Jamelle Bouie Says Your Fear of Trump Isn't Helping. Plus, Humphrey Bogart’s Betrayal.

Summary

On the Media — Episode Summary

Episode: Jamelle Bouie Says Your Fear of Trump Isn't Helping. Plus, Humphrey Bogart’s Betrayal.
Date: October 3, 2025
Host: Michael Ohinger (WNYC Studios)
Guests: Jamelle Bouie (NYT columnist), Corey Robin (Brooklyn College professor), archival Hollywood voices

Overview

This episode of On the Media explores how the U.S. media covers escalating authoritarian rhetoric and actions by President Trump in his second term, focusing especially on the militarization of domestic politics, the chilling effect of government actions meant to silence dissent, and the counterproductive nature of public fear. The centerpiece is an in-depth conversation with Jamelle Bouie about what we misunderstand about power and resistance, how history frames these debates, and the limits of fear and fatalism as political responses. The episode concludes by drawing striking parallels to Cold War era silencing tactics, featuring Corey Robin’s insights and a meditation on Hollywood’s role in shaping, and sometimes retreating from, these fights.

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Main Discussion with Jamelle Bouie

The Administration’s Rhetoric: Militarization and “Enemies Within”

[02:44–04:41]

• Key Point: Bouie analyzes President Trump’s and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s speeches at Quantico, where the administration calls for transforming the U.S. military into a force targeting "the enemy within"—namely, Democratic-led cities.

  • Bouie (03:18): “The constant references from the President to an enemy within, identifying Democratic led cities [...] what he wants is to use the military against American citizens. This is in keeping with statements Trump has made in the past during his first term.”
  • Trump’s praise of the Chinese crackdown on Tiananmen Square protests is cited as evidence of long-standing authoritarian ambitions.

• Historical Context: Bouie notes that turning the U.S. military inward would be a profound betrayal of American tradition and constitutional principles.

Hegseth’s Vision of the Military and DEI Backlash

[04:55–09:13]

• Key Point: Hegseth rails against “woke” military policies, equating diversity and inclusion with weakness, vowing a return to colorblind “merit” and even suggesting physical intimidation in training.

  • Hegseth (06:38): “You kill people and break things for a living.”
  • Bouie notes this is out-of-touch with the military’s actual composition and ignores the institution’s historic role as a site of racial, gender, and class integration.

• Deeper Interpretation:

  • Bouie (09:13): “A diverse military with a diverse officer corps is going to be far less willing to turn itself against the American people.”
  • DEI rollbacks are about reinstating an exclusionary leadership ideal, not actual merit.

The Myth of the Presidential “Mandate”

[11:00–12:54]

• Key Point: Bouie dismantles the media’s and society’s embrace of the “mandate” narrative.
  • Bouie (11:31): “The aim of a presidential election isn’t to elect a living avatar of the American people.”
  • Even landslide victories do not erase the need for collaboration in a fractious society.

Contextualizing Today with American History

[13:27–16:36]

• Key Point: Bouie underscores the cyclical nature of debates over inclusion—who gets to be an American—referencing moments from the Founding through the Civil Rights Movement.
  • Bouie (14:48): “Who is included in the category of American? A very simple question that comes up again and again [...] Knowledge of history helps us tackle that question.”

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Jamelle Bouie on Media, Social Media, and Fear

Translating Analysis for a Wider Audience

[18:30–22:10]

• Bouie’s Approach: Bouie describes using platforms like TikTok to reach audiences beyond NYT readers, presenting complex political and historical analysis accessibly.
  • His process involves treating both writing and videos as public speaking, aiming for clarity without oversimplification.

Confronting Public Fear and Political Fatalism

[22:10–25:20]

• Bouie’s Viral Video on Fear: Responding to post-election fatalism, Bouie reassures followers that their agency persists even under authoritarian drift.
  • Bouie (22:36): “Just because this is a very serious result [...] doesn’t mean the politics are over, and critically doesn’t mean that you have lost your capacity for agency.”

Visceral Honesty on Social Media

[24:27–28:58]

• Memorable “Name Calling”: Bouie’s sharp language online (calling RFK Jr. a “eugenicist freak” [24:41], Scalia a “run of the mill gutter bigot,” JD Vance a “miserable little pig man”) is discussed.
  • Bouie (25:38): “It is name calling, but it’s not substanceless name calling. Part of it just reflects how I viscerally feel.”
  • He argues this directness is proportional to the harms and hypocrisy he sees, and sometimes is simply more honest than the paper’s usual tone.

Media Blind Spots: Trump’s Decline

[28:58–31:09]

• Key Point: Bouie argues the media is ignoring Trump’s visible cognitive decline, even as similar coverage of Biden was once ubiquitous.
  • Bouie (29:22): “There is clear evidence that Donald Trump is not nearly as sharp and capable as he was in 2016 and 17 [...] If any other political figure gave a speech like that, we would clearly recognize it for what it was, which is someone who is in decline.”

Fear, Agency, and “The Mind Killer”

[32:02–39:48]

• Many viewers and readers now confront a sense of impotence and fear.
  • Bouie (32:47): “Fear is the mind killer. It’s the little death. Be not afraid.” (Quoting Frank Herbert’s Dune)
• Bouie urges listeners not to catastrophize or assume Trump’s power is absolute:
  • The president’s ability to directly control institutions (like elections or National Guard deployments) is limited and often checked by state governments or civil society resistance.
  • Bouie (35:19): “If there’s no button he can press, then that area becomes a site of resistance.”
• He affirms, “there will be a new normal,” and contends the present is unusually bad, but not the worst Americans have faced.
  • Bouie (37:25): “People who look like me have faced much worse in this country. This is like a bad era, I'd say for the United States. It's not the worst.”

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Corey Robin: Silencing, Not Cruelty, Is the Point

The Politics of Fear and Institutional Silence

[41:46–45:26]

• Robin’s Argument: While Trump’s policies appear gratuitously cruel, their real aim is often to silence opposition and force institutions/individuals into complicity.
  • Robin (43:59): “Cruelty is not the point. The goal is to silence anybody who has a different thought. That’s the point.”
• References to the McCarthy era: relentless small compromises by individuals and institutions lead to broader “lies of life.”

Casablanca, Hollywood, and Betrayal

[45:44–49:24]

• As an illustration, Robin traces Hollywood’s film and public advocacy against fascism—culminating in Casablanca—but notes how fear led to betrayal and capitulation during the Red Scare.
  • Humphrey Bogart, quoted as saying after testifying for Hollywood’s left, “I’m ready to admit I was a dope [...] They’re too smart for guys like me.”

Repression’s Long Shadow and Resistance

[49:24–53:05]

• Silencing outlasts the showy villains (like McCarthy); its effects ripple through lost expertise (as in U.S.-China policy) and diminished public life.
• On courts as saviors: Robin remains skeptical, reiterating, “We have to save ourselves.” (52:51)

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Notable Quotes & Timestamps

• On U.S. militarization:
  Bouie [03:31]: “What he wants is to use the military against American citizens.”
• On dismantling DEI:
  Bouie [09:13]: “A diverse military with a diverse officer corps is going to be far less willing to turn itself against the American people.”
• On the myth of the ‘mandate’:
  Bouie [11:31]: “The aim of a presidential election isn’t to elect a living avatar of the American people.”
• On generational questions of inclusion:
  Bouie [14:48]: “Who is included in the category of American? A very simple question that comes up again and again and again.”
• On social media critique:
  Bouie [25:38]: “It is name calling, but it’s not substanceless name calling. Part of it just reflects how I viscerally feel.”
• On Trump’s decline vs. media coverage:
  Bouie [29:22]: “If any other political figure gave a speech like that, we would clearly recognize it for what it was, which is someone who is in decline.”
• On practical resistance:
  Bouie [35:19]: “If there’s no button he can press, then that area becomes a site of resistance.”
• On resilience and history:
  Bouie [37:25]: “People who look like me have faced much worse in this country. This is like a bad era [...] it’s not the worst.”
• On policy and silencing:
  Robin [43:59]: “Cruelty is not the point. The goal is to silence anybody who has a different thought. That’s the point.”
• On individual responsibility:
  Robin [52:51]: “We have to save ourselves.”

---

Memorable Moments

• Bouie’s TikTok Critique Turns to a Song:
  A fan turns Bouie’s “JD Vance is a miserable little pig man” into a TikTok song, highlighting the cultural reach and irreverent energy of new media engagement. [25:08]

• Bouie on channeling historical resilience:
  Refers to ancestors facing worse, listing Black intellectuals and activists, underscoring the necessity of both realism and resolve. [37:25–39:48]

• Robin on Hollywood’s Red Scare fears and reversals:
  The arc from Casablanca’s idealism to Bogart’s retreat epitomizes the tragic consequences when fear silences public courage. [46:05–49:24]

• Closing Touch:
  Both Bouie and Robin reiterate that passivity and dread are themselves forms of defeat, and the path forward depends on clear-eyed resistance and collective agency.

  • Bouie (39:48): “I try to have that perspective in my own life and I try to have that perspective about political life.”

---

Thematic Takeaways

• Fear as Paralysis: The greatest danger is not just what authoritarian leaders attempt, but the ways in which public fear and institutional obedience entrench their power.
• Historical Cycles: Questions of inclusion, resistance, and betrayal recur in American life; history, as Bouie observes, is not a guide, but a resource for resilience.
• Agency and Action: Media narratives, government intimidation, and even self-doubt must be met with clarity—about what power actually exists, what legal and political tools remain, and why giving up is never the only option.
• The Role of Media: The press has an obligation to scrutinize all holders of power—not just the perceived political enemy—and to resist narratives of inevitability.

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[Summary created from the full episode transcript. Ads, intros, and outros have been omitted.]

Transcript

[Michael Ohinger]

From WNYC New York, this is ON THE media. I'm Michael Ohinger.

[Unidentified Commentator]

We should use some of these dangerous cities as training grounds.

[Michael Ohinger]

This week, the president mused about using US Forces against the enemy within. New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie suggests it was ever thus.

[Jamelle Bouie]

If you go all the way back to a younger Donald Trump just after the Tiananmen Square massacre, you'll hear Trump praise the Chinese government for its handling of those protests.

[Michael Ohinger]

Also on this week's show, what Bowie wishes the political press covered more.

[Jamelle Bouie]

Trump is not, not nearly as sharp as he was. If any other political figure gave a speech like his speech in Quantico, we would recognize it for what it was, which is someone who is in decline.

[Michael Ohinger]

Plus, the administration's deportations and funding cuts share a common purpose.

[Corey Robin]

Cruelty is not the point. The goal is to silence anybody who has a different thought. That's the point.

[Michael Ohinger]

It's all coming up after this. OnTheMedia is supported by Progressive Insurance. Do you ever find yourself playing the budgeting game? Well, with the name your price tool from Progressive, you can find options that fit your budget and potentially lower your bills. Try [e-mail] Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates Price and coverage match limited by state law. Not available in all states. From WNYC in New York, this is ON THE media. I'm Michael Olinger. This week we're going to do something a little bit different. You're about to hear my extended conversation with Jamel Bouie, a writer I've long admired. Jamel's work in the New York Times, where he's a columnist, often takes the long view, drawing on his deep knowledge of the highs and lows of American history, the Constitution, the Civil War, Reconstruction, the civil rights era, to explain and contextualize what we're living through right now. In 2019, the Columbia Journalism Review called him one of the defining commentators on politics and race in the Trump era. This all makes him sound like a very serious person, which he is. But he's also managed to shake off the stiff stereotype of the gray lady's opinion section. Most days you can find him casually opining on TikTok. He also co hosts a podcast about 90s action thrillers and Cold War politics called Unclear and Present Danger. I began by asking Jamelle to untangle the fraught and frankly frightening speeches delivered on Monday by President Donald Trump and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, who flew in some 800 generals, many from across the world, for an unprecedented rally in Quantico, Virginia.

[Jamelle Bouie]

My initial reaction to all of this, both to Defense Secretary Hegseth's comments and to President Trump's, was that they wanted fundamentally transform the American military from a force that principally deals with external threats to the United States to basically some kind of internal security force.

[Unidentified Commentator]

Only in recent decades did politicians somehow come to believe that our job is to police the far reaches of Kenya and Somalia. While America is under invasion from within, we're under invasion from within.

[Jamelle Bouie]

The constant references from the President to an enemy within, identifying Democratic led cities.

[Unidentified Commentator]

We should use some of these dangerous cities as training grounds for our military.

[Jamelle Bouie]

That to me is a sign that what he wants is to use the military against American citizens. And this is in keeping with statements Trump has made in the past during his first term. General Mark Milley commented in his memoir about his time in the administration that the President asked if soldiers could shoot at protesters during the 2020 protests. And if you go all the way back to a younger Donald Trump just after the Tiananmen Square massacre, you'll hear that younger Donald Trump praise the Chinese government for its handling of those protests. So I understood this to be a reflection of the President's preoccupation, perhaps with using the military as a domestic political force, which is a understatement, to say that this isn't in keeping with the American military tradition and the American tradition of military, military and civilian relations. To say nothing of the fact that it would in my view be a profound violation of the President's duties as President of the United States.

[Michael Ohinger]

Of course, this is all being led by the self styled Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth, who during his speech spoke about the culture of the military and the quote unquote standards that all personnel must meet.

[Pete Hegseth]

Hegseth said, for too long we've promoted too many uniform leaders for the wrong reasons, based on their race, based on gender quotas, based on historic so called firsts. We've pretended that combat arms and non combat arms are the same thing. We've weeded out so called toxic leaders under the guise of double blind psychology assessments promoting risk averse go along to get along conformists. Instead we became the WOKE department. But not anymore.

[Jamelle Bouie]

My parents were in the military. They both were career military. My father was an officer, my sibling, my younger brother served some time in the military and I was in the reserves at the moment. Many people in my family serve in the military. And if you were to zoom out and look at middle class black American families in this country, you would find a disproportionate number of people who have served in the armed forces. And there's a good reason for that. The US Military has been, for all of its many faults as an institution, one of the premier places for integration and meritocratic promotion of people regardless of their racial or ethnic background. In more recent decades, regardless of their gender background, the military has done a lot of work to build an American armed forces that is reflective of the nation at large. And I think the way to understand Hagseth is that he doesn't like that he has an image in his head. He's constantly using the term war fighters, referring to lethality. At some point in that speech, he.

[Pete Hegseth]

Says, you kill people and break things for a living.

[Jamelle Bouie]

You know, most of these people work in logistics, Right? Like that's what the US Military is. Yes. It exists to defend the United States, to project power, and this occasionally involves killing people. Maintaining the readiness of the military has much more to do with how and where the US Military is going to procure tens of millions of shells for its artillery, and less to do with making sure everyone can deadlift 250 pounds. Hagseth has this idea in his mind that the military is all this Hollywood picture of special forces operators.

[Pete Hegseth]

It all starts with physical fitness and appearance. Frankly, it's tiring to look out at combat formations or really any formation and see fat troops. Likewise, it's completely unacceptable to see fat generals and admirals in the halls of the Pentagon and leading commands around the country and the world. It's a bad look. It is bad. And it's not who we are.

[Jamelle Bouie]

He sees, he says so as much in the speech, he sees the promotion of women and non whites and the recognition and promotion of transgender people and other queer Americans in the military as taking away from this.

[Pete Hegseth]

Promotions across the joint force will be based on one thing.

[Jamelle Bouie]

Merit.

[Pete Hegseth]

Colorblind, gender neutral, merit based.

[Jamelle Bouie]

You demand a certain set of aesthetics that he thinks is equivalent with ineffective armed forces. He mentions in basic training, drill sergeants can use physical force against trainees.

[Pete Hegseth]

We're empowering drill sergeants to instill healthy fear in new recruits, ensuring that future warfighters are forged.

[Jamelle Bouie]

He wants to get rid of anonymous reporting.

[Pete Hegseth]

No more frivolous complaints. No more anonymous complaints. No more repeat complainants. No more smearing reputations. No more endless waiting. No more legal limbo. No more sidetracking careers. No more walking on eggshells.

[Jamelle Bouie]

So that, let's say you are a soldier who has experienced bigotry from someone in your command, or you are a woman who has experienced sexual assault. A real problem or issue the military has had, you may have a harder time getting that addressed.

[Michael Ohinger]

You mentioned your family. If the military has benefited from a broad and diverse membership, why strategically would Hegseth be antagonizing his ranks?

[Jamelle Bouie]

I think it is darker than simply an aesthetic obsession. I think they probably correctly perceive that a diverse military with a diverse officer corps is going to be far less willing to turn itself against the American people.

[Michael Ohinger]

That is dark.

[Jamelle Bouie]

Wanted to go for the silly part first.

[Michael Ohinger]

No, I appreciate that. Start light. You've written that the dismantling of DEI programs is, quote, the reintroduction of something like segregation. What do you see as being undone even outside the military?

[Jamelle Bouie]

I think first and foremost what is being pushed is this notion that diversity itself is evidence of a lack of qualifications and a lack of competence and a lack of merit. You'll have someone like Pete Hegseth, who, by the qualifications we expect of the typical secretary of defense, is not particularly qualified to be secretary of Defense. But he goes on and on about merit.

[Michael Ohinger]

He's a Fox News host.

[Jamelle Bouie]

I'm trying to be polite. Yes. He's a television personality. He has no experience in the kind of work that the secretary of defense does, and he's going on about merit. So does merit have anything to do with qualifications? Apparently not. Hegseth has removed high ranking officers from positions of leadership who had 20, 30 years of experience, nothing but strong and clean records under the guise that they had not been promoted according to merit. Merit, in this usage, seems to be a certain image of who belongs in elite institutions, who belongs in leadership, and it isn't everyone.

[Michael Ohinger]

We're speaking on Wednesday, and your latest column is about this idea that the president has a mandate. This is the term, the framing that we hear from the administration.

[Unidentified Commentator]

America has given us an unprecedented and powerful mandate.

[Michael Ohinger]

It's also something you believe that like too much of the rest of us, the press, civil society, is kind of just bought into that he won an election and therefore he can do what he wants because he represents the will of the people. Why isn't that right?

[Jamelle Bouie]

The aim of a presidential election isn't to elect a living avatar of the American people. It's to elect what the framers described as a chief magistrate, someone to lead the government and to ensure its compliance with Congress and the Constitution and also set an agenda for the government. Let's say the President wins comfortably 4, 5, 6 points, but then the other party wins the legislature. Who has the mandate? No one does, because there is no mandate. What there is is a charge from the public to work together. And even when the public gives one party control of the federal government, that doesn't erase the fact that the public is still big and fractious and diverse, and the Congress represents that. And that in a system based off collaboration and consensus, there's still an obligation to work together. Because even in our polarized and divided time, not every Republican represents the same exact kind of constituency. Or that goes for Democrats as well. And where this is supposed to work is that the president is recognizing that in crafting his proposals, his policies, and working with Congress to get something done. What Trump is claiming instead is that he's basically elected, sort of like America's king, and he doesn't have to do any of that because his will represents what the people want. And I just. I just think that's very silly. It has no basis in reality.

[Michael Ohinger]

I've heard you invoke the idea of what the framers wanted or intended, and I know that that's kind of like the express goal of your column, which is to use history to kind of help contextualize current events. How do you square this feeling that history should help guide our country and how we understand it at a time when we live under a presidential administration that's trying to erase and distort history, that's kind of happy to cherry pick or ignore what the framers intended?

[Jamelle Bouie]

Yeah, I mean, it's not just what the framers intended, although I do make quite a bit of reference to the founding era. It's the whole sweep of American history. And really, it's trying to suppress or erase those parts of American history that provide a challenge to the kind of vision of the country that I think the administration has, which is the United States as this white European, Christian country for whom others are interlopers or marginal figures at best, and for whom events, institutions like slavery, are side stories to the main event. And for someone like myself who views history not so much as a guide, but as a way of exploring questions that are recurring in the American experience, I'll put it that way. Right. Like, there are things that just keep coming up for Americans in trying to live together in this big society, trying to govern ourselves. And the utility of history is that you have all these case studies. You can see how other groups of Americans at different times, in different conditions, approach the same or similar questions, like what.

[Michael Ohinger]

What's come up time and time again that you think can clarify what we're living through right now.

[Jamelle Bouie]

So a perfect example. Who is included in the category of American? A very simple Question that comes up again and again and again. When the Declaration of Independence is like, fresh on the paper and you have enslaved Africans throughout the colonies saying, aren't we included in this too? Doesn't this include us? Aren't we all men as well? This obviously comes up again in the battles over slavery before the Civil War and then after the Civil War when we have emancipated 4 million enslaved people, you're left with this question, where did they go? How do they belong? Can they be included in this society? And this question of who gets to be an American extends beyond black Americans at one point included, like Irish Americans and German Americans in the 1840s, it includes Asian Americans, specifically Chinese Americans in the 1880s. It includes, when you look at a recurring question like who belongs? At each point, participants are looking back either at their own experiences or at previous times in history. So Abraham Lincoln, in his response to Dred Scott, is looking back at the framing era and seeing examples of black Americans being included. Frederick Douglass, in his advocacy for the inclusion of Chinese Americans into American society, is looking back at his experience as an enslaved person. The Civil Rights movement is looking back at Reconstruction. So that's all to say that, like, that's an example of what I mean. This is a persistent question, who gets to be an American? Who is included? And a knowledge of history helps us, I think, tackle that question. We can see how other Americans answered it and what we can take from their answers.

[Michael Ohinger]

Coming up in the second part of my conversation with New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie, we get into his habit of name calling. This is on the media.

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[Michael Ohinger]

This is on the media. I'm Michael Ohringer. Now for more of my conversation with New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie. In 2022, Jamel made the jump to TikTok, where he dishes out a more casual brand of political analysis for over 270,000 followers, sometimes while walking his dog around Charlottesville, Virginia.

[Jamelle Bouie]

The the algorithm is really not happy about my politics videos, so but it is happy about my history videos. So we're going to talk a little more about reconstruction and I've been thinking more, more about it since last night.

[Michael Ohinger]

I asked Jamel how he came to embrace new media.

[Jamelle Bouie]

Part of it is just my own interest in the social Internet. I'm 38. I was in college, I believe, when Twitter got started. When I was younger, in high school, I was on like Internet forums. Like, it's just part of my life. I'm not Unlike someone maybe 10 years younger than me or 15 years younger than me. I'm not what you call digital native. I have firm memories of the analog world. I like analog things. But I've always been interested in the social Internet and engaging on the Internet in social ways. And so part of it's just that these are newer platforms. Short form video is like a newer kind of thing to do. Let me give it a shot. Let me give it a try and see if I can't do a version of what I do on the page via this. Part of it is very intentional, which is that I don't just want to be communicating with New York Times readers. That's a big audience. It's in many ways an influential audience. It is an audience that I think extends further than maybe people might realize. Like, for example, every year I get emails from high school students who are doing a project on newspaper, commercial, whatever, and they're like, yeah, we're reading your columns. Could you answer some questions?

[Michael Ohinger]

But the fact that they're assigned to read your work also communicates something.

[Jamelle Bouie]

Exactly, exactly. I want to encounter a broader set of people, and that necessarily means going where the people are. And the people are on short form video and long form video too. That's YouTube.

[Michael Ohinger]

Yeah. And you post a lot, which you kind of have to do. You even posted a video on Christmas this past year, and what I see you doing is something pretty unique on social media, where it feels like you have to sacrifice depth for an audience. Often you talk about history and politics without dumbing things down, and yet you've still been able to build a pretty good audience. How would you say the craft differs from, say, making videos on TikTok versus writing the column for the Times?

[Jamelle Bouie]

That's interesting. Obviously it differs in very practical ways, right? Like, it takes longer to write a column. You're communicating in a different way. It's a more formal form of communication. You have more time to consider what you're saying. But then there are ways in which it's actually not that much different. Like, for me, the writing is like the last stage in a process that involves a lot of reading and reporting. And in the same way, making a short form video, at least making the kind of short form video that I'm trying to make, it rests on a foundation of research and knowledge. I'll also say that for me, I didn't get into writing by way of journalism. I got into writing by way of public speaking. And like school and so much of my process now as a writer is pegged towards public speaking. I'm almost reading my stuff out loud to see if it just like sound well to an audience.

[Michael Ohinger]

You read your New York Times columns out loud?

[Jamelle Bouie]

Yeah, in the editing process, I read them out loud. I do that with an ear towards, if I were giving this to an audience, how would it sound?

[Michael Ohinger]

One video of yours that's really stuck with me and I think may have been one of the reasons I subscribed to you on TikTok was seeing a video you made shortly after the election about the fear that many of your followers were experiencing. You responded to messages and comments you were getting about how this was the last presidential election. You disagreed with that sentiment and you explained why.

[Jamelle Bouie]

So earlier in our conversation, we talked a little bit about the notion of the public, right? And that the public isn't like a singular thing and that it's fluid and constructs itself and reconstructs itself. That TikTok both came out of responses to people who follow me, but also that underlying sense of what I think a public is, which itself owes itself to years of study and reading and research and all this kind of thing. In that video, I'm kind of trying to condense all of that stuff into something that is relevant. And the ultimate message is that just because this is a very serious result and will have very serious implications doesn't mean That I think the phrase I use is the politics are over and critically doesn't mean that you have lost your capacity for agency and that your agency still matters, that political life still matters, and that we'll see it mattering pretty soon, which I think has clearly been the case.

[Michael Ohinger]

You mean that this election was not a sign of absolute authority from the Trump administration and that there would still be many, many opportunities to express ourselves democratically, to protest, to stand up, et cetera.

[Jamelle Bouie]

Right. And to just contest claims being made about the world and claims being made about presidential power. I mean, I don't think I said this, but that in turn becomes like a basis for maybe new ways of doing politics and new ways of building alliances and coalitions, maybe constructing new kinds of majorities. I see so much of this as being fluid and not static. For me, that's just a conclusion to draw from my relatively short life doing this. My first job in journalism was under Barack Obama, and now here I am and it's Donald Trump's second term. Very obviously, things change rapidly.

[Michael Ohinger]

One thing I think that your fans appreciate about you is that you don't mince words, particularly on social media. On Blue sky, you've called RFK Jr. A eugenicist freak.

[Jamelle Bouie]

Just gotta read him.

[Michael Ohinger]

While reading a biography about Antonin Scalia, you made a post referring to him as, quote, a run of the mill gutter bigot. You're loving it, I can tell you.

[Jamelle Bouie]

This feels like a negative ad.

[Michael Ohinger]

I'm just, I'm just reading the quote.

[Jamelle Bouie]

It's okay.

[Michael Ohinger]

And on TikTok, you call JD Vance a miserable little pig man who no one respects, who almost certainly does not respect himself. And a fan of yours ended up making a song out of that clip on Tick Tock.

[Jamelle Bouie]

He's a little pig man, pig man, pig man. He's a little pig man. J.D. vance. He's a little, He's a little, He's a little pig man. He's a little pig man. Big man, big man.

[Michael Ohinger]

Clearly you think it's funny. I think it's funny. It also catches my eye because the language is so much more visceral than what I'm used to hearing from New York Times columnists who are often, you know, let's be honest, like pretty self serious and very, very cautious. Why the name calling?

[Jamelle Bouie]

So it is name calling, but it's not substanceless name calling. Part of it just reflects how I viscerally feel. That's the language that comes out of my actual reaction to some of this stuff. I think the Scalia thing was in relation to his comments about the Voting Rights act during the oral arguments over Shelby County v. Holder, refers to it as a racial entitlement. It makes me angry. You're telling me that a law that basically enfranchised 15% of the country, that brought meaningful democracy to millions of Americans, including my, like, grandparents, is some kind of racial entitlement? That the only reason it exists is because people are afraid of being called racist? Like, come on, give me a break. My name calling is both a way to express my disrespect. Like, I do not respect this opinion. I do not respect this person for giving it. But in the case of J.D. vance, here's a guy who barely a decade ago was telling his friends that Donald Trump was Hitler.

[Michael Ohinger]

Yeah.

[Jamelle Bouie]

And is now the most MAGA of MAGA boosters you can imagine. And who clearly is calibrating according to what he thinks will be the most politically advantageous for him. Who has been willing to demagogue innocent people. I'm thinking here about the Haitian residents of Springfield, Ohio, for whom he spread, I'll call it a libel that they were stealing and eating their neighbor's pets. A kind of claim that has roots in long standing forms of racist dehumanization against Haitians specifically. And then he defends it. If I need to tell a story to get the media to pay attention to the problems facing the American people, then I'll do it. This is a rough paraphrase of what he said in response. And that, to me, is not just an ugly thing to say about people who were his constituents in Ohio, but just an ugly thing to say about anyone, period. But it, to my mind, demonstrates just a profound lack of principle. The kind of lack of principle that might lead you to describe the person as a little pig. I feel like I'm just calling a spade a spade here. RFK Jr. I think that comment was after the initial measles outbreak in Texas, and he's asked about the children who are getting sick and dying of measles. And he says something to the effect of only a sick child is gonna die of measles, which is either the most tautological thing you'll ever hear or an expression of some other set of ideas, which he has also expressed about purity, about his skepticism of modern medical treatment being based in the sense that they're kind of adulterating the human body.

[Michael Ohinger]

That the weak deserve to die, or.

[Jamelle Bouie]

That we are doing something harmful when we don't let the weak die of natural causes, die of diseases that they catch that what you want is a world in which people get sick and then they get better. And then if they're better, they're stronger and if they don't survive, well, they were just sick anyway. We have a word for that, and that's eugenics. Now, the freak part. Yeah, that's mean. The eugenics part is accurate observation about RFK's ideology.

[Michael Ohinger]

Speaking of calling a spade a spade, you have been critical of news organizations for not writing more about Donald Trump and his mental and physical acuity. You wrote, quote, he hasn't just deteriorated, he's clearly cognitively impaired. And it is bizarre to me that this isn't just a major story.

[Jamelle Bouie]

Yeah, I mean, I wrote this in my column last year. There is clear evidence that Donald Trump is not nearly as sharp and capable as he was in 2016 and 17. And he wasn't particularly sharp and capable then either. His speech in Quantico, where he seems to be barely able to keep himself up, is constantly making bizarre digressions, is kind of just droning on and on. I think if any other political figure gave a speech like that, we would clearly recognize it for what it was, which is someone who is in decline. And what I do find strange is that we had not long ago a little media self flagellation over not being forthright enough about Biden being impaired.

[Michael Ohinger]

Yeah.

[Jamelle Bouie]

And now here we are with the President who just a couple days ago shared a bizarre AI video about a conspiracy theory about some sort of magical beds that heal all issues. That is not the behavior of someone who is fully in control of their entire capacities.

[Michael Ohinger]

This is like a fascination among QAnon adherents that the government has access to a cure all medical bed, but for some reason is withholding it.

[Jamelle Bouie]

Right. I just think that we should be consistent in the political press and maybe the fact that the currently serving President United States may not have the capacity to handle his job in full is something we should be talking about. Especially I'll say, given the evidence that he has outsourced important parts of his job to other people in the administration without any real public discussion of this.

[Michael Ohinger]

Like what?

[Jamelle Bouie]

There is some reporting that the strikes on boats in the Caribbean is very much a project of Stephen Miller. And it may be even possible that Stephen Miller is directing those strikes, which seems like something the public should know. Russell Vaught, the head of the Office of Management and Budget, essentially being a one man demolition derby for the federal bureaucracy feels like something that should be an area of concern for the public. I would literally like to know who is doing the work of president right now? Is it Donald Trump who seems to be golfing all the time, or is it someone else?

[Michael Ohinger]

I just want to return to TikTok. A lot of what you're doing there I see as a kind of modern style of journalism where you're fielding comments and concerns from your followers, responding to their anxieties. What are you hearing most from your viewers there?

[Jamelle Bouie]

I think the overwhelming thing is just a sense that there's nothing that can be done to hold Donald Trump accountable or to stop Donald Trump. And I think my response often is depends on what the things are, what's happening, what the circumstances. To use an example, if Trump is pushing his Republican allies in the states to try to gerrymander a Republican majority next year, that is maybe a sign that Donald Trump does not think he is on the firmest political standing. And it's maybe a sign that the kind of lurid fantasies I think that some people can fall into about canceling elections and so on and so forth are far from reality.

[Michael Ohinger]

What you're really talking about here is fear, a pervasive fear.

[Jamelle Bouie]

Right.

[Michael Ohinger]

You've said that fear is the mind killer. It's the little death. Be not afraid. I don't know what you're quoting there.

[Jamelle Bouie]

Really?

[Michael Ohinger]

Yeah.

[Jamelle Bouie]

It's dune.

[Michael Ohinger]

Oh, it's dune. Okay.

[Jamelle Bouie]

It's dune.

[Michael Ohinger]

Okay. Okay. On one hand, Trump may want a third term. He may be signaling pretty strongly that he's going to be screwing with elections. He is already threatening to screw with the postal service. On the other hand, it's not so simple because the federal government doesn't control elections. How do you balance a rational response to what this administration is doing, which should frighten us with. With a sense that it can go too far quite easily.

[Jamelle Bouie]

It's important to recognize what the executive branch of the President has direct control over under any administration, and where there is no particular mechanism in the most literal sense. So an example, last month, two months ago, the president issued this executive order mandating voter ID and all these things. Things. And a lot of people very understandably freaked out he's going to try to subvert the elections. And the thing that I argued is that there is no mechanism here. What can the President do to force the Virginia State Board of Elections to change the way they do things? Well, the president can engage in political coercion, can use the bully pulpit to try to pressure these other institutions, individuals and groups into doing what he likes. There's no button he can press to make it happen, pay Attention to this, this actually really matters, because if there's no button he can press, then that area becomes a site of resistance. You're seeing this with his attempts to deploy the National Guard. To deploy the National Guard to Chicago. In the absence of any kind of actual real emergency, he needs the permission of the governor. He needs to ask. And if the governor is going to say no, then that's it. And so what you noticed with his threats to deploy the National Guard to Chicago, Governor of Illinois J.B. pritzker said, no, we don't want them here. And if you send them here, we're going to do everything we can to hold them accountable for any laws they break here. And the president more or less backed down. He still makes the threat, but he's backed down now. He says, oh, well, you know, if Pritzker wants us to bring them in, we will. Recognizing when he is counting on you to believe he has power that he does not actually have, I think is really important.

[Michael Ohinger]

You used the word status quo anti this old normal that we can never return to again, but you believe that we will find a new normal again one day. Do you mind just explaining how you think about that?

[Jamelle Bouie]

So I do think that Trump winning last year marks a definitive break. We're like, in a new place. The kind of damage it's done to, I think, the American constitutional system, it's been done. Any kind of repair is gonna require steps that are maybe more radical than people are accustomed to thinking are necessary. We're in this era, and I think the president's unpopularity, the unpopularity of his agenda is evidence of this, where no one is really won the game here. Both sides are still kind of in this war position and trying to figure out who can establish some kind of new political order. So I think there will be a new political order. I think there will be a new normal. And I think my argument is that it's all very, very contestable right now. It's all extremely contestable that no one is actually one. The country is still quite closely divided. There's still much that can be done if you have, as I do, a more egalitarian and inclusive vision of the country to try to build out the kind of support for that vision.

[Michael Ohinger]

You talked about how fear is the mind killer quoting Dune. That was like nine months ago. And in that time, we've seen Donald Trump and his administration rapidly attempt to consolidate power. This speech at Quantico, the enemy's within, you said it yourself, that is a pretty extreme escalation of Using the military against citizens for unknown thought crimes. Yet when you talk about this stuff, you seem like really calm and collected. Is there anything that you're afraid of? Like when you pull up the New York Times in the morning, do you not feel that knot in your stomach?

[Jamelle Bouie]

I obviously there are things I fear. There are outcomes that I fear. I fear an outcome where, yeah, Trump does manage to create a consolidated authoritarian regime. I fear an outcome where basic rights that Americans take for granted are sharply restricted. I fear an outcome where there is violence done to people, there's violence being done to people now where there's even more violence doing done to people. These are real objects of fear. I think for me in my day to day life, I'm not going to be the decisive figure here, right? So fear is a healthy emotion, it's a rational emotion in many cases. It's something that helps us calibrate ourselves and our response to the world around us. But fully giving in to fear, fully embracing fear, being afraid as just a state of being renders one unable to act. It makes it hard to think clearly about the situation you're in. I'm constantly telling my kids, and my oldest especially, it's okay to feel fear, it's okay to be afraid. But that cannot be the way you go through life because you'll never experience anything, you'll never do anything if what you're afraid of is being embarrassed or what you're afraid of is making a mistake or failing. I try to have that perspective in my own life and I try to have that perspective about political life. The other thing I'll say I grew up in Virginia. I was born in the South. My family is from the American South. My family has been in the American south since at least the early 19th century. Were descendants of enslaved people. And it's just simply the case that like people who look like me have faced much worse in this country. This is like a bad era, I'd say for the United States. It's not the worst, if not just people that I may be related to, but people in my rough position. The kind of writers that I look up to, like W.E.B. du Bois or Anna Julia Cooper or Ida B. Wells, if they can do their work. Ida B. Wells chased out of her home by a lynch mob. Walter White, the head of the NAACP and not caring in Breaking Bad. Walter White can investigate lynchings as a light skinned black man, but a black man nonetheless. This is serious, but not. It's not that bad.

[Michael Ohinger]

Jamel, thanks so much for giving us so much of your time.

[Jamelle Bouie]

Thank you.

[Michael Ohinger]

Jamelle Bowie is an opinion columnist at the New York Times. Coming up, the politics of fear have deep roots in this country. This is on the media.

[On the Media Announcer]

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[Brian Reed]

I'm Brian Reed. When I created s town, I looked at how secrets lies and the stories we tell shape a small rural town. Now on my podcast, question everything, I'm going bigger. Hi, this message is for Senator Lindsey Graham. I'm hoping I head to Washington to take on a law that gives tech.

[Jamelle Bouie]

Companies sweeping immunity is how these companies have gotten rich.

[Corey Robin]

Senator Durbin's office.

[Brian Reed]

Join me as I go after big tech on question everything from placement theory and KCRW out Thursdays.

[Michael Ohinger]

Wherever you get your podcasts, this is ON the media. I'm Michael Oenger. We just heard from Jamelle Bouie about how fear can get in the way of action when it comes to political resistance. Instance, it's a subject that Brooklyn College professor Corey Robin, author of the History of a Political Idea, spoke to Brooke about at length earlier this year. Robin explained how by threatening deportations and funding cuts, the Trump administration forces institutions and individuals to make a calculation.

[Corey Robin]

The leaders of these institutions, the people who work at these institutions, they have to make that calculation. Do we speak up and incur the further wrath of the government or do we quietly cooperate, keep our heads down and hopefully we'll come out okay? The problem, and this is what happened during the McCarthy era, is you start doing that day in, day out, and before you know it, the very reason you were making the sacrifice, namely to protect the institution, you've already betrayed that goal. When we read about people who lived under communist regimes in the 1970s, the 1980s, that's what they were talking about. The daily cooperation with lies, not lies that Fox News is trumpeting, not lies that are easy to Identify. But a lie of the life.

[On the Media Announcer]

A lie of the life. What do you mean?

[Corey Robin]

If you're at a university, the reason that you work there is not to make a lot of money. It's because you believe in research, in teaching, you believe in knowledge, all of these things. If then you yourself are part of an enterprise where you're firing people and you don't fight it vigorously, you start living a life of lies, of betrayal, and that is, I think, a lie of life.

[On the Media Announcer]

During Trump's first term, Adam Serwer coined the phrase the cruelty is the point to describe his policies. But you offer an alternative read. You say silence is the point.

[Corey Robin]

Yeah, it wasn't just Adam Serwer. This really became a very influential slogan among liberals. The idea is that the people who are doing these terrible things enjoy humiliating, enjoy degrading other people. Now, I would certainly not deny that to some degree describes what Donald Trump is doing.

[On the Media Announcer]

Well, just look at Marco Rubio alone.

[Corey Robin]

Yes, but that's not why the funding is being pulled from all of these universities, why funding is being pulled from every state, why employees all across the federal government are being fired. So let's take the case of support for Israel. The Trump administration has no interest in being cruel about that issue. They're trying to produce a certain kind of belief system by silencing those who would disagree with them. This was very true during the McCarthy era. McCarthy did seem like a cruel individual, but that's not why the federal government, the state's governments, the whole society sought to eliminate all of these different beliefs about civil rights, democracy and so forth. They wanted to produce a country that was much, much more conservative and didn't subscribe to those beliefs. Cruelty is not the point. The goal is to silence anybody who has a different thought. That's the point.

[On the Media Announcer]

And back in the 40s and the 50s, what was being suppressed was anti fascist ideas, anti Nazi, pro civil rights, pro democracy, pro workers rights, pro free speech. And then there was the film Casablanca.

[Unidentified Commentator]

Don't you sometimes wonder if it's worth all this? I mean, what you're fighting for? We might as well question why we breathe. If we stop breathing, we'll die. If we stop fighting our enemies, the world will die. What of it? It'll be out of its mouth. You know how you sound, Mr. Blaine? Like a man who's trying to convince himself of something he doesn't believe in his heart.

[Corey Robin]

It's an iconic film, but it comes out of an effort to make left wing ideas seem like common sense American ideas. There was a film Called Tender Comrade. That was written by Dalton Trumbo, who was a member of the Communist Party. And in it, Ginger Rogers says, share and share alike. That's democracy.

[Jamelle Bouie]

We could run the joint like a democracy, and if anything comes up, we'll just call a meeting. That'd be wonderful. Oh, we could just do lots of things.

[Corey Robin]

And Casablanca really comes out of that firmament. It was really an effort to make the cause of fighting fascism, not just a political cause, but in the form of Humphrey Bogart, a human cause. You know, what is Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca? What is his struggle? It's a guy who was betrayed by a girl who, because of that, has become cynical about everything. And then in the course of finding her again and falling in love with her again, he discovers that he's going to fight fascism. And it was a great film. And the reason why it's so important is in the late 1940s, when the house Committee on American Activities went after Hollywood, they hauled up a group of screenwriters, directors and so forth, who were called the Hollywood 10. And all of liberal Hollywood rallied behind the Hollywood 10. They formed something called the Committee on the First Amendment. And it include all your favorite stars. Gene Kelly, Katharine Hepburn, Frank Sinatra, Groucho Marx. It also included Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall. Yes, and there's a great photograph of the two of them marching. And in Washington, I think it was October 26, 1947, for the First Amendment.

[On the Media Announcer]

A group of actors even launched a radio show called Hollywood Fights Back.

[Unidentified Commentator]

This is Humphrey Bogart. We said to ourselves, it can happen here. We saw American citizens denied the right to speak by elected representatives of the people. We saw police take citizens from the stand like criminals after they'd been recovered, refused the right to defend themselves.

[Corey Robin]

The Hollywood studios get very, very nervous. And Bogart makes a turn. And in March of the following year, he writes an article called I'm no Communist. It was in Photoplay magazine. He says, I went to Washington. It was an ill advised, foolish trip. I'm ready to admit I was a dope. And maybe somebody like fdr, he says, could handle those babies in Washington, but they're too smart for guys like me. On the one hand, it's sort of funny the way he talks about this, but there's a real sadness to me. Humphrey Bogart made this iconic film as somebody who found himself by fighting not just against fascism, but regimes of fear. My daughter knows who Humphrey Bogart is at the age of 16 today because of that film. And then in real life, to engage In a complete reversal, this is what I meant before when I said, this is the lie of life. It's such an utter betrayal of all the reasons why we love Humphrey Bogart.

[On the Media Announcer]

And with regard to the long term consequences of this Red Scare, it was a profoundly effective silencing campaign. But McCarthy did get his comeuppance in the Army McCarthy hearings when a lawyer said, you've done enough.

[Michael Ohinger]

Have you no sense of decency, sir?

[Unidentified Commentator]

At long last, have you left no sense of decency?

[Corey Robin]

It certainly brought down Joseph McCarthy. It didn't bring down McCarthyism or the Red Scare. He was brought down not just because he went after the Republican Party and the military, but that he had already performed his service to the Republican Party. He was so helpful to winning elections in 1950, 1952 and 1954. And having completed that service, he could be dispensed with. But the ism persisted. Immigration, deportations continued, suppression of heterodoxy in labor unions, in universities continued. And one of the long term repercussions could even be felt in American foreign policy. One of the targets of the second Red Scare were left to leaning people in the State Department, oftentimes called the China Hands, people who really knew China and East Asia, and they were purged from the State Department. And many people, including David Halberstam in the Best and the Brightest, claim that in losing those people who were experts on China and on Asia, the country set itself up for what became the Vietnam War that destroyed so many millions of lives in Vietnam and so many lives in the United States as well. That's a particularly dramatic consequence of political repression, of political fear. But in the long term, that's the kind of thing we have to be thinking about, particularly in an age of climate change where we are facing large conflagrations. When all those scientists and researchers are purged in silence, where will we be with the fire next time or the flood next time?

[On the Media Announcer]

During the first Trump administration, you came on the show and argued against those who were invoking the word fascism. You know, douse your hair doesn't need to be on fire.

[Corey Robin]

I was afraid you were going to ask me about this. I was skeptical in the first Trump administration that they had the kind of power and the kind of authority that many of their critics feared that they.

[On the Media Announcer]

Had, which they didn't have in the first administration.

[Corey Robin]

Right. And I was skeptical coming into this second administration that they would be able to wield the kind of power that people feared they would wield. And I have since turned out to be wrong. They have set off multiple conflagrations, and I have been shaken out of my skepticism.

[On the Media Announcer]

You don't think the courts will save us?

[Corey Robin]

I never thought the courts would save us. In fact, the McCarthy era, I think, is a good example of this. When the courts finally started intervening and striking down a lot of the instruments of the second Red Scare, it was after the Red Scare had succeeded. I always feel like the courts come late. We have to save ourselves.

[On the Media Announcer]

Corey, thank you so much.

[Jamelle Bouie]

Thank you.

[On the Media Announcer]

Corey Robin is a distinguished professor of political science at Brooklyn College, and he's also the author of the History of a Political Idea.

[Michael Ohinger]

Brooks spoke to Corey Robin earlier this year. That's it for this week's show. On the Media is produced by Molly Rosen, Rebecca Clark Callender and and Candice Wong. Our technical director is Jennifer Munson with engineering from Jared Paul. Eloise Blondio is our senior producer and our executive producer is Katia Rogers. On the Media is produced by wnyc. Brooke Gladstone will be back next week. I'm Michael Ohinger.

[Brian Reed]

I'm Ira Flato, host of Science Friday. For over 30 years, our team has been reporting high quality news about science, technology and medicine. News you won't get anywhere else. And now that political news is 24 7, our audience is turning to us to know about the really important stuff in their lives. Cancer, climate change, genetic engineering, childhood diseases. Our sponsors know the value of science and health news. For more sponsorship information, visit sponsorship.wnyc.org.