← Interesting Times with Ross Douthat
Interesting Times with Ross Douthat
Resistance, Where Art Thou?
00:43:13
Gone are the days of pussy hats and massive protests. Where is the resistance to Donald Trump’s second term? Lydia Polgreen and David French join this week to talk about the muted outcry to Trump and Musk’s plans to upend the federal government and where the most effective forms of resistance may show up.
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- [00:00]
Jonathan Swan
This podcast is supported by NetSuite.
- [00:03]
Podcast Announcer
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- [00:33]
Michelle Cottle
Where are the boys? Where are the boys?
- [00:35]
Ross Douthat
Late as always. Well, now that we're ruled by men, I guess, you know, we've been put in our place, Michelle.
- [00:42]
Michelle Cottle
Just gotta get used to it, I guess.
- [00:43]
Ross Douthat
Yeah.
- [00:44]
Michelle Cottle
So far I cannot recommend. From New York Times opinion. I'm Michelle Cottle. I'm Ross Douthit and this is Matter of Opin. Our beloved Carlos is out this week, which was so discombobulating that we felt moved to bring in two colleagues to fill his shoes.
- [01:15]
Jonathan Swan
That's what it takes.
- [01:17]
David French
It's not enough.
- [01:17]
Jonathan Swan
Not enough.
- [01:18]
David French
It's not enough. It's not enough.
- [01:19]
Ross Douthat
Sadly, neither of us is an economist.
- [01:21]
Jonathan Swan
Nor a Notre Dame football fan, so.
- [01:24]
Michelle Cottle
Nor a Notre Dame football fan. But never fear, we have drafted the truly brilliant combo. Ross, drumroll, please, for our guests.
- [01:32]
Jonathan Swan
No, I don't. I don't have a drum. I can't.
- [01:34]
Michelle Cottle
You can't even fake it. That's just sad.
- [01:36]
Jonathan Swan
That was sad.
- [01:36]
Michelle Cottle
We have drafted the truly brilliant combo of David French and Lydia Polgreen. Friends, welcome. Thank you so much for joining us this week.
- [01:46]
David French
Thanks for having us.
- [01:47]
Ross Douthat
Great to be here.
- [01:48]
Michelle Cottle
All right, so the mood here in Washington has been. I'm going to go with freaked out. As President Trump and his BFF Elon bulldoze across the federal government, issuing executive orders, issuing funding freezes, jettisoning federal workers, targeting agencies for dismemberment. So I thought today would be a great time to talk about resistance and whether we're seeing any so far. How it looks different compared to Trump's first go around and what form it might take this time, culturally and politically. But me being me, of course I want to start with politics. So, Lydia, let's pick on you. Would you be so kind as to remind us what political resistance look like at the start of the first Trump administration? Back when we were also young and.
- [02:40]
Ross Douthat
Innocent, mere babes, we knew so little.
- [02:42]
Michelle Cottle
So innocent.
- [02:43]
Ross Douthat
So innocent. Well, look, I think that early 2017, there was just an extraordinary ferment. There were sort of two big moments that come to mind for me. One was the women's march, which was, you know, a kind of unforgettable sea of pink pussy hats. The pussy hats came, of course, from the quote, unquote, grab em by the pussy line from the Access Hollywood video. That really inspired a lot of women to come out and say, we reject this. We don't want this style of politics to be running our country. And the other big thing that I personally found incredibly moving was people who rushed to airports and had really big protests against the so called Muslim ban, you know, sort of put their bodies on the line to protest what was fundamentally, I think, a really racist policy that was promulgated by Donald Trump the first time around. So those are the two big ones that stuck out to me. I mean, there were, obviously the Democratic leadership at that time looked a little bit different. You know, Chuck Schumer was still the leader of the Democrats in the Senate, but the mighty Nancy Pelosi was the Democratic leader in the House. You saw the emergence of the squad, these, you know, left members of Congress who I think got a ton of attention opposing Trump's policies, the Mueller investigation, Russiagate, all of those kinds of things, you know, and every night you had an outrage on Rachel Maddow's show and other cable news. And it was just a sort of steady drumbeat of resistance, resistan resistance. What that got us, I think, is something we can discuss. But that's. That's what it looked like to me.
- [04:16]
David French
You know, I think one thing that strikes me about then is there was this sense that Trump was an accidental or illegitimate president in a way that you don't have it now in 2025 because he had lost the popular vote. And then he won the election by kind of pulling this real inside straight with these Midwestern states to the point where people would say, wait, this, how did this happen? It also felt accidental in the sense of coming after the Comey letter, and then you had all of the information about Russian interference. And so there was this sense at that moment that this guy is kind of a pretender president. And so resistance flowed very easily from that. Whereas now he won the popular vote, he didn't just draw some sort of inside straight in the upper Midwest. He won all of the swing states. There was almost no demographic or very few demographics. Democrats did better in 2024 than they did in 2020. It's just a different beast entirely. And so I think People are wrestling with, oh, this guy won in every way that you can win, popular vote, Electoral College, swing states. And it's just a completely different psychological phenomenon, in my view, than that initial response in 2016, 2017.
- [05:33]
Jonathan Swan
Right. I think David is absolutely right that from 2016 to 2020, there was a sense that there was a fundamental liberal, or at least center left majority in America that had been unfairly denied its rightful position of power and influence. And so it just made sense to say, we just need to mobilize. Right. The one last thing I'd add is that Trump's White House in the early days of 2017 and indeed throughout his presidenc, was filled with people who were not at all loyal to Donald Trump, some of whom were just total opportunists, some of whom were sort of, you know, respectable Republican figures who felt like they were there to manage the weird, bizarre phenomenon of the Trump presidency. But those people played a very important role, a kind of feedback loop in driving the energy of the resistance by basically leaking constantly about how crazy things were inside the Trump White House. And so far, I mean, we're only a few weeks into his presidency. You do have some leaks. But clearly the team, the teams that exist in the Trump White House this time have esprit de corps. They have internal loyalty and cohesion. And so whatever is going on, and we can talk about what's actually going on, because it's sort of an open question, but whatever is going on in the kind of Trumpian attempt to remake the executive branch, you know, people aren't interested in just telling Politico in the New York Times all about how horrifying it is on the regular.
- [07:08]
Ross Douthat
Well, and they also don't really need to. Right. Because Elon Musk is just tweeting it out. We're feeding US aid into the. Into the wood chipper. Right. There is a kind of radical transparency. We're just seeing it all unfold.
- [07:22]
David French
And you didn't need a leak to say that he wanted to invade Gaza and displace the population.
- [07:28]
Jonathan Swan
See, to me, that's very Trump 1.0. That is more like Trump comes out and says something that sounds crazy and everyone covers it like it's a normal policy announcement. That, to me, is more a flashback to the old school. The old school?
- [07:41]
Michelle Cottle
Yeah, you can't change them entirely, particularly.
- [07:43]
Ross Douthat
When it comes to real estate development.
- [07:45]
Michelle Cottle
So, you know, the first Trump administration. Yeah. Everybody saw as a fluke, an accident, an unintended consequence. This time, this is who we are. This is. This is What America chose. So to the extent that there is organized resistance happening, where is it coming from? What shape is it taking?
- [08:03]
Ross Douthat
Well, I think we're seeing a few different things. You know, the response out of the gate was, you know, I think a little bit muted. And I think it's really only over the past few days that you've started to see a much more concerted and organized political resistance. Ross's home state Senator Chris Murphy, has been kind of everywhere, all at once, wall to wall, speaking about the billionaires who have your Social Security number and how they're gon take your money and give themselves tax cuts. You know, you're starting to see the beginnings of some political resistance from the Democrats, but it feels embryonic and quite early. How much they can actually do to stop the train, the, you know, sort of freight train that is Elon Musk in particular, I think remains to be seen. There's also, I think, been a flurry of lawsuits. But those will take time. They always do.
- [08:53]
Michelle Cottle
Yeah, I mean, that's my question, which is that there's a limited amount that the Democrats can do in Congress. They don't have the numbers. They can try to slow things down, they can logjam a few things, but a lot of this is gonna take place in the courts, which we saw plenty of happening in the first Trump administration. But David, where do you see this expanding and going?
- [09:15]
David French
Yeah, I mean, to me, the only early effective resistance is going to be in courtrooms. Look, this is just basic stuff. If you don't have the House and you don't have the Senate, it you're very much like where the Republicans were, say in 2009, early 09. But Obama had that filibuster proof majority for a little while. So Republicans were really just prone on the floor in many ways. And all they could do at that time was just sort of say all we are is a permanent no. And then they got out there and they whipped up the grassroots and the Tea Party started to take off. And by 2010, all of that sort of filibuster proof majority is just gone. The other thing is one of the things that I think was learned, a Lesson learned from 2017 to 2021 was Giant street protests don't necessarily work out to Trump's detriment. Right. That a big movement of social unrest is not necessarily something that energizes and galvanizes the rest of the American people against Donald Trump. And so in many ways, the political slash protest side of resistance to Trump is just much less Viable now. And the lawyers, though, I will say, have not been taken by surprise by any of this. And so even as there's a lot of concern about what is it that we're doing politically, culturally, which we can talk more about, what can be done, but basically, everything that can be done legally is being done. And already there are some legal results. I mean, the birthright citizenship order has been blocked, some of the defunding has been blocked, all of the necessary lawsuits have been filed, and now we are in that condition where we're going to see does this particular part of the system hold or does it not?
- [11:03]
Ross Douthat
Just to weigh in real quick on the question of protests, I mean, I think there are two things going on. One is, I think people are scared. Honestly. You know, the guy who's in charge of the Pentagon is an absolute Trump loyalist who I think would, it seems, would not hesitate to deploy serious violence against American citizens if they were to take to the streets.
- [11:22]
Jonathan Swan
Why do you think that? What's the evidence that he would deploy violence against peaceful protesters? That's a fairly extreme claim.
- [11:28]
Ross Douthat
Well, I mean, he doesn't seem to have a whole lot of restraint when it comes to being willing to do things that Donald Trump wants. And Donald Trump is the, you know, when the looting starts, the shooting starts president.
- [11:40]
Jonathan Swan
Well, are we talking about looting, or are we talking about peaceful protest?
- [11:43]
Ross Douthat
Well, I think that's in the eye of the beholder. But, you know, I mean, it's worth remembering that the resistance to Biden was January 6th, right? A giant, violent, deadly riot on the Capitol. And Trump, of course, was able to turn that to his advantage ultimately and pardon everyone involved. But the question of what legitimate protest looks like, I think you have a lot of people in the United States who perhaps would like to go to the streets and protest, but are, frankly, just kind of scared.
- [12:10]
Michelle Cottle
I'm also gonna jump in and just throw it out that I think a lot of people are exhausted. I mean, I think the first time around, there was this sense that if. If you could just explain how bad Trump was, you could make some sort of difference and be done with him. And here we are. People spent years protesting and bringing stuff to light, and we wound up with another Trump term. And I think people are completely perplexed and gobsmacked even more than those who are actually afraid to get out there.
- [12:43]
Jonathan Swan
I mean, I will just say, I think that the. The resistance to Trump was, in fact, very effective at doing what it set out to do in the first couple years of his administration is make it really, really hard for him to run an effective White House and to mobilize certain kinds of moderate sentiment against him. I think there's a big difference between the kinds of protests that you got under Covid conditions in the summer of 2020, when you did have riots and looting, and the kind of protests that mostly characterized the early days of his administration. I think that the reasonable critique of the resistance is that it did not fully set up the. To understand the larger situation that they were in, in the sense that it was sort of motivated by this sense of like, we actually won and we don't have to deal with the deeper appeal of populism. But I don't think it was ineffective at snarling up Washington and the Trump administration in 2017 and 2018. I think it did succeed in that. In doing that. It depended on both public opinion being broadly anti Trump, which it is not now, and on Trump and his White House not having capacities that they do in fact have now. So you need, in effect, before you can get a successful model of resistance of any kind, you need public opinion to move, I think, at least somewhat from where it is right now. I don't think resistance is the way to move public opinion so much as if public opinion moves, resistance becomes a more viable strategy.
- [14:27]
Michelle Cottle
David, you're very vigorously nodding. Where do you.
- [14:29]
David French
Yes, I am nodding. I think Ross is right about public opinion, full stop. I also think that prior to the 2024 election, the Democrats had a lot of reasons to believe that they were sort of still in this majority position because in 2018, they take back the house. In 2020, they take back the White House and they take back the Senate. So that by the end of Trump's first term, he's the first president since that in the four, a single four year term had lost control of all of the elected branches of government. So then 2022 rolls around in its peak inflation. This is when inflation was really, really bad and Democrats outperformed expectations. So there was a lot of reason for democrats flowing into 2024 to sort of still have this sense that it's a closely divided country. But it's still, we still are in that majority position. But then the polls kept showing Trump winning. They just kept doing it. Trump is polling better at this cycle than he did previously in 2016 and 2020, and he'd always outperformed his polls. And so Democrats were left with really a hope that this time when we're polling Trump, this time we got it right. And then the torpedo below the waterline in my view, was I still to this day, do not think Democrats understand how much the Biden White House blunted the charact argument against Trump by its own conduct and its own concealment of the president's material degradation of his condition. And a lot of Americans saw that and saw for what it was, which was supremely dishonest, bordering on dangerous. And then to turn around and say, we are the team that is going to preserve integrity and norms, I just feel like the Democratic Party may not still recognize that that did not land with the American public.
- [16:26]
Michelle Cottle
So you throw all of that a big cocktail shaker and you come up with this poison blend for the party. And now they are in a very tricky position and don't seem to know what to do. I mean, you have a shift among Democratic electeds where this time around you have, you know, Elizabeth Warren isn't exactly a moderate bipartisan, let's all play nice together with the other team person. But she, like many Senate Democrats, are saying what we need to do is work on areas of cooperation, that the kind of tone of the resistance has come down, at least among Democratic electeds for now. And it remains to be seen kind of how they are going to play with the Trump administration or how long they can continue with that.
- [17:17]
Jonathan Swan
I think we can already see, though, that that's not going to be the issue for them. I mean, the Trump administration is clearly very, very interested in rewriting the rules of presidential control over the executive branch. At the very least, that is sort of top priority. And congressional Democrats are just not going to be deeply involved in that. That is going to be an issue ultimately for the courts. Secondarily, you know, the Trump administration may want to push the envelope in terms of, like, you know, whether it spends money that Congress has appropriated. There, Congress is involved as sort of a political agent, but there, too, it also pushes towards the courts. And I don't think it makes like, if I were giving advice to Democrats, I would not say that it really matters one way or another how bipartisan they act. I don't think that's.
- [18:09]
Michelle Cottle
No, no. I'm just saying this is the position that they find themselves in. They don't know what to do.
- [18:15]
Jonathan Swan
Well, they're looking for. They need Trump or the Republicans to do something that is genuinely unpopular. Like right now, the Democratic line of argument is nobody elected Elon Musk, but in fact, Donald Trump spent the last two months of the election campaigning with Elon Musk, saying, Elon Musk is the smartest man in the world. I'M going to turn him loose on government waste and fraud. So guess what? The public did sort of vote for Elon Musk to do something about government waste and fraud. So you need him to do something that is unpopular and attack it, not just assume that saying Elon Musk isn't the elected president will suffice.
- [18:52]
Ross Douthat
Well, I think that you're right, Ross, that as long as there are not felt material consequences, there's not going to be a real kind of popular resistance. Right. I mean, I don't think people thought that they were voting for Elon Musk to do to the federal government what he did to Twitter. I just really don't believe that because I just don't think people were paying that level of attention and they made the mistake of not reading the fantastic book about what Elon Musk did to Twitter, written by our colleagues, Craig's Character Limit, which I recommend to our audience. But I do think that the sort of, the moment that you start to have real material consequences to some of this slash and burn, wrecking ball tactics, you know, people are gonna be angry and there will be a political response, but that's gonna take time. You know, the other thing that I'll say is that, you know, there's been a lot of kind of Monday morning quarterbacking. You know, there was a big piece in Politico saying, oh, you know, the Democrats are taking the bait by defending usaid. Americans hate usaid. They think that, you know, we give way too to people abroad and things like that. And yes, sure, I believe that. I personally, you know, am much more familiar with the left critiques of USAID and the work that it's done around the world. But, but I do sometimes, sometimes they're.
- [20:04]
Jonathan Swan
Now the same critique.
- [20:05]
David French
That's true, Ross. That's true.
- [20:07]
Ross Douthat
Indeed.
- [20:07]
Jonathan Swan
Horseshoe.
- [20:08]
Ross Douthat
Horseshoe. Yes, absolutely. But I think that there is this kind of over analysis of every minute move that will sort of fail to capture the fact that people who took a chance on Trump, who weren't of the hardcore MAGA base, these are people who don't follow the news very closely. Right. Like we saw that in the polling again and again, that these are people who weren't necessarily deeply, ideologically committed to the ideas that Trump was putting out there, but were willing to give a chance to someone who they saw as a real change agent. The question is, how much change do people actually want? You talk about a federal government that employs 3 million people. If a company that employed 3 million people laid off, you know, 20% of its staff, like that would be a huge economic, economic problem for the United States. Right. Because workers are not just people who accept paychecks, they're also people who spend money. So there are going to be knock on effects to this, but it's going to take time. And how Democrats either make hay of that or don't, I think is an open question.
- [21:09]
David French
You know, when I look at this, Ross is right. There's a difference between what's popular and unpopular versus what's constitutional and unconstitutional. And those are not the same things. And in fact, quite often the Constitution intentionally acts as a break on majoritarianism. It creates structures, establishes civil liberties that are a break on majoritarianism. They operate as a restraint on sort of unilateral executive authority, even when unilateral executive authority is very popular. And so part of this, if you're going to get out there and you're going to say what Donald Trump is doing is, as Ross said, remaking a vision, a constitutional vision of the presidency. I don't think there's much dispute about that. The only real question is how far is he willing to go to do it. But when you talk about that, that is a very difficult to mobilize public opinion.
- [22:00]
Michelle Cottle
You're not gonna get em fired up about the Impoundment Act.
- [22:03]
David French
It's very, very difficult. Well, you are.
- [22:05]
Jonathan Swan
Well, you are. If the issue is the Trump White House started trying to use impoundment to stop payments for popular programs, right? Absolutely. You would get people mobilized. You're not going to get people mobilized over how the Impoundment act applies to usaid. Right.
- [22:25]
Michelle Cottle
So it doesn't matter if he blows through constitutional stuff unless it's something that people feel at home.
- [22:29]
Jonathan Swan
Well, you need.
- [22:30]
David French
No, as a matter of popular opinion.
- [22:31]
Jonathan Swan
Well, there's two ways it matters. It matters politically if he does something where the actual act itself is unpopular, and then it matters politically if he gets in a public fight with the Supreme Court. But until you have, you know, if the Supreme Court issued a ruling and Donald Trump decided he wasn't going to obey it, among other things, in addition to a constitutional crisis, that would be a really big political opportunity for Democrats. But you actually have to run the machinery to the point of getting an adverse ruling before that becomes political from.
- [23:06]
Michelle Cottle
A very conservative Supreme Court, which frankly.
- [23:08]
Ross Douthat
Would help add to its credibility. Right. I mean, if they ruled against Trump, you know, and it's a 6, 3 court on the conservative side, then that makes it, I think, a lot harder for him to claim partis.
- [23:18]
Michelle Cottle
David, do you feel optimistic about some of that.
- [23:20]
David French
I do, I do. So the, the, now I've been fully on the record. I had disagreements with the immunity ruling. I do not think the immunity ruling was consistent with the originalism of the court. I had problems with the 14th amendment ruling on the same grounds. But as a general matter, it's just an empirical fact that the Supreme Court has rejected Trump and MAGA arguments just again and again and again. Even Democrats arguing in front of majority Republican nominated courts have done better than Trump did. So, so I do think there's absolutely reason to think that the courts will uphold the basic constitutional structure. And in fact, there's even more reason now to think so because some of the decisions that a lot of my friends to my left really don't like, like the OSHA vaccine case or the Loper Bright, which overruled the Chevron doctrine, actually had the effect of really restricting executive autonomy.
- [24:14]
Ross Douthat
Yeah.
- [24:14]
David French
And, and so right now we're going into Trump is exerting the most executive autonomy we've seen in the modern era at the same time that as a matter of constitutional doctrine, our presidents have less executive autonomy as a matter of law than any time in the modern era. So this is a, we have a collision.
- [24:34]
Jonathan Swan
But people, people have. Go ahead, Lydia.
- [24:36]
Ross Douthat
Oh, I was just gonna say, I mean, he's also got the, the third branch of government, Congress.
- [24:40]
Jonathan Swan
Right.
- [24:40]
Ross Douthat
I mean, he's got a Republican majority both in the House and the Senate. That seems completely supine. Right. I mean, just totally, totally ready to be walked over.
- [24:48]
Jonathan Swan
Well, except he has three votes. He's got a like three vote majority in the House. So, yes, it's, in a way, it's supine, but it's a very, very fragile and vulnerable majority.
- [24:58]
Ross Douthat
And frankly, he's got a very thin majority and also not an overall majority, you know, in terms of the, of the final popular vote. But my point was that's all the more reason that, you know, the Roberts Court, as much as we can still call it the Roberts Court, given the way that things have been going in terms of decision, you know, protecting the power and the role of the Court in the American constitutional order, I think is extremely important specifically to John Roberts. So I think that that's another argument in David's favor.
- [25:24]
Jonathan Swan
But I think, though, that liberals especially need to be realistic about what we're saying here. Right. Which is that there are a bunch of things that the Trump administration could do or might be playing around with doing that the Supreme Court is likely to rebuke, but there is also a Lot of room for executive activity within the executive branch itself that the court is probably just not going to touch. Right. So you see people saying, like, oh, you know, Elon Musk doesn't have the proper deputization to see certain things in the Treasury Department. Right. I mean, fundamentally, Elon Musk works for the President of the United States. The President of the United States runs the executive branch. If he wants Elon Musk to see treasury payment plans, it's probably it's going to happen. And similarly, like usaid, can the President just stop spending money that Congress has appropriated on foreign aid? I think the Supreme Court would say no. Can the President restructure USAID in a profound way? Yes, he probably can. Right. So that's, I think that's important that there is. There is going to be running room for a aggressive executive here.
- [26:34]
Ross Douthat
But this is, I think, where you come back to politics, right, which is that, you know, you think about what is the grand coalition that united behind Donald Trump. It is a very, you know, surprisingly diverse coalition. It was supposed to be something sort of fundamentally different than the traditional Republican base. And I think that what we're seeing right now is a kind of a return to sort of fundamentals. Right? I mean, what Elon Musk is doing is, in some ways, what he appears to be doing is fulfilling the Grover Norquist fantasy, right, of turning government into something so small that you can, you can drown it in a bathtub. And I think that the question is going to be, is politically, is that, is that going to work for the coalition that Donald Trump has built? And that's an open question. I don't know. I think ultimately it depends.
- [27:22]
Jonathan Swan
I think it doesn't work. Again, it doesn't work if you are actually cutting large, popular programs that the Trump base and swing voters really like and support. If what you're doing is dismantling the structure of grant making at a bunch of federal agencies that the entire Republican electorate, in all its varied forms, thinks favors liberals and progressives, then that's going to be fine. The coalition is going to be totally happy with that.
- [27:54]
Michelle Cottle
Okay, we're going to take a quick break, but we'll be right back, so stick with us.
- [28:10]
Ross Douthat
Foreign.
- [28:19]
Jonathan Swan
This podcast is supported by NetSuite.
- [28:22]
Podcast Announcer
Okay, business leaders, are you here to play or are you playing to win? If you're in it to win, meet your next MVP NetSuite by Oracle. NetSuite is your full business management system in one convenience suite. With NetSuite, you're running your accounting, your finance, your HR your e commerce and more, all from your online dashboard. Dashboard. Upgrade your playbook and make the switch to NetSuite, the number one cloud ERP. Get the CFO's Guide to AI and Machine Learning at netsuite.com NYT netsuite.com NYT I'm Jonathan Swan.
- [28:54]
Lydia Polgreen
I'm a White House reporter for the New York Times. I have a pretty unsentimental view of what we do. Our job as reporters is to dig out information that powerful people don't want published, to take you into rooms that you would not otherwise have access to, to understand how some of the big decisions shaping our country are being made. And then painstakingly to go back and check with sources, check with public documents, make sure the information is correct. This is not something you can outsource to AI. There's no robot that can go and talk to someone who was in the Situation Room and find out what was really said. In order to get actually original information that's not public, that requires human sources, we actually need journalists to do that. So, as you may have gathered from this long riff, I'm asking you to consider subscribing to the New York Times. Independent journalism is important, and without you, we simply can't do it.
- [29:56]
Michelle Cottle
So I want to swivel us away from the legal world a little bit, back to more along the lines of political or popular resistance and how we see that playing out. David, you want to kind of jump in and start us off with this?
- [30:11]
David French
Yeah. Picking up on one of Ross's threads. When things get unpopular is where the Democrats are going to have their opportunity. And you could see that emerging in the tariff battle that has been postponed, put on pause with Canada and Mexico, because here you had the possibility of the 25% tariffs. This has been sold to sort of Trump's voters as it's all upside, there's no real downside side. And all of a sudden, you begin to see the stock market tanking, and then, boom, you have this deal, right? This deal, which is, you know, trumpeted by Trump is some giant victory. But a lot of it is like Mexico and Canada saying, well, here's what we were doing. And Trump's like, okay, great, problem solved. But that was very instructive because, look, it's. Trump has a lot. You know, there are a lot of limitations that he has that are quite obvious. But I think it's time to. To recognize now that the guy's got some pretty good political instincts. And one of those political instincts is that, you know, if I'M going to careen through the system like in that John Mulaney sketch, a horse in a hospital. Then the one thing I can't do is tip over the stock market, right? Because that's where I start to lose my freedom of action. And I think that goes back to what Ross was saying, is that there are things, there are. Are points where Trump's actions start to actually really filter into the broader world outside the universe of political hobbyists and those who follow politics closely. And one of those things is a stock market crash. And look how quickly we went from here come the tariffs, Here come the tariffs, here come the tariffs to some fake deal, like, fake deal that is by no way going to end fentanyl coming into the United States. States. And then here comes the stock market.
- [32:08]
Michelle Cottle
Ross, you look pained.
- [32:09]
Jonathan Swan
No, no, I think that's right. Except even there, I think probably Trump's critics and skeptics could go one step further and say, yes, presume that Trump extracted at most minor concessions from Canada and Mexico. He did also impose tariffs on China. And everyone said initially, oh, the tariffs on China are smaller than the tariffs on our allies. This is crazy. But in fact, pretty obviously, Trump went in assuming that the tariffs on our allies would be taken away in exchange for minor concessions, while the tariffs on China presumably remain in some form. So from the point of view of people in his administration who think, you know, fairly seriously about tariff policy, this is sort of a win. You use tariffs as sort of a blunt instrument of diplomacy with your allies and, you know, remove them as soon as you get what you want, and meanwhile, you use them as an axe, actual instrument of policy against China. That's not just a horse in a hospital. That is, in fact, policy making. And the more that liberals and would be resistors recognize that there is going to be actual policymaking, the better positioned they'll be to understand their own situation, I think.
- [33:22]
Ross Douthat
Well, perhaps. Right. But I mean, I think, as I was saying earlier, I think that one of the things that we might find is that this ends up being an actually quite sort of ordinary, traditional conservative Republican administration in a lot of ways, right? Where the focus is really on deep cuts to government spending and giving huge tax breaks to rich people. And I think that that's sort of where the rubber meets the road. If you've built this coalition that includes, you know, people who are in labor unions or people who have, you know, children with. With special needs or people who, you know, people who have, like, who actually need the government in some way with which Is hello, basically all of us, because we live in a complex, diverse, multicultural society.
- [34:06]
Jonathan Swan
We live in a society.
- [34:08]
Michelle Cottle
Yep.
- [34:09]
David French
Yeah.
- [34:09]
Ross Douthat
I mean, with all apologies to Margaret Thatcher, I think that that's where I think the very real political problems are gonna come. And in some ways, I think the best strategy for the Democrats is to, in some ways wait for those things to start to happen and say, look, Paul Ryan economics is back. This is the old Republican Party that you all remember. You know, I mean, the one thing I will say is they've gotta stop saying Berlagarchs. My God, please don' use that term. It's just like, it's awful.
- [34:35]
Michelle Cottle
They should not say Berlin Democrats have a language problem. But my bigger concern is that they are gonna do a little bit of what they did in the first Trump term, which is miss this opportunity to do some soul searching about what it is that they really stand for and what kind of coalition they wanna build, as opposed to just picking things that Trump's done to pick apart.
- [34:59]
Jonathan Swan
Right.
- [34:59]
Michelle Cottle
Democrats obviously have lost the public trust. They, they have no idea what they've done wrong. They need to find their way back. And that's going to require something more than just standing up and going, oh, look, Trump's doing something horrible here and horrible there.
- [35:16]
Ross Douthat
Or just like the Republicans post 2012. Right. Like, it may just require a deus ex machina. Right. Like, I mean, it may require an extraordinary personality like Donald Trump, but on.
- [35:24]
Jonathan Swan
The left, the Mark Cuban scenario. I mean, no, I largely agree with Lydia. I think that the big political weakness of this Trump administration is going to be if the Republican Congress passes incredibly steep spending cuts in order to pay for big tax cuts. That's a traditional Republican position that tends to be unpopular. That could be. Again, I think it would be smart for Democrats in the House not to offer any votes to Mike Johnson to make anything that looks remotely like that happen and just force him, with his very thin majority, to own whatever the House passes. But then in terms of the sole search, soul searching, it's just having lived through this as a conservative in the Obama era, it really is just hard to do soul searching, at least until you get to your next presidential primary. Right. Like, we just witnessed the spectacle of the votes for the leadership of the dnc, which to my mind was a spectacle of, you know, identity politics and absurdity run amok. Right. And lots of liberal soul searchers were sort of in agony over that. But, like, it's hard to escape from that until you have people actually competing to be the leader of the party, and you're not going to get that for a little while. And Democrats do have to sort of accept they're not going to have a new identity until they have a contest for leadership, and they're not going to have a contest for leadership until after the next midterm. And the only way they win the next midterm is probably with a negative anti Trump agenda.
- [36:53]
David French
Well, and also be careful about who you embrace in this organic process of rising stars and resistance figures and all of this.
- [37:01]
Jonathan Swan
You know, I can remember Michael Avenatti for president. Baby, come on, come on.
- [37:05]
David French
That was Ross. Why? Did you see. You saw exactly where I was talking.
- [37:09]
Jonathan Swan
Second CONVICTED felon President David There is.
- [37:13]
David French
This tendency to sort of be caught up in the social media cycle, embrace rising stars, embrace sort of these figures that really kind of come up in niche fights and capture imagination in very specific spaces and then just get pushed and thrown out there. And that's all part of the problem. I also think that the Democrats have a very real issue in this sense, that a lot of the conversation that we talk about is like, how can they change messaging? What are the different talking points? Who are the different figures that presumes that they're a pool of voters out there who are really following Democratic messaging and really looking at Democratic public figures and really examining whether the Democrats are responsive to their needs, when the reality is a bunch of this election was decided by people who pay so little attention to politics, so little attention. So if I'm a Democratic strategist, I'm looking at a lot of the numbers that I saw before the election, which was all the people who followed politics closely. Harris was winning them by a pretty large margin. All of the people who don't follow politics at all or very much at all. Trump was winning those people by a pretty large margin. So, you know what? If you're telling me that I just need a messaging change, if a messaging change falls in the forest and no one hears it, does it make a sound? I mean, everything circles back to this main point of what are the conditions on the ground and the felt needs of the American people. And if Trump can't deliver on that, the reality is that the Democrats could win again without changing a darn thing. But we'd be back in the same cycle we've been in for 20 years, where neither party has solved the problem that the American people are asking them to solve. And so we've had more lead changes. It's like a NBA basketball game with 18 different lead changes, where no one has really been able to surge into a lead because they're not actually meeting the needs of the bulk of the voters.
- [39:12]
Michelle Cottle
All right, we're going to have to leave it there, but you know, we're going to do this again and again. I can feel it. So we're going to take a break now, and when we come back, we're going to go hot, cold, foreign.
- [39:32]
Jonathan Swan
This podcast is supported by NetSuite.
- [39:35]
Podcast Announcer
Okay, business leaders, are you here to play or are you playing to win? If you're in it to win, meet your next mvp. Netsuite by Oracle. Netsuite is your full business management system in one convenience suite. With NetSuite, you're running your accounting, your finance, your HR, your E commerce, and more, all from your online dashboard. Upgrade your playbook and make the switch to NetSuite, the number one cloud ERP. Get the CFO's guide to AI and machine learning at netsuite.com NYT netsuite.com NYT.
- [40:05]
Michelle Cottle
Hi, it's Samantha Shea from Wirecutter, the product recommendation service from the New York Times. We all know those people who are.
- [40:12]
Jonathan Swan
Simply impossible to shop for.
- [40:14]
Michelle Cottle
At Wirecutter, we have a huge collection of gifts guides to help you find the perfect present. We test everything we recommend, from an.
- [40:21]
Jonathan Swan
Ice cream subscription to a back massager to a trio of succulents.
- [40:25]
Michelle Cottle
We believe there's a perfect gift for everyone and Wirecutter can help you find it. Check out all our gift guides@nytimes.com giftguides and finally, it is time for hot coffee, which is my favorite. So who's got it for me this week?
- [40:47]
David French
I have been designated.
- [40:48]
Jonathan Swan
You've been deputized.
- [40:50]
David French
And I am so into this. Like, I'm so into this.
- [40:53]
Michelle Cottle
Hit me.
- [40:54]
David French
There are moments, you know, where were you when the Berlin Wall fell? You know, for example, watching it in high rise dorm at Lipscomb University. Like, what were you doing during LeBron's block in 2016 and Game 7 there?
- [41:08]
Ross Douthat
You lost me.
- [41:09]
Jonathan Swan
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [41:10]
David French
The Luke Luca Doncic trade to Los Angeles in exchange for Anthony Davis is. I'm going to remember where I was, what I was doing for the rest of my life. Biggest blockbuster trade in modern sports history. And it was such a big deal that I have this fun class I teach with undergrad at my alma mater. And I started my whole class with a 20 minute discussion of the breakdown of the Luca deal. And so, so I'm here for it. It's incredible. And how do the Lakers keep doing this?
- [41:44]
Michelle Cottle
Okay, I've got to ask because I texted my 21 year old basketball obsessed son and his ruling is stupidest trade in history for the Mavericks.
- [41:55]
Ross Douthat
Could someone explain this to me? I'm sorry, explain it to me like I'm five. I love going to sporting events. I do not follow sports.
- [42:01]
David French
Luca is a 25 year old star for the Dallas Mavericks who's 25 and is already a five time first team all NBA player. Player Anthony Davis I believe is 31 or so. He's a star, he's a top 10 player. Luca's a top three. And so Luca is going to be the face of the, one of the faces of the NBA arguably for the next 10 to 15 years. Incredible player, just incredible. Traded for this older star who's not as good, who's had got a long health history. And the reasoning allegedly from Dallas is they were on the verge of having to give Luka a huge extension. But they don't like his conditioning, they don't like that he likes to drink beer. They think he might be injury prone. I'm not making this up. They think he might be a little hot headed. And meanwhile I'm sitting there going, if Luka wants to come to my team, I will put a case of PBR at the end of the bench. I will give him Zen nicotine pouches. In game like however you want to live your life, Luca, just get on that crowd court. And the other thing that's so fascinating is Luca and Anthony Davis were apparently traded without any knowledge it was happening. Nobody else in the league knew it was happening. So it's a shocker on its own terms. Double shocker. Because nobody knew this was going down.
- [43:16]
Michelle Cottle
Ross, you're being very quiet. Do you have a thought?
- [43:18]
Jonathan Swan
No, I mean I, I've, I've, I'm more baseball and football than basketball, so I've only followed it in the sort of secondary way. Who are the other throw ins in the deal?
- [43:27]
David French
Oh, that's. You ask a great question. Okay, well they send Anthony Davis, Max Christie and a 20, 29 first round draft pick. And it's sent in exchange for Luka Jonczyk, Maxi Kleber and Markief Morris.
- [43:43]
Jonathan Swan
So there's no like blue chip prospect thrown in to this. Okay.
- [43:47]
David French
Normally when you have this, it's a huge, huge player and then draft pick after draft pick after draft pick after. Right? No, that's not the way this could look.
- [43:55]
Michelle Cottle
All right, Lydia, is that clear to you before we go?
- [43:57]
Ross Douthat
I feel clear as mud. But I, I guess the lesson is the perfect is the enemy of the good.
- [44:03]
Michelle Cottle
That's very deep for this.
- [44:05]
Jonathan Swan
Well, is there a connection here? Because aren't the Mavericks owned by Dun Dun Dun by the Adelson family?
- [44:13]
David French
Oh, Ross, if you want me to go down there because they think they.
- [44:16]
Jonathan Swan
Owned they used to be. Well, I mentioned Mark Cuban, future Democratic nominee for president earlier. He was the owner. Now they're owned by the Adelson family, which includes Miriam Adelson, you know, famous Donald Trump donors, supporters of Israel. Real. So there is a political angle. But I have nothing more to add.
- [44:34]
Michelle Cottle
Because we're out of time off before Ross brings in Aliens.
- [44:36]
Ross Douthat
We'll do a crossover with Bill Simmons.
- [44:38]
Jonathan Swan
I didn't.
- [44:39]
David French
No, bring in Aliens. We need more aliens.
- [44:42]
Michelle Cottle
We'll do an entire episode with Aliens. The Future will come back soon.
- [44:45]
David French
Absolutely. Anytime.
- [44:47]
Michelle Cottle
Bye, guys. Have an excellent weekend.
- [44:50]
Ross Douthat
Thank you.
- [44:51]
Jonathan Swan
Take care.
- [44:51]
Ross Douthat
Great to see you. Bye. Bye.
- [44:58]
Michelle Cottle
Thanks for joining our conversation. Give Matter of Opinion a follow on your favorite podcast app and leave us a nice review while you're there to let other people know why they should listen. Do you have a question for us based on something we talked about today? We want to hear it. Share it with us in a voicemail by calling 212-556-7440 and we just might respond to it in an upcoming episode. You can also email us at Matter of opinion@nytimes.com Matter of opinion is produced by Andrea Batanzos, Sofia Alvarez Boyd and Elisa Gutierrez. It's edited by Jordana Hochman. Our fact check team is Kate Sinclair, Mary Mars Locker and Michelle Harris. Original music by Isaac Jones, Carol Sabaro and Pat McCusker. Mixing by Carol Saborough. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta and Christina Samuluski. Our executive producer is Annie Rose Strasser. Foreign.
- [46:17]
Jonathan Swan
This podcast is supported by NetSuite.
- [46:20]
Podcast Announcer
Okay, business leaders, are you here to play or are you playing to win? If you're in it to win, meet your next mvp. Netsuite by Oracle netsuite is your full business management system in one convenience suite. With NetSuite, you're running your accounting, your finance, your HR, your E commerce, and more, all from your online dashboard. Upgrade your playbook and make the switch to NetSuite, the number one cloud ERP. Get the CFO's guide to AI and machine learning at netsuite.com NYT netsuite.com NYT.