think one important thing when we're looking at these polls now is you have to look at the party ID data. And kind of the weird stuff about a lot of these polls in the moment that we're in is when you're asking people which party they trust more on issues like immigration or foreign policy or things like that. And then also when you're asking people the generic ballot question, do you plan to vote for Democratic Republican Congress? Democrats are not answering those polls the ways we would expect. And on a lot of those cases, the reason why there's such a delta between Republicans and Democrats is actually because Republican, you normally would expect that these polls are normally basically asking or kind of coding for, how do independents feel on this issue? Because we're going to expect that Republicans are going to almost completely say they trust Republicans more. Democrats are going to almost completely say they're going to trust Democrats more. And then we're really kind of testing, okay, where are the independents in the middle who don't identify with either party? Which party are they trusting more on these issues? And same with the generic ballot question. But that hasn't always been the case in a lot of the polls we've seen in the last year, because Democrats are so disillusioned and so upset with their party that a lot of times they are saying they don't trust the Democratic Party either. And I think that's kind of messing with the numbers in ways that make those polls not necessarily wrong, but at least complicated by that party id. And then that leads to two separate questions, which is, what does that mean for Democratic primaries? Does that mean we're going to see a big difference in how Democrats are voting in Democratic primaries? And then obviously also in the general election, if Democrats are not saying they're gonna vote for Democrats in the midterms to the numbers we expect, will that actually bear out in terms of how they vote? And I'll say kind of on both ends. You know, in the primary end, I don't think we've seen the sort of, you know, Tea Party esque movement that numbers like that would suggest. When you look at Democratic primary challenges, there are some on the 2026 primary ballot and there's gonna be some interest in primary matchups, but not the kind of movement of, you know, kind of Democrats trying to oust Democratic incumbents. You might expect. See the numbers of how Democrats judge the Democratic Party. And then the general election, we don't know. We can point to special election data, as you say, where we still see Democrats, despite how disillusioned they are with their party, are still coming out to vote in special elections, which might be a sign that they'll come out to vote in the midterms. Although of course, historically one thing parties do count on when they're the opposition in the midterms is a huge enthusiasm advantage. And maybe they won't have that same sort of enthusiasm advantage, which would obviously eat into maybe they still win back the House, but not by the numbers you might expect. So that's the one complication. And you can tell me if you think you don't, you're not seeing that in the data, but I still think I do think you see in some of these polls unusually low levels of Democrats saying they trust their own party, which kind of messes with the numbers. But maybe not necessarily in a way that will carry over to midterm results. But maybe you're seeing, maybe you're not seeing that. I'd love to know.
- [30:10]
A
Okay, so I'm looking at a generic ballot average right now where Republicans get from 50 plus one, where Republicans get 40% support and Democrats get 44% support. That means 16% of Americans are at this point point undecided or voters are undecided about how they might vote. We have seen some shifting towards likely voter models amongst pollsters after the 2025 election. But I think a lot of that is yet to come. So it wouldn't surprise me if we saw a yawning gap between Democrats and Republicans down the stretch as voters minds become more focused on the idea of a referendum as opposed to a choice. Again, that's going to be a tension for the two parties. Democrats are going to want to make it a referendum, Republicans are going to want to make it a choice. And that's, you know, those are the two strategies in some ways. But I think perhaps when we, when pollsters start applying a likely voter model, Democrats will have a baked invention because we, when we look at the polling, they are, we already see that Democrats say they are more enthusiastic. I have a difficult time believing that when Democratic voters are asked do you trust Republicans or Democrats more on healthcare? They're going to say, say I don't know because they're so mad at their own party. I will say for party approval, right. When you see numbers like the Democratic party has a 27% approval rating, the lowest in three decades of data from Gallup, I do believe that that is in large part driven by Democrats. I mean, look, it's also independents, but like in the historic level is because of Democrats themselves saying screw this party. They haven't gotten things right. They're not winning elections, they're not pursuing the policies that I want, want. They don't seem strong enough. They don't seem like they fight for people like me. All of those kind of emotional things that come from, from loss and grief of any kind. But the, the numbers that point to more ambiguity when people are forced to make a choice, I tend to trust that. And what that tells me in part is that while Trump is deeply unpopular because of Democrats own challenges with their brand and poor job administering government over the past four years, they're not going to be able to capitalize on the sort of drama, outrage, missteps, whatever of Trump 2.0. The way that, you know, a party whose most recent president or memory of a president is Barack Obama versus Joe Biden. And that may all change when somebody else comes to the top of the Democratic Party. Democrats are going to have their own primary, presidential primary process that will probably begin by the end of this year. And if somebody comes to the top who is highly inspirational and creates a break with the Democratic Party that people sort of have in memory right now, that could change. But it's not going to change before the midterms.
- [32:58]
B
I think a lot of that is well taken. I think your point about like I think people do often. Yeah. Think back to like that last. Who when you think of the Democrats, who are you thinking of right now? And I think it's absolutely reasonable to think, think that a Democrat circa 2017 was imagining Barack Obama then now a popular person and that a Democrat circa then circa 2026 voters are imagining, you know, maybe someone like Joe Biden and Kamala Harris who are not popular. So I think that's well taken. I do wanna though just give some of the data cause I was just trying to find some polling just to kind of substantiate what I was saying. This is from CBS YouGov poll from just last week. And they ask about the economy and immigration. So the two issues we're talking about, which party has the better approach. And so for example on the economy you see that Republicans have a point edge on which party have the better approach. But then when you do dig into the party ID data, 83% of Republicans say Republicans have a better approach and only 68% of Democrats say Democrats have a better approach, which is a pretty large delta and I do think is contributing to then those overall numbers. And then as we said obviously it matters independents who large plurality of independents just say neither. And independents actually say Democrats buy a two point edge but 42% of independents say neither. So kind of effectively a wash, but partially you see that being driven by the difference between Republicans, how Republicans judge Republicans, now Democrats judge Democrats. Then on immigration you see 89% of Republicans say Republicans have a better approach and 71% of Democrats say Democrats have a better approach. So pretty much on both questions like about 18% difference between how partisans judge their own party and then the end result being that Republicans and immigration have a 10 point edge. But I do think again you always have to look under the hood and some of that is driven by, driven by Democratic dissatisfaction.
- [34:41]
A
Okay, one more complication which is we're really going to get, we're really going to go deep complicated, which is that in polls leading up to the 2024 election that showed Trump and Harris essentially tied, you would still see when you ask those questions, do you prefer Trump or Harris or do you prefer Democrats or Republicans? On a lot of these issues, healthcare, abortion, immigration, the economy, what have you, you those numbers would not match up perfectly. You would not see that like 50% of the country preferred Kamala Harris's approach to immigration and 50% of the country preferred Trump's approach to immigration, you would see that Trump was beating Harris by say 15 percentage points on the issue of immigration, which is to say there were a large chunk of people who planned on voting for Kamala Harris who actually didn't prefer her on the issue of immigration. Likewise, there were a lot of people who planned on voting for Trump who didn't prefer him on the issue of abortion. And so in part, what that's capturing is, although we are forced to choose between Democrats and Republicans broadly, Americans have mixed views and they prefer one party on a certain issue, but another party on another issue. And because we have a two party system, you don't always get the combination of policy positions that you want. And so I think that is part the of, of what you're seeing in that. Like, I think there are probably people who say, I plan on voting for Democrats, I don't really like how they approach the issue of immigration, or I plan on voting for Republicans, I don't like how they approach the issue of healthcare, for example. And so I think it's, I mean, this would be a pretty massive structural challenge for polls right now if all of the information that they were capturing was biased by the fact that Democrats themselves hate the Democratic Party so much that they're not willing to say that they're going to vote for them for Congress. They're not willing to say that they support them on any issues. And you're just going to have to wait to see them vote because when it comes time to vote, they will just turn out. I mean, it is in some ways a theory that explains why they're doing so well in special elections, but not so well. I would say maybe in the polling we've talked about the economy and immigration. Were you going to judge Trump on another issue?
- [36:54]
B
Yeah, I just think the third thing that I was gonna mention is just that I think a big part of any time you're electing Donald Trump, you know, a big part of it is clearly wanting a kind of complete kind of shock to the system, wanting, you know, everything to kind of turn over and kind of, you know, you know, it's, it's a middle finger to the elites, you know, kind of a call for upheaval, a call for change. And I think on that metric, I would say it's mixed. So again, if we're going to kind of say immigra, I guess maybe, maybe the answer has been that they're all a little mixed. But you know, immigration, maybe at least in terms of border security, a little bit more towards Trump economy a little bit against him. This one, I think is a bit of a mixed bag because, I mean, obviously you've seen things like Doge kind of in the early parts of administration and kind of dismantling of USAID and of a lot of, you know, federal agencies and bureaucrats that I do think, again, judged against that metric of voters who want to just kind of complete upheaval, which is not all Trump voters. But, you know, but is obviously, I think attitudinally something that people did want that, you know, kind of people did see kind of a sclerotic kind of, you know, deep state that they wanted kind of shock to. There's a lot, I guess, a lot that I think a lot of people were dissatisfied about in 2024 and remain dissatisfied about today. And if people were hoping that that sort of wide scale change would carry over to the things that, you know, dissatisfy them most in their own lives, that hasn't happened. And then again, like you say, I mean, I don't know, I think not to add complication over complication, but pulling data is hard to parse. It is complicated. And like, you know, it is strange because you do see again and again, you know, like we saw under Biden, we're seeing Trump being haunted by the same kind of trends of, you know, you see a lot of people who say, like, their personal economic situation is good and their state's personal economic situation is good, and maybe they like their governor and their inclement member of Congress, but they hate Congress as a whole and they hate politics and the nation's economy is terrible. And so, you know, maybe all of this is really kind of scrambled and confusing and people are inconsistent, which is all true, true. But still, I do think there is kind of a persistent sense that people wanted change out of Trump just like they wanted it from Biden, didn't feel like they got it wanted it from Trump this time. And a lot of people who don't feel like their personal situation, they've seen the sort of kind of wide scale change and disruption of the status quo that they've looked for. And, you know, I mean, one thing I'll note that I do think is ironic, as you mentioned, the president is, you know, headed to Davos in a little bit. And one thing that has been interesting to me in the last few weeks is seeing trouble. Trump kind of try to revive some of the populist energy of his 2024 campaign. We've seen a number of moves on housing and different things like that, that Trump has tried a little bit more kind of populist policies. And ironically, I'll note he'll be announcing some of those in Davos, the kind of as elite setting as you can imagine, which I find a little ironic and I think does point to a little bit, you know, in a lot of these ways that I think voters wanted Trump to kind of disrupt the elite status quo. I think one of those is foreign policy, obviously. Obviously, also a vote for Trump has generally been seen as a vote against, against kind of deep state, very interventionist, very regime change, nation building, foreign policy. And again, I think what we've seen in Trump's second term again and again is I think a little bit the ways in which there's kind of a bit of a discordance, I think, of Donald Trump personally and the political movement he's built, which, like Donald Trump built a very populist, anti interventionist movement in many ways, not always, but in many ways on both those scores. And yet he himself, you know, when you think of someone who's, you know, covering the White House in gold and, you know, trying to name things after himself and, you know, does enjoy by all accounts rubbing shoulders with elites and Davos and, you know, things like that, is not always kind of a very good populist himself. And then clearly in this term has also not been, you know, quite the isolationist because I think whatever movement he built personally has always kind of made for an uneasy fit.
- [40:34]
A
Yeah, I mean, one philosophy about his turn towards an interest in foreign policy, diplomacy, military intervention and the like is that while he has certainly tried to push the boundaries of exec, and succeeded in some ways to push the boundaries of executive power in the United States abroad, there are far fewer limits on executive power when it comes to crafting American foreign policy and military strategy. And while there are meant to be congressional limits on declarations of war and the like, plenty of presidents, Democrat and Republican alike, have blown past them. But as Trump has maybe butted up against some limitations of executive power domestically, he's really gone in whatever direction he would like in terms of foreign policy. You know, one question I do want to ask you is on the topic of those limitations to his executive power, that brings us back to the dynamic that you described at the beginning happening, which is the time from coming up with an idea to announcing it, and the time from announcing the decision to actually, you know, reality shifting in accordance with whatever that policy changes. And there are two other branches that all of that has to sift through to A greater or lesser degree. We've talked a little bit about Congress, and obviously the Senate and House are controlled by Republicans in any case. But when it comes to the courts, that's not meant to be a partisan agreement or disagreement. That's meant to be an interpretation of the Constitution that allows or disallows whatever the action may be. How much of a check have the courts been on Trump in that second half, you know, the. From announcing the policy onward?
- [42:21]
B
Yeah. So, I mean, I would say in the first year, I mean, I think the best data on this, the Associated Press keeps very rigorous data on, like, every court case that is being filed against the Trump administration. And their data is that about 350 cases, at least, that they're tracking, have been filed against the administration. They have that. About 100 are pending. 100 Trump is winning. And then 150 Trump actions have been blocked. And so from there, you see, it's about, if you take out the 100 that are pending, you see it's almost 50, 50, or you're slightly, maybe 55, 45 in terms of. Of slightly more actions than not have been blocked. But then obviously a whole host have still gone through. I think there's different. The best way I've. The way I've been writing about this, I think the best way to think about it is to really categorize. I think we talk about Trump's use of executive power like it's one thing, but there are very different legal doctrines and precedents and things undergirding the different assertions of power. And this is not my division exactly, but this has been used by other people that the best way to think about it is kind of horizontal power versus vertical, vertical power. And so I think, you know, when Trump has asserted vertical power, that is a power over the executive branch that he sits atop in his first term, even if the district courts have not. But the Supreme Court has been incredibly willing to kind of let him have his way kind of over the executive branch. And we've seen that most notably, we're likely to see that most notably in the Trump v. Slaughter case that will be assigned where the justices are expected to kind of give the. Give presidents kind of, you know, carte blanche over independent agencies. Think of the fcc, the ftc, et cetera, et cetera.
- [43:58]
A
But notably, potentially not that.
- [44:01]
B
Right. And so that would be kind of the biggest exception. And we'll see arguments of that tomorrow where they might be making this kind of vertical carve out a little bit complicated or unclear how they're going to legally kind of justify that. They point to kind of the history of the institution, the fact that it's historically not been seen as purely under the executive branch, but has kind of been a creature of both Congress and the executive branch. Although you could make those arguments about the other independent agencies, too, but exactly that's kind of the main carve out. But we've seen kind of a lot of power. Trump has asserted a lot of power over the executive branch, and the courts have given it to him. When he's asserted more of that horizontal power impinging on other branches or trying to kind of grab spending power from Congress or, you know, other powers, it's been a lot more mixed, and a lot of it is still tbd. To answer kind of the second part of your question, the absolute biggest horizontal power case is the tariffs. And that is one that obviously we're waiting any day now, we'll see how the court rules and kind of the president's ability to kind of unbounded tariffs. That's something that's kind of arguably in Congress's box that Trump is trying to take from Congress's box and the Supreme Court might not let him take from that box. We saw at the very end of last year, also in a very interesting case, Trump trying to kind of reach into the National Guard box and the Supreme Court tell him he could not that. You know, we know from the Constitution that although the president is commander in chief, there's also a lot of war powers that fall under Congress's box. And the president can deploy National Guard troops within the borders of the country when Congress tells them he can. And they ruled that in the case of Chicago and then by extension also in cities like Portland and la, that Congress had not given him that power. So that was a major loss. We've seen also pretty major assertions of power over elections that's maybe reaching into kind of state spox. His executive order on elections has been almost completely paused by the courts. We've seen him also try to, I think, kind of the boldest use of executive power, effectively try to reinterpret the Constitution in terms of the 14th Amendment and birthright citizenship that was issued on day one of his presidency. And there's not a single day of his presidency in which that executive order has been in effect. We've seen a number of judges and a number of different cases rule against that. So a lot of those horizontal cases, to answer your question, many of that are still unfolding. The tariff case being the biggest Example, we're probably seeing more kind of cases over the National Guard then we see some of those vertical cases, even though the court has given us a good signal of how they're going to rule and kind of how they've ruled in kind of emergency posture. On these cases, you'll see Trump be slaughtered probably in June on independent agencies, probably around the same time, you'll see Trump v. Cook, which is the Federal Reserve case, which will probably be seemingly Supreme Court is that's to be kind of the one kind of horizontal power they won't give to him. And I think those are kind of some of the key cases. And then we'll also see a decision on the birthright citizen case, again, most likely in June, which also I think a lot of legal experts would be surprised this report would rule with him on. So some pretty huge victories in terms of, you know, power over independent agencies, power that previous presidents have sought in some cases, previous presidents probably wished they would have had and that now will be given to the president. But then a whole host of other powers that the Supreme Court has not given him yet in terms of birthright citizenship, tariffs, firing fed governors, deploying National Guard troops, and very potentially won't in a permanent way when the permanent decisions come out.
- [47:17]
A
There's a set of cases that is more scattered and dates back to the early days of Trump's second first year in office, which is withholding funds from universities, municipalities, organizations, government institutions based on in part, it was the stated rationale was oftentimes DEI practices. But it would also be in part, you know, these organizations have been taken over by liberals and the like. You know, he also sort of went head to head with law firms and said that these law firms would not be able to gain federal contracts if they didn't do X, Y or Z. Not everyone fought back in court. Some folks sort of settled. But to the degree that they have tried to buck the president on this stuff, have they been successful?
- [48:05]
B
Again, it's a mix. But I would say a lot of those executive orders that you just referenced, Donald Trump has lost on in court. I mean, you look at you mentioned kind of the cases against law firms, executive orders against law firms. As you said, some law firms just decided to comply. I believe the ones that have fought it in court, not a single one has succeeded. The same is true with a lot of the cases against universities. Harvard has won. A series of legal victors have had other universities. There's been a number of cases where there have been grants to kind of blue cities or states where those cities or states have been able to kind of keep their funding. So you have seen some victories for Trump there. Importantly, almost none of the cases that we're talking about have reached the Supreme Court. And that's where a lot of people point to the president's win record at the Supreme Court. But it's very important to remember that the denominator of those kinds of of cases, the kind of full pool of cases that reach the Supreme Court, in many cases, that's up to the president, that's up to the Trump administration, because if they lose in courts below, they get to choose whether or not they're appealing to the Supreme Court. And they've used that ability very, very wisely and very carefully. And that Solicitor General John Sauer has been very careful about the cases that he's sent to the justices and ones that he hasn't. And almost none of the cases about law firms. A few of the federal grant cases and kind of edge cases have reached there, but nothing involving universities. You know, a lot of these things have just not reached the Supreme Court level, and a lot of that's because they've lost at the lower court level. And then not wanting to risk a loss at the Supreme Court, we did see, you know, kind of kind of edge cases surrounding what are called pocket rescissions. And basically, I won't kind of go into all the details there, but the Supreme Court did, at least in an emergency docket, kind of accept Trump's kind of legal theory, theory there, that he could kind of claw back funds at the very end of a fiscal year without congressional authorization, that he would be able to kind of not spend those funds. But almost all the times that he has tried not to do that, he's certainly seen a series of losses in terms of grants to states, in terms of funding to universities and things like that.
- [50:11]
A
We've talked about a large number of issues, policies, areas of public opinion. In one thing I do want to touch on before we end are the culture wars, right? Like, Trump came into office declaring that woke is dead, basically. And like I said, used a lot of his executive orders on DEI and the like to try to get universities, law firms, institutions, the Smithsonian, whatever, to, you know, accept his wishes. But ultimately, the culture is more decided by the public then, you know, as they say, politics is downstream of culture. And Trump can't sign an executive order that says Americans will no longer believe X or Y or include pronouns in their emails or whatever. I mean, maybe if they work for their federal government, he can say that, but like he can't control how people necessarily behave in their daily lives, although many would argue that he can set an example. We talked about how there's bit of a been a bit of a boomerang on some of these issues, like immigration. There was a real sense that Trump, Republicans, conservatives were winning the culture wars on the day of his inauguration one year ago today when we saw all of the tech titans sort of standing on the dais, et cetera, et cetera. A year on, has that also been a sort of casualty of thermostatic public opinion in the sense that Americans are moving back to more liberal positions on the culture wars, or is that still pretty locked down?
- [51:37]
B
I think it varies issue by issue. Like you said, clearly the polling on immigration is very fluid. I think, you know, I would be surprised if we ever see the Democratic Party return to kind of a scene like we saw in the 2020, although you never know, could always be surprised. And the Democratic, I guess never underestimate the Democratic Party's ability to kind of move left at certain points. But let's see what we saw in the 2020 debate stage of Democratic candidates raising their hands, saying they'll decriminalize border crossings, promise healthcare to illegal immigrants, things like that. I would be surprised if public opinion ever boomerangs so far. Are the Democratic presidential candidates feel comfortable on that? So clearly, yes, Donald Trump is now on the back foot on immigration, but I think has still won a lot of that kind of larger debate of where I think liberal activists really tried to push towards really kind of full acceptance for undocumented immigrants, kind of even tried to push decriminalizing the border and things like that, I'd be very surprised if public opinion moves back there anytime soon. Maybe it was never there, but if the party leaves, leaders kind of allow themselves to be pushed back there again. But then I think even look at gender issues, I don't see that much movement on the polling. I think we saw a year ago that, although I guess it's complicated that I think Americans continue. I wrote a piece not that long ago that kind of said the Supreme Court is the median voter and kind of argued that in a lot of these cases that the Supreme Court had kind of hit on what I think seems, according to polling, to be kind of where public opinion seems to lie. And I think on gender issues, that tends to be the case. To me, you look at like the Bostock case from 2020, where the Supreme Court ruled that, you know, kind of in general, kind of employment discrimination against transgender Americans, that that would be illegal. And it remains true that if you look at the polling, most Americans are opposed to a baseline level of discrimination against transgender people. But then in kind of more kind of complicated cases where that sort of permissive attitudes towards transgender rights kind of butts up against how other people, you know, that people are kind of okay with people living their lives. But then if it butts up with how other people are living their lives, then it gets a little bit more complicated. You think of issues like bathrooms, like sports teams and those. I don't see any movement in the data that, you know, conservatives do kind of seem like they've won the culture war on that issue. And again, I don't see anytime soon Democrats kind of moving back to quite a permissive attitude towards transgender rights. Or I guess that that's kind of undecided issue within the party. But certainly you see on public opinion, Republicans, a lot of those of kinds, kind of those kind of issues around sports teams, around bathrooms clearly still seem to be in the Republican bucket. Then I think there's like another interesting bucket is I do think there's a degree to which kind of no one in our politics is really anti woke and everyone is just kind of woke for their own identity. And I think you see this with a lot of groups who are like anti cancellation until they want to cancel people. And I think obviously the biggest example we saw with that of the Trump administration was, you know, after Charlie Kirk's assassination where you saw kind of this attempt to really to cancel, get people fired, get Jimmy Kimmel off the air, kind of really try to, I think that was really trying to seize a lot of cultural power over what people were talking about in terms of Charlie Kirk. And there was huge backlash to that, not just in public opinion, but from Republican members of Congress, Ted Cruz and a number of other Republican senators who did not react well to that. And so I do think that speaks to kind of on free speech issues. I don't know that either party is really winning that argument. Cuz I don't know that either party really can have a strong claim to being pro free speech after kind of the wave of cancellations we saw in 2020 and then the kind of attempted cancellations of 2025. I don't really, I don't really know that either party can make a claim there. But clearly I do think the kind of more libertarian position the culture wars there is kind of continues to win, that Americans tend to be pretty pro free speech and pretty anti Any attempt of kind of majorities, whether on the left or right, to try to get people fired for their speech, that just has not gone well for either party when both have tried it in kind of the last five years or so. So maybe that's a win for the Libertarian Party or something, I don't know. But that's kind of an issue where, you know, that either party is winning the culture wars. But I would say Trump again, maybe had the opportunity to win the culture wars there if he had kept with the kind of, you know, anti weaponization, anti free speech kind of rhetoric of his campaign. But then as I said, it seems to be that, you know, everybody just hates cancel culture when they're in the minority. And then as soon as both parties, once they're in the majority, tend to, to, to enjoy using those sorts of powers.
- [55:55]
A
Yeah, there's a lot that we haven't covered. So I'm going to make the final question a really open ended one and maybe you can incorporate anything that we haven't touched on. But it's just what are your biggest unanswered questions for the second year of Trump 2.0?
- [56:11]
B
Yeah, I mean, I think the biggest one, and we didn't talk too much, we talked a little about the economy in this podcast, but I think kind of the obvious one is clearly it is striking to me, Trump's numbers on inflation are so low and dissatisfaction with the economy is so high runs a little bit different than to kind of the core economic data that we're seeing, which doesn't suggest some kind of roaring, amazing economy, but also does not suggest nearly the kind of dire picture that clearly a lot of voters say, which is an interesting kind of example seemingly of clearly there's been a lot of media coverage about tariffs raising price prices and there's obviously products where the prices have raised and people are clearly noticing that. But then there's also a lot of areas where prices haven't raised that much. But yet people seem very dissatisfied with inflation. So I'd be curious to see the kind of inflation numbers in the year ahead, whether we see kind of economists. Basically we have two kind of predictions and neither have really come true. Donald Trump saying that tariffs will kind of rescue the economy and then kind of economists saying they'll tank the economy. And so far we've kind of just seen kind of this kind of economy that's kind of limping along, not really kind of roaring, but also not crashing. And guess I'll be curious to see that remains. But then obviously that's kind of tied to this other big question. See, that's tied to the other big question of the Supreme Court, of what the Supreme Court will do on tariffs, which will obviously have economic impacts there. I'm also curious, I think that also ties to the future of kind of the AI economy. And I'm also curious, one question we didn't get to, but I'm curious the kind of political valley, the political impact that has in the year ahead. Obviously, I think a lot of it will be tied into the economic performance of a lot of these AI companies. But I think we've already seen some politicians on both parties try to lean into kind of an AI tech lash, trying to campaign against data centers and rising AI. And it's an issue I hear about all the time, just in my kind of conversations with people worried about the future of their industries or kind of curious about the future of AI. And I'm curious to see the degree to which 2026 is the year we see that make matter politically, or maybe it kind of still won't at all, and we'll kind of still be kind of treated separately from the political arena, both by voters and by politicians. How about you?
- [58:17]
A
I guess there are two big questions for me. One is very much of the moment, which is as we are speaking, I think Trump has probably ended his press conference right now, although I can't promise that. But he's supposed to head to Switzerland later today. And we're in like, let's be honest about it, like a really weird moment where we are in some ways threatening war with NATO, but also being very coy about it and just saying that we absolutely need Greenland. And on one hand, there's a lot of issues that we talked about today that were covered as if they were the most important thing on earth when they happened. And now you can barely remember that they even happened because Trump cycles through things that quickly. And so one strategy that I think European, the Europeans have been trying to deploy is just muster through in the moment and Trump will move on to something else very quickly. I mean, if that was Delsey Rodriguez's, the acting president of Venezuela's strategy, boy, has it worked so far because, you know, just two weeks after that seemed like the biggest story on earth. No one's talking about it. And so on one hand, we may just cycle out of the this Greenland story very quickly. But ultimately, as with so many questions when it comes to Trump, like people always say that for a good functioning government, a good functioning democracy, you want layered institutions because not every facet of your democracy is going to function or government is going to function well all of the time. And America has the benefit of many, many layered institutions, allegiances, and the allies that the United States has through NATO and what whatnot. There's decades of history there. So yeah, we can cycle through these crisis points several times and move on from them and forget that they kind of forget that they ever happened. But how long does that last? So one like, what is the culmination of all of this for now? You know, like when he leaves Davos, what's what, what does he have to say? What does everyone have to say about Greenland? But at what point point do little things, little things. I don't know if this is little, but like Canada basically saying, like screw this, we're going to get a lot closer to China. You know, those kinds of how many things can break in small ways before something breaks in a big way? It passes Prologue I don't expect something to break in a big way in 2026. I mean that's just maybe a bias towards the status quo and not expecting big explosive of historical events. But sometimes they do happen. And so how many little things can break before something big breaks, I guess is one question. And then my other question is just about healthcare, which is kind of boring compared to talk of World War iii. It's something that Democrats feel really confident about, something that has dogged Republicans for a very long time, something we haven't really talked about here. But as we know from the data, millions of Americans lost their subsidies through the Affordable Cash Act. Millions of Americans just chose not to get insured as a result. To what extent does healthcare come to the fore in 2026 will be Trump's second year in office, but also an election year.
- [61:25]
B
If you had to lay on that first one on Greenland, if you had to lay odds, if we have this conversation one year from now, will anything be different in the US Relationship with the territory of Greenland one year from now? Or what are the odds that something is different?
- [61:41]
A
I don't, I just, I don't think that the United States gets Greenland in the next year. Like, does the United States have a different relationship in terms of mineral contracts or the number of, I don't know, even military bases, although that number has been on the decline, not inclined. So I, I, maybe, maybe I'm going to look like an absolute idiot. But no, I don't think the United States gets Greenland. What about you?
- [62:04]
B
Yeah, I mean, I agree, I, I think again, I, maybe I just have this bias towards status quo too, which is that I think my expectation is there will be perhaps some deal that emerges that yet gives the USU increased rights to Greenland, which we already have pretty expansive rights in terms of military rights there, but maybe we'll get more mineral rights as well, and some agreement comes out there and that Trump's threats do kind of effectively kind of bring Denmark to the table there to kind of give us some sort of concessions. But yeah, I would be very surprised if we actually own the territory of Greenland. But that said, if you had asked me a day before we went into Venezuela, I also would have said I don't think that we will do that, that we will actually invade and kind of capture Maduro. And that was wrong. So I don't know. So I think the after, after that, I'm no longer willing to make such a blanket declaration that that is something Trump isn't willing to do. Although I still would be very surprised if it's something he does.
- [62:57]
A
All right, well, I think we're gonna leave things there for today. Gabe, thanks so much for chatting with me.
- [63:02]
B
Always great talking with you, Galen. Thanks so much.
- [63:04]
A
My name is Galen Druk. Remember to become a subscriber to this podcast@gdpolitics.com and wherever you get your podcasts. Paid subscribers get about twice the number of episodes. You can also join our paid subscriber chat and pass along questions for us to discuss on the show and you ensure that we can keep making this podcast. Also, be a friend of the POD and go give us a five star rating wherever you listen, maybe even telephone friend. About us thanks for listening and we.
- [63:27]
B
Will see you soon.