← Interesting Times with Ross Douthat
Interesting Times with Ross Douthat
Why Trump’s Immigration Crackdown Defines the Right
00:43:16
Has immigration become the new litmus test for the Republican Party? In this episode, Ross talks to Matthew Continetti, the author of “The Right: The Hundred-Year War for American Conservatism,” about the party’s shifting coalition, the defining role of immigration and how today’s right echoes its past.
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- [00:01]
Sandra E. Garcia
Hi, my name is Sandra E. Garcia, and I'm a reporter at the New York Times. I write for the Styles desk, where we try to understand our complicated world by keeping up with culture. We want to take you to the forefront of cultural shifts and let you know why things are trending. Our subscribers make this kind of coverage possible so the New York Times can continue to highlight the stories that go beyond breaking news. Help us keep a pulse on culture by subscribing@nytimes.com subscribe.
- [00:30]
Ross Douthat
From New York Times Opinion. I'm Ross Douthat, and this is Interesting Times. What does the second Trump administration really stand for? How different is Trumpism from past forms of conservatism? Just in the last week, we've seen the great break with Elon Musk seemingly bring an end to the experiment with having the tech right, the Silicon Valley hotshots try to run Washington, D.C. we've seen the protests in Los Angeles and the president's militarized response highlight just how central immigration politics is to contemporary conservatism. And we've seen the battle in Congress over the big beautiful bill bring back the ghosts of the Tea Party era. So it's a good time to talk about what Trumpism 2.0 actually represents. And my guest this week is the perfect person for that conversation. Matthew Continetti is a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, and he's the author of the recent book the the Hundred Year War for American Conservatism, which in my humble opinion is the best recent intellectual history of the American right. So, Matthew Continetti, welcome to Interesting Times.
- [02:01]
Matthew Continetti
Ross, thank you. It's great to be here. I'm looking forward to our discussion of Andor.
- [02:06]
Ross Douthat
Oh, did we schedule you for the wrong week?
- [02:09]
Matthew Continetti
I was told.
- [02:09]
Ross Douthat
I was told that's how we lure everyone in. We're like, come for the Star wars discussion.
- [02:15]
Matthew Continetti
Well, I enjoyed that episode very much. So it is a pleasure to be here.
- [02:18]
Ross Douthat
Well, you're very kind. Well, there can be a science fiction element here as well, because I wanted to start with Elon Musk, a science fiction figure if there ever was one. And the great Trump Musk schism, which sort of put an exclamation point on Elon's departure from the White House or from government. And I want you to talk about what you think the Musk experiment represented in the realm of ideas. What was that all about?
- [02:47]
Matthew Continetti
Well, I think the way to approach this question is to look at the shape of the coalition that Donald Trump brought into being in his reelection last year. And a large part of that coalition, certainly a lot of the intellectual energy, a lot of the fundraising came from what's been called the tech right. But there was also other parts of the coalition. There was Maha an RFK Jr. There was Tulsi Gabbard, kind of disaffected Democrats over foreign policy. There was of course, the minority working class voters that we've talked so much about in the aftermath the election. And so Musk is often associated with this tech right, but I actually think he overlaps several of these categories. He was someone who had been very friendly to the left and then over the period of the Biden administration really moved right now. What does it mean in the realm of ideas? Well, I think he shares with the tech right a vision of dynamism, a vision of technological progress, a sense that the federal government under Biden in particular was too heavy handed in its regulation of key technologies. And Musk so has this future orientation. He wants us to become a multi planet species. He wants to go to Mars, Occupy Mars. He wants us to repopulate the species. And then of course, also in the realm of ideas, over the past several years, he's focused on the woke ideology, on Wokeism as something that is corrupting Western societies, Western civilization.
- [04:26]
Ross Douthat
I think that's compelling. But it raises the question, how did it end up being the case that Musk spent almost all of his time and sort of public rhetoric in Washington D.C. talking about the budget deficit and how Doge, the Department of Governmental Efficiency, was going to save at least a trillion dollars? And I mean, this to me was one of the most striking and surprising things about the last six months. The extent to which Musk, who was sort of a figure out of these ranks of disaffected centrist Democrats, suddenly sounded like a Tea Partier?
- [05:05]
Matthew Continetti
Well, on his journey, right, he did start raising concerns over our mounting federal deficits and debt. And you know, he did come from a place which is very common in Silicon Valley, especially common in Silicon valley during the 1990s where he was a free marketer, he was a libertarian, he would post on X Milton Friedman videos, right, which is not normally associated with the populist wing of the MAGA coalition. So he did have that framework. You know, when we first heard about Doge, I think a lot of us were saying, oh, it's going to be another Simpson Bowles commission. He and Vivek Ramaswamy are going to really get a bunch of pencil next together and accountants and they're going to propose this plan for Deep Spending cuts. But what I didn't quite understand is that, no, Ramaswamy's out, Musk is in charge and he's going to actually focus heavily, and I think quite successfully on gutting the federal workforce. That's what he knows. That's what he does when he takes over a company or even when he treats one of the companies he founded. He's always trying to cut personnel because he thinks that cutting is the only way you'll find out what's actually necessary. So I think when we look at Doge, we see a combination first of Musk's kind of general libertarian background and approach to markets and business, but also his own entrepreneurial history. He tried to treat the federal government as though it was one of his businesses.
- [06:37]
Ross Douthat
But certainly it seems like parts of the tech right were not happy with what they got from Doge. Right. Like when, when I. If you'd asked me to describe the views of the tech right six to 12 months ago, I would have said, yeah, lots of people in that world are libertarian. They like Milton Friedman, they really like deregulation. But they also want a federal government that's very active in certain areas, that's spending money on, you know, tech and scientific research and defense and all of these things. They aren't sort of string government cutters in those areas. Well, I'm curious where you think that kind of vision is left by sort of Musk riding through Washington, slashing headcount. I mean, we'll see what happens next. But is there a tech right now beyond what Elon did?
- [07:28]
Matthew Continetti
Yeah, I think there's a tech right now. I think the tech right, they were really interested in deregulation. They were really interested in freeing AI research and development. I think when you look at the energy demands of AI, you see many people in the tech industry demanding or asking the federal government to loosen the restrictions on nuclear energy. The tech community very much wanted less regulation on crypto. And Trump himself and his administration at large are big fans of crypto.
- [08:03]
Ross Douthat
Big fans.
- [08:04]
Matthew Continetti
Big fans of crypto. There's also one piece of the tech right that we talk about a little that's kind of the new weapons manufacturers, the palantirs, the andurils. And of course, they're focused on expanding, revitalizing America's defense industrial base. And the jury's still out on that, I think. Right. But that's not really what Doge was all about. And then there's space too. And of course that is intimately connected to Elon Musk because of SpaceX. But all these things, I think, are parts of the tech right that still exist. And then you have the more cultural dimension. Not just economic, but cultural. I do think that many people in the tech community became alarmed and even radicalized by the growth of the progressive ideologies during the Biden administration. Wokeism, dei, even gender ideology. And so that, I think, continues even though Elon Musk has left Doge as well.
- [09:08]
Ross Douthat
Yeah. The first interview I did for the show, before it was a show, I guess, was with Marc Andreessen, who's sort of seen as a defining figure of the tech right. And the issues you just listed, basically crypto and AI regulation and wokeness, were clearly sort of the center of his worldview. And it may be that a lot of other things that have left some people disappointed in what Doge did or didn't do or what the Trump administration isn't doing are fundamentally peripheral to those core issues that pushed core figures in the tech world rightward. But I'm also interested in sort of the persistence of ideas within American political coalitions, even during times of fundamental change. So the fact that Musk ended up spending so much of his time in Washington D.C. sounding a bit like a newly elected Tea Party congressman. Right. In the days when you and I were Young in Washington, D.C. a long time ago, that to me was very striking. And yes, you can sort of draw it out of his pro Milton Friedman posts on X. Right. But it also suggests this kind of fascinating resilience in right wing politics. Right. Because you have this GOP coalition that by general agreement has been transformed way more working class voters, Hispanic men, fewer college educated professionals by far than in the Reagan era. And there's all this talk about a new right, all these various forms of the new right, and yet you still end up with a Republican Congress passing a bill that cuts taxes and tries to cut spending. And then the grassroots are complaining that it doesn't cut spending enough and that, you know, that could have been 2012, that could have been 1984, 1986. So I wonder if you can explore your thoughts on that kind of consistency and persistence. Like, why doesn't the right change more?
- [11:09]
Matthew Continetti
Well, I don't know if we would have seen this bill in a pre Trump Republican Party. It maintains the current tax rates and then it adds these more populist tax cuts, really kind of holes in the tax code that are being created. The no taxes on tips, no taxes on overtime, the tax deduction for your car interest. These are meant to appeal to the new coalition that brought Trump into power. The Child Tax Credit's expanded. There have been a whole bunch of debates over the size of the child tax credit over the years. Wall Street Journal editorial page sees it as another form of spending. It's in this bill, it's expanded. And those are just the fiscal parts of the tax parts that forget about the immigration parts of the One Big Beautiful Bill. Codifying the Trump approach to immigration is something that would not have happened prior to his rise in 2016. So I see this reconciliation bill, we call it the One Big Beautiful Bill, another example of Trump's marketing genius. But it really is, I think, kind of writing into law the Trump view of so many issues that have been dominant in American politics now for a decade. Foreign.
- [12:48]
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- [13:42]
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- [13:55]
Ross Douthat
You can make the case certainly that what Trump has done has shifted the GoP substantially relative to where things stood at sort of the peak of the Tea Party. At the same time, it is still seen from 30,000ft. A bill that codifies what were temporary and now are extended lower tax rates that benefit upper brackets more. Right? And that does in fact make real cuts in social spending. Not the cuts that the party's libertarian wing would like to see, but real cuts nonetheless. So maybe it is sort of this hybrid of pieces of where the party would have gone. I mean, I guess what strikes me, though, is there are still sort of places that the populist Republican Party or the officially populous Republican Party can't go, like actually raising taxes, while Trump is willing to sort of float it, let people talk about it, bat it around. But in the end, that still is sort of a limiting principle. You can't raise taxes, you can't raise income taxes at least, and therefore you have to find your savings in cuts. That seems to be a thing that's preserved.
- [15:08]
Matthew Continetti
Well, I think that's an important point, and I'd like to spend a little more time on it. The first thing to note is that Trump did not campaign on raising taxes on the rich.
- [15:18]
Ross Douthat
Right.
- [15:19]
Matthew Continetti
Instead, he campaigned on no tax increase for anybody and these special tax breaks, and he won. The second point is that even in a presidentialist system, which, you know, you and I agree, we live in now, Congress still is powerful. And this question was put to the Congress during the debates over writing the one big beautiful bill, do you want to increase taxes on upper incomes? And there was a. There were advocates in the White House for this position and maybe a few people sotto vche in Congress. The Congress wasn't going to have it. Right. So Congress still has a role in writing this legislation. And Congress is responsive, I think, to its electorates. Now, you could argue those electorates are gerrymandered and whatnot, but not all of them. So I think that there are many, I think there are many populists in the media and in the MAGA intellectuals cohort, but we always have to distinguish between the intellectuals and the communicators and the actual politicians. And so when you say the word hybrid, that is Donald Trump. He knows it. He has to cater to all of the pieces of his coalition, not one part of it.
- [16:28]
Ross Douthat
What do you think is the biggest break, though? To me, again, two or three months ago, it seemed like you would say that Liberation Day, the tariffs and so on, everything associated with them. This was the fullest triumph of the populist spirit over the older forms of Reagan era conservatism. That, yes, Ronald Reagan supported some tariffs, George W. Bush supported some tariffs, but never before had a Republican president gone so hard on this issue. No president basically seemingly gambled his entire administration on something that almost no expert would endorse. Right. The essence of populist instinct against expert opinion. That was my view then. You know, now we've walked things back, we've sort of tap danced around and so on. Where do you see that issue in terms of populism triumphant or just another sort of hybrid.
- [17:27]
Matthew Continetti
You mean the tariffs?
- [17:28]
Ross Douthat
Yeah.
- [17:28]
Matthew Continetti
Oh, well, I do think this is. When you look at the three main ways that Trump challenged the conservative mainstream in 2016, there was no entitlement reform. Right. And we haven't gotten any entitlement reform. There was build the wall and have Mexico pay for it. So the whole revolution involving the government's approach to illegal immigration, well, we're in the midst of that now, as we can see by turning on the news. And then there was the trade piece. And at the trade piece, this is one idea he has held for all of his public life, the idea that trade is a zero sum game. There's a winner and there's a loser to every transaction. And America has been losing for decades. I would say that in the first term, he made some progress on immigration. Not what he wanted, but pretty good progress. He avoided entanglement in entitlement politics. And on trade, though, he didn't really get what he wanted. Now we have Trump too. Trump unbound, Trump surrounded by his hand picked loyalists. And trade is where he's made, I think, huge progress from his point of view. And even with the walk back from Liberation Day, America still now has the highest protective wall since the Great Depression, going back to fdr. So I see this trade part as where Trump has actually done the most in continuing his revolution of conservative dogma and the Republican Party's political economy. He hasn't done it in the way that, say, an Oren Cass would recommend. He's done it in his way and because it's his way, it's improvisatory, it's piecemeal. There are fits and starts. But I think he.
- [19:31]
Ross Douthat
Relatively few people want to come come on podcasts and defend the politics.
- [19:35]
Matthew Continetti
Did you notice that? Yes, exactly right. There's a hard. It's hard to get some people to talk and defend it, but I think from Trump's point of view, it's all going according to plan.
- [19:45]
Ross Douthat
So the reference to the Great Depression, let's pick up on that. Because one of the points that you make in your book about conservatism is that you can really see some of the clearest continuities between the things that Trump has done that seem different from modern American conservatism, Reagan era American conservatism, you can see them as connected to what conservatism in America looked like before Franklin Roosevelt. And that's true of protectionism on trade, industrial policy, arguably. And it's arguably true on Foreign policy as well. So talk a little bit about that. Trump as a man of the 1890s through the 1920s.
- [20:25]
Matthew Continetti
Well, you know, when I was writing my history of the right, I came up against this problem, which was, you know, how does one explain Donald Trump? Where did Trump come from? Where did MAGA come from? And I think many people and many conservatives had trouble answering that question because the narrative we had been taught always began at the end of World War II. It always began with the beginning of the Cold War and the creation of modern American movement conservatism as an anti communist enterprise. And so when we looked at Trump talking about protection, when we looked at Trump talking about illegal immigration and immigration more broadly, and when we talked about Trump and America first and foreign policy in the national interest, it all seemed a little strange. But if you actually went back before World War II, you saw that the American right then closely resembles the American right now along those three axes of immigration, trade, and foreign policy. Now, how did Trump get there? You know, I think it might just be the case of the man meeting the moment. Trump was never connected to modern American movement conservatism. He's been a Democrat, he's been an Independent, he's been a Republican, he's all over the place. But he has always had these views that essentially post war, Post World War II, American policy was flawed. And he wanted to be in a position where he could revise all of these institutional arrangements that he believed really ill served America and ill served America's middle and working classes in particular. And that's what he's done. And it's the second term now where he's in a position to actually move toward his goals that we're seeing it play out most concretely. And in foreign policy in particular, when we were just talking about where is the biggest change, there's a change in Trump foreign policy, not just from Trump vis a vis the pre Trump Republicans, there's a change in Trump foreign policy from Trump to vis a vis. Trump won. Right? And we see in this foreign policy, as you've documented, a real turn toward non interventionism. He has clearly defined himself in these early months of his second administration as a peacemaker, as someone who wants to extend olive branches before he turns to war, but a kind of testing, because sometimes his administration is conflicted, as we saw in the Signal Gate episode. And I think, frankly, Trump is conflicted sometimes. Trump, as much as he wants to be a peacemaker, also wants to be strong. And I think as you and I are having this conversation, his patience is running thin with Iran. And even though it doesn't seem like it most days, Vladimir Putin.
- [23:34]
Ross Douthat
Well, and he also has a coalition where I think the transformation that you've described, the return to the 1920s, is less complete than if it was just Trump himself. He is personally conflicted. His administration still contains lots of different factions that are contesting with one another. I think the internal contestation on foreign policy is in some ways an undercovered aspect of this presidency. And then if you turn to Congress, right, like the Senate is full of Republicans who would very happily triple sanctions on Russia tomorrow if they could. I think the House is full of members who would be very uncomfortable with certain potential deals that Trump could cut with Iran. And so it seems to me that there, there's both sort of uncertainty in Trump himself, but then a lot of different factions are sort of in play within the Republican coalition, notwithstanding Trump's overall power.
- [24:35]
Matthew Continetti
Yeah, well, it's similar to the debates we were talking about regarding economic policy. You know, Congress's role can't be dismissed here. It is still powerful. And you see this in the foreign policy. I agree. I mean, you look at the Lindsey Graham Blumenthal proposed secondary sanction bill on Russia. It has super majority support in the Senate. So that is to me reflective of the overall opinion of the Republican Party because it comes from so many voices. And Trump understands that. He knows that. And what I think it gets to which we've kind of been circling around, is that the jury is still out on how lasting the New Right is. There was this sense that when Trump appeared in 2015, that Trump is an aberration. Trump will probably lose in 2016. When he loses, he will go away. MAGA will go away. We'll be back to Romney, Ryan, McConnell. That will be the Republican Party. Now, of course, that did not happen, Right. Trump won and he changed the party in the movement. But when I look at these debates happening today, I sometimes wonder, without Trump, without his personality, his charisma, his gargantuan power within the Republican Party, where will this new right be? And when you look at Congress, what you'll find is that the new right will be there, but it might not be as powerful as it thinks it is today.
- [26:37]
Richard Karn
Hi, I'm Richard Karn and you may have seen me on TV talking about the world's number one expandable garden hose. Well, the brand new pocket hose Copperhead with pocket pivot is here and it's a total game changer. Old fashioned hoses get kinks and creases at the spigot, but the Copperhead's pocket pivot swivels 360 degrees for full water flow and freedom to water with ease all around your home. When you're all done, this rust proof anti burst hose shrinks back down to pocket size for effortless handling and tidy storage. Plus your super light and ultra durable pocket hose. Copperhead is backed with a 10 year warranty. What could be better than that? I'll tell you what an exciting radio exclusive offer just for you for a limited time. You can get a free pocket pivot and their 10 pattern sprayer with the purchase of any size Copperhead hose. Just Text Water to 64,000 that's water to 64,000 for your two free gifts with purchase W A T E R.
- [27:29]
To 64,000 by texting 64,000 you agree to receive recurring automated marketing messages from Pocket Hose. Message and data rates may apply. No purchase required. Terms apply. Available@pockethose.com terms.
- [27:45]
Ross Douthat
So in all the issues we've talked about, it seems like we've been emphasizing a mixture of continuity with the Republican past and Trump era change. But is there one place where you think the Trump era change has just been radical and complete?
- [28:00]
Matthew Continetti
Well, immigration, without a doubt.
- [28:03]
Ross Douthat
Thank you for giving me the answer.
- [28:04]
Matthew Continetti
That was better. That's our telepathy that you and I have right there.
- [28:09]
Ross Douthat
The telepathy tapes. Is it actually a tried but discarded title for this podcast?
- [28:15]
Matthew Continetti
There's no question. I mean, just to think about where MAGA came from. It was in opposition to the Republican Party's approach to immigration. You have Romney losing in 2012. You have the GOP autopsy coming out the next year. What does the GOP autopsy say? It says Republicans must amnesty illegal immigrants in order to have any viability as a political institution. Marco Rubio, much in the news, then begins negotiations for a bill in the Senate that would do exactly that. Achieve comprehensive immigration reform, as it's called. Public outrage at that, along with long simmering outrage at the GOP establishment in Washington, manifests itself stops that bill from ever happening. Trump makes immigration his signature issue. He wins. The transformation is total. And there's one other player I want to mention in this story, though, before you respond, and that is Joe Biden. I don't think we would be where we are today had not President Biden decided that the mounting concerns on the southern border in the spring of 2021 were either temporary or, you know what? Nothing to worry about. It was the effects of the immigration crisis over the last four years that has flipped public opinion on its head to the point where Trump has really carte blanche to do what he deems necessary to seal the border and to deport illegal immigrants.
- [29:48]
Ross Douthat
So I want to test a hypothesis on you, which again, I think you'll agree with. But we're sitting here, we're watching the immigration related protests and riots in Los Angeles. We're watching the federal crackdown, though, really sort of, it's more a kind of soft federal intervention designed to highlight the tensions between the White House and the governor of California, or at least that's how it seems. The National Guard and federal troops are not doing all that much, as far as I can tell. But they're sort of a signal of what you just described, the White House and Trump's confidence in their position. But I think what we're seeing here is a world where ever since the end of the Cold War, there's been talk about what is the thing that unites the right the way anti Communism did. And for a little while in the early 2000s, it seemed to be the war on terror. But I think very clearly at this point, it's immigration. And this is the thing that unites the American right with other forms of conservatism in Western Europe. But the idea that to be conservative is to be opposed to mass migration, opposed to open borders and in favor of deportation seems like as close to a consensus definition of what it means to be on the right and to be a Republican as there's been in my entire lifetime.
- [31:09]
Matthew Continetti
Yeah. Viktor Orban, the Prime Minister of Hungary, gave a very interesting speech at the CPAC Hungary in recent weeks. And he talked about what it meant to be a conservative in 2025. And of course, borders were a huge part of it. And then he mentioned anti wokeism. And I would come at it from a slightly different angle than you. I think anti wokeism is the umbrella issue, but WOKE encompasses immigration as well. Right. It's, you know, I think the writer Mary Harrington calls it the omnicause that motivates the left. One day it's global warming and net zero and the Green New Deal. The next day it is pro Gaza activism. The day after that it is a stop ice, stop the deportations, open borders. It's all one thing. And I put it under the category of woke. And I think if you were against those things, if you're against woke, you're a conservative.
- [32:06]
Ross Douthat
I guess it just seems to me that watching the last. The politics of the last couple years and sort of the focus of the Trump administration. A year or two ago, I guess I would have put anti wokeness above all else and sort of folded immigration politics under it. But again, this is not a provable observation. But when I look at sort of how people online talk about politics, what people in the Trump administration seem to care the most about where the energy lies, it seems to me that wokeness is felt to have, in certain ways have been beaten back. But the energy around immigration and the assumption that this is going to be sort of the organic defining issue for years or decades to come, I don't know. It seems to me to loom at the very least larger than other fights within the constellation of woke causes, whether it's climate change or anything like that.
- [33:08]
Matthew Continetti
Yeah, part of that might be the administration's kind of stealth success at repealing the bureaucratic foundations of Wokeism. I mean, the Trumps executive order essentially ending affirmative action in the federal government did not get the attention it deserved. The recent Supreme Court case saying that yes, white people can suffer from discrimination too, again, that was kind of undercovered. Considering all that is going on, I do think that the Trump administration has made huge strides against wokeism, as you say. But it's still out there and it's still, you know, very controversial, especially when we look at what's happening between the government and the universities. But there's no question borders are these.
- [33:54]
Ross Douthat
I just feel like what you've described there.
- [33:56]
Matthew Continetti
Right.
- [33:56]
Ross Douthat
Is partially ground that liberals and progressives, or maybe liberals but not progressives, have maybe to their own surprise, been sort of willing to give up. Like, all right, I guess we're not going to fight to the death over affirmative action, these kind of things. But then in a way, it's partially just because deportation requires the government to do something material, punitive, that requires the use of police powers and so on. It just becomes a point of. I mean, maybe that's part of what it is, that it's the point of most natural resistance for progressivism. And so it sort of heightens its salience and importance for conservatism, that maybe that's sort of the dynamic we're witnessing now.
- [34:44]
Matthew Continetti
Yeah, I mean, I do think that borders are. Are key to a conservative worldview. If you're a conservative, you are attached to certain institutions that predate you, the family, the church, your local community, and kind of going up the ladder to your country. I also think that illegal immigration, it seems to me, is essential to the viability of the Democratic Party as a political entity. I've just been struck over the Debates surrounding Kilmar, Abrego, Garcia, where Chris Van Hollen, the senator from Maryland, kept referring to Garcia as his constituent. He's not his constituent. He's an illegal immigrant in Maryland. It's a weird kind of, to me, mislocation of who our elected representatives represent. To me, they should be representing American citizens. And then when you look at the way that the Democratic officials in California are talking about the ICE actions that led to these huge protests, again, there's no distinction made between a legal immigrant and or citizen. I think when you look at the understanding of the Democratic Party among its elites about its future, which is that this coalition of the ascendant is eventually going to swamp the Republican Party's coalition and we will win. And how will we do that as a Democrat? Well, we'll do it by legalizing the status of everyone in the country. So I think you're right. Immigration is the issue of our time. I do believe that. I think that's why we're seeing Los Angeles play out as it's happening. But I think it goes to kind of the heart of the two party coalitions in addition to these greater geopolitical issues involving sovereignty and such.
- [36:35]
Ross Douthat
So just to swing back a little bit to where we started. One place where at various moments during the presidential transition, Elon Musk seemed to be out of step with, at the very least the impulses of grassroots conservatism was on immigration, where he had sort of become a harsh critic of illegal immigration, low skilled immigration, but retained a kind of traditional Silicon valley support for H1B visas and other programs that bring high skilled or officially higher skilled immigrants to work for American companies. And that was sort of not just a Silicon Valley thing, but a kind of continuing echo of what had been a really potent constituency in the Republican Party for a very long time, which had been business conservatives who favored immigration, legal or illegal, for reasons related to their workforces. Do you think that that kind of Republican politics is just dead right?
- [37:36]
Matthew Continetti
Well, you know, it's important to note that the H1B visa issuance hasn't been resolved in either direction, it seems to me. I don't think there's been any changes made to the H1B program. So it's neither been expanded nor reduced. So neither wing of the coalition really has a victory there. The broader issue, I think you're absolutely right. It's one of those places where probably in the congressional sentiment is more open to high skilled immigration than the intellectuals and media figures in maga. But I look at Trump Here. And it's interesting to see what he's up to. Of course, he's militarized the southern border. He's closed the border. He's staging this kind of federal intervention in order to quell or the protests over ISIS actions in California. He's trying to deport as many people as possible. But he's also talking about his gold card. Right. The special visa that people will be able to pay a lot of money for. He goes back and forth on global talent to the United States. Some days he's like, we want the best people in the world. We're going to staple your green card to your college diploma.
- [38:51]
Ross Douthat
Then, of course, the administration, well, he made that promise, I think, on a leading tech right podcast during the election.
- [38:58]
Matthew Continetti
So it was very clearly aware of his audience. Right?
- [39:00]
Ross Douthat
Yep.
- [39:01]
Matthew Continetti
But then, of course, we say, well, no more Chinese students. But then even then, whether we're not going to have Chinese students in the United States is now a card that the administration is playing in its trade negotiations with China. Right. So I think the legal immigrant piece of this puzzle, so that is the laws pertaining to legal immigration in the United States, there is not the same consensus toward them that there is toward illegal immigration. Right. What you and I just said, illegal immigration, if you're a conservative, you're opposed to it, you want to take as strong measures as possible to stop and reverse it. Legal migration, that is still kind of up in the air, not only in Congress, but also, I think, within the.
- [39:45]
Ross Douthat
Administration to some degree. But it does seem to me like this is a place where I agree with you that Trump himself, if you were the last person to talk with him hypothetically, you could talk him into certain pro global talent measures. But he also has a really strong intuitive sense, always has, of where his coalition is, where the base is and so on. And it just seems to me that there he's been carried along to some degree that in the end, right now, Stephen Miller and The vice president, J.D. vance, who are more immigration restrictionists than the president, are also more where the party actually is, where the center of gravity actually is, than Trump himself, the slightly more pro legal immigration president that could be.
- [40:35]
Matthew Continetti
I noticed just the other day that Charlie Kirk, you know, hugely important figure on the right these days, said we should have a immigration moratorium, full stop. And that is also called for in the manifesto of the National Conservative Movement, which was published several years ago. No more immigration for some period of time, illegal or illegal, Trump's not there yet. I don't think J.D. vance is there publicly either. But in 2028, you never know.
- [41:05]
Ross Douthat
Well, and it would be a very, very 1920s Republican Party. It would, wouldn't it, to support such a thing. All right, last question. We've had a long conversation analyzing Trump and his Republican Party in terms of ideology, worldview policy, and so on. And I can imagine some listeners, especially liberal listeners, saying, isn't this all kind of a category error? Isn't analyzing Trump himself mostly a matter of analyzing him just in terms of power? And this is the idea that essentially Trump has an authoritarian temperament and personality. And so whether it's his impulse to play the deal maker with dictatorships around the world or his impulse to militarize the southern border and send troops into California, the primary way to understand all of this is what gives Trump himself the most power, sort of independent of ideas and ideology. And I'm curious what you think of that line of argument, what you would say to it. Why are the ideas relevant as opposed to just Trump? The self aggrandizing would be Caesar.
- [42:19]
Matthew Continetti
Sure. I mean, the first thing I'd say is the ideas will outlast Trump. So they're important in that regard. As Cain said, we are moved by ideas long ago thought, even if we don't recognize them. So the type of issues that Trump emphasizes, the type of kind of deep concepts of identity, citizenship, loyalty, that strength that he plays upon, all of those will be elements in our politics even after Trump. And one day, there will be a day after Trump, though many people can't imagine such a day. I'd say Trump the man clearly does like the trappings of power. He wants to be a strong man. He wants to make these deals with other strongmen. That's how he kind of views the world between strength and weakness. And so he needs to be the strong man and the winner in every transaction in order to sustain his enterprise. But I also believe that the next three and a half years will be rocky. There are going to be a lot of clashes. That system will be put to the test, but I don't see us turning into even a soft, authoritarian society. I think that one lesson of the Trump era, which we've been in now for a decade, is that the guardrails do remain in place. And at the end of the day, as you've pointed out in your column, one reason Trump has sustained himself as a political figure for so long is he knows when to pull back and when to modify and change. So to the liberals who have, you know, put up with me to this point in the conversation. I would say that, you know, it's not going to be fun, but there will be an America that is still recognizable to us at the end.
- [44:13]
Ross Douthat
All right, on that optimistic note, assuming that you like the America that is recognizable to us today. Matt Continetti, thanks so much for joining me.
- [44:22]
Matthew Continetti
Thanks Rock.
- [44:47]
Ross Douthat
As always. Thank you so much for listening. And as a reminder, you can watch this as a video podcast on YouTube. You can find the channel under Interesting Times with Ross Douthat. Interesting Times is produced by Sophia Alvarez Boyd, Andrea Batanzos, Elisa Gutierrez and Catherine Sullivan. It's edited by Jordana Hochman. Our fact check team is Kate Sinclair, Marion, Marge Locker and Michelle Harris. Original music by Isaac Jones, Sonia Herrero, Amin Sahota and Pat McCusker. Mixing by Pat McCusker, audience strategy by Shannon Busta and Christina Samulewski. And our director of Opinion Audio is Annie Rose Strasser.
- [45:45]
Unknown
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