Noah Rothman (3:40)

As Joe Biden's presidency drew to an abrupt close, something unanticipated happened in the electorate. Voters were overcome with nostalgia for Donald Trump. As one indicative New York Times Siena College survey discovered in April of last year, a plurality of voters came to remember the Trump era as mostly good for the country. More polls from that period found that the voting public longed for the relative prosperity at home and peace abroad over which Trump presided during his first term. Voters appreciated the sound deregulatory policies Trump coupled with pro growth initiatives in the federal tax code. They backed his border enforcement politics, zero tolerance for illegal immigrants, including those with children. They shared his disgust for street crime, a disposition that contrasted favorably against the disorder in America's major metros during the summer of 2020. In hindsight, the public saw a lot to like in the way Trump imposed maximum pressure on Iran. After all, no October 7th massacre occurred on his watch, nor was there a mechanized conventional war on the European continent. For all the President's obsequious gestures towards Vladimir Putin, Trump 1.0's new sanctions on Russia, seizure of its diplomatic property, expulsion of its diplomats, and armed intervention against its proxy forces in places like Syria seem to have held Moscow in check. Joe Biden didn't just lose voters trust, Trump earned it. Voters Trump era nostalgia was not irrational, but their expectation that restoring Trump to the White House would reproduce the status quo ante was misplaced. The policies for which the public pined were largely a result of Trump's decision to outsource his administration to conventional conservative Republicans in 2024. Trump made no secret of his contempt for the architects of the generic conservative policies his administration pursued, and that disdain was mutual. During his years in the wilderness, Trump's grievances with his disloyal subordinates led him down a different path. The former president surrounded himself with sycophants who flattered his pretensions and encouraged him to indulge his instincts, instincts honed over decades spent criticizing conservative policy prescriptions and a GOP that was beholden to them. Trump took many of those figures with him as he returned to the Oval Office, along with a serious axe to grind. In fact, the second Trump administration seemed to have set out with the goal of repudiating the first. It is therefore not surprising that many of the policies Trump has pursued in his second term have an unmistakable left wing flavor.

Podcast Host (6:17)

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Noah Rothman (8:27)

Degrowth republicanism the president entered office in January, resolved to implement the onerous tariff schedule his advisors had dissuaded him from pursuing in his first term. He raised trade barriers gradually at first, then recklessly and with an utter disregard for the downward pressure they put on domestic growth and productivity. Trump's tariff regime represented an attack on the fundamental conservative notions that economic planning does not work and that government should not be in the business of nudging the public to behave in ways preferred by social engineers in Washington. It makes sense, then, that the tariffs eventually led Trump's supporters to mouth the degrowth shibboleths that were once exclusive to the progressive left. Sometimes you have to take medicine to fix something, the president told reporters as markets melted down in early April. That was the logical extension of the president's February promise that his policies would induce pain before they delivered America to the sunlit uplands of autarchic autonomy. Trump's subordinates followed suit. Access to cheap goods is not the essence of the American dream, treasury Secretary Scott Besant insisted. Rather, according to Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, the American dream consists of consignment to menial labor, intensive factory work, the army of millions of millions of human beings screwing in little screws to make iPhones. That kind of thing is going to come to America, he declared. However virtuous the return to menial labor might be, it must be balanced against how the president's tariff policies would reduce Americans purchasing power, truncating the amount of free time and capital they could devote to their preferred priorities. If you buy the common leftist fear of the disaggregating and disruptive power of the capitalist enterprise, then maybe that's a virtue, too. Amy Chen, the chief sustainability officer at the University of California, Berkeley, cheered the limitations Trump's tariffs would impose on emissions over consumption and waste. Indeed, their effects won't be limited to cheap goods, she wrote. For example, the rising cost of high end goods would ensure that consumers wouldn't be able to replace electronics, appliances and vehicles. You will have less, and you will be able to afford less, and you'll have to find solace in the salutary environmental effects that follow. Some Democrats with aspirations for higher office did not seem particularly appalled by Trump's tariff policies. I understand the motivation behind the tariffs, michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer conceded before praising the new economic consensus that a lot of Democrats and Republicans now share. When Trump floated tariffs on film and television products shot abroad, he found surprising allies in California governor Gavin Newsom and Senator Adam Schiff. Now it's time for a real federal partnership to make America film great again. Newsom cheered. Schiff agreed, welcoming efforts to, quote, bring back runaway production. Within a month of Trump's experiment with tariffs, the politics of avarice had become the last intellectual safe harbor for Republicans. Why should a multi billion dollar company pass off costs to consumers? One unnamed White House official complained to CNN's reporters. Like Democrats under Biden's policies, Republicans had been told that producers would absorb the inflationary effects of Trump's tariffs. When they didn't, Republicans promulgated the theory that rapacity alone was responsible for consumers woes, a GOP version of the greedflation argument retailed by cynics and economic illiterates in the Biden years. Trump seemed partial to that logic and the retributive policies that flow from it. As the president later confessed, a tiny tax increase for the rich might not be such a bad idea. Political necessity, not philosophy, compelled the American right to endorse confiscatory policies and stultifying trade barriers. In the end, and in the absence of a more convincing rationale, the president's backers settled on the message that privation and hardship will give way to a more spiritually fulfilling social compact. You can lose points in your portfolio, the podcaster Benny Johnson informed his audience. You won't miss them when you're dead. The working class masses suffered for too long, insisted GOP campaign operative Steve Cortez. We must reorder the American economy to work for the masses of working class citizens. Free Press contributor Batya Unger Sargan took the mock Bolshevism to a new level. Screw you. She barked in the general direction of elites on Wall Street. I'm waging a class warfare on behalf of the American working class. This is hardly the only realm in which Trump has acclimated the right to the nostrums that were once the exclusive province of the American left.

Podcast Host (13:11)

We'll be right back after this quick commercial break.

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Isaac Saul (13:47)

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Noah Rothman (15:05)

Revolutionary Reversals throughout his presidency, Barack Obama took an approach to American foreign policy that regarded America's allies as problems to be solved. Conversely, he saw the enemies of the United States as potential assets that could be unlocked through conciliatory measures and supplication. For his efforts, Obama earned himself the dubious moniker, courtesy of Nigel Farage, of the most anti British American president there has ever been. He was pathologically hostile towards Benjamin Netanyahu's Israeli government and deeply mistrustful of the Saudis. He briefly welcomed a Muslim Brotherhood takeover of Egypt as though it were preferable to the military government that preceded and succeeded it. He denounced America's European and Middle Eastern allies as free riders who were using our military power to settle scores. At the same time, Obama engineered a reset with Russia, a diplomatic offensive that compelled his administration to compromise American interests. Obama abandoned a George W. Bush era plan to send radar and interceptor missiles to NATO members on the alliance's frontier. He withdrew U.S. combat teams and tanks from Europe. He mocked critics of his approach for failing to recognize that the Cold War has been over for 20 years, leaving voters with the notion that advocates of a robust military deterrent were as fanatical and hidebound as enthusiasts for horses and bayonets. Government by zinger won Obama re election, but it didn't make us any safer. The folly of that seduction was clear to all but Obama by the time Russia invaded Ukraine in 2014. Likewise, the 44th president leaned on Iran's untrustworthy Shiite militias to help him fulfill his campaign promise to get US Troops out of Iraq. That, in concert with his pursuit of a nuclear deal with Tehran that legitimized Iran's uranium enrichment capabilities, missile program and support for terrorism would finalize America's divorce from the region. All this was designed to facilitate America's pivot to Asia, but the pivot never happened. Obama counted on the world to cooperate, but it did not sound familiar. It should. Obama's vision was for a smaller America, one that could no longer muster the wherewithal to fight a two front war, preserve free maritime navigation rights, or prevent the return of 20th century style spheres of influence. Indeed, Obama declared the era of great power conflict to be a thing of the past, and he did so in Russia of all places. Donald Trump seems to have a similarly faithless outlook toward the country he leads. The President is possessed of an ideologically comparable notion that America's allies are taking advantage of his country. He is contemptuous toward the Canadians, the Danes, the Panamanians.

John Law (17:54)

Hey everybody, this is John, Executive Producer for Tangle. We hope you enjoyed this preview of our latest Friday edition. If you are not currently a newsletter subscriber or a premium podcast subscriber and you are enjoying this content and would like to finish it, you can go to readtangle.com and sign up for a newsletter subscription. Or you can sign up for a podcast subscription or a bundled subscription which gets you both the podcast and the newsletter and unlocks the rest of this episode as well as ad free daily podcasts, more Friday editions, Sunday editions, bonus content, interviews and so much more. Most importantly, we just want to say thank you so much for your support. We're working hard to bring you much more content and more offerings, so stay tuned. I will join you for the daily podcast on Monday. For the rest of the crew, this is John Law signing off. Have a fantastic weekend y' all. Peace.

Podcast Host (18:55)

Thank you for listening to this Tangle Media production. Our Executive Editor and founder is me, Isaac Saul, and our Executive Producer is John Lowell. Today's episode was edited and engineered by John Lal. Our editorial staff is led by Managing Editor Ari Weitzman with Senior Editor Will K. Back and Associate Editors Hunter Casperson, Audrey Moorhead, Bailey Saul, Lindsay Knuth and Kendall White. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet 75 and John Law. And to learn more about Tangle and to sign up for a membership, please visit our website@readtangle.com.