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- [00:01]
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- [00:29]
Martin DeCaro
Equal Housing Lender History as it happens June 30, 2026 the rise and fall
- [00:36]
Donald Trump
of Trumpism I am officially running for President of the United States and we are going to make our country great again.
- [00:51]
Damon Linker
I just want to find 11,780 votes. Gonna try and get compliant, but this is now effectively a riot. 49 hours declaring it Donald Trump will be elected to return to the White House, the first since Grover Cleveland to serve non consecutive presidential terms.
- [01:10]
Donald Trump
Tonight, as we stand on the edge of our 250th year of independence, I am thrilled to declare that America is back.
- [01:20]
Damon Linker
His approval rating sits at 42%. His approval rating has hit a record high, 62%.
- [01:27]
Libsyn Ads Host
Only 27% of Americans approve of how
- [01:31]
Martin DeCaro
he is handling inflation, the survey found.
- [01:33]
Damon Linker
Trump's job approval rating now stands at 29%.
- [01:36]
Martin DeCaro
Is the end of the Trump era in view, or will his politics endure? What about his presidency will last? In terms of ideology? Donald Trump is as difficult to pin down today as he was when he announced his first presidential run in 2015. Is it politics after Ideology? That's next with Damon Linker as we report history as it happens. I'm Martin DeCaro.
- [01:59]
Damon Linker
Whereas Trump will, in a mercenary way, embrace certain of those commitments in the moment, but in the end, he will never place his commitment to or fealty to those principles or ideas or policy positions if it requires a sacrifice of his own good, even for a moment. Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr. Do solemnly swear. I, Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr. Do Solemnly Swear that I will faithfully execute.
- [02:35]
Martin DeCaro
Way back in January 2021, right as Joe Biden was being inaugurated, I produced a podcast titled Trumpism After Trump. After all, his political career was finished, right? He had lost his reelection bid and then tried to steal the election by, among other things, inciting a mob to attack Congress on January 6, 2021.
- [02:59]
Donald Trump
We love Trump. Mike Pence I hope you're going to stand up for the good of our const and for the good of our country. And if you're not, I'm going to be very disappointed in you. I will tell you right now.
- [03:22]
Martin DeCaro
Now, Trump didn't just get away with that. He never went away either. And four years later, the American people rewarded him with another term in the White House. And it has been as chaotic and corrupt as expected. Yet over these past 11 years, what is Trumpism? Has been difficult to answer, to define. There doesn't seem to be any consensus. Is it fascism? Is it some kind of American populism? Is Trump even a conservative? What does the man actually believe in? Does he have an ideology?
- [03:54]
Podcast Interviewer
Do you see any checks on your power on the world stage? Is there anything that could stop you if you wanted to?
- [03:59]
Donald Trump
Yeah, there's one thing. My own morality, my own mind. It's the only thing that can stop, not international law. And that's very good. I don't need international law. I'm not looking to hurt people.
- [04:12]
Martin DeCaro
And what about these past 11 years will stay with us? We can ask that about policies like immigration restriction. Is that here to stay? What about maga's cultural impact? Was there really a vibe shift? David Wallace Wells has a new op ed in the New York Times you might want to read. So maybe it is too early to ask this question. Trump has two and a half more years in office, but we can see the end coming, however slowly, as the bottom falls out of Trump's second term, thanks to the man's sheer incompetence.
- [04:45]
Donald Trump
Now they have to cry uncle. That's all they have to do. Just say we give up.
- [04:50]
Martin DeCaro
If Trumpism is really hollow, then maybe it'll fade as soon as he exits the stage. In a post at his substack newsletter, notes from the middle ground, titled Politics After Ideology, the political scientist Damon Linker tries to make sense of what Trump's absence of ideology means, why it makes it so difficult to know what's coming. When it comes to governing, Trump is a free agent, doing whatever feels right to him in the moment, with the only standard he looks to being what he thinks will benefit him personally. Ideology doesn't just distort, says Linker. It also lends a coherence to our experience of the world. Yes, that coherence is always partially a projection of our minds. But such projections give us badly needed orientation, disciplining our pursuits, giving them shape that our world increasingly lacks. That shape is grounded in a conviction that political actors are pursuing clearly articulated ends by various discernible, coherent means. Linker goes on to say, the ends pursued by different parties and politicians might clash. The means each adopts might be controversial in all kinds of ways. But as long as everyone involved in politics can be presumed to act according to ideologically articulated goals, we have a measure to make sense of things. That measure is missing with Trump.
- [06:05]
Podcast Interviewer
After a number of appearances where his remarks were rambling or incoherent, and one event in which he swayed silently to music on stage for close to 40 minutes, questions are being raised about possible cognitive decline. Here are a couple of recent events that sparked concern. The first one in which he began talking about electric vehicles, then switched to a story about an electrically powered boat.
- [06:27]
Donald Trump
Let's say your boat goes down and I'm sitting on top of this big powerful battery and the boat's going down. Do I get electrocuted? And he said, you know what, Honestly, nobody's ever asked me that question. But if I'm sitting down and that boat's going down and I'm on top of a battery and the water starts flooding in, I'm getting concerned. But then I look 10 yards to my left and there's a shark over there. So I have a choice of electrocution or shock. You know what? I'm going to take electrocution. I will take electrocution every single time.
- [07:01]
Martin DeCaro
And I'll share a link to that post in the show. Notes to this episode. Damon Linker, welcome back.
- [07:07]
Damon Linker
Thanks for having me, Martin. Always good to be here.
- [07:09]
Martin DeCaro
Joining us from one of the seedbeds of the American Revolution, Philadelphia. Are you feeling the spirit of 76?
- [07:17]
Damon Linker
More than I anticipated given, you know, our current political arrangement, which complicates one's feelings a bit. I mean, I live in Center City Philadelphia now, literally a 10 minute walk from Constitution Hall. That helps. Going for just a stroll around the neighborhood and looking over and waving at the building where they drafted the thing. It's a nice feeling.
- [07:40]
Martin DeCaro
I was referring to the summer of 1976. See, I fooled you there.
- [07:46]
Damon Linker
Yeah, I actually remember that I grew up in New York City and I remember the tall ships and the red, white and blue spray of water in the air. It was quite an experience. Experience as a six year old and
- [07:58]
Martin DeCaro
some parallels between the two periods. Maybe we'll return to that in a bit. I actually just did an entire episode about the bicentennial and the national mood similar to today's. Although I would say the country, despite everything, is in better shape now than it was then. Maybe we'll Return to that, because I'm at some point going to bring up JD Vance's comments about Watergate and corruption. So one Damon Linker recently said or wrote, donald Trump believes in nothing beyond himself. He will sell out any idea, principle, objective, nation or person in order to get a deal that he's convinced will benefit him personally. I want you to expand on this. Now, what do you mean by politics after ideology?
- [08:42]
Damon Linker
We have a tendency to think of politics in ideological terms, in terms of like, and this is, I think, in some ways more true now than say, mid 20th century when the two parties were more ideologically heterogeneous than they became later. Where there were kind of liberals and segregationists in the Democratic Party and the Republican Party was a combination of sort of blue blood, wealthy east coast types and business owners, the GOP has always been a little bit more of the kind of pro business party, whereas these days, meaning kind of since the late 60s, the two parties have ideologically started sorted. And so we have a tendency to think that, you know, if you're a Democrat, you believe in a list of ideas or principles that you're seeking to advance, and if you're a Republican, you think of another set of ideas and principles and policies you're trying to advance. And then when we think about Donald Trump taking over the Republican Party in 2016 and the years to follow, we think of that in terms of kind of swapping out some of those ideas and principles, say, from the Reagan dispensation that prevailed until 2016, like swapping them out for an alternative set, whether we call it post liberalism or right wing populism and so forth. The point I'm trying to make in the post you're referring to is simply that there is something to that. Trump definitely made alternative ideological appeals on trade and immigration and to some extent on foreign policy. Yet I think it's also important to recognize that he personally represents an alternative version of, or a distinctively unideological version of that new post liberal set of commitments. The contrast with someone like J.D. vance, I think is illuminating. Vance is an ideologue. You know, he's a graduate of Yale Law School. He thinks in terms of ideas he might be completely cynical in swapping out one set of ideas for another. As recently as 2019 and 2020, he was more of a standard issue fusionist National Review ideologue. And then he sort of turned on a dime in the aftermath of January 6th and adopted a sort of post liberal set of commitments instead. But in both cases, they were ideological commitments. He Sort of wants everything to make sense, cohere, hang together, if you hold one set of commitments and entail different set of commitments necessarily. Whereas Trump will in a mercenary way, embrace certain of those commitments in the moment. But in the end, he will never place his commitment to or fealty to those principles or ideas or policy positions if it requires a sacrifice of his own good, even for a moment.
- [12:03]
Martin DeCaro
Post liberalism, that's a strain of populism. That's what produced by the breakdown of the post Cold War consensus, or, well, it's one variation.
- [12:14]
Damon Linker
I mean, the way this has worked. Speaking more as a historian of the recent past, what we've seen is that beginning around or a little bit over a decade ago in the United States, in the uk, throughout Europe and other countries as well around the world, we've seen a kind of right wing populist attack on center liberal establishments and ideological commitments. The thing is, with someone like Trump, this was very much a kind of sledgehammer or battering ram to go after the establishment and this set of commitments. But what would replace it? It was not clear immediately other than a few issues again like trade and foreign policy, immigration. And what you saw happen after Trump won in 2016 was a kind of mad scra gamble by right leaning intellectuals who had made their entire careers by being versions of Reaganite conservatives, try to figure out what the hell they were going to stand for instead. And one version of what that could be is post liberalism. Many of the post liberal thinkers like Patrick Deneen, Adrian Vermeule at Harvard Law School, Sohrab Omari and a few others are Catholic, right wing Catholics. They sort of are in favor of blending church and state. They're sort of willing to be left leaning on economics in return for being more hard edged on cultural issues from the right. So they're very anti abortion, very anti gay marriage, but also okay with using the federal government to help, you know, the struggles of the working class, provided the working class is mostly white and socially conservative. So that is what post liberalism has tended to mean. And Vance has sort of hitched his wagon to that set of kind of alternative ideological commitments over the last several years.
- [14:19]
Martin DeCaro
Yeah, so there is some ideological coherence there. And these folks have seen Trump as a possible vehicle for their ideas. So populism, I'm going to use a term Roger Griffin used on this podcast recently because I usually don't use these kinds of words on my show. Floating signifier. All ideologies to one degree or another are floating signifiers. And populism is a very broad category. Right, right wing, left wing populism. Trump is a kind of populist. It's phony populism if we go back to, say, the origins of the first true populous Capital p party in 19th century America. But anyway, Trump is certainly not an ideologue. So I wholeheartedly agree with you about your statement. There's. But he might have ideologues around him. Right. I spent a lot of time on my show recently talking about immigration and foreign policy. But as important as those issues are, Donald Trump's second term priority is to enrich himself and his family and be as corrupt in broad daylight as possible and get away with it.
- [15:24]
Damon Linker
Yeah, I certainly think that's true. And that's part of what I mean by saying he's post ideological or non ideological. He uses ideology to kind of whip up his supporters demagogically. He's instinctually a very gifted demagogue and person to mobilize different discontented factions of the electorate in a kind of populist crusade. And in that respect, the way I use the term populist is perhaps a little different than the way you used it it a minute or so ago. And a lot of people use it. I sort of think it's most useful to not have it, have much content to it. It's what it is, is a kind of modifier. You can have almost any ideological commitment pushed with a populist mode or style. Populism is any kind of politics that is framed in terms of opposing whatever the current establishment is. So it's any politics where someone kind of at the street level, on the outside of power says to people gathering around him on the street, we have been wronged. They pointing up and kind of over into the distance, into the kind of the mansion on the hill, the hallways of power. They're the people who are screwing us. Let's go get them and tear them down and replace them with people who won't screw us over anymore. That's populism. It can come from the right, it can come from the left. There could even be a centrist form of populism, like a Ross Perot style from back in the 90s. In that respect, I think Trump definitely is a populist. I think substantively I agree with you. If we think populism means like, like substantively helping the working class. Yeah, he's doing nothing to help the working class other than giving them a thrill of screwing the left, screwing minorities and, and so forth. Other than that, he doesn't really do anything to help them. He actually benefits the wealthy, the plutocrats, people like himself in terms of policy. And in terms of the corruption that you described, he and his friends are
- [17:49]
Martin DeCaro
making all like bandits, staggering, staggering levels of corruption. None of it prosecuted. Right. There's no hope that the DOJ is going to do anything.
- [17:58]
Donald Trump
Yeah.
- [17:59]
Martin DeCaro
You know, fascism is a form of populism, populist ultranationalism. I'll share the one sentence, Griffin, definition of fascism. A genus of political ideology whose mythic core and its various permutations is a palingenetic form of populist ultranationalism. Palingenesis, meaning rebirth. The original 19th century American populists were nativists. They wanted to bring back silver coins. But really the target of their populism was the railroads in those days. That was the entrenched interest that was making farmers, workers, everyday lives more difficult. It's not so much a question as a ramble, but go ahead, Damon.
- [18:41]
Damon Linker
No, no, I don't have much to add to that. That's right. I agree with that interpretation. That sounds good to me.
- [18:48]
Martin DeCaro
So history, you get into this idea in historical context in your piece on Substack, and I will share a link to that post in the show Notes to this episode. There was a time where thinkers like Daniel Bell, historians like Daniel Bell, believe that the United States had moved, had shifted to a post ideology politics. And it turned out to be. Well, I'll let you pick it up from there.
- [19:11]
Damon Linker
Yeah. I talk in the piece about Bell's 1960 book, the End of Ideology, where he predicted, you know, on the eve of JFK's victory, we were entering a time where ideological differences would not really matter very much. Now, I think actually this was not great timing on his part, given that we were only half a decade away from things beginning to spin out in various new, more extreme ideological directions in the latter half of the 60s. But what he was referring to, I think was the kind of overwhelming dominance of, at one level, New deal liberalism from 1932 all the way down to 1960. Because, of course, not only did we have at least four elections with fdr, followed by his Vice President Truman, who then got narrowly reelected in 48. And then Eisenhower comes in and he sort of runs as a moderate Republican and very clearly does not come in and like roll back. The New Deal doesn't break from the Cold War. He actually, he actually consolidates the New Deal. He continues the Cold War in roughly pragmatically the kind of way that Truman was waging it. You know, Maybe a little more pragmatic. I mean, he didn't, he didn't respond to the crackdown in Hungary.
- [20:36]
Donald Trump
That's true.
- [20:37]
Damon Linker
He wanted to be rolled exactly the way Truman would have.
- [20:40]
Martin DeCaro
Yeah, he wanted to do rollback, but pragmatically, as you say, he realized that was, was impossible in Eastern Europe. They're not going to drop the GIs in to help.
- [20:47]
Damon Linker
Yeah, exactly. So but in general, like in the scheme of like the broader political spectrum, there wasn't much discontinuity. And so with that in mind, I think what Bell was saying is like that ideological homogeneity in the center of the spectrum combined with the rise of technocratic managerialism that we get also post New Deal, that a lot of politics is beginning to become public policy focused within policy intellectuals formulating it using advances in statistical analysis, data analysis to decide what the best policy would be in various areas. These two things together, I thought, I think he sort of believed would make politics less about ideological clashes. Like should we be socialists or Trotskyists or Stalinists? Should we be fascists on the other side? No, the spectrum was constricting and politics would pretty much be a kind of soft handoff from center right to center left where politics would be about kind of fiddling with the knobs of public policy a little this way, that way. Very pragmatic, not big conflicts. There is something to that that gets at an aspect of our trends in politics. I think there was then another wave of this thinking in the piece. I suggest that the whole Francis Fukuyama end of history debate in the early 90s after the cold War was a new version of this debate where people thought, well, now that we know that communism isn't a viable option and we have long known since the end of World two that fascism isn't a viable option, we're left with again sort of handoff between a soft center left and a soft center right. It might feel in the moment like these are huge differences in the election coming matters. It's huge amount. But if you really look at it, you know, Reagan sounded like an ideologue, but he even, he didn't really cut government in any significant long term way. It continued to grow. And then by the time Reagan's gone and we have the first Bush presidency, he goes along with raising taxes and that hurt him in getting reelected, but he was willing to do it. Then Bill Clinton is a super moderate to conservative Democrat and does the crime bill and declares the end of big government. I mean you put it all together and you could say Also in the 90s, maybe we're post ideological now. Every American can take pride in this victory. From the millions of men and women who've served our country in uniform to millions of Americans who supported their country and a strong defense under nine presidents. Today the federal workforce is 200,000 employees smaller than it was the day I took office as president.
- [23:54]
Martin DeCaro
The era of big government is over,
- [23:56]
Damon Linker
just as Bell declares this in 1960. And then by 1968 we have, you know, the Democratic convention there and and riots and you know, anti war protests and cities burning and the police beating up on on veterans. Similarly, within a decade or so of Fukuyama you have the Trump upsurge which was prefigured by the Tea Party movement on the right kind of populist discontent. That's why I think John Gantz's work on 1992 as a pivotal year is so important because that's the year the end of history comes out. And he shows although I don't think he deals with Fukuyama in the book, it's a very nice retrospective kind of corrective to show that even while Fukuyama was making that very interesting, stimulating interaction interpretation of his present moment, there were all these churning discontents in the country at the local level, in New York and other kind of white ethnic areas of the country with the Perot candidacy, with Pat Buchanan's challenge to the first Bush's reelection and getting 39% of the vote in New Hampshire primary and so forth.
- [25:12]
Political Commentator
But this campaign is for time, the first working people and the middle class of both parties and of no party. The establishment that has dominated the Congress for four decades is as ossified and out of touch with the American people as a ruling class in the White House.
- [25:31]
Damon Linker
This churning discontent in that very moment where it seemed to others that, you know, all the big disagreements are behind us now.
- [25:40]
Martin DeCaro
Tap subscribe now in the show Notes to skip ads, get early access and enjoy all of our bonus content or go to historyasithappens.com.
- [26:06]
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- [26:35]
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- [27:03]
Martin DeCaro
Equal Housing Lender Buchanan and Perot they in retrospect, they seem to have prefigured Trump or were a harbinger. You know, in January 2009, though, when Barack Obama is taking the oath of office, no one is thinking about Buchanan or Perot like that. Right, Right. It looked like we had gotten past that, but no, I tend to agree. I mean, the post Cold War order has disintegrated. I'm not sure what this next order is going to look like. You mentioned the political spectrum. It is hard to make sense of it now. Our politics are unstable. The major parties are hollowed out. So. And you mentioned John Ganz, his book. Was it when the Clock Broke?
- [27:40]
Damon Linker
Yeah, when the Clock Broke.
- [27:42]
Martin DeCaro
Yeah. I enjoyed that book. It did bring me back to my formative years in the 1990s.
- [27:46]
Damon Linker
Same here. I was living in New York City in 1992.
- [27:50]
Martin DeCaro
That's a great time to be there, you know.
- [27:52]
Damon Linker
Yeah. Except for the 2000 murders a year.
- [27:55]
Donald Trump
Well, that's.
- [27:55]
Martin DeCaro
Well, you know, that tailed off by the. I can't remember when the murder rate really did fall off.
- [27:59]
Damon Linker
It didn't really dip until like 97 around there. Giuliani oversaw the decline, but it took several years.
- [28:09]
Martin DeCaro
The 1990s. In retrospect, we were all too optimistic. And you talked about forces that led to Trump. I mean, the Iraq war, the 08 crash. You know, stuff happens. Politics is not just a debating society. I want to return to this issue of ideology now because I was just looking at this, our history together. You first appeared on the podcast in 2022. This is your sixth appearance. And every time we've spoken it's been about Trump or Trumpism or where the conservative movement might be. We did an episode with a editor from the National Review fairly recently.
- [28:43]
Political Commentator
Yeah.
- [28:43]
Martin DeCaro
Where did this come from? Where are we going? Which is always difficult, parallels, say, with past populist movements. But we do have to be careful there because many past populist movements were third parties. Ultimately that stung and just faded away. Donald Trump took over a major party. I mean, this is one of our first discussions whether Trump was an anomaly. I mean, I think it's still yes and no. You can think of him as very different than past presidents, but also a result of structural forces.
- [29:13]
Damon Linker
There are all kinds of ways to find continuities. If we talk about populism in the formal sense that I was describing it without content, then you can clearly see a line between Andrew Jackson, down through various kind of populist upsurges through the rest of the 1918th century, down to the actual People's Party, the actual populists of the 1890s, aspects of the old right during the 20s and 30s, especially in the 30s, angrily opposing the New Deal on down to Robert Taft's failed presidential bid in 1952. George Wallace, a huge important pre figurement of Trump that surges up in that moment of 1968 where the segregationist faction of the Democratic Party departs the Democratic Party on its way to joining the Republicans by 72. And it pauses for that election with George Wallace. And it has this broader appeal. It's not just the five Deep south states that Wallace wins, but he also wins double digits throughout the rust belts of the North.
- [30:31]
Historical Narrator
I say that those who let us into it ought not to lead us out of it, because had they not given lip service to this anarchy in the streets eight years ago, it would be safe to walk on the streets of Oklahoma City and of Tulsa and of Los Angeles and of Birmingham and the other large cities of our country.
- [30:51]
Damon Linker
It does surprisingly well. And then fades. And then we get 92 with Perot and Buchanan and then Trump. So, like, that's one thread down through American history. I mean, we could go back even further before Jackson to the anti Federalists, in a way, a kind of nascent populist response to the Federalist case for a more robust federal government under the federal Constitution.
- [31:20]
Martin DeCaro
If somebody like George Wallace, his potential appeal was limited for a number of reasons. One of them is that the establishment was still held in fairly high regard, or the parties were still strong enough to keep someone like him out. Right. He eventually became an independent, and then he was shot and paralyzed and the party that he started faded out as soon as he did. Right. So there's a parallel there to the question of how long will Trumpism last when Trump departs the stage?
- [31:54]
Damon Linker
That's an important point, but I do want to make my own in response, which is that when these things happen in American History, because we only have a two party system, the sort of outsider challenge invariably gets absorbed into one of the two parties. So the People's Party, though, like a lot of the people involved with it, would never have, they would have blanched if you had given them a kind of crystal ball prediction of it, the 1890s. But they are extremely important for the rise of the progressive movement a decade or so later. Similarly, as I was saying About Wallace, by 72, a lot of those voters are voting in Richard Nixon's landslide reelection. For Nixon, if there hadn't been Watergate, we probably would have had a very potent right leaning Republican movement from after Nixon, a little bit earlier than we got it with Reagan. Especially by 84, after Watergate, there was a kind of recoiling from that and that kind of set the Republicans back a cycle or two. But I agree that the distinctiveness of Trump, a lot of the things I was talking about under the rubric of non ideological, the corruption, the kind of mercurial incontinent moving about from position to position, seeking personal advantage at all times, that probably is fading and will go away in part because there, there is no one else who can do that in the charismatic way that he manages to pull off. I don't understand the charisma. It doesn't appeal to me. But clearly it affects a lot of people. What Trumpism represents, whether you call it post liberalism or right wing populism or some other, other term that I don't think is going away and it is going to have a home in the Republican Party. It's just a matter of, of exactly what mode it is. And, and that is going to be partly a function of who becomes the standard bearer for it over the next couple of presidential elections cycles.
- [34:11]
Martin DeCaro
I agree that at least some of these politics are going to stick around. Immigration restriction for one. Right. But you know, the thing is, Donald Trump and his party's policies are not popular. Maybe some are, but for the most part, he's underwater on almost everything.
- [34:28]
Damon Linker
But because of the, he's underwater because he is inept and cruel and, and vicious. Like after the Biden administration, I think there was a genuine sense that, that, that Biden had screwed up the border and some kind of order needed to be reimposed. If Trump had come in and competently and humanely, but toughly, like clearly there were going to be deportations, but if it had been done, first of all, without haphazardly going into immigrant neighborhoods and rounding people up at their very low paying jobs and humiliating people and breaking, breaking families apart. If ICE hadn't taken a kind of glee and shooting protesters in the face, I think his policies could have been at least popular enough to keep him in the mid to high 40s. It's that both terms. Trump comes in and he acts like a cruel, inept thug, and there is enough humanity still in the American electorate that, that repels a lot of people who are receptive to some of his policy positions. That's at least my view. And the paradox of it for him, and a problem for the Republican Party, is that his base in the Republican Party love precisely those things about him. They want the cruelty and the viciousness and the haphazard, chaotic display of Trumpism, and so they cheer him on. And in the end, that's what Trump kind of is always playing to. And so that creates a feedback loop where, like, he can't get any useful political information. Like, normally, one way in which we have competent government is that, like, the people in charge see that what they're doing is unpopular and so they, they pivot to something to get better. But he only cares about what the most rabid and horrible members of his own coalition think. And they love the bad stuff both times. He can't sustainably stay above about 40% in approval because of that.
- [36:46]
Martin DeCaro
The primary election system will continue to reward people who support this stuff no matter how unpopular these policies become or their execution becomes. So we kind of.
- [36:56]
Damon Linker
Maybe, maybe. I mean, I think we haven't seen that exactly yet. We have to play it out in real time with other candidates when, when Trump isn't an option because they're going to have to settle for somebody else.
- [37:09]
Martin DeCaro
When he's not there to intimidate people.
- [37:12]
Damon Linker
Yeah. I mean, and that's going to be the real, like, my, this is a parenthetical, but my God, like, can you imagine what, whether it's Vance or Rubio or somebody else, like whoever is running in 2028 on the right, if Trump is still sentient and, you know, hasn't had, if he's had a stroke and can't communicate, then, then everything's. Then they have it easier. But if he's still there taking pot shots every day, multiple times a day, you know, basically saying, haha, make you dance Vance by attacking him anytime Vance says anything independent of Trump, it's going to be an impossible thing. It's going to be very.
- [37:51]
Martin DeCaro
Yeah, I mean, the question of when is enough is enough. We, we haven't gotten there quite just yet. I mean, I'm still waiting for A. Well, I mean his, his approval ratings are underwater, but still it's not, it's not low enough. At some point he's kind of settled.
- [38:07]
Damon Linker
He's sort of now at about 38, 39 in the aggregate. And he's has a kind of new floor under him there. And that's pretty much where his floor was, was the first.
- [38:17]
Martin DeCaro
This is, this is what will happen. The Democrats will win in November. They'll overreach, they'll screw up, and then they'll be booted out in two more years. So the thing about populist movements, I mean, populism is really an appeal to emotion and it's, it's part of the mass communication era, mass politics era. But ideas always matter and policy matters. One reason why populist movements say, such as George Wallace's was co opted, the issue of civil rights. Right. Nixon did appeal to many Black voters in 68, but he also wanted to appeal to people who opposed civil rights. And he wanted to bring that, as you, as you said, he wanted to bring that faction or strain into the Republican Party. When it comes to Trumpism, what's going to endure here? Corruption. The damage will be lasting. Just wondering about the future of Trumpism and looking back to history to try to figure out where we might be going. I mean, what's going to endure from Trumpism?
- [39:11]
Damon Linker
I'm hesitant to make strong predictions given what we've lived through over the last decade or so, because I did not foresee this coming. I wrote a column for the week back in 2015 titled something like it's over. Jeb Bush is going to be the nominee for the Republicans. Like that's where my head was before Trump launched his campaign. So take everything I say we with with a grain of salt. First of all, I think it is indisputably clear that largely because of social media, there is a kind of predisposition in the politics of democracies around the world now toward populism. I think populism has a mode again in a formal sense, not substantively, but in the sense of we're on the outside, those people in charge have wronged us. Us, let's go get them and kick them out. That dynamic of politics has been with us in some form pretty much from the exact dawn of social media and smartphones, which means like 2012, 13, all over the world. And I don't think that is going away now. It can take, as I said earlier, it can take left wing forms, as it just did in New York York City with With the primary elections they had this last week on the left, it can happen on the right, as we've seen with Trump and beyond. And then it can happen even in the center, potentially. I could imagine a more centrist form of populism as well. So that I think is going to persist. And then the question is, do we get a sort of. I'll, I'll use these names as kind of catch alls. Not so much about their particular prospects, successful as politicians, but like a kind of Rubio mode, which would be a harder edged, angrier version of kind of what the GOP was in, say the 2012 Republican primaries, when we have the kind of clown show primaries, the, the
- [41:21]
Martin DeCaro
18 people on the stage.
- [41:24]
Podcast Interviewer
Yeah.
- [41:24]
Damon Linker
And, and like everyone trying to one up each other for being crazy. But the joke general message was just a kind of harder edged form of Reaganism in a way during the Reagan campaign with people like Jack Campenard Laffer. Ronald Reagan. Ronald Reagan.
- [41:40]
Political Commentator
Ronald Reagan.
- [41:41]
Damon Linker
Ronald Reagan.
- [41:41]
Political Commentator
Ronald Reagan.
- [41:42]
Damon Linker
President Reagan.
- [41:43]
Donald Trump
President Reagan.
- [41:44]
Damon Linker
President Reagan. Ronald Reagan. I'm with President Reagan. Or is it going to be Vanceism, which is a more radical departure from Reaganism, more in line with where Trump is, although a little different on foreign policy, because I think on foreign policy, Vance is a genuine so called restrainer, kind of the ideology associated with the American conservative magazine with Tulsi Gabbard kind of genuinely thinks we should not be. It kind of overlaps a little bit with kind of the Nation magazine left wing critique of American foreign policy, wants us to be going to war a lot less often. It's what a lot of people on the right, Right. Thought they were getting with Trump, whereas Trump has not given them that at all. Because he himself, as usual, is not connected to any ideology, including restrainer oriented isolationism. He sort of is just a muscular unilateralist where he singularly decides what's in the interest of the country in terms of what's in his personal interest. So why did we go to war in Iran? Because he thought the little Venezuela nonsense was very good and he could do the same thing on a bigger stage and he'd get good headlines for being a tough guy. That's it. Nothing more than that.
- [43:04]
Martin DeCaro
You know about Vance, he just did this comment the other day about Watergate that if that happened today, it would be no big deal.
- [43:10]
Political Analyst
I think that his historical legacy is enjoying a bit of a renaissance, but I think deservedly so. As I joked with Robert backstage, if Watergate happened tomorrow, it would be like a 12 hour news story.
- [43:24]
Damon Linker
The Idea that it would have taken
- [43:25]
Political Analyst
down a presidency is crazy. And by the way, if you look at the story of how the deep state took down Richard Nixon, it's not all that different from what the same groups of people, the same institutions tried to do to Donald Trump and the first Trump administration.
- [43:44]
Martin DeCaro
That's my fear about one of the enduring influences or legacies of Trumpism, maybe be the normalization of corruption.
- [43:53]
Damon Linker
Yes, I think that is a. I think it will be a factor now. It's different if you can't get much traction or leverage against corruption in order to enforce the law. The doj, that's one problem. Yeah. The DOJ has been gutted. Whatever happens after Trump, the Department of justice is, has been seriously harmed in a way that is going to be longer lasting and very difficult to repair. It's not impossible, but it's not going to happen overnight. But then that's different than, like Trump actually. Like he's caused a lot of that corruption, but having him there actively pushing it ever further every day is different than they're not being a person at the head of one of our two parties actively doing that. So maybe the decline down the slope towards genuine collapse of public standards for public officials and expectations and the ability to enforce those rules, maybe the downward slide might halt at a new lower level, which would of course allow us to have a foothold to maybe start pushing the boulder back up the hill a little bit, which I hope so.
- [45:08]
Donald Trump
Yeah.
- [45:08]
Martin DeCaro
So back to foreign policy and Trump's ideology, or lack thereof. A few months ago, I wrote a piece for the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft or their website, responsiblestatecraft.org, which is the media arm of Quincy. I did a Q and A with Alex Duvall about what is now, in my view, if not the dominant, one of the dominant frameworks or dynamics in international relations. And Trump is part of this global mafia politics, the political marketplace, as a way of understanding, well, Venezuela, I'll use an example, right? It's all about the deal. This was not a voluntary deal. It was a deal coerced at the barrel of a gun. But it's about how to take countries, weak countries, to use Duvall's terminology, at the periphery of world politics, and how to slice, dice, rank and trade them. And there was very much a business or an economic peg to all of this. In Venezuela, it was all about the oil. Venezuela sovereignty did not matter. High ideals that were prominent, say in the 1990s in the humanitarian intervention era, human rights, stopping genocides, democracy, freedom none of that matters in this framework of global mafia politics, which is not an ideology. It's just a way of understanding this transactional foreign policy that is not unique to Trump. Look at the Sudanese civil war and all the outside forces there. They're trying to make a buck off of that and to prolong that conflict for any number of reasons that have nothing to do with the well being of the Sudanese people. What are your thoughts on global mafia politics and Trump?
- [46:49]
Damon Linker
There is a strong strand and always has been an American foreign policy thinking that is very unilateralist. Americans don't like being bound. You know, there are different ways of framing it. You have the kind of Jacksonian version of it. You also have the kind of higher minded John Quincy Adams version of it. Don't go abroad in search of monsters to destroy. It's there in Washington's farewell address. Be hesitant about alliances. Leave Europe to its own problems. Don't get embroiled in it. Take advantage of our ocean borders and then weak north, south borders on land to say we're on our own. We don't have to worry about these global conflicts. We just are free agents. That got very much submerged during the Cold War. And it worked partly because of the fear of the threat of communism, but also because we were at the head of our bifurcated half of the globe. We were the leader of it. So it's easier to make a case to the American people that it's okay to be multilateral because we're the boss of the multilateral coalition of the free world.
- [48:05]
Martin DeCaro
Yeah. I mean, George Washington could not predict 1945, but go ahead.
- [48:09]
Damon Linker
But then once we got to the end of the Cold War, then the question was like, okay, is this now a unipolar moment, as Charles Krauthammer dubbed it, in that period where essentially it's not just that we're the leader of the free world, we're the leader of the of the world because everyone's free. There are no more dictatorships or there's some on the periphery. But, you know, as George H.W. bush put it in trying to make a case to go after Saddam Hussein after the invasion of Kuwait, there will be a new kind of global world order. The day of the dictator is over, That will be led by the United States, that will form sort of ad hoc coalitions of all the countries of the world to enforce the bare minimum of international law. Namely, you can't cross border aggression, you can't take your neighbor's oil fields for your own sake, and get away with it. Because the rest of the world will get together and push you out and say, no, no, you can't get away with it. That really pissed off. I mean, you know, when we're talking about 1992 and Buchanan, that was a big factor in his success that year. Perot as well. The notion that, like, what, the Cold War is over and instead of just coming home and getting a peace dividend, now we're the world's policeman, where we're going to enforce international law everywhere on the planet. Screw that. Why would we do that? This is for us.
- [49:50]
Martin DeCaro
Buchanan's speech when he announced that he was running for president in New Hampshire in the late 91 or early 92. I've listened to that speech many times. He says exactly that.
- [50:00]
Political Commentator
He is a globalist and we are nationalists. He believes in some Pax Universalis. We believe in the old Republic. He would put America's wealth and power at the service of some vague New world Order. We will put America first.
- [50:17]
Damon Linker
That was the main catalyst. And actually, when you listen to Buchanan's speech at the nominating convention where he endorses Bush, but also gives his spin on why he got his support. He says lots of nice things about Reagan and Bush ending the Cold War, but he says nothing about the Gulf War at all. And you know that that's where he drew the line.
- [50:40]
Martin DeCaro
He also cracked some jokes about gay people on that speech.
- [50:43]
Damon Linker
Oh, a whole bunch of them. He, he, you know, because the Democrats had already had their convention in New York City, and he definitely was mocking them for their. Their kind of gay convention up in New York City with all of their corrupt scumbag people. It's, it's quite, you know, I don't know. Reminds you of the trumpeter a little bit.
- [51:02]
Martin DeCaro
Yeah, exactly. Because there was a period of time, not that long ago where. Where you couldn't say those things out loud anymore.
- [51:08]
Political Commentator
Yet a militant leader of the homosexual rights movement could rise at that same convention and say, bill Clinton and Al Gore represent the most pro lesbian and pro gay ticket in history.
- [51:21]
Damon Linker
And so they do.
- [51:23]
Martin DeCaro
Well, forget.
- [51:24]
Damon Linker
Yeah, yeah, that was gone in like a blink of an eye. That was just like eight years or something.
- [51:28]
Martin DeCaro
Trump as a primacist again. Ideology structures. Trump can campaign and talk all he wanted about avoiding the forever wars, avoiding unnecessary interventions in the Middle East, a region that the United States has never been able to figure out, where we've sunk so many lives and so much national treasure, to say nothing of all the misery we've caused for the people who Live there. For all that talk, when you become President of the United States, you are now the head of a superpower and a hegemon. And there's an ideology that comes with those two positions. I wrote about this recently as well, citing a scholar by the name of Naim Anaitollah in this section of the article. There's another structure operating here in the Iran war. Even if Trump is scattered and he's all over the place, there is hostility between these two countries that animated right wing or conservative politics, as they would say, for a war that's been going on for 47 years. So, so I can't say exactly how much all that influenced his thinking, but it's there. It is there.
- [52:33]
Damon Linker
That's actually something on which I think we might just disagree. I do not think Trump is a primacist in the way that term has typically been used. Rubio, I think, is a primacist and a lot of Trump's right wing critics goading him on in prosecuting the Iran war, their primary primacists. But for me, primacism as an ideological outlook is about America being the most powerful nation on the planet, preferably by such a huge amount like our spending on defense being so many multiples ahead of everybody else that no one can challenge us. Now, Trump's in favor of, you know, completely going nuts on defense spending, but I don't think in the name of that, that mode of primacism. I think he's, he's much more instinctually a kind of sphere of influence guy now, of course, put through the lens of his own self interestedness personally. So like he, he can't think of American national interest in any other terms than what's good for him personally.
- [53:41]
Martin DeCaro
That's the.
- [53:41]
Damon Linker
Either way, he's perfectly comfortable with saying that Russia, Russia can get its near abroad and do what it wants there. That is not our business. He doesn't care about NATO particularly. I don't even think he cares about China's near abroad. Do you think he would actually go to war with China over Taiwan? Absolutely not.
- [54:01]
Martin DeCaro
How's the United States going to defend Taiwan when we can't defend our bases?
- [54:04]
Damon Linker
Now, there's no way we would do that. And I think China knows that. Now, the one exception to the sphere of influence argument, and that goes by the way to the kind of Don Road doctrine ridiculousness about we can do what we want in our hemisphere, like a kind of ridiculous funhouse mirror version of the Monroe Doctrine. So we can, yeah, take Greenland if we want. We can take back The Panama Canal. We can topple the government of Venezuela and take their oil and turn it into a slush fund for Trump to use at his discretion with it being the money laundered in gutter. I mean, that ridiculous stuff like that's our sphere. But for some reason, and it's a complicated story to explain why it is a lot of it having to do with his personal business ties. The Mideast is kind of an exception to that. Like he wants us to have, have the western hemisphere of the Americas Greenland on its periphery. But then we also are, you know, a major player in controlling the Mid East East. He wants us still projecting power there. So while we're waging that war and going to war with Iran, it can trick us into thinking he's still a primacist. But his case for these things is not the same as a primacist. A primacist is like, we have to be fully supporting NATO. We have to be helping Ukraine and pushing back on Russia. We need to be preparing for war over Taiwan, on with China. We have need to be checking them with the Hawk, a sub nuclear sub deal like Biden was doing. Biden was a primacist in the name of a kind of liberal internationalism. But that's a form of primacism. I don't think it describes Trump, though.
- [55:54]
Martin DeCaro
I'll say this primus is a mixed with the political marketplace, global mafia politics. This is why I'm not a political scientist.
- [56:02]
Damon Linker
Well, I mean, I would also say like, Vance is even less of a primacist, like, because he is a restrainer. And, and if he somehow ends up getting to be president in 2028 or 2032, that's where I think American foreign policy truly pivots to a new mode where we truly are in the kind of the multipolar moment where we will see a true resurgence of spheres of influence in a kind of, of cockamamie weird resurgence of like 19th century foreign policy thinking where like, yeah, China invades Taiwan and we sort of, you know, stand on the sidelines and say, oh well, who cares? You know, we can take Cuba, like, because that's our Taiwan. They're right off our shore. We can see that as kind of a legitimate extension of our interests. But we're not going to go to war over an island 100 miles off the coast of China. What does that have to do with our interests?
- [57:08]
Martin DeCaro
On the next episode of History as it happens, it'll be my final pre July 4th America 250 episode. We'll be joined by two time Pulitzer Prize winning historian Alan Taylor to talk about a day in the life of a Revolutionary War soldier and British soldiers and Tories and loyalty Royalists and the enslaved and Native Americans. Now I did mention the last pre 4th of July America 250 episode during the rest of this summer I will continue to produce episodes about the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. But in the meantime make sure to sign up for my free newsletter. Just go to Substack and search for history as it happens.
- [58:05]
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