David Frum’s Unified Thesis of Trump’s Failings

Summary

Podcast Summary: Talking Feds

Episode: David Frum’s Unified Thesis of Trump’s Failings
Host: Harry Litman
Guest: David Frum (Senior Editor, The Atlantic)
Release Date: June 4, 2026

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Episode Overview

This episode is a one-on-one deep dive between Harry Litman and David Frum, centering on Frum’s new article in The Atlantic, “Why Trump Lost.” The discussion goes far beyond foreign policy, positioning Trump’s conduct—especially regarding the Iran war and domestic governance—as a unified story of recurring personality flaws and institutional failures. Frum delineates six core personality traits underlying Trump’s leadership style and failings, drawing connections between his foreign misadventures and domestic corruption.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Why Trump “Lost” in Iran ([01:41]–[06:32])

• Setting the Stage: Frum addresses Trump’s inability to achieve any of his stated (and shifting) goals in Iran: preventing their nuclear program, helping the Iranian people, destroying the missile program, and securing navigation through the Strait of Hormuz.
  • “There’s a list of them and he’s achieving, it looks like, none of them.” — David Frum [02:11]
• Lack of Strategy and Public Buy-In:
  • Trump failed to seek Congressional approval or public support, making unilateral decisions without building a coalition or providing explanation.
  • Historically, America enters difficult wars only with public and Congressional backing, which Trump never sought.
  • “He did it as a solo action… No support in the country, no support in the Congress, no explanation to what he was doing.” — David Frum [05:19]
  • When unforeseen difficulties arose, Trump was left with no support to bear the costs or move forward.

2. Trump's Leadership Flaws: The “Six Sins” ([06:32]–[14:06])

• Litman recites Frum’s schema: Arrogant, reckless, hasty, procedural loathing, panicky, gullible, and can’t lead.
• Focus on Gullibility:
  • Trump is the victim of his own con—believing that bold action alone guarantees victory, with no contingency planning or process.
  • The Iranian regime, knowing their very lives are at stake if they lose, adopts a strategy to simply outlast Trump, exploiting his impatience and unpredictability.
  • “…there was no, he allowed no one to bring forward, here’s how it might go wrong… all he is, is the victim of his own wishes, about which he is extremely gullible.” — David Frum [10:36]
• Procedural Aversion:
  • Trump’s hatred for process left the National Security Council sidelined, demotivated, and rarely convened.
  • This absence of structured debate or dissent means Trump governs essentially without institutional restraint or thoughtful planning.

3. Domestic Fallout – Corruption and Vindictiveness ([21:47]–[24:47])

• Scale of Corruption:
  • Frum asserts Trump’s second term is defined by both personal and systemic corruption—what was “dishonest millions” in the first term has escalated to “dishonest billions.”
  • “The single strongest throughline in this second term has been the scale of the plunder… I don’t think you should use [‘the most corrupt’] language because the most corrupt is Trump two. The second most corrupt is Trump one.” — David Frum [22:01]
• Motives:
  • Frum lists Trump’s priorities as plunder, vindictive retaliation against enemies, ego gratification, and personal enrichment, even extending to “interior design” (morphing the nation’s capital to his taste).
• Political Consequences:
  • Despite risk, Trump appears unconcerned about losing Congressional protection, possibly banking on Democratic disarray or miscalculation.

4. The IRS “Settlement” Scandal ([24:47]–[27:11])

• Explosive Illegality:
  • The episode highlights Trump’s creation of executive-controlled funds (via sham litigation or dubious settlements) utterly bypassing Congressional authorization—a potential constitutional crisis.
  • “It just looks like stealing. Right. It’s as if the President drove up to… Now I’ve got a wheelbarrow. Let me in.” — Frum [25:30]
  • Drawing a comparison to King Charles I, Frum warns this upends core constitutional architecture: “No spending money without Congress saying so.”

5. Unified Failure Mode – Personal Flaws Across Domains ([14:49]–[16:49])

• Failure in Every Sphere:
  • Trump’s lack of forethought, inability to plan, and aversion to dissent manifest in all realms—whether January 6th, the Iran War, or domestic governance.
  • “…he didn’t think January 6th through, he didn’t think the Iran thing through. He doesn’t think things through. And that is a consistent problem.” — Frum [15:29]
• Institutional Safeguards Needed:
  • Frum emphasizes the necessity of checks, procedures, and bureaucracy to temper such presidential impulses, which Trump either ignores or dismantles.

6. Impact on America’s Global Standing ([16:49]–[20:42])

• Declining US Primacy:
  • Trump’s failures have emboldened China, Russia, and regional rivals, while eroding alliances.
  • The core folly: trying to balance against China one-on-one (“G2”) rather than marshaling allied power.
  • “The only way the US can peacefully compete with China… is by bringing more allies into the picture.” — Frum [18:34]
  • Because Trump’s America is perceived as transactional and unreliable, even democratic allies are now wary, less willing to follow US leadership in the future.

7. Will There Be Political Accountability? ([27:11]–[30:21])

• Likelihood of Midterm Repercussions:
  • Frum is skeptical whether even major losses will prompt true accountability, thanks to ongoing Republican enablement and sharp divisions in the Democratic Party.
  • “…it’ll depend very much on how the Democrats do and if they come out of the midterms feeling like the so-called progressives have the better of the argument…I think a lot of them will be willing to let Donald Trump off the hook.” — Frum [29:45]
  • Both parties, for different reasons, may fail to pursue tough investigations or reforms even after significant abuses.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Iran:

  “He did it as a solo action with no allies except Israel. No support in the country, no support in the Congress, no explanation to what he was doing.” — David Frum [05:19]

• On Trump’s Leadership Style:

  “He rules by command. And so he settles for…that’s why he doesn’t have a legislative agenda. If he can’t command it, he doesn’t want to do it.” — Frum [12:20]

• On Corruption:

  “The single strongest throughline in this second term has been the scale of the plunder.” — Frum [22:01]

• On Constitutionality of Trump’s Treasury Seizures:

  “If the executive wants money, it has to ask the legislature…The last head of government of an English speaking country to try in a serious way to create revenue that the legislature had no say over was Charles I of England. And the English cut his head off for it.” — Frum [26:12]

• On Unified Failure:

  “We only have one personality, and we have to apply it to many different situations... he doesn’t think things through. And that is a consistent problem.” — Frum [14:49–15:29]

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Important Timestamps

• [01:41] – Opening of substantive discussion
• [02:11] – Frum’s diagnosis of Trump’s failed objectives in Iran
• [06:32] – Introduction of Trump’s six core failings
• [10:36] – Gullibility, fantasies, and lack of process
• [14:49] – Unifying “failure mode”; connection to January 6th
• [18:34] – The necessity of alliances to contest China
• [22:01] – Corruption and personal enrichment as a guiding motive
• [25:01] – The IRS “settlement” and the principle of Congressional oversight over spending
• [27:52] – Skepticism about political or legal accountability post-midterms

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Tone and Style

• The conversation is direct, analytical, and at times laced with dark wit (e.g., “It’s as if the President drove up to… Now I’ve got a wheelbarrow. Let me in.”).
• Frum maintains a calm but urgent warning about the consequences of Trump’s style—deeply personalized leadership, corrosion of institutions, disregard for norms, and unprecedented corruption.

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Takeaways

• Trump’s methods—in foreign policy and at home—are not isolated blunders but emanations of core traits: arrogance, aversion to process, self-serving impulsivity, and disregard for legal or constitutional guardrails.
• Failures in Iran are emblematic of a broader pattern: a refusal to build consensus, undertake real strategy, or plan for consequences.
• Domestically, Trump’s tenure is described as the most systemically corrupt in US democratic history, with risks of ongoing impunity due to partisan divides and political calculation.
• The lasting legacy may be the weakening of both US alliances abroad and institutional checks at home.

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This summary covers all major arguments, insights, and notable exchanges, making it an engaging, comprehensive, and accessible guide for listeners and non-listeners alike.

Transcript

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[Harry Littman]

Welcome to Talking Feds. One on one deep dive discussions with national figures about the most fascinating and consequential issues defining our culture and shaping our lives. I'm your host, Harry Littman. It's been too long since we've had the chance to check in with David Fromm. To my mind, one of the very, very sharpest political analysts and Trump critics in the country. He is also the source of the most memorable line in Talking Fed's history, which I won't try to rehearse, but you can look up under tequila and Quaaludes. Dave is a senior editor at the Atlantic and the host of its weekly podcast, the David Frum Show. He's the author of two 10 books, including Trumpocracy and Trumppocalypse. In 2001 and 2002, David was a speechwriter for President George W. Bush. He's also helped lead a number of prominent think tanks. David Frum, so good to see you. Thanks for being here.

[David Frum]

Thank you so much.

[Harry Littman]

I wanted to focus in the first instance on your recent article in the Atlantic, why Trump Lost. It's one of several written of late about the war by you. But but it's more than that. The piece strikes me as a sort of personality study in Trump's numerous and severe psychopathologies. Let's first set up the premise. You're certainly in large company in thinking it, but in what sense has Trump lost in Iran?

[David Frum]

I want to emphasize I'm not any kind of military expert or Middle east expert, so I'm going to tread very lightly here. But Trump at various points has set various goals. They've been different from time to time and contradictory. But there's a list of them and he's achieving, it looks like none of them. He's not achieving a nuclear free Iran. He is not achieving helping the Iranian people, which on January. This is to my mind one of the most shameful passages in this war on January 13th, the President of the United States, from his personal social media platform, promise the Iranian people that help is on the way. Now, you know his word is not to be trusted. I know his word is not to be trusted. But if you're the Iranian people being massacred by an authoritarian regime, you trust the President of the United States. And he said that. And he didn't make good. He's undertaken as well. He's committed as well to destroying their ballistic missile program. That hasn't happened. And now he's got a late goal because the war closed. The Strait of Hormuz to get the Strait of Hormuz reopened, and not with a toll or with some kind of tax, but as rights of freedom of navigation. He's not achieving that either. But my interest was not so much this part of the war, which I leave to others who know more, but to talk about what went wrong. Why was Trump backed into this position? Given the awesome power of the United States military, why couldn't he execute on what he promised to do?

[Harry Littman]

And it's sort of remarkable, right? You just think about the asymmetry of the power, how the first couple weeks went last June, and you would think it's a little bit of a, you know, elephant and mouse. I, it seems to me, part of it, and this is in the article as well as he never seemed to know what he wanted to do. I mean, we've had months now of his zigging and zagging and proclaiming peace and resuming bombing. Do we know anything more than we did at the beginning? Which is to say nothing about why he even launched the war.

[David Frum]

We don't know very much about that. But here's, I think, the answer to the elephant and the mouse problem. I mean, Iran's not exactly a mouse. So this is like an elephant and cheetah. Yeah, a dangerous cheetah. Exactly. A dangerous jungle beast, but not of size and power to the elephant. Wars go wrong. Wars are difficult. And one of the reasons the United States does not use war all the time is because of this recognition that the war must be worth the price, even if the United States can win. The United States has fought wars that it gave up halfway through. Vietnam is the classic example. Not because it couldn't have won if it set its mind to it, but because when it did set its mind and said, here's what will have to be done in order to win, Americans said, that's not worth it. This war is not existential. It's not important enough if it can be Done cheaply and easily. Yes, but if it's going to be costly and difficult and dangerous. No, it's not a war like we the United States was attacked or it's meeting some great power competitor in Nazi Germany or Imperial Japan. So what happened here was President Trump never sought permission in any way from the American people or from Congress to lead the country to war. He never tried to build any kind of coalition. There are Democrats, I've met them in the Senate and even in the House who are very Iran skeptical and who under other conditions might have supported military action to settle the long standing business with which the United States has to deal with Iran. There's a lot of American blood on the hands of the American terror regime dating back to 1980. It was possible to mobilize opinion in country and Senate. But Trump didn't do that. He did it as a solo action with no allies except Israel. No support in the country, no support in the Congress, no explanation to what he was doing. And a president can sort of get away with that if it's like Granada 1983 or Venezuela, cheap, easy, okay, it's over. But if it's going to be a war that is going to impose sacrifices, you have to make the case of the country. You have to be a leader. And you have to be not just a personal leader, but the leader of the whole government, including Congress. And when you don't do that, once you meet any bumps in the road, you discover you have no public permission to go further. And that's why Trump is scrambling to make the disadvantageous peace he is scrambling to make because he will not pay the price. He cannot afford the price in public opinion because he never got permission to do what he's done.

[Harry Littman]

And it's the reason that I think from the start, even the other wars you talk about the beginning had the support of the American people. But here we've had spectacular disapproval from day one. Your piece, it's almost like six sins or six dwarves or whatever, lays out six personality flaws that the war illustrates. And you've just mentioned can't lead here, I'll just say, and they roll off the tongue nicely. Arrogant, reckless. Haste, procedure. Panicky. Gullible, can't lead. And I wanted to focus for a second on gullible. You describe him as gullible, someone who falls victim to his own con. Do you have a sense, David, and I totally take your point that we're talking about Trump here more. And you're not trying to be an expert in geopolitical military Strategy. But do you think from a strategic standpoint, the Iranian leadership kind of knew that he was someone who really wouldn't follow through, and they've achieved a kind of leverage over him. Everyone seems to think the deal he wants to proclaim victory for will be no better than the deal he disparaged that Obama had. What's your sense of how Iran thought of him as a leader and how it affected their own strategy?

[David Frum]

Well, they're in a very asymmetric position here, which is they didn't have a lot of choices. They didn't have to make a lot of decisions because they didn't have a lot of options. So option one is when Trump hits them first, they know that if they relent or relax in any way, their people will kick random limb from limb that they will of the people in the leadership regime. If there's a change of regime, they get killed and probably their families get killed, and probably in pretty gruesome ways. There are just so many Iranians who have seen their loved ones tortured, murdered, hanged from cranes. The hatred of the people for the regime is very intense. So if the regime loses, they are all dead men, and as I said, probably dead in gruesome ways. So they have no choice. They have to fight. And they don't have a lot of ability to strike back at the United States, at least not rapidly. They can use terrorist methods, but that takes maybe a time to get organized. So they just have to take the punch and then they have to wait it out and hope that their waiting works so they don't have to have a big theory of Trump because they don't have a lot of choices of what to do. Ride it out, take the punch, try to survive, do the best you can. It's the United States that has to figure them out, because the United States is trying to bend Iran to its will without doing. Look, if the United States were to say, changing Iran is the single most important challenge for the United States, and to that end, it's going to work with allies and mobilize Congress and impose the taxes and cut the other domestic spending programs and do what's necessary, the United States could change, bend Iran to its will. The difficulty for the United States is at what cost? Will Americans pay what it costs to change Iran? And Trump understood from the beginning, no, they won't. So I have to do this. I have to do this on the cheap. So this is where the hatred of process and the gullibility become important. So the United States is not ruled by a president Like a one man band. Normally, normally there are processes. There's a National Security Council. There are ways of consulting Congress, the Intelligence and Armed Services and Foreign affairs committees. There are ways of consulting allies. And so presidents have an instinct, maybe I should do this, or somebody has an idea and then it's tested and argued about. And there are ways to bring forward the question, what if it doesn't work? I mean, I was in the W. Bush administration during the planning for the Iraq War and I could see what happens when you don't think seriously enough. Okay, what if this all goes wrong? What if all the things that all these smart people are saying, what if they're wrong and there wasn't enough attention to that what if it goes wrong option? And Trump has responded by not just having no process at all, not even raising the question, what if it goes wrong? He talked himself into the idea, hit Iran, the regime collapses. Give yourself a parade. You'll be there in time for the cage fighting match on the Washington mall for the 250th anniversary with all the gilded statues and the new reflecting pill. And it'll be like being emperor of Rome. You will ride to triumph in your chariot and everything will go exactly the way you wish it in your Walter Mitty fantasy. And there was no, he allowed no one to bring forward. Here's how it might go wrong. There's for all practical purposes, no national security advisor. He's laid off most of the National Security Council and they don't seem to meet very often and he doesn't seem to listen to them. And so there's no process. So all he is, he is the victim of his own wishes, about which he is extremely gullible.

[Harry Littman]

I was struck, David, that you said that he understood that the American people wouldn't be for him. I might have thought, including from reading your piece, that you'd have a different kind of view about that and why he never tried to bring even Iran hawk Democrats, as you mentioned on board, never sought congressional authorization. Well, let me put it this way. Was that a strategic decision and a poor one, or was it a reflection of the fact that he literally cannot conceive of governing beyond his base? He just doesn't even know how to do it.

[David Frum]

To lead in the way you have to lead to get ready for war is to conceive that the President is not all powerful and he has to give as well as get and he has to cajole and he has to persuade and he hates doing all of those things. He likes to. He Rules by command. And so he settles for, for example, that's why he doesn't have a legislative agenda. If he can't command it, he doesn't want to do it. I think there's something else that goes on which is one of the reasons he doesn't want to lead in this way is you do have to face the reality of sacrifice. Wars often go, even successful wars have a lot of disappointments in them. And they're expensive, which means you can't have everything you want. Now, I want to be careful in what I'm about to say, but it does look very like well connected insiders have made a lot of money on this war by trafficking on inside information in oil markets and stock markets. That's one thing we know. The second thing we know, and it's a different thing, we can't hastily to put them together, is that President Trump as president has been a very active trader of individual stocks. And not only that, that he has

[Harry Littman]

promoted last few months, like off the charts, really stunning, right?

[David Frum]

And it's not like he's exactly doing it in secret, which would be bad enough. With all the access to all the information that the President has, he's actually been using his social media accounts to promote the stocks. So here's what I'm buying. You should all buy it too. Again, if you were an ordinary CEO, there would probably be some negative legal repercussions. So we know that someone is making money trading on the war and we know that Donald Trump is making money by trading on stocks about which he's powerful information and about what she's promoted. I don't want to suggest that those two lines of thought connect, but suspicious minds might wonder if they do. And if they do connect, that's one more reason, because one of the things that Congress would ask is, Mr. President, you want our vote, you want our taxes, you want our revenues? What are you giving up? Are you maybe going to not profit on this war? Are you going to maybe pay some taxes yourself and prove that you have by releasing your tax returns?

[Harry Littman]

I mean, I'll say this much with confidence. Should that have occurred to him, I don't think any legal niceties would have led him to stay his hand. The piece you write that the debacle kind of encapsulates his personality in a number of key ways. So just to zero in on that thesis, it felt to me, David, like as if you're arguing that the same traits that explain January 6th, that explains so many of his failings, explain this war Is that a deliberate thesis? That he's a single unified failure mode across every domain he touches?

[David Frum]

Well, we only have one personality, and we have to apply it to many different situations. But one of the examples I use is how he's not someone who thinks things through in a coherent way. And you mentioned January 6th. If you could say to Donald Trump in the silence and no legal repercussions, you're not being investigated here. What did you think was going to happen? What was your plan? Okay, so your people invade the Capitol, they do succeed in seizing Mike Pence, they put a gun on his head, and Mike Pence is pressured to recite the magic words you want him to recite. What happens then? This isn't a good plan.

[Harry Littman]

He does it at gunpoint.

[David Frum]

The Vice President of the United States at gunpoint, saying, okay, Donald Trump, I cancel all the slates of electors. Donald Trump is president, may I go home now? Without being killed. If he did that, it's not like the. Okay, Don, President Trump, you cracked the cheat code. You found the cheat code and you gave yourself the extra health stim pack, and therefore you get to play the game again. No, there would be. At best, the bureaucracy would ignore him. At worst, there would be real civil conflict and people in the streets. But the country was not going to accept a Trump presidency achieved by putting a gun to the head of the vice President to get him to recite a magic formula that was not gonna work. And in the same way, the Iran thing, he didn't think it through. He didn't think January 6th through, he didn't think the Iran thing through. He doesn't think things through. And that is a consistent problem. And of course, the reason you have. And we are all look as, to some or greater or lesser degree, vulnerable to not thinking things through, that we powerfully want to happen. And that's why we create systems and bureaucracies. To ask a question, don't go so fast. Have you thought of this? And there has to be enough respect for the process, where even the head of the process, even the president has to admit, well, gee, I haven't thought about that. If that happened, that would be bad. You make a point and, well, what's our plan in case that happens?

[Harry Littman]

Okay, back perhaps to another aspect of the failure to take. You mentioned, you know, one of the surprises here. He could have taken the sort of partial win after the shock and awe blitzkrieg of last June. A lot of thinkers such as Robert Kagan in the Atlantic, we had a really good. I had A really good talk with them a few weeks ago see the war as a bellwether of declining American primacy in the world and the emergence of a new sort of world disorder in which China, Russia, regional powers and authoritarian governments become more assertive because they no longer believe the United States can shape outcomes as it once did. Not asking you again to assume a PhD's had in foreign policy, but do you agree that in essence, he's not just lost this war, but he's terribly transformed and devalued the United States position in the world?

[David Frum]

Yeah. No, this I do very much agree with Bob Kagan about, and I've written a lot about this particular aspect, which is with the rise of China, the United States, for the first time in almost all its history, faces a country that is a military peer, an economic peer, a technological peer, and a sheer mass and size peer. The United States had to face the Soviet Union, but that was not a technological or economic peer. It had to face Germany in two world wars, but that was not a size peer. The last time the United States had to face a peer who was a peer in every domain and was about the same size was the War of 1812 against the British Empire, which we mostly lost.

[Harry Littman]

Yeah.

[David Frum]

No one here has any preparation for this. And so it's a new kind of problem. And the only way the United States can peacefully compete with China, peacefully balance China, is by bringing more allies into the picture. This is one of the things I thought that was particularly an example of Trump at his not thinking things through, his emphasis on the China, US relationship as a G2. The United States should never allow this to be a G2. The United States should always be dealing with China in positions. We're here, yes, but so is our wingmate from Japan, and so are our friends from NATO. So are friends from Australia and Canada. So when you deal with US China, you're not just dealing with us where we've got a somewhat larger economy and a somewhat smaller population and roughly comparable technology. You're dealing with the entire alliance. All of them are friends of the world's most advanced, powerful, wealthy countries. And there you discover you're at quite a disadvantage when it's us against the team. But if you're going to assemble such a team, you're going to. You have to show respect for the team's interests and you have to show some statement of values, because one of the reasons that these teammates are with you, even though some things that will be asked of them will be a little inconvenient is because they do respond. They're also democracies, they're also liberal societies. They respond to this kind of leadership. And if you just say, look, we're a predatory empire, we see the Chinese seize Tibet, we seize Venezuela, they steal from their subjects, we steal from our subjects, people say, well, why should we prefer you to the Chinese alternative? So that Trump's damage to the alliance system, and I think it will be deep and enduring as it's happened twice, and Biden in between, was not enough of an improvement that allies are going to say, obviously a post Trump, the United States will be a somewhat more comfortable partner than China. Less predatory, less aggressive, but not so much. And so we need to have some distance from the Americans as well as distance from the Chinese.

[Michael Waldman]

I'm Michael Waldman, host of the Briefing podcast. I'm a former White House speechwriter, a lawyer and a constitutional scholar. And I'm president of the Brennan center for Justice. We work to repair and strengthen American democracy from gerrymandering to abuse of presidential power, from Supreme Court reform to congressional corruption and more. What fun. You're going to hear new ideas in this podcast and you're going to hear about the strategies and the legal and political fights that will shape the next phase of American politics. If you care about our democracy. The Briefing is a podcast for you.

[Harry Littman]

A couple more general Trump questions more in the domestic setting. So he sure seems now to be acting in self defeating ways, or at least ways that benefit himself and his allies like the January six offenders, but alienate most Americans and harm the Republican Party's prospect for the midterms. Do you agree and what does it say about him as a leader or even a historical figure?

[David Frum]

Well, one decision he very clearly made in the second term was he said he thought back to the first term and said, you know, the mistake I made is in the first term I helped myself to some dishonest millions. If I ever get the chance to do it again, next time it's going to be dishonest billions. So I think that the single strongest through line in this second term has been the scale of the plunder. People will use the term the most corrupt administration in American history. I don't think you should use that language because the most corrupt is Trump too. The second most corrupt is Trump won. And after that there's just like nobody like Ulysses Grant, you know? Yeah, he didn't there was some fraud in his administration, but Grant wasn't part of. He was pretty negligent. Harding, Harding was not a thief. He was a little lazy, inattentive. There is no runner up. The comparisons here are not to Mobutu in Congo or Yeltsin in Russia, not to anything American. It's a scale of national plunder never seen, I think, not only in American history, but in the history of any democratic country ever. So that's goal one. Goal two has been vindictive, petty retaliation against anyone who crossed him. Jean Carroll seems to be the most recent target, the woman who successfully found Trump civilly liable for sexually assault or for delaying, I beg pardon for defaming her about the civil assault for which the jury believed he had committed, but

[Harry Littman]

also and also brought a sexual assault claim that she won.

[David Frum]

So he seems to have. That's goal two. And then goal three seems to be ego gratification and goal four, interior design

[Harry Littman]

three and four. Kind of cluster, don't they? Kind of morologization of the nation's capital or something. Yeah.

[David Frum]

And he, I think his gambling, to the extent he's making, you might say, well, if you're doing all this crooked stuff, it should be it's really important to you to retain a Republican majority in both House and Senate.

[Harry Littman]

Right.

[David Frum]

In order to protect, to have safeguards against consequences. But he doesn't seem to be worrying about that now. Maybe he thinks, maybe he's not thinking at all. Maybe he's just deluged with arrogance, maybe thinks if I have one of House or Senate, that'll be enough. Maybe he's thinking the system is too slow and the Democrats won't want to do it. And that may not be a crazy calculation, but he's taking a lot of risks. And maybe he's thinking the Democrats will make a lot of mistakes, which they are doing because the Democratic plan for the Senate at least seems to be if you throw away Maine and Michigan with extremist candidates, but you spend a quarter of a billion dollars on Texas, you may be able to win the Senate race, the Senate majority, even with bad choices of candidates in two gettable states. I don't know what the plan is, but Trump does not seem to be as worried about what might happen as you would think. Somebody who's doing the things he's doing should be worried.

[Harry Littman]

Yeah, I want to zero in on one in particular. I've been particularly up in arms, as have you, about the IRS settlement. What's your sense of it, maybe even in political terms, David, does it have legs as a scandal?

[David Frum]

As you've taught your audience, the Constitution gives federal courts jurisdiction over cases and controversies. And if you have fake litigation where it's the same person on both sides in a sham, in what pretends to be oppositional but is really a compact. Of course, this is sham litigation, so it's not litigation, so it's not a settlement. So the money isn't leaving the treasury as part of a settlement. So how is it leaving the treasury? It just looks like stealing. Right. It's as if the President drove up to.

[Harry Littman]

Now I've got a wheelbarrow. Let me in. Yeah, yeah.

[David Frum]

And one more thing to add about this, and this goes to the heart of why this is so, I think, explosive. One of Donald Trump's projects in the second term has been to create pools of money that the executive controls that no one else has any authority over. Whether it's from his illegal tariffs, whether it's from his plundering and pillaging of the Venezuelan oil that he has violently seized, or whether it's this that create pools of money that are not subject to either review by Congress or the courts, just his. Now, if there's one principle, one foundational constitutional principle the United States has insisted on since the beginning and inherited from England beforehand, it is that any money the executive has must come from the legislature. No taxation without representation. If the executive has money, the legislature has to approve it or there has to be some legal mechanism like a legal settlement. The last head of government of an English speaking country to try in a serious way to create revenue that the legislature had no say over was Charles I of England. And English cut his head off for it. Yeah. And ever since the English cut off the head of Charles I, it's been well understood if the executive wants money, it has to ask the legislature or you can win, maybe because of a court settlement, but Donald Trump said not. So I think this is as unconstitutional a thing as a president can do, arguably. I mean, more than creating a state religion where we have to bring sacrifices to BAAL and worship, bring golden calves to sacrifice, that's a violation of the First Amendment. But the amendment is just an amendment. This is the actual architecture of the Constitution. No spending money without Congress saying so.

[Harry Littman]

Let's just close with a general question. Do you perceive that with these various outrages designed to bypass the law, really they've all been enabled by a incredibly pliant Congress and House and Senate. Do you think that a, with the midterms coming and the some and some of the more outrageous thing he's doing, that a tenable political solution, genuine political solution is coming into view where his own party joins some of his own party joins Democrats and pushes back in a way that parries it.

[David Frum]

Let me just restate the question because I don't have a good answer for you. The lesson of the first three years of the Trump administration, of the first Trump administration, were if a president delivers reasonable prosperity and if he stays out of international conflicts, he can steal millions of dollars and get away with it. And Trump, in terms of said, okay, well, what if you mess up the economy and have unsuccessful foreign wars and steal not millions, but billions, can you get away with that? And the answer to that I think is going to be probably not. There will be midterm repercussions. I think he will lose control of the House and not impossible, the Senate. But then there's a question, what happens then? Does Congress have the appetite to really do some cleaning up, Both investigating, punishing the plundering, punishing the self dealing, at least getting to the bottom of it. And here are two worries. First, there may be Republicans who continue to protect Trump for their own reason. And the Democrats have a split that has, I think become apparent this year, which is the left wing of the Democratic Party has a very ambitious agenda. And they are not interested in the moderate. Say, you know what, the American system, basically a pretty good system. We need to defend and protect it. And when there's a criminal action in the office of the presidency, we need to tidy that up. But there are people, and it's an important part of the Democratic Party say the system's terrible. It needs radical reform. We have all kinds of big plans and punishing Trump because we're actually the voters we want are not the comfortable suburban voters who vote for the mainstream of the Democratic Party and who do care about these issues. They're highly disaffected people who don't understand that there's a difference between Hunter Biden selling a painting for $500,000 that he shouldn't do and Donald Trump Jr. Getting a contract for $600 million that he shouldn't get. I mean, both are bad, but there's a difference. We don't want those comfortable suburban voters because they're not radical enough for the rest of our agenda. But we think that the Trump voters might be radical enough. And so there's gonna be a big debate in the Democratic Party about how seriously to take these integrity issues. And there'll be powerful important voices who wanna let it go. And so I don't know how it's going to come out. It'll be depend very much on how the Democrats do and if they come out of the midterms feeling like the so called progressives have the better of the argument, I think a lot of them will be willing to let Donald Trump off the hook because their real quarrel, as always with extremists, is with the moderates in their party, not with the other party.

[Harry Littman]

You know, I totally agree. And there'll also be a very strong voice saying, you know, that this is how we way we can quickly lose power if we make it about the past, etc. David Frum so good to be with you. Really enjoyed the discussion. Hope we can do it again soon on Talking Fitz thank you for tuning in to One on One, a weekly conversation series from Talking Feds. If you like what you've heard, please tell a friend to subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts or wherever they get their podcasts. And please take a moment to rate and review the show. You can also subscribe to us on YouTube where we are posting full episodes and daily updates updates on top legal stories. Check us out on substack harrylitman.substack.com where we're posting two or three bulletins a week breaking down the various threats to constitutional norms and the rule of law. And Talking Fez has joined forces with the Contrarian. I'm a founding contributor to this new media venture committed to reviving the diversity of opposition opinion that feels increasingly rare in today's news landscape, where legacy media seems to be tacking toward Trump for business reasons rather than editorial ones. Rest assured, we're still the same scrappy independent podcast you've come to know and trust just now, linked up with an ambitious and vital project designed for this pivotal moment in our nation's legal and political discourse. Find out [e-mail] thanks for tuning in, and don't worry, as long as you need answers, the Feds will keep talking. Talking Feds is produced by Lou Cregan and Katie Upshaw, associate producer Becca Haveian, sound Engineering by Matt McArdle, Rosie Don Griffin, David Lieberman, Hansuma Hadrinathan, Emma Maynard and Hallie Necker are our contributing writers and production assistants by Akshaj Turbailu. Our music, as ever, is by the amazing Philip Glass. Talking Feds is a production of Doledo llc. I'm Harry Littman. Talk to you later.