Transcript
Isaac Saul (0:00)
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Isaac Saul (1:23)
From Executive Producer Isaac Saul this is.
John (1:28)
Tang Foreign.
Isaac Saul (1:39)
Good afternoon and good evening, and welcome to the Tangle Podcast, a place where you get views from across the political spectrum, some independent thinking, and a little bit of my take. I'm your host Isaac Stahl, and on today's episode we're doing a reader mailbag. It's been a little while since we did one of these, but we got a huge fat stack of listener and reader questions that have just been sitting in our inbox in our little spreadsheet where we organize them, and so we wanted to clear that stack a bit. I'd also just like to contextualize this in relation to the last few weeks. A couple Fridays ago we wrote and published a podcast about the whole point of Tangle. And as we wrote in that piece, we're not here to just stand on a soapbox or to call balls and strikes and tell you who's right and who's wrong. We want to present the best arguments as we understand them and let you make your own determinations, all while trying to give you our best read on what's going on in the news from the day today. So you'll see us grappling with the topic at hand, forming a narrow opinion on an issue, and over time we assume you are forming your own broader viewpoints. We do not want to make you see things our way. We want to provide some deep political analysis that helps you see things your way with more clarity. And as part of that ethos, we solicit reader questions about politics and our work every day in Tangle. So many questions pile up on the back end that we just decide to answer a bunch of them at once in these member only reader listener mailbags. So today's one of those days. I think it's a very healthy exercise that just allows us to critically examine some of our own writing, but it also provides us with more perspectives that help us fulfill our core mission. So as always, we want to thank all of you for writing in. A reminder, you can do that by writing to our staff inbox stffeadtangle.com somebody always reads those emails. There's also a form in our newsletter that you can click into to fill out a question. And we read them. We really do. We go through and we think about ones we want to tackle in the podcast or the newsletter. Because today's piece is quite big and because there were a lot of questions, you're going to hear a few different voices on the podcast. I'm going to be reading some of these responses, but Will and Ari are also going to drop in to read the responses that they answered. I answered a few listener questions, they answered a few listener questions. So when you hear their voice, that's why. All right, with that, I'm going to kick things off with a question from John in Rockville, Maryland. John said much of the start of this new administration feels well planned and thought out. Isn't much of what Trump has done so far right in line with Project 2025? If not the people behind Project 2025, who are the planners and thinkers that have gotten this administration off to such a fast start? Thanks in advance for any thoughts. So since Trump came into office, I've actually gotten a lot of questions from Tangle readers about our explainer on Project 2025 that we published before the election. In that piece, I put forward a few key arguments. Number one, Project 2025 was an expansive plan for taking over the government, and it represented a lot of fringe conservative views. Second, on net, given how radical some of the proposals were, I did not support the document as a whole, though I pointed out some ideas that I liked. And third, I expected Trump to adopt some of the policies, leave others behind, and try but fail to adopt others. Since Trump has come into office, those tangled readers have been suggesting that I was wrong about Project 2025, that it was the plan. It is the plan, and we are seeing Trump adopt it wholesale. To be sure, they have some pretty good arguments. For one, Trump immediately made Russell Vaught, a Project 2025 author, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, which administers the federal budget and coordinates policy initiatives across executive agencies. Also, conservative commentators like Matt Walsh and Steve Bannon immediately joked after Trump won that yes, Project 20 really is the goal, but going back and reading our writing, I actually think our coverage of Project 2025 has aged really well. Trump is also doing exactly what I said he would. He's taking some ideas, abandoning others, and failing to incorporate some. For instance, one of the biggest areas of concern we highlighted in our piece was attacking the federal civil service. Indeed, Trump and Doge have gone after the federal workforce with layoffs. Trump did not enter office with a plan to bypass Biden era regulations. That made it harder to implement Schedule Fit, which would strip civil servants of protections from being fired. But they're now gearing up for a fight. Trump is trying to wind down the Education Department, but he's already delayed signing one planned executive order over fear of backlash. At the Same time, Project 2025 advanced plenty of policy prescriptions that Trump hasn't even attempted. Most notably, he has not adopted any of the platform's recommendations on abortion. In fact, he has continued to push for expansion of IVF and has tried pulling Republicans to the center on the issue. He's not invoked the Insurrection act, though there is reporting the administration is still mulling it. He has not conducted mass deportations. Deportation levels were lower in February than they were during Biden's last full month in office. He has not disbanded the Department of Commerce. In fact, he's trying to expand its power and core functions under Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick. He also has not disbanded, but instead empowered the Department of Homeland Security. Like I said in our initial piece, Trump was lying when he claimed to know nothing about Project 2025. He was glad handing with many of its authors and has since brought a few of them into the administration. He always had deep connections to its organizers, but he also hasn't bound himself to their plans. Trump's Agenda and Project 2025 were not the same, and they still aren't the same. Next up is a question from Jacob in Boston, Massachusetts. Jacob said, my personal favorite Tangle piece you've ever done is Seeing Ghosts, which I actually reread last night to lower the temperature for myself. But how do we know when the ghosts are real? I get how tired and overblown the Hitler comparisons are, but there is plenty of room for innovation on human and civil rights violations. What could a political candidate that could undermine American democracy or its protection of citizens to bring America its own Tiananmen Square or Holocaust or some other fresh horror look like? Would there be warning signs? And how would they be different from the warning signs Trump is currently showing us? Okay, so first of all, thanks for highlighting that piece. It's one of my favorites I've ever written. It's one I'm thinking about expanding on down the road. I encourage people to go read it again. It's called Seeing Ghosts. Second, let me give you one example of why I might chuckle at relating the Holocaust or the Tiananmen Square massacre to Donald Trump. As I was thinking about your question, I literally got a push notification from the Wall Street Journal that a well respected federal judge had just ordered Trump to reinstate thousands of fired workers. The lawsuit was brought by a group representing tens of thousands of federal employees across six agencies fired by the Doge Crew and Russell Vaught. They sued and they won. I don't know what will happen next. Maybe Trump will challenge this ruling up to the Supreme Court. Maybe he will comply and let it be. I suspect the former. But to explain my point in a quippy way, some people are worried about Trump becoming the next Hitler when he can't even fire federal workers. I really don't mean to be glib, but this is genuinely what I think when I see this stuff. The truth is, I just have a lot of trust in our systems, in our courts, our people, and yes, even our Congress, to the degree they are good at jamming each other up. It's possible that one of my most conservative or conservative coded views, because I increasingly struggle to know what is conservative or liberal anymore, is a general reverence for our Founding Fathers and a continued wonder at how much their theories of government have continued to apply to our modern era in a way that preserves democracy. Thankfully, I think the worst instincts of Trump, the people in his orbit, and past presidents like him are all checked pretty well by the system we have. It's truly remarkable. At the same time, it's not impossible to conceive of things becoming increasingly more dangerous. Genuine danger signs for me would include these five things. 1. The DOJ or FBI actually attempts to prosecute or imprison Joe Biden or prominent Democratic leaders, especially those potentially running for office in 2028, presuming the charges aren't accompanied by material evidence. For instance, Democrats like Bob Menendez and Eric Adams deserve to be charged. Trump supporters would of course suggest this already happened to Trump, but my view is that Trump actually did deserve to be charged for election interference and the theft of classified documents because there was material evidence. Given the publicly available information, I'm not surprised that he got charged, though I would reserve judgment on his guilt until those cases were actually complete. Of course they weren't. Number two, using the military, especially with excessive force against peaceful protesters. I do not mean clearing out a single small Protest in Washington, D.C. but actually deploying soldiers against demonstrators who were assembling peacefully against some action he took in office. Number three, genuinely restricting or chilling speech. Good examples might be banning newsrooms from reporting on the White House because they don't use the White House's preferred language, powerful figures in the administration threatening newsrooms with jail or the arrest and deportation of legal permanent US Residents for speech, in case you're not catching my drift. Yes, I think this one is actually already happening. As I've said, I think it's one of the most disturbing developments yet. Number four, the eroding or ending of free and fair elections. I'm fairly certain that Democrats will win back the house in 2026, and I think they have a good shot at the White House in 2028. If we've learned anything these last 20 years, it's that Americans love change, and I don't see the MAGA movement maintaining its force after Trump leaves office. But if Republicans meaningfully erode or end free elections through legislation in the next two years, or begin to seriously entertain the prospect of Trump 2028, we'll call that out early and often. And I don't just mean gerrymandering, which is a bipartisan crisis, or voter ID laws, which I support. I mean an actual electoral restructuring that prohibits Democrats or Democratic groups from being able to participate in elections. And number five, I'd look out for Democrats folding. By folding, I mean complete submission to Trump and maga. A defining characteristic of authoritarian regimes is their utter lack of any meaningful opposition. For instance, countries like North Korea or Russia have no real opposition party. Every election is a sham. In countries like Hungary, opposition exists, but it has been totally defanged and weakened. The United States still has a genuine and capable opposition to Trump, and Republicans represented a genuine and capable opposition to Biden. I don't love the duopoly, but that makes me much less nervous about any kind of authoritarian takeover. We'll be right back after this quick break.