Dems in Disarray, Bari Takes Over CBS, Trump's Success Explained, & A Look Ahead at 2028: Mark's Most Memorable Reported Monologues of 2025

Summary

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Next Up with Mark Halperin – "Dems in Disarray, Bari Takes Over CBS, Trump's Success Explained, & A Look Ahead at 2028: Mark's Most Memorable Reported Monologues of 2025"

Podcast: Next Up with Mark Halperin
Episode Date: December 30, 2025
Host: MK Media
Focus: Political analysis of the Democratic Party’s disarray, the rise of Donald Trump, Bari Weiss’s CBS News appointment, and implications for 2028

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Overview

This episode features detailed monologues from Mark Halperin exploring the current state of the Democratic Party, lessons learned (and ignored) from recent elections, the appeal and methodology of Donald Trump, and the seismic shakeup in media caused by Bari Weiss being named Editor-in-Chief of CBS News. Halperin synthesizes voices from both within and outside the Democratic Party, critiques legacy media, and maps out connections between Trump's unconventional leadership style and his ongoing success. He also offers a pointed critique of the Democratic Party’s inability to self-reflect or adapt as 2028 looms.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. The State of the Democratic Party: Disarray, Denial, and Divisions

[01:00–14:52]

• Party in Crisis: Halperin relays anxieties from a wide spectrum of Democrats—loyalists, defectors, and disaffected voices—who see the party as out of touch, lacking original ideas, and failing to grasp why their political fortunes have changed so dramatically.
• Failure to Self-Interrogate: A common refrain is the party's reluctance to "ask the right questions" and confront hard truths, especially in contrast to Trump’s approach.
• Media Enablers: Halperin criticizes "the dominant media" for shielding the party from tough questions, allowing them to remain "in their blue bubble, not even asking the right questions, let alone trying to figure out the answers" ([01:55]).

Core Problems Identified (with speaker attribution):

• Far-Left Shift: "The Democratic Party has moved to the far left, farther left than it's been in our lifetimes, and that is a big part of the challenge the party faces..." – Political Strategist, [02:15]
• Lack of Original Ideas and Leadership: "You think about where do they stand on the economy, where do they stand on tariffs, where do they stand on immigration, education? The lack of original ideas Democrats say is a big problem. Lack of leaders in Congress who really are breaking through with the wider electorate. Chuck Schumer, Hakeem Jeffries, not seen as strong leaders." – Political Commentator, [02:52]

Legacy Questions Avoided by Democrats:

• Why did Bobby Kennedy leave the Democratic Party and eventually support Trump?
• Why did the party ignore the political potency of issues like trans athletes in women's sports and border/immigration policy?
• Why was the nomination of Joe Biden handled so poorly, despite evidence of mental decline, and why did Kamala Harris lose to Trump?
• "There has to be a conversation about it." – Political Commentator, [06:40]

Notable Quotes:

• "How could a party commit that kind of malpractice?" – Political Strategist on ignoring Biden's decline, [07:54]
• “If you fail to grapple with it, you don’t have credibility with the public and you don’t understand the dynamics of the Democratic Party.” – Political Commentator, [08:56]

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2. Present Day Questions Dems Must Confront

[09:22–14:52]

• Media Consumption & Echo Chambers: Democrats' continued consumption of partisan media keeps them isolated from political realities.
• Cultural and Demographic Tensions:
  • Gender dynamics—Are "strong men" welcomed in the party?
  • Speech—Is dissent branded too readily as "racism, misinformation, or fascism"?
  • Coalition Building: Deliberate exclusion of groups (e.g., Big Tech, some minorities) is weakening the party’s tent.
  • Voters Lost: Failure to address shifting support among Latinos, young voters, and working-class/union members, with young voters seeing the party as "not cool" ([13:49]).

Notable Quotes:

• "Democrats see an intolerance in the party for dissent, and they think that's not a good way to build a party." – Political Strategist, [11:28]
• "Being the working class party is a good thing to be in politics for all the obvious reasons. In terms of numbers, there's a lot of working class voters and yet Democrats haven't seemed to find a way to have that conversation." – Political Commentator, [14:42]

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3. Trump’s Decision-Making Formula: The Seven Rules

[16:10–34:14]

Halperin lays out the seven rules by which Trump makes decisions as president—offering examples and archival audio to illustrate:

1. Consults Widely and Unconventionally

• "He's open minded about who to ask and he knows who to ask even if they're not the person with line authority." – Political Analyst, [16:22]

2. Student of History and Sports

• “He's a massive student of history... He's learned from [presidents] and informs his decision making.” – Political Analyst, [18:58]

• Clip: Trump riffing on presidents Polk and Eisenhower, demonstrating his unusual historical perspective ([17:59])

3. Makes No Decision Before Its Time

• “He just doesn't care. He does not make a decision until he absolutely has to, and sometimes not even then.” – Political Analyst, [20:18]

4. Matches Decision With the Problem

• “Trump matches each decision to whatever the specific is, doesn't feel hemmed in by either the simple, a good versus bad, moral, amoral, or I got to decide based on data. It's all situational.” – Political Analyst, [21:10]

5. Executes and Implements Relentlessly

• "For Trump, that's just the first step... He thinks of everything like it's a movie and he's the star of the movie." – Political Commentator, [22:43]

• Clip: Trump in East Palestine, OH: “We have told you loud and clear, you are not forgotten...” ([23:30])

6. Frames Decisions for the Media Himself

• "Trump wants to frame it himself. And he uses what is an unprecedented and masterful understanding of the media." – Political Analyst, [24:55]

• "He doesn't mind changing his mind... There's something about Trump, and the only other politician I've covered who plays at this level is Bill Clinton." – Political Analyst, [27:35]

7. Follows Instincts Above All

• “He has extraordinary instincts about human beings and he's very at peace when he makes a decision.” – Political Analyst, [29:01]

Memorable Commentary:

• “He understands the media and, and television production better than any president I've ever covered, probably better than anyone ever.” – Political Analyst, [28:11]

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4. Bari Weiss Becomes Editor-in-Chief of CBS News: Why It Matters

[35:12–47:37]

• The Story: The appointment of Bari Weiss, founder of the Free Press and ex–NYT/Wall Street Journal journalist, as head of CBS News marks a watershed for legacy media. Significantly, CBS is also acquiring the Free Press.
• State of CBS: Once dominant, CBS News has been "somewhere between irrelevant and a joke...way too liberal and they've not been part of the conversation." – Political Commentator, [36:12]
• Bari's Breakout: Weiss built the Free Press into a multimillion dollar, talent-diverse journalistic venture after being "chased out" of the NYT by a "woke mob" ([40:09]). Her entrepreneurialism, focus on fact-based reporting, and embrace of controversial stories earned her major media attention.

Bari Weiss’s 10 Point Manifesto (as read by Halperin, [42:34]):

• Journalism that reports on the world as it actually is...
• Journalism that is fair, fearless, and factual...
• Journalism that respects our audience enough to tell the truth plainly...
• ... (and so forth through 10 principles)

Industry Reaction:

• Staff Anxiety: "People are using words like depressing and doomsday. It feels like some sort of doomsday." (CBS staffer quoted in The Independent, [42:49])
• Critics on the Left: Figures like Walker Bragman and Nicole Hannah-Jones blast the hire as "a travesty" or “totally unqualified” ([44:03, 45:32]). Keith Olbermann calls Weiss “the dumbest person in America” and says Murrow, Cronkite and even Katie Couric would "deny they ever worked there" ([46:08]).
• Halperin’s Take: “The irony of all these criticisms is so rich… Barry Weiss coming in. Rather than freaking out, they should be celebrating.” – Political Commentator, [47:09]

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5. Explaining the Trump Surge and Dem Decline—A Framework for the Past Decade

[50:08–65:32]

• Three Analytical Lenses: How people interpret Trump’s success: denial (Trump is a failure), MAGA triumphalism (Trump’s brilliance), or a nuanced institutional and attitudinal explanation.
• Substantive Trump Accomplishments: Beyond election victories, Trump has produced results that have shifted paradigms for border/immigration, global trade/tariffs, downsizing bureaucracy, and restructuring NATO.
  • “Trump has created a spectacle, but he's also shifted the paradigm on what it takes to close the border and how effective it can be.” – Political Analyst, [52:08]
  • “He wants to re engineer global trade by leveraging the US Market and other American advantages…” – Political Analyst, [52:44]
• Party Failure to Adapt: Democrats, Halperin argues, emphasize Trump’s missteps but never honestly appraise or confront the sources of their own decline—including failing to capture or adjust to shifts in public opinion on crime, migration, gender, and class.
• Contrast with Rest of West: In other Western democracies, left-wing parties have declined, but the U.S. Democrats have suffered especially from Trump’s unique political skill.
• Self-Silencing on Achievements: Democrats privately praise Trump initiatives (Abraham Accords, border, etc.) but won’t do so publicly, fearing their activist base.

Notable Quotes:

• “If you think Trump is a bad political athlete, you're making a mistake. Trump has lots of unpopular policy positions, but he knows how to mitigate them better than the Democrats know how to mitigate theirs.” – Political Analyst, [65:32]
• “Trying to block Bernie Sanders from winning the nomination in 2016 and 2020, trying to keep Bobby Kennedy off the ballot, lawfare against Trump... The core of the list is being on the right side of the issues that matter to the American people.” – Political Commentator, [65:58]
• “This party continues to struggle. And the clock ticks. The clock ticks. They're still more in denial and justification mode than they are in thinking anew. And they're up against a guy in Donald Trump, even though he's a lame duck, who understands this dynamic exactly.” – Political Commentator, [66:25]

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Memorable Quotes & Moments (with Timestamps)

• “The real problem they see is the party has its head in the sand. Enabled by the people in what I call the dominant media...” — Political Strategist, [01:34]
• “How could a party commit that kind of malpractice?” — Political Strategist, [07:54]
• “Being the working class party is a good thing to be in politics for all the obvious reasons. In terms of numbers, there's a lot of working class voters and yet Democrats haven't seemed to find a way to have that conversation.” – Political Commentator, [14:42]
• “He understands the media and television production better than any president I've ever covered, probably better than anyone ever.” — Political Analyst on Trump, [28:11]
• “Barry, zero news experience. No, actually, Barry has lots of news experience. And the proof is in the pudding. Barry has built in three years, a very successful news organization that breaks the mold, changes the terms of the debate.” — Political Commentator, [45:32]
• “If the Democrats can't figure out how to lead with being tough in 2028, whoever the Republicans nominate... will make mincemeat of the Democrats.” — Political Analyst, [59:05]
• “This party continues to struggle. And the clock ticks... They're still more in denial and justification mode than they are in thinking anew. And they're up against a guy in Donald Trump...who understands this dynamic exactly.” — Political Commentator, [66:25]

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Timeline of Significant Segments

• 01:00–07:25: Listing and analyzing self-inflicted wounds and unaddressed questions for Democrats post-2024
• 09:22–14:52: Real-time existential questions confronting the party: media, speech, coalition-building, demographics
• 16:10–34:14: Deep dive: Trump’s seven rules for presidential decision making
• 35:12–47:37: Bari Weiss and the CBS News revolution: legacy media in flux
• 50:08–66:25: Linking Trump's rise to Democratic decline, with global context and 2028 outlook

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Tone and Final Thoughts

Mark Halperin provides an unvarnished, reporting-heavy critique of the Democratic Party’s weaknesses, the structural and strategic advantages that Trump brings, and the resistance faced by change agents in media (like Bari Weiss). His tone is analytical, sometimes wry, impatient with partisan platitudes on both sides, and insistent on rigorous, uncomfortable self-examination—above all for Democrats contemplating the road to 2028.

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Listeners seeking a sweeping analysis of US politics, media change, and 2028’s early battle lines will find this episode bracing, deeply reported, and unflinching in its warnings for the center-left—and illuminating for those interested in how Trump’s political style continues to bend American politics to his will.

Transcript

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[Political Analyst]

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[Political Commentator]

I'm going to start by telling you the honest truth that I've heard from.

[Political Strategist]

Conversations with people across the country, smart.

[Political Commentator]

Democrats, some still Democrats, some disaffected Democrats who say that the party has to.

[Political Strategist]

Address some really tough questions.

[Political Commentator]

I haven't heard anybody with a list.

[Political Strategist]

Like this, and it's a list that.

[Political Commentator]

I put together, getting kind of the.

[Political Strategist]

Consensus view of a number of very smart people, some of whom have left.

[Political Commentator]

The party, as I said, but some.

[Political Strategist]

Of whom really want the Democrats to be able to not just win the.

[Political Analyst]

White House back, but to build the.

[Political Commentator]

Kind of a sustained coalition or kind of movement that Donald Trump has built to try to figure out how things have gone.

[Political Strategist]

The real problem that these Democrats see is not that the party is weak in every way. We'll talk about that. The real problem they see is the party has its head in the sand.

[Political Commentator]

Enabled by the people in what I call the dominant media who are not.

[Political Strategist]

Wanting to ask the hard questions because.

[Political Analyst]

They'Re hard and they're embarrassing.

[Political Strategist]

In some cases, they're difficult. Instead of doing that, they just have.

[Political Commentator]

Their masks and their shields on, their.

[Political Strategist]

Trump derangement syndrome inside their blue bubble. And they're not even asking the right questions, let alone trying to figure out what the answers to those questions are.

[Political Commentator]

So again, these aren't my questions. These are the questions that really smart people who have been involved in Democratic.

[Political Strategist]

Politics at the highest levels, at the grassroots level, are saying the party has to face.

[Political Analyst]

It's a fact.

[Political Strategist]

The Democratic Party has moved to the far left, farther left than it's been in our lifetimes, and that is a big part of the challenge the party faces to figure out what does it mean now to be a Democrat and how they can compete with Donald Trump. Donald Trump's poll numbers are down, but the Democrats numbers are not good either. The state of the Democratic Party is not good. As weak as Trump is, most of the things that have happened good to the Democrats, most of the things that they're anticipating in the spring, summer and fall and into the midterm year are because they're expecting Donald Trump to mess up. That's not good enough for a lot of the Democrats I'm talking to.

[Political Commentator]

They say the problems are too big.

[Political Strategist]

To count on Donald Trump and the Republicans messing up. There's the Democratic brand, which is extremely weak. If you look at all the polling that's been done, this is not fake news or Republican polls. As bad as Trump's numbers are now compared to how he started his presidency, the Democratic brand is not seen favorably. The Democrats performance and trust on a number of important issues is still not very good. Part of that, I think, is the Democrat black ideas. You look at Bill Clinton and other Democrats who've been able to make a big splash nationally, they've had distinctive ideas that appeal to voters. The party really does not. You think about where do they stand on the economy, where do they stand on tariffs, where do they stand on immigration, education? The lack of original ideas Democrats say is a big problem. Lack of leaders in Congress who really are breaking through with the wider electorate. Chuck Schumer, Hakeem Jeffries, not seen as strong leaders. The presidential field, you're already seeing that vacuum of lack of leadership in Congress being filled by some people like the governor of Kentucky, Governor Beshear, the governor of Illinois, J.B. pritzker. These folks are out there. But I continue to say, not to run these folks down as individuals, but it's a weak presidential field, it's an overrated field. And the energy in the party where you see big crowds and a lot of attention, continues to be with people like Bernie Sanders, aoc, college protesters. There's, there's clearly a need for the Democratic Party to have that enthusiasm. But most Democrats I talk to say that's not a majority. That's not enough. It's not even majority within the Democratic Party. And it's certainly not a majority to win back the country. But again, these are maybe symptoms of the problem. What the Democrats I talked to this week have said that the real problem is the failure to ask the right questions and to come up with answers. Now, some of these questions are backward looking in one sense. About what happened in the 2024 election. But they're relevant today because the failure to grapple with the recent past shows some of the weaknesses the party has. Let me give you some examples. Okay. Some of these legacy questions from 2024. For instance, one that I heard from several Democrats. I talked to Bobby Kennedy. Why did he leave the Democratic Party, run as an independent, and then join the Trump administration? And what are the sources of his appeal? It's kind of an incredible story that the press didn't cover. They blackballed Bobby Kennedy at the urging and insistence of Democrats. They didn't give him access to the ballot to run as a Democrat. They didn't give him access to the media airways to get his message out. Blackballing him from the ballot, from the media left caused him to leave the party, and he left the party with a lot of energy. I'm not sure Donald Trump would have won the election without Bobby Kennedy's support. Kennedy, Democrat, right. Must have taken an extraordinary turn of events to drive a Kennedy out of the Democratic Party. And yet they did so again. Why did he leave? What's the source of his appeal? Another set of things involves issues that clearly were potent for Donald Trump and Republicans. The issue of trans athletes and women's sports, the issue of the open border and immigration. Again, why didn't the Democratic Party see or act on the obvious impact that those were going to have on the election? Those are pretty big errors to let those issues hang out there for the entirety of the Biden administration. And there's something wrong with the Democratic Party that they didn't have the ability before it was too late, too late to get the Democratic Party to change its point of view on issues. Okay, next, Kamala Harris. Why didn't she win? What was wrong with her as a candidate? Why couldn't she beat Donald Trump, someone who the Democrats think has no business being president, particularly after January 6th. I've seen no serious public discussion and even privately very little analyze it. Why'd she lose? What was wrong with her? And then what are the lessons for the party of the failure to get Joe Biden off the ticket in time to have a strong nominee? Okay, there were plenty of people, including me, saying for years that Joe Biden was a real threat to Donald Trump's reelection if he ran for re election himself. And yet the party did not have the capacity to force him off the ticket until the very last minute, when plenty of these Democrats and others will say it was too late. How and why did that happen? Okay. Those are backward looking. But the Democrats I've talked to say they have to be addressed. There has to be a conversation about it. So recently some Democrats have started to been asked this question. What happened with Joe Biden? How did the party not act on what seemed apparent, his mental decline? Here's Elizabeth Warren being asked that question.

[Political Analyst]

Do you regret saying that President Biden had a mental acuity, he had a sharpness to him. You said that up until July of last year. I said what I believe to be true. And you think he was as sharp as you? I said I had not seen decline.

[Political Commentator]

I'm not singling her out because very.

[Political Strategist]

Few Democrats want to grapple with it.

[Political Commentator]

Because to grapple with it is to acknowledge a, that Biden had declined, that.

[Political Strategist]

They all saw and they didn't have.

[Political Commentator]

To see it in private, they could.

[Political Strategist]

Have seen it in public.

[Political Commentator]

And to grapple with the question of how could a party commit that kind of malpractice, here is Bernie Sanders grappling with the same question on Fox News.

[Interviewer]

I want to play a clip from this BBC interview from former President Biden. Take a listen. It was a hard decision, but regrets there? No, I think it was the right decision. I think that the, well, it was just a difficult decision. But you shouldn't have taken it early. Well, I don't think so. I mean, I don't know how that would have made much difference. So should President Biden have gotten out.

[Donald Trump (archival clips)]

Of that race earlier?

[Interviewer]

But I'm not going back a year. You're not going back? No, I'm not. You know, I don't want to. Isn't that a big part of where the Democratic Party is? No, no, it's not. It's nothing to do with Biden right now or Kamala Harris. The question is what is the fundamental issue in politics? Which side are you on?

[Political Commentator]

Well, he's right that that's a fundamental issue. But the Democrats I've talked to say if you fail to grapple with it, you don't have credibility with the public and you don't understand the dynamics of the Democratic Party. Now, it's not like in 2028 they're.

[Political Strategist]

Going to face the exact same issue.

[Political Commentator]

But the Democrats again, who some in the party, some who've left the party.

[Political Strategist]

Say it's an embarrassment and it, and it, and it gets away from an authentic discussion. All right.

[Political Analyst]

Those are the backward looking ones.

[Political Commentator]

Now I'm going to tell you some of the ones that are germane right now that these Democrats say must be discussed, not just Privately, but out in.

[Political Strategist]

The open, if the party's going to have a chance to have a revival and a strong chance to win the White House.

[Political Commentator]

The first one has to do with the media and what kind of information.

[Political Strategist]

Democrats are taking in.

[Political Commentator]

What are the sources since about 2015 that Democrats have relied on to say, what do we know about the world? What do we know about Donald Trump's appeal? What do we know about how our party is doing? And these Democrats say if they continue to stay in their blue bubble, it's not just about Pete Buttigieg going on.

[Political Strategist]

A podcast that Donald Trump's going on.

[Political Commentator]

It's about consuming programs, including programs like.

[Political Analyst]

This, that try to find the truth.

[Political Commentator]

About the party rather than just relying on things that keep them from the truth. It's pretty fundamental.

[Political Strategist]

Now, I'm sure some people on the.

[Political Analyst]

Left will say, well, that's what the Republicans do.

[Political Strategist]

They're just watching conservative media.

[Political Commentator]

They, they, they, they see plenty of things like CBS News that they can.

[Political Strategist]

Take in and understand what's going on on the other side.

[Political Analyst]

So that's one.

[Political Commentator]

Then there's another one. Again, these are hard questions to grapple with gender.

[Political Strategist]

What kind of party does the Democratic.

[Political Commentator]

Party want to be regarding men and women? And what some Democrats said to me this week, one in particular with a fair amount of emotion, is, are strong men men who are strong by traditional definitions or roles? Are strong men welcomed in the Democratic Party, or is the Democratic Party not want to be welcoming to strong men? It's a tough question conversation to have because there are plenty of people in the party who would say they don't want traditional gender roles to play a role in the party.

[Political Analyst]

So that's a tough one.

[Political Commentator]

Here's another one about speech. What these Democrats said is, for a lot of people in our party, if somebody says something we don't like, if we find it to be offensive or negative or not consistent with our worldview, we call it hate speech or we call it racism or misinformation or fascism.

[Political Analyst]

Is that the way to deal with.

[Political Strategist]

Dissenting voices, to make it a big.

[Political Commentator]

Broad party, to make it a stable.

[Political Strategist]

Party and to adapt to changing circumstances.

[Political Commentator]

These Democrats see an intolerance in the.

[Political Strategist]

Party for dissent, and they think that's not a good way to build a party. All right, another one about coalitions, okay?

[Political Commentator]

How to build the biggest possible tent, how to draw people in. And what some Democrats say is they're deliberately excluding people.

[Political Strategist]

They're taking groups of people and saying, we don't want that group in the party. And one prominent example is people in big Tech.

[Political Analyst]

Big Tech.

[Political Strategist]

And this is a huge irony. Big Tech was instrumental in helping, trying to help Hillary Clinton win in 2019. 16, instrumental in helping Donald Trump. Joe Biden beat Donald Trump in 2020. And yet now you see lots of tech leaders saying they don't feel welcome the Democratic Party, and they're taking their influence, their, their money, their capacity to affect public policy conversations, and they're saying, we don't love everything about Donald Trump, but we're welcome in the Republican Party. Democrats have said to too many groups, in the view of the people I talk to, not just that, that, you know, we're not going to court you aggressively, but do we think it's a positive to kick you out of the party, that we are better off as a party to exclude rather than include. And that is seen by my sources as a real problem. Next, can Democrats appeal to Latino voters if they're not honest about how Donald Trump improved his standing and support with Latino voters, including on the issue of immigration? For years, Democrats told themselves, if we're tough on the border, we'll alienate Hispanic voters. We can't do that. Better call them Latinx and say we're for the Biden policies on the border. Well, the data is pretty clear, and you can see it in focus groups and polls. A lot of Latino voters who are in this country legally, they don't want an open border. And so it turns out for at least some of those voters, the Democratic theory of the case was exactly backwards, that supporting tougher policies on illegal immigration actually can appeal to Hispanic voters. Democrats haven't had that conversation. My sources say they knew they need to. Young voters, okay, young voters supported Donald Trump in numbers that are baffling to so many Democrats. They need to figure it out. Young voters historically have been a pretty big source of support for Democrats. And instead, what you see is a lot of young voters see the Democratic Party as not cool. You think not that long ago, Barack Obama defined cool for younger voters and many others. And now what you see is a Democratic Party that doesn't seem to have the capacity to communicate with young voters in a systematic way to be the cool party.

[Political Commentator]

Now, part of that might be that.

[Political Strategist]

A lot of the democratic leaders are 70, 80 years old.

[Political Commentator]

But it's also, in the view of my sources, a cultural problem, a communications.

[Political Strategist]

Problem, a symbolism problem, a personality problem.

[Political Commentator]

How can the Democrats have an honest.

[Political Strategist]

Conversation about why young voters supported Donald Trump?

[Political Commentator]

Maybe the biggest one is working class voters, union voters.

[Political Strategist]

Again, they move towards Donald Trump. How do Democrats who are in denial explain that?

[Political Commentator]

How do they come to terms with.

[Political Analyst]

The fact that they, the parties have flipped?

[Political Commentator]

Being the working class party is a.

[Political Strategist]

Good thing to be in politics for all the obvious reasons. In terms of numbers, there's a lot of working class voters and yet Democrats haven't seemed to find a way to have that conversation.

[Political Commentator]

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[Political Analyst]

Here. Now, based on my reporting over many.

[Political Strategist]

Years and very intensely over the last.

[Political Analyst]

Couple of weeks, the seven rules Donald Trump has for making decisions. First thing is he knows who to ask.

[Political Strategist]

You know, if you're, if you got.

[Political Analyst]

A national security issue, presidents are going to ask their, they're going to ask their Secretary of state, they're going to ask their secretary of Defense, their national security advisor. And Trump does that. He'll talk to the usual people. Some of it's very linear, but some of it's not. Some of it is out of the box. He'll talk to someone in his office, a business leader who's in his office for a meeting. On a totally unrelated topic, he'll say to that person, what do you think I should do about Iran? He's famous for asking people at his two Clubs in New Jersey and Florida. What do you think I should do? Two clubs in Florida and one in New Jersey. People say, well, that's kind of random. Why would he ask some random waiter, gardener or business leader something where there's not a linear way that they're involved in the decision? And the answer is sometimes it's random, but sometimes Trump has high human intelligence. And he says, well, this business leader knows how to make decisions about business. So I'm going to ask them what they think about this unrelated decision. It's an extremely important trait. He's open minded about who to ask and he knows who to ask even if they're not the person with line authority. Second thing about Trump in terms of making decisions, again, underappreciated. He's a massive student of history. He's also a huge sports fan, which I think a lot of people don't fully appreciate. Huge student history. Knows a lot about it, knew a lot about it before he was president. Since he became president, he's become even more invested in studying past presidents and how they've dealt with the job, including this issue of decision making. Here he is from a Cabinet meeting this week. Give you some idea of just how into understanding his predecessors he is. Role A2, please.

[Donald Trump (archival clips)]

President Polk, he was sort of a real estate guy. He was, people don't realize he was one of. He was a one termer, but he was a very good president. But, and I'm not sure I should be doing this, he actually gave us the state of California and then you have Dwight Eisenhower, who was a very underrated president, built the interstate system and he was the toughest president, I guess, until we came along. But I don't mind giving up that crowd because I don't want. He was not a Republican, to put it mildly, but he was, you know, he was a four termer. He was Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Over there is Honest Abe Lincoln. And the Lincoln bedroom's very famous. You remember when Bill Clinton had it and he rented it out to people. We don't do that. You have John Adams and it's this was. They were the first occupants of the White House, 1800.

[Political Analyst]

And so the guy can go on and on about every president and not just in kind of a funny or superficial way. He knows the lessons of the past presidents and he's learned from them and informs his decision making. But the clearest example to me is the Forever Wars. He knows that Lyndon Johnson's presidency crashed on the shores of Vietnam. He knows what happened in Afghanistan with his Predecessors. He knows what happened in Iraq with George W. Bush. And learning those lessons, understanding past errors made by his predecessors is a huge part of how he makes decisions as president. That requires knowing both what they did and the impact of what they did. And he does. Okay, number three, Trump rule for decision making. Make no decision before it's time.

[Political Commentator]

People will say, well, Mr. President, you.

[Political Analyst]

Have to decide this by X date. Or you previously said you would make this decision by August 1st, so you have to make it by August 1st. Trump runs on his own clock when he's making a decision. When he's got a choice, he feels absolute freedom to reach whatever conclusion he wants to, long after the conventional timekeeping would suggest he has to decide. It's an extremely valuable trait. Not everybody can get away with it. Trump can. But knowing that anybody tells him, you.

[Political Commentator]

Got to decide this by X, either.

[Political Analyst]

Because of some external deadline or because he set a deadline previously, in public or in private. He just doesn't care. He does not make a decision until he absolutely has to, and sometimes not even then. It's an extremely risky thing to do in some cases. But that is a big part of Trump's decision making that sets him apart from a lot of other leaders, a lot of other previous presidents. All right, number four, Trump matches the decision to the specific problem. Okay. He sometimes will be guided by very simple, simplistic good versus bad, right versus wrong principles to make a choice. But sometimes he'll say, well, no, on this choice, it's really gotta be kind of bloodless.

[Political Commentator]

I need data.

[Political Analyst]

I need to make a very strategic decision. It all depends on the nature of the facts on the ground for whatever the choice is, whatever decision he has to make, the nature of that decision. Some leaders will say, I'm just always going to say what's right, what's wrong.

[Political Strategist]

Right.

[Political Analyst]

Some leaders are going to say, well, I'm just going to go on the data. I'm just going to be like Richard Nixon, Henry, his just a bloodless decision. In studying Trump, what I see is a guy who again, matches each decision to whatever the specific is, doesn't feel hemmed in by either the simple, a good versus bad, moral, amoral, or I got to decide based on data. It's all situational. Again, I think that's a very realistic and strong way to make decisions as president. Number five, making the decision about what to do. It's only the first step. Trump focuses way more than most presidents do on execution and implementation of any decision he makes. He knows that the decision's important, but it's only the first thing you got to do. So give you an example. As a candidate, Trump decided after the train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, that he was going to go, right? And there were some questions. Should he go, should he not? He wasn't president, you know, would he disrupt things there? All the normal things that go into that kind of choice. Trump decides to go. Now, most presidents or presidential candidates having decided to take a trip like that, they tell the staff and expect the staff to go out and implement it, right? Like, where's he going to go? What are the photo ops going to be? How long will he be there? Trump considers that packed to the decision. It's wedded to the decision to go. So when he decides to go, Trump thinks of everything like it's a movie and he's the star of the movie. So Trump says, okay, we're going to go now. What are we going to do there? Right? So Trump decides to go to East Palestine. And. And the trip is widely considered historically now as a huge success. It helped him contrast himself with Joe Biden. It helped him contrast himself with the other Republicans who at the time were challenging him for the nomination. And that was somewhat about the decision to go. You didn't see Joe Biden go right away and some controversy over that. It's part of why Trump went. We also didn't see other Republican presidential candidates go. So you make the decision to go. But as I said, for Trump, that's just the first step. Look at how effective he was in speaking. This is just one of many things moments when he was on the grand East Palestine, but look how effectively this is staged. Look at the folks behind him. Look at what he says. Here's Donald Trump in East Palestine.

[Donald Trump (archival clips)]

To the people of East Palestine and to the nearby communities in Ohio and Pennsylvania, we have told you loud and clear, you are not forgotten. You are not forgotten. We stand with you, we pray for you, and we will stay with you in your fight to help answer and the accountability that you deserve, we'll have that accountability. It'll all be out there very clearly.

[Political Analyst]

All right, I said Palestine. I meant Palestine. I think I said it right once and wrong once. All right, so that's a very well staged set of remarks. But again, the whole trip was walking around, being shown things by local officials, talking to voters on the ground. This is a photo op at a fast food place. Like, this is for Donald Trump part of the decision. He didn't decide to get arraigned in Georgia when he was indicted, he had to go do it. But he was heavily involved in the decisions about, okay, what am I going to do? What kind of press access am I going to give? What am I going to do with the mugshot on social media, all those things. It's the same as president when he says, okay, we're gonna, we're gonna change that. What we're doing on tariffs or we're gonna bomb Iran, that's the decision. And then the subsequent decisions are all part of how to do it. And again, with a high emphasis on implementation, high emphasis on executing, and of course, the public facing aspects, what he's doing with the media.

[Political Commentator]

Speaking of the media.

[Political Analyst]

Trump recognizes that if you make a decision and you just throw it out there, you know, I'm going to bomb Iran or I'm going to do 1, 1, 1 bill, not 2, that the press then will take over. And of course, a lot of the press very hostile to him. A lot of the press isn't going to want to frame the story he wants it to frame. So Trump's sixth rule of making decisions, don't let the media frame the decision. Trump wants to frame it himself. And he uses what is an unprecedented and masterful understanding of the media to give himself a kind of optionality on decision making that his predecessors rarely have enjoyed. And that goes from making the decision on himself, you know, to all the incremental things that go from that, all the incremental choices that follow on. Trump doesn't want negative or harmful judgments, but he knows that the way to mitigate those about his courses of action is to be in charge of framing the thing. He does not have the politicians typical, most politicians typical defensiveness. He doesn't mind being accused of flip flopping. No decision in his mind is final until he decides it's final. You see that with tariffs, you see that with Putin. He frames every step of the way. So how many decisions has Donald Trump made about what to do about tariffs? It's possible to count. Many, Many, right? Many, many. Sometimes any day he'll put tariffs on, he'll take them off. How many decisions has he made about what to say about Putin? He's blown over the course of his time in national life, more hot than cold on Putin. Now he's blowing particularly cold. But there have been other moments like that. Again, Trump's view is he doesn't let the media frame these decisions, particularly when it's a change. He frames it. It doesn't always win. Sometimes the media pushes back and frames it another way. But Trump's always thinking about how. How do I frame the decision? Using social media, using press conferences, using other methods to frame the decision. Other presidents consider their job largely within the four walls of, I've made my decision. Go, go implement it. Go, you know, have my press secretary talk about it. Go have cabinet members talk about it. Trump isn't like that. He decides both what to do and how to do it. And as I said, he doesn't mind changing his mind. And there's something about Trump in the context of this one, this. Don't let the media frame the decision, that you can study it all you want, but it's not clear that other people can get away with it. Now, other politicians change their mind. Other politicians don't tell the truth when they change their mind, they pretend they haven't. But there's something about Trump, and the only other politician I've covered who plays at this level is Bill Clinton.

[Political Commentator]

And you'll hear it all the time.

[Political Analyst]

You hear people say, well, how come Trump can get away with this and other people can't? Nobody can answer that question. It's just a. It's an ineffable, a magical thing. And. And the people who oppose Bill Clinton felt the same people as Trump's adversaries do. It's unfair. But part of it is explainable, part of it is explicable because Trump thinks about it. He says he, again, like him or not, he understands the media and, and television production better than any president I've ever covered, probably better than anyone ever. And so he frames the decision, and he challenges the media to frame it better, stronger, faster, on their terms, if they don't agree with him, either because they're hostile to him or because he is not telling the truth, or he has made a mistake and he's changing because he's made a mistake. He, Trump, just is relentless about it. He's knowledgeable and he's relentless. And as long as he has an opportunity to change his mind and he thinks that's the better course, he will. Okay, finally, number seven follows. It follows his instincts. And this one, you could say, runs counter to all the most of the other stuff I've listed here in the previous six ways Trump makes decisions, because the rest of them are largely about doing things with a method, sometimes with a madness, but always with a method. Following your instincts runs counter to that. It says, basically, it doesn't matter who you consult.

[Political Commentator]

Right?

[Political Analyst]

It doesn't matter if you know anything about history. It doesn't matter what the timing of the decision is. It doesn't matter how you, what factors go into it in terms of data, doesn't matter what implementations there are or what the media's role is. For Trump, what matters is his gut, and that is how he's made a lot of decisions. He does all these other things. But in the end, Trump believes following your instincts is key. Now, other presidents have felt that way at times, but have more doubt. Trump has doubt. And when you talk to people who are around him as he's making big decisions, like with Iran, he's got doubt. Fear may be too strong a word. I would say he's quite concerned about making a fateful decision like the Iran decision, bombing Iran. Iran might have launched a missile and hit US Americans. Iran might have unleashed terror cells in the United States. There were a lot of risks involved in that decision. And Trump doesn't like risk, doesn't like errors. He certainly doesn't want to make a bad decision as president. He wants to make good decisions, but he believes in his instincts in the end. And I've said this before about Trump, and it fits in this context perfectly. He has extraordinary instincts about human beings and he, and he's very at peace when he makes a decision. Other presidents I've covered sometimes will agonize a little bit more when Trump decides in the end, takes in all the data, all the consultation, all the planning, but in the end, when he makes a final decision, and again, it's often at the very last minute or beyond what a normal president would say is the last minute. If his instincts tell him to do A and not B, he's largely at peace with that. And, and his focus is it moves from self doubt. Oh, my goodness, should I have done B? Maybe I should have done B. He moves off of that typically, and his focus is on, all right, implementation. We're doing a, let's get it done. And there's a good and bad about having this, all this decision making so concentrated in one person. Right. The bad of it is there may be people who know more than Trump. The, the bad of it is Trump can only do so much. Trump can't fly ahead of his trip and advance the thing himself. Right. He has to rely on other people. And so much of it comes from him. The good of it is it's all integrated in one man. It's all integrated in a single brain of somebody who has extraordinary judgment, extraordinary instincts now that he's in the, you know, in his fifth year in the job, extraordinary experience about how to Be a decider as president, and having it all concentrated in one guy allows there to be kind of a unified sense of how to get things done, a through line of what are the factors I'm going to use to decide? When am I going to decide? Now that I've decided, how are we going to implement it? How are we going to frame this for the public through the media and through social media? It's a.

[Political Commentator]

It's a.

[Political Analyst]

It's an extraordinary array. And I thought, as I was doing reporting for this, how dissimilar is this from. From his predecessors, you know, and the presence. I've covered both Bush's, Clinton, Obama, Biden. How different is it? And my answer is it's pretty different. There are elements that match the others, but Trump is extremely aware from his time as a business person, the importance of making decisions when they're ripe, making them well and following through. And you think about the big decisions he's made as president. Now, a lot of them, tens of millions of Americans, agree with the actual decisions. They don't like what he decided. But if the standard you're judging him by in the first instance is.

[Political Commentator]

Did.

[Political Analyst]

Trump make a decision that he. He liked and did it work out well from his point of view, not from the point of view. People disagree with his politics, and then the question is, did it make America better? The verdict on the. On the second one is not in yet. Right? We're gonna have to see not. Not just at the end of his four years, but probably in some cases years down the road. But do. Does he get what he wants? Did he do at least some damage to Iran's nuclear capability? Did he pass a reconciliation bill that fulfilled a lot of his campaign promises? The answer is yes. And I will go back continually and look at every big decision he makes and including ones he's made in the past. We don't really know yet what the results are, but all the ones going forward and say almost always they're reflective of these seven principles that Trump uses to make decisions, and they serve him well from his point of view. Seven rules for making decisions that make Trump different than other presidents and which, as I said, from his point of view, serves him well. He is a confident decision maker. The process itself can be chaotic. There are times when, in all of his consultations, he expresses some doubt. He's working it. He's working it, he's working it, he's working it. And he's getting to the point where he feels comfortable making the decision. And as I said, Trump's timeline is different than everybody else's. So regularly people say, well, what's he going to do about X or what's he going to do about Y? Tariffs, you know, every day now for weeks. And the answer is he's going to do a lot of things. No decision is final and Trump will make decisions serially until he gets to the point where he's happy with how it ends or the clock runs out.

[Political Commentator]

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[Political Analyst]

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[Political Commentator]

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[Political Analyst]

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[Political Commentator]

Don't be a victim. Protect your Equity today. That's hometitlelock.com promo code mark. I reported monologue on a very big media story that has implications, I think for the whole country. It's about the media, but it's about more than that. It's a story in some ways about two people. I'll tell you who they are in a moment. I've been talking for the last several weeks based on the rumors that this was coming true, something that did come true. Barry Weiss taking over the editor in chief role of CBS News. I've talked to journalists, political people in both parties. Some of them get what's going on and they've helped inform my views today, some of whom definitely do not. And they've informed my views as well. David Ellison, very wealthy purchaser, a new CEO of Paramount, Skydance, hired Barry Weiss, who I'm friendly with, to be the editor in chief of CBS News. And Barry has done this on the strength of the extraordinary success she's had.

[Political Analyst]

At the Free Press.

[Political Commentator]

You've seen her on Megan's show, you've seen her own video, she's got her own podcast. But the Free Press is an extraordinary success. Just about three years in, and the hiring of Barry to take a senior editorial position at CBS News potentially, potentially solves a lot of problems that have existed at cbs. But it also speaks to some larger issues. I'll get to the larger issues in a minute, but first, let's talk about CBS. CBS News is no doubt one of the storied top 10 news organizations in the history of the modern United States. Back in the glory days, Sevride and Cronkite, et cetera, et cetera, they were a powerhouse and they dominated the national news landscape along with just a handful of other organizations. But during the course of my career, CBS News has been somewhere between irrelevant and a joke, primarily because of several factors that afflict lots of news organizations. But whereas ABC and NBC have thrived during the last, say, 40 years, CBS has not. They've been way too liberal and they've not been part of the conversation. I remember in 22,000 when I was on the ground in Florida covering the Bush Gore recount, abc, NBC, CNN had huge presence on the ground and CBS was virtually invisible. They've been uncreative in their programming. Their morning show and their evening news shows have been low rated. They have not been good on digital. For the most part, they have been a news organization in serious decline. The two entities that are described as the crown jewels of CBS News, where people say, well, the rest of CBS might have declined in terms of relevance and ratings and credibility. 60 Minutes on Sunday Morning. I take exception to, first of all, Sunday Morning is a really well produced show. But they're not holding powerful interests accountable.

[Political Analyst]

To the public interest.

[Political Commentator]

They're just telling stories about babbling brooks and authors who are friends with the host. So it's a good show, but it's not a journalistic powerhouse.

[Political Analyst]

And then 60 Minutes.

[Political Commentator]

60 Minutes has done more to discredit the media as liberal than any other entity in the country because of their reach. And while again, it's a well produced show, it's got good ratings, it is not a program that has brought credit to the reputation of CBS News as a fair place when it comes to political coverage or coverage of corporations or other areas. So CBS News is, is in bad shape and, and it was purchased by someone in Ellison who wants to have a strong news division. He wants CBS News to thrive. And he's not an idiot. He's got eyes and ears and he can see CBS News has been a disaster. So he's buying a tarnished property and he's trying to figure out how to fix it up, how to take what is the strength of CBS News, which is the extraordinary reach that it has. And something where if you put money behind it, you can grow it. And he's brought in Bari Weiss. Bari Weiss is an extraordinary person and an extraordinary force in journalism. She's an independent. She started the Free Press as an independent organization with investment from some very wealthy and very smart people who saw the potential of the idea. But she also understands legacy media. And I'm not going to compare myself to Barry because Barry is legend.

[Political Strategist]

But.

[Political Commentator]

But I understand where Barry's coming from in part because I now have gone to independent media. But I also understand legacy media. I was in legacy media longer than Barry. But Barry at the Wall Street Journal at the New York Times is a student of media, really understands the weaknesses of legacy media that she'll confront at CBS News when she starts this job next week. But she also understands the strengths. Legacy media still has some strengths, which I'll talk about now. Why did Barry leave the legacy media? Why did she leave the New York Times? They treated her horribly. And not only did they treat her horribly with a woke mob criticizing her on internal slack channels and threatening her, but then they didn't cover the story. And they still aren't covering the story correctly. They're still whitewashing the circumstances under which Barry left the Times. She left the Times because a woke mob chased her out. And rather than leave journalism or rather than be traumatized by it to the point of inaction, she built the Free Press in three short years. She built an organization that is a real deal. And part of the deal with cbs, not only are they getting Barry to be the editor in chief, they're purchasing the Free Press. And now the Free Press will have.

[Political Strategist]

Access to all sorts of things as it.

[Political Commentator]

As it as a partnership with cbs.

[Political Analyst]

How did Barry do it?

[Political Commentator]

First of all, she's brave. She demonstrated that by standing up to the bullies at the New York Times and writing a scathing departure letter. But she's also was brave to say, I'm going to start my own thing. She's tough. Not afraid to take things on. Tough enough to go pitch Silicon Valley millionaires and billionaires and get the funding to start this. She's creative. She thinks anew. What the Free Press has done is innovative, but also goes back to basics. Right? They're text first they write really provocative, interesting stories in text. Old fashioned, but it works. And she's done it in a creative way. And she's talent first. And that's been my philosophy throughout my career. Barry has hired great people. She's hired young people, old people, liberals, conservatives, people with a lot of traditional experience, people with no traditional experience. She has an eye for talent and boy, does CBS News need that. And she cares about facts. Barry is an old fashioned journalist. Finally, a business model. Think of that. If you're going into legacy, leaving legacy media where there is no clear business model and you're going to new media, some people make the mistake of saying, well, it's independent. Do I need a business model? Nah, you do. Barry found a business model at the Free Press. She gave the access away to people who couldn't afford it, but she's built up a huge network of paid subscribers who pay for her content in a way that has made it hugely profitable. Some people say it makes 20 million a year. Pretty good for a startup. Now the people on the left are howling, the guardians of the status quo at CBS and elsewhere, saying Barry is a threat to cbs. So Barry again, who's no dummy, wrote.

[Political Strategist]

A note to her new colleagues and.

[Political Commentator]

She laid out her 10 principles that Barry says are vital for a good.

[Political Strategist]

News organization and vital to her and her sensibility.

[Political Commentator]

So I want to read to you Barry's very elegantly written, very brief rules. Number one, journalism that reports on the world as it actually is hard to disagree with that or any of these. Journalism that is fair, fair, fearless and factual. Journalism that respects our audience enough to tell the truth plainly wherever it leads. Journalism that makes sense of a noisy, confusing world. Journalism that explains things clearly without pretension or jargon. Journalism that holds both American political parties to equal scrutiny. Journalism that embraces a wide spectrum of views and voices so that the audience can contend with the best arguments on all sides of the debate. Journalism that rushes towards the most interesting and important stories regardless of their unpopularity. Journalism that uses all of the tools of the digital era. Journalism that understands that the best way to serve America is to endeavor to present the public with the facts first and foremost. Anyone who knows Barry Weiss's career and has looked at it seriously will not be surprised by those 10 rules or how sensible they are or how needed those exact rules are not just by CBS News, but by pretty much everybody in the legacy media. So rather than say, hey, we've got a decades long record of failure here at cbs, our new boss seems to have a Direction to try to make the news division relevant and popular and successful rather than welcome that. How has Barry been received so far? This has been rumored for a while. So these, these sensibilities are not new. But in the wake of the formal announcement, here's what some people said. This is from the Independent. A quote from a CBS News staffer. It's CBS is not a good place right now. People are looking, literally freaking out. People are using words like depressing and doomsday. It feels like some sort of doomsday. Okay, that's what they're saying to the people at the Independent. Doomsday. You know what doomsday is? Doomsday is what CBS News has been in the past. Barry Weiss coming in. Rather than freaking out, they should be celebrating. All right, here's another reaction. This is from a guy named Walker Bragaman. Not really sure who he is. Some independent journalist. Everyone at CBS News should quit in protest. This is travesty. Bari Weiss is a misinformation peddling right wing operative. She's totally unqualified for this job. Again, totally unqualified for the job. The people have run CBS News since the ground for several decades. Everyone should quit in protest. I think Barry would probably welcome anyone who would quit over the arrival of Bari Weiss. Probably will save her the trouble of having to fire them. And the notion that Barry is a white. A misinformation peddling right wing operative. I don't agree with everything in the Free Press. If I did, it would be boring to read. Right wing operative. No, Barry's for common sense. Barry is not a right wing operative. And you can on any given day go to the Free Press website and read lots of things that people on the right will not like. That is Barry. Here is the very famous Nicole Hannah Jones of the New York Times. Here's what she says about Barry. It wasn't. In case it wasn't clear, the anti DEI crusade has never been about merit. Zero news experience, Never been a reporter elevated to editor in chief of CBS News, one of the most storied institutions in the nation. Well, I don't know what, I don't know how long the statute of limitations is on storied. But again, this comes at a time when CBS needs help. Barry, zero news experience. No, actually Barry has lots of news experience. And the proof is in the pudding. Barry has built in three years, a very successful news organization that breaks the mold, changes the terms of the debate.

[Political Strategist]

And changes the game.

[Political Commentator]

Finally, what would be a chronicle of the failure of the left to understand what time it is without the inclusion of the estimable Keith Olbermann. Here's his tweet. I'd like to congratulate CBS News on hiring as editor in chief the dumbest person in America, Barry Weiss. Dumbest person in America. Again, if I were inclined to be critical of Barry, and I'm not, I'm quite fond of her, dumb would not be the word I would use. And Keith Olbermann, who's made out a career out of calling people the worst and the stupidest, Keith Olbermann is not as smart as Barry Weiss. I'll leave it at that. Finally, Keith Ohrman says to folks, you should sell all the stations, equipment and furniture. There is no recovery from this. Murrow, Cronkite, and even Katie Couric would now deny they ever worked there. There is no recovery from this. Again, the irony of all these criticisms is so rich. No recovery from what? No recovery from the august position that CBS News finds itself in. I have friends at cbs and I don't want to say there's no one there of value. I respect the legacy and as a commercial enterprise of 60 minutes Sunday morning super well produced show. I'm not, I'm not saying all their other shows are worthless. What I'm saying is they have been liberal, they have been legacy media, and they have been losing. And the people at CBS who want to keep losing should say, horrible that we're bringing in someone new. Horrible that we're bringing in someone with a record of success.

[Political Analyst]

Horrible.

[Political Commentator]

We're bringing someone whose 10 points of how journalism should work are a model for anybody, whether legacy or new media. This reaction is hilarious to me. And it's also dangerous. All right, so if you're using a normal phone, you're going to see those creepy ads that pop up all the time. They tell the people out there exactly where you've been, what you bought, even who you've been talking to. And you probably, when you see that.

[Political Analyst]

Happening because you see signs of it.

[Political Commentator]

On the phone, you probably ask yourself, is my phone monitoring me? I'll the truth is, your smartphone is constantly collecting and leaking data, all without your knowledge and without your consent. Every day it's building over and over.

[Political Analyst]

A more detailed profile of your whole life.

[Political Commentator]

Your location, your habits, your interests, even.

[Political Analyst]

The people you're communicating with.

[Political Commentator]

And all that information gets funneled into what it is, an invisible marketplace where it's tracked and analyzed and sold to the highest bidder. It's annoying, of course, but it's also very invasive.

[Political Analyst]

And it's nonstop.

[Political Commentator]

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[Political Analyst]

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[Political Commentator]

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[Political Analyst]

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[Political Commentator]

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[Political Analyst]

What is the connection between the rise and success of Donald Trump over the last decade and the parallel decline and weakness of the Democratic Party? Now, when I ask people that question, I generally get one of three reactions. If I ask somebody who has Trump derangement syndrome that question, they say, well, Trump is a total failure. So it's a silly question. There's no need to think about the connection between Donald Trump's success and the decline of the Democratic brand, because Trump's a failure. If I ask people who have MAGA plasma racing through their bloodstream, they say, well, Trump is brilliant and so 80% of this is his doing. 20% is the stupidity and destructive nature of the people on the left and their tendencies to. To destroy themselves. Now, if I ask people of an analytical bent, I think they give me the correct answer, which is, there is a very big connection between the two, but it is difficult to quantify it. It's very though important to Understand, there's no doubt that Donald Trump has had failures over the last 10 years. Of course he lost the 20 election, but there's also no doubt that he's won twice and that right now he's dominating our politics and that Democrats are in trouble. Trump's poll numbers aren't great, but they're better than the Democrats. And I ask Democrats all the time if the worst you think Trump is, the stupider you think he is. The more ineffective, the more out of step with public opinion, the more you must think your own party is a catastrophe because you're losing to this guy. He's got better poll numbers than the Democrats do. Now, I think this is a topic that's worthy of a book or at least a 5,000 word essay someplace like the Atlantic magazine or wherever. Don't have time for this now, but I will lay out what I think would be a pretty good book. This storyline, this dynamic is to me the framework for what is the best explanation for what's happened in our politics in the last decade, maybe more. And I think it's also the biggest clue to what's going to happen next. Beyond winning two of the last three presidential elections, Trump has accomplished a lot. There's stuff that he's accomplished that you may not think are great, but there are things he set out to do. He just got the trade deal with Europe, trade deal with Japan. He's presided over economy where the NASDAQ and the S and P are way up. Inflation is not fully tamed, but it's lower than it was under the previous president. Passed the tax cut bill. Lots of investment coming in from the private sector. Both American companies and overseas again achieved goals that conservatives have wanted for a long time. Gotten rid of dei, not just from the public sector, but forced a lot of private companies to get rid of it. Scaling down lots of government departments, including the Department of Education, change the way the ability of trans athletes to participate in women's sports, gotten the Ivy League colleges, many of them, to change their policies, successfully bombed Iran's nuclear facilities and many other things. And I'll add to the list NATO getting NATO countries to pony up more money. Now, again, some of these things are only positive in the eyes of Trump backers. But I think there are four things at least that are objectively in the interest of the United States. One would be immigration, controlling the border. Trump has clearly in this area and all four of the areas I'm going to list, he's clearly done some things that people rightly say are Overstep that these policies have some downsides. But controlling the border is something that's in the national interest, something a majority of the Americans want. Trump has created a spectacle, but he's also shifted the paradigm on what it takes to close the border and how effective it can be. Number two, tariffs. Okay, Trump has changed the paradigm there, too. Lots of these countries now are doing what the United States wants. The coverage this week of the deal with the EU favorable, the United States favorable to Trump. Even news organizations that don't normally say positive things about Trump have said this is in the United States interest. Trump got a good deal out of this. And again, the goal is clear. He wants to re engineer global trade by leveraging the US Market and other American advantages without hurting the American or global economy. Right now, that appears on track. It's early. These deals are not fleshed out yet. But I'll say again, this is another area of Trump achievement in the national interest. Other presidents didn't do it just like closing the border, and Democrats just pretend it's just a total failure. Same with number three, controlling the size of the workforce. Trump has turbocharged the capacity of a White House to control the size of the bureaucracy. He already has eliminated a lot of positions. He plans to eliminate more. This concept that we've had for decades, that the federal government's just going to keep growing. He's figured out a way to change that. Again, popular, not in every respect, overreach in some areas. But this is another area that Democrats are simply criticizing. Finally, as I mentioned before, NATO, where Trump has ensured that terms and conditions apply now to be a member. He's changed the relationship from one where the European countries were free riding and freeloading to one now that's more transactional. It's a post globalist arrangement in which the alliance can live on, but on terms that are far more favorable to the United States. Now, again, I'd say again, in each case there are objectively downsides to what Trump has done. But I'll say also in each case that overall these directionally are positive and popular. And no other recent president has had the requisite desire or drive to change the status quo in such a fundamental way in this country. The Democrats simply accentuate the downsides of these achievements. They find and highlight the weak links and there are weak links. Rather than grappling with what's actually happening. That I think is more important that the trends in this country in terms of public opinion have fueled Trump's rise and capacity to get stuff done. Trump has understood where public opinion was on these issues and others. And the Democratic Party has been and largely remains clueless. Okay, this is, to me, fundamental if you're thinking about the connection between what Trump has done and what's happened with the Democratic Party. And it's not just the United States. Trump has read the mood of where things are in these issues and others, and the Democrats have failed. The American left has failed on these and other issues. So if you look at Europe and the other industrialized democracies in the west, you see the same conditions that have grown over decades that have caused rebellion against the parties on the left, out of control, mass migration, out of control crime, the dominant influence of wokeness in all sorts of cultural institutions, the LGBTQ changes that many have seen as overreach, particularly in the area of trans censorship, overregulation, cancellation, neosocialism. All these things exist in other countries. Kim Strassel has written about what's happened in the United States in the Wall Street Journal. Very good focus. That much. Most Democrats haven't even thought about open borders, unrestrained spending, supports for teachers unions when they're acting antithetical to the interest of our kids, an obsessive focus on climate change, bashing the police, being against Israel, the dominance of identity politics. All of this has caused Democrats in this country to lose support from demographic groups independent of Donald Trump, although Trump has taken advantage of that. Imagine if the Democrat, if the Republicans rather, were losing support from interest groups that had long been a bedrock of their electoral success. Imagine if the reverse were happening, how much the media would cover it. This is a massive story. Democrats losing support from voters of color, from younger voters. Massive. Now, Trump is singular. All these other industrialized democracies, they have the same issues, but what's different is they haven't found their version of Trump. There have been kind of poor man's versions of Trump, but they haven't succeeded. They haven't had Trump's skill. They haven't had Trump's level of aggressiveness. Tough enough and determined enough to take on the old order. So what's happened to these other countries with their left parties? Their equivalents of the Democratic Party is they're weaker than they were before, but they're not crushed. They haven't declined as precipitously in most cases the way the Democratic Party has. Who is now as low as they've been in poll after pollution? I'm thinking about this stuff and I talked to some Democrats who are but very few prominent Democrats. Whether you're talking about people in elective office. You're talking about activists or writers or people in think tanks. They're not even vaguely grappling with this problem in public. Why? Because they fear that the activist left will push them out of the party or cancel them. And because most of them lack the creativity and self awareness that's required to say, hey, how did this happen? How far back has this been going on? Some of these trends go well before Donald Trump's rise. When the few Democrats do tepidly and timidly put their toe in the water and say, what have we done wrong? They do it in a way that doesn't really give voice to a full analysis of what's happened and what needs to happen next. Because they're afraid, as I said, of being canceled by the left. They're afraid of being out of step with the activist wing of the party. So Neera Tanden, a liberal advisor to Hillary Clinton, advisor to Joe Biden, one of the smartest people in the Democratic Party in my experience, very knowledgeable. She wrote an op ed piece in the Wall Street Journal, not in the Washington Post, not in the New York Times, but in the Journal conservative editorial page. And she admitted that the Biden administration, that she was part of a big part of it and advising on domestic policy, screwed up on the Mexican border. And she called for comprehensive immigration reform. She rightly, in her piece, put in sharp relief all the unpopular elements of President Trump's immigration policies, because some of the things Donald Trump has done are unpopular on the border. But she also felt compelled to call for a path to citizenship for some of the people in this country illegally that is known by many Americans as amnesty. And she criticized other elements of what Donald Trump has done to try to stay on the good side of her liberal wing of her party. If the Democrats can't figure out how to lead with being tough in 2028, whoever the Republicans nominate, whether it's Vance or somebody else, they'll make mincemeat of the Democrats in Trump world. They laugh at how even now, even after Donald Trump's victory in 2024 was clearly fueled in large port by immigration. They laugh at how much the Democrats still don't have a clue on immigration and a range of other issues. Then you think about New York City and the nomination by the Democrats of Mr. Mandani to be their mayoral candidate. The reaction to that again reveals how clueless far too many Democrats are about what his election would mean for their brand. Republicans are salivating at the notion of having Donald Trump be able to run against Mondami and campaign against him if he is the mayor of New York City. Now, there are people in Trump's orbit who don't want him to win because they think he'd ruin the city. And some of them have pretty big investments in New York. So there's cross pressure there. But on the left, they continue to not grapple with what it would mean to elect someone with Mondami's background and stated positions on the economy and law enforcement, a range of other issues. There was an op ed piece in the New York Times by a woman named Tressie McMillan Cotton. She argued that the opposition to Mondami is based pretty much solely on his racial heritage, rather than, say, the fact that he's a socialist. Okay. New York Post story this week talked about how so many prominent people in the party, in the Republican Party, plan to make Mondami the face of the Democrats. And then you have people like Chuck Schumer, Hakeem Jeffries, the leading Democrats in Congress, both from New York City, Kathy Hochul, the mayor of New York, the governor of New York. They know how dangerous this is politically for the party. They're really worried about it. But except for the fact that none of them, none of those three have publicly endorsed Mondavi yet. They're frozen in amber because the base does not want to see them be outspoken against the nominee. And they're worried that he may win, but they're not doing anything, at least overtly, to stop his march to victory. Who can solve this for the Democrats? Who can speak out thoughtfully? I don't think the current Democratic Party chair, Ken Martin or the past party leaders, Barack Obama, Kamala Harris, Joe Biden. These folks are not well positioned to try to stop Donald Trump on his march to achieving more or to do the other task that needs to be done in parallel, rebuild their party's brand to try to come up with policies and ideas and make messengers that could really make a difference. Okay, Trump's going to continue to have success and failures. The Democrats may do very well in the midterms. They may well. But in each case where Trump may have failure, I don't think it has much to do with the Democrats having a capacity to affirmatively and assertively meet the moment, to rethink why voters are so down on their brand, to change their image on the economy, on social issues, because based on all the available evidence, the Democrats actually right now are on worse shape than the polling suggests. Because the polling is a snapshot of where we are. They're running out of time again, because the nature of the midterms, because we don't know where the economy will be, we don't know what's going to happen with the Epstein story. It's possible that the Democrats will have a good 2026, but the Democrats I talk to are far less worried about 2026 in the midterms because this history suggests that even weak, the party could still do well enough to take back the House. What they're worried about is 2028. What they're worried about is the capacity of the party to redefine itself. And to win back voters, they'll need to win the White House, particularly because they are a party right now without strong candidates. The Democratic brand on its own right now, it appears to be on the wrong side of both the polling and of the history. And, and that's a big problem. It's a big problem to be on the wrong side of polling. End of history, you think back to where did this start to go wrong? As I said, some of these trends have been around forever. But what's to me, in talking to the smartest Democrats I know, what to me is their biggest concern is not the history, but the future. How can they fix this? When so many of the dynamics on social issues, teachers unions, the economy, immigration, government spending, relationship with NATO, on so many of these issues, there's no reflection about where things went wrong. And it's very hard for Democrats to criticize Donald Trump and praise him. Because if you give him any praise, think about in the first term with the Abraham Accords. Ask any Democrat privately, what do you think of the Abraham Accords? Privately, they'll say, fantastic. Ask them what they think about shutting down the border. Most of them will say, great, huge accomplishment. But in our polarized, red, blue America now, it's very hard for either party to praise. And you take heat from the base if you praise Donald Trump.

[Political Commentator]

And they're worried about what Donald Trump.

[Political Analyst]

Would do with that praise. But a realistic appraisal shows that Democrats are not getting on the right side of these issues, were on the wrong side of public opinion, the wrong side of history. These other industrialized democracies, their liberal parties, have survived because they haven't faced Trump. And I'll say again, if you think Trump is a bad political athlete, you're making a mistake. Trump has lots of unpopular policy positions, but he knows how to mitigate them better than the Democrats know how to mitigate theirs. And he fights to get on the right side of issues when he's on the wrong side. Democrats, for instance, are counting on being on the right side of Medicaid and Medicaid spending and people on health care. Trump's not going to sit back passively and be on the wrong side of that. He'll do whatever he can as much as he needs to change. The Democrats have not shown the same level of awareness, the same level of nimbleness. And so I say again this question, how did the Democrats go wrong? And there's plenty of other things we could list. We've talked about some of them here. Trying to block Bernie Sanders from winning the nomination in 2016 and 2020, trying to keep Bobby Kennedy off the ballot, lawfare against Trump. There's a. There's a whole range of things that are kind of episodic that Democrats did in part because of Trump derangement syndrome, in part because they were too wedded to the establishment of their party. It's a long list, but the core of the list is being on the right side of the issues that matter to the American people. I still find rarely find any Democrats who can speak with passion about how they got on the wrong side of the issue of trans athletes and girls and women's sports. Rarely. They continue to drift back towards the ideological base of the party, which is still not taking into account the thoughts of the majority of the parents in this company, in this country, on that issue. Same with all the issues related to Covid. Same with all the issues related to the economy, or most of them, anyway. This party continues to struggle. And the clock ticks. The clock ticks. They're still more in denial and justification mode than they are in thinking anew. And they're up against a guy in Donald Trump, even though he's a lame duck who understands this dynamic. Exactly. He knows where the weak parts are in the Democrats, and he knows where public opinion is.