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The Ezra Klein Show
The New Rules of the Trump Era
00:48:00
There’s a quieter transition happening beneath the pageantry of this week’s inaugural events — a transition not of power per se but of the rules around how power in Washington works. And the new rules look very different from the old ones. In this conversation, I’m joined by Aaron Retica, an editor at large for New York Times Opinion (and my column editor), to discuss what President Trump’s inaugural address and first round of executive orders signal about the administration to come. We talk about the end of birthright citizenship and the renegotiation of American belonging, why Trump is so fixated on Greenland and the Panama Canal, his retro-futurist vision of American power, the unsettling arrival of a new tech oligarchy and more. Mentioned: “What’s Wrong with Donald Trump?” by Ezra Klein “Democrats Are Losing the War for Attention. Badly.” by The Ezra Klein Show, with Chris Hayes Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at ezrakleinshow@nytimes.com. You can find transcripts (...
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- [00:00]
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- [00:40]
Ezra Klein
From New York Times Opinion. This is the Ezra Klein Show. I feel like I've been watching two different presidential transitions take place. There's been the official one, with all of its pomp and its pageantry, the one we call the peaceful transition of power. I watched Vice President Kamala Harris preside over the certification of the election she lost. I watched President Joe Biden welcome his successor, President Donald Trump, back to the White House. I watched every living former president assemble under the Capitol Rotunda to honor Trump's second inauguration. What a difference to four years ago when a mob stormed the Capitol when Trump sought to upend the election results and, upon failing, did not attend Joe Biden's inauguration. This transition, the official transition of presidential power. This transition has been one orderly. But there has been this other transition happening too. A transition not of power but of political system. A transition in the rules and expectations of power. I understood Joe Biden's pardon of Hunter Biden. Hunter had become a particular fixation of the Trumpist right, and the idea that they would unleash their revenge on him individually seemed all too real. Joe Biden has already lost two children. Others may disagree. I had trouble begrudging him his refusal to potentially lose a third. But then came so many more pardons, culminating in pardons of Anthony Fauci and much of Biden's family. And it wasn't just pardons. There was the refusal to enforce a ban on TikTok that Biden himself had signed into law Biden's bill. And alongside that came this bizarre decision to announce that the Equal Rights Amendment was now ratified, as Virginia had accepted it in 2020, becoming the 38th state to do so. But that wasn't true. It wasn't ratified. Congress had set a deadline of 1982 for ratification. The opinion of Joe Biden's own Justice Department is that Virginia's late act is meaningless. The ERA is not ratified, whatever Biden said. And the Biden administration, they know it. Biden did not direct the archivist of the United States to add the Equal Rights Amendment to the Constitution, and she quite reasonably did not. He said the Constitution was changed. It lies now unchanged. All of this was a very strange substitution of press stunt for policy process. All of it felt like an effort to make the president in his final days seem more powerful and more consequential than he really was. And why did it wait until the final days if it was so worth doing, then do it earlier and defend it. Changing the Constitution under a controversial theory, it's not what you do on your way out the door. The Biden of 2020 would have done none of this. In key cases like the family pardons, he said he would not do this, and then he did it. This feels, in its own way, like Biden's submission to the new regime. The powers of the presidency are whatever the president can get away with. And I'm not naive. I cover this professionally. I know that presidents have been testing the limits of their authority since the dawn of the republic. But for a president whose core message was about the preservation of America's constitutional democracy, and not just that, but the informal norms and values that scaffold that system, for he to leave in this way was a profound message on its own. Maybe the message was cynicism, maybe it was arrogance, but maybe it was acceptance. It is clear that things are to be done differently now. The beginning of Donald Trump's second term certainly revealed a president who intends to govern based on what he can get away with. Trump declared birthright citizenship invalid, unilaterally changing the clear language of the Constitution and daring the courts to stop him. He's giving TikTok a reprieve from the clean language of the law so he can save it. He is pardoning the January 6th rioters. He's renaming the Gulf of Mexico to be the Gulf of America, denali to be Mount McKinley. I was struck in Trump's inaugural address how almost everything mentioned was an executive action that he himself would take and the courts would decide to accept or reject. He talked little of laws he wanted to persuade Congress to pass. What interests Trump is what he can do alone. Watching Trump take the oath of office from the good seats were the CEOs of the major platforms that control America's attention. There is Elon Musk, the owner of X and Tesla. Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Meta, Sundar Pichai, the CEO of Alphabet. Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon and the owner of the Washington Post. And a bit Further back was Xu Chu, the CEO of TikTok. For all of Donald Trump's talk of manufacturing jobs and auto plants and infrastructure, the CEOs of GM and GE and Ford and Caterpillar were not in that room. This wasn't just an assemblage of America's rich. It was our attentional oligarchy, the people who control what we look at assembled before Trump. All this came just days after the Trump family launched a crypto coin in their own name. A meme coin. You can't spend it. This isn't a currency or a piece of decentralized financial infrastructure meant to offer services to the unbanked or commerce to the metaverse. It's just a way to invest in Trump's fortunes, to invest in Trump to make him richer. The meme coin shot to more than $70. And the Trump family and its partners seem to own about 80% of the coins, making their holdings worth, notionally, tens of billions of dollars. And then, Melania Trump, she launched her own meme coin, which also shot up, although it seemed to harm the value of the Trump meme coin. This is all insane to even try to describe, but her meme coin comes after she sold her biopic and another project, both of which she is the executive producer on, to Amazon for $40 million. The scale of the graft and the grift right now is astonishing. And it's all out in the open. It's not like politics is free of corruption in 2018 or 2022, but this is a new era of brazenness, of cashing in on power. And who is going to stop Trump and his family? Who is going to tell them no? We talk about America's system of government as if it is a solid thing, bound by the Constitution and institutions the way a belt cinches around a waist. But much of it is just a pile of norms in a trench coat. Knock the norms down and everything changes. I could imagine all this leading to backlash. I don't think it's safe. I don't think it's good politics to rub America's face in oligarchy and corruption. I could also see it all leading to a consolidation of power, as Trump and his allies unite to protect their power, to serve each other. You scratch my back, I'll scratch yours. This is how democracy is backslid in so many other countries. But we are entering a new era. Power did not just pass from one president to another. It passed from one regime to another, one set of rules to another. And you can see it so clearly because the old regime ended even before the new one began.
- [08:33]
Lori Leibovich
Hi, this is Lori Leibovich, editor of well at the New York Times. Everything that our readers get when they dig into a well article has been vetted. Our reporters are consulting experts doing the research so that you can make great decisions about your physical health and your mental health. We take our reporting extra seriously because we know New York Times subscribers are counting on us. If you already subscribe, thank you. If you'd like to subscribe, go to nytimes.com subscribe.
- [09:03]
Sentry Insurance Representative
You have a vision for your business. Your priority might be to expand facilities.
- [09:08]
Ezra Klein
Or bring in the best talent.
- [09:10]
Sentry Insurance Representative
At Sentry Insurance, we listen, learn and work to understand your business and your plans to help protect your new locations. As your business evolves, your vision comes true. Sentry right by you. Property and casualty coverages and render written and safety services are provided by a member of the Sentry Insurance group, Stevens Point, Wisconsin. For a complete listing of companies, visit sentry.com policies, coverages, benefits and discounts are not available on all state. See policy for complete coverage details.
- [09:43]
Ezra Klein
Joining me now to talk about the inauguration and what we are seeing as Trump begins his second presidential term is my editor, Aaron Retica. Aaron, welcome to the show.
- [09:54]
Aaron Retica
Thank you very much. Great to be here.
- [09:56]
Ezra Klein
So where do you want to start?
- [09:58]
Aaron Retica
Let's start with the big question. I mean, there's a million things to talk about, but let's start with, we have a better idea today, 24 hours into the second Trump administration, what they mean by making America great again. So what's great? What are they trying to achieve?
- [10:18]
Ezra Klein
So I've been thinking about, let's imagine you make $75,000. You live in Columbus, Ohio. You have three kids. You've been frustrated by prices. Eggs are expensive, gas. What problems of yours did he offer to solve? At the inauguration, I was struck by how much what make America great again seemed to mean was about renegotiating who is or can be an American. Under the proposed birthright citizenship executive order, Kamala Harris might not be a citizen. So there is a fight over what Joe Biden used to call the soul of America.
- [11:02]
Aaron Retica
Can I. You said propose, but of course, that's the crazy part, right? It is an executive order. It's proposed in the sense that they know it's gonna be fought.
- [11:11]
Ezra Klein
Yes, it seems to be unconstitutional, but yes, this is their assertion that they will no longer respect birthright citizenship. They will direct the agencies that give you things like Social Security numbers to not give those numbers from the beginning, the biggest thing they are doing is changing who gets to be who is on some level un American. The longtime liberal view about Donald Trump and maga, that their fundamental question is about belonging, is proving true. And then there was a lot of other stuff in there, a lot of it related to Trump and his resentments personally. Weaponization of the government, that kind of thing. There was a pardoning of the J6 rioters, but in terms of actually solving the problems of normal people, about your health care, about your prices, about your commute. For all the talk that Trump at some point understood that he won on the price of groceries, there was not a lot here about the price of groceries.
- [12:12]
Aaron Retica
They would say that drill, baby, drill. And what they're going to do with gas and energy is one of the things that's going to affect prices in a way that will make people happy. Right. That would be their argument.
- [12:26]
Ezra Klein
Presumably there was some talk about increasing energy production and I'm sure they will try, though we're already at record levels. I guess it's worth asking, is there anything here that is different than what they thought eight years ago? Right. We just went through a long inflationary period. People are upset about things like prices. Is there a new problem being solved or. He talks a lot about crime and safety. Even if you want to say that he's doing something on that by naming some of these cartels terrorist organizations and directing the US Government to put more enforcement against immigrants. Most crimes are not committed by immigrants. Right. This was not the announcement that they're gonna be sending to Congress a large new bill managing police forces. Look, I don't wanna be faux naive here. Everybody knows that Donald Trump is not super detailed around most policies, but even the tariffs were absent. Right? They're going to create this External Revenue Service to have America study the question of what kinds of tariffs might make sense to put on. Make America Great Again is about who belongs. It is about excluding people who are currently in the definition of America. And it is about restoring to America a masculine dominant, backed by force sense of our destiny. We will control the Panama Canal again. We will have Greenland, and we'll begin adding to the American imperium again. We will put our flag on Mars.
- [13:58]
Aaron Retica
Okay, so let's take these things one at a time and let's stay with birthright citizenship, because this is. Even though we knew it was coming, even though they told us it was coming, it's still worth stopping and just talking directly about what this is. Right. So they're talking about the most obvious Thing which is the children of undocumented immigrants would not automatically be American citizens. But they are also talking about, and you referred to it, what some people are calling the Kamala Harris clause, which is that if you're a student here, a graduate student, medical student, whatever, and you have a child here right now, that child is automatically an American citizen. That's out in their executive order. I'm really struck by the way you said proposed as though it were legislation. They know there's going to be this battle. Do they intend to actually end, I mean, they intend to end birthright citizenship, but do you think that they think they can? Or is this like the new row? Is this something that they're going to always have on the edge of expectation that actually can't be done, that they can motivate their base?
- [15:04]
Ezra Klein
Although Roe eventually got done.
- [15:05]
Aaron Retica
I know Roe did get done, right? Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
- [15:08]
Ezra Klein
I think the central question to the Trump administration right now is what will this court that they built let them get away with or give them the power to do? Right. This court that they built got rid of Roe, which many people thought was, if not impossible, very unlikely. So the idea that the law that we understood to be settled in 1996 or 2006 or even 2016, I mean, it's not settled now. And there are things in the current system that I think reasonably offend people, Right. The idea of birth tourism is reasonably offensive, right. That you pay to come here and you have a child here and that child is a citizen, and that that is being advertised to you. Right? That is a way of getting around a loophole. And you hear them use this term a lot, invasion, Right? There's an understood in the law carve out for the question of invasion. And what the law and the Supreme Court text are attempting to do there is to say, well, look, if During World War II, Germany had sent an invading force to the American homeland and we had eventually repelled them, not every member of the German infantry or the German officer corps who had a child here during that period, if they had families here, it'd be crazy to say they're all citizens. That would be an insane thing just because they're on the territory. So the idea is, can you say that the people coming here legally or illegally are an invasion and they're carved out? That's one question. Then there's this question of the temporary residence. Right. Someone who is here on a student visa that's much more sympathetic. But you can also imagine them putting that up as something that maybe the court will strike that out. Right? They'll leave the you can't come here as a undocumented immigrant and have a child, or you can't come here for birth tourism and have a child and expect to have citizenship. But you could be here on a student visa and expect to have citizenship. And you can imagine a world in which what they believe might happen is that the courts might split the difference. And so there is this question that I think they don't know the answer to. But so much of the early executive orders is about testing, which is, given this Supreme Court, how much power does this president have? They understand that their power in Congress is quite limited. The Republican House majority, a five seat majority, is the smallest House majority since the Great Depression. Republicans have a 53, 47 cut in the Senate. That does not give them the ability to go over the filibuster. So it's going to be difficult and frustrating to do legislation. And I don't think Donald Trump likes doing legislation anyway. So the question is, how much can he be king? What can he do himself?
- [17:53]
Aaron Retica
Right. So the case you were referring to, Wong Kim Ark from 1898, if I'm remembering correctly. I won't go into the details of the case, but the gist of it is guy was born in San Francisco, went to visit his parents in China, tried to come back to the US Was blocked, eventually was granted the right to stay here because he was a citizen. The court that decided that was also more or less the court that decided Plessy versus Ferguson. This is not like some kind of Warren liberal court. Right. So even if they imagine that they have some sort of capture of the Supreme Court, which they do, it is a little hard to imagine them doing that. But again, we don't know. Right. And as you say that maybe they're just, maybe it's all horse drag. Everything's a deal, Right? So even law is a deal. We're gonna propose X number of things.
- [18:41]
Ezra Klein
And we'll just even the debate is a win in a way.
- [18:44]
Aaron Retica
Right. That's what I was gonna say.
- [18:45]
Ezra Klein
Right. Birthright citizenship.
- [18:47]
Aaron Retica
Why are we even talking about this?
- [18:48]
Ezra Klein
What they have put back on the table is who is an American and who should be an American. Right. And you've seen different versions of this. You saw it with J.D. vance and the way he was talking about Haitian immigrants during the campaign. These people are here legally, but he was describing the authority under which they are here as incorrectly decided, illegally offered. They don't like legal immigration either. They shut down the border Patrol application, which the Biden administration began.
- [19:16]
Aaron Retica
Two people were standing in line, which.
- [19:18]
Ezra Klein
Had people stay in line. I mean, the videos of these people screaming and crying as this meeting that after they had jumped through all these hoops was now 20 minutes away from happening, has just been canceled. But these were the people who are doing it the right way, who were standing in line, who were giving the biometric data. Right. What they want to do is raise as a fundamental question who is an American. And even if you lose at the court, maybe you still win partially in public opinion. If you can turn more and more people against the system as it exists, if you can call more and more people citizenship and the legitimacy of their belonging into question, I mean, that is a win for, I think, the spiritual core of Trumpism, which is that we have been invaded and America isn't America anymore. It is no longer great because we have let too many of these other people in here. And I will also say the birthright citizenship move, that's the shock and awe part of this campaign. Behind it is a. I mean, they're doing a lot. One thing I do think you see is Trump is always a good marketer. I think he played his first day incredibly well. I think the signing of the executive orders in public. He didn't sign all of them in public, but he had this rally and he was throwing the pens out to the crowd. I mean, it had everything but a T shirt. Cannon was, that'll be for the third Trump term. Right. A big part of everything right now is him persuading his own people, the demoralized and dispirited Democratic opposition and the rest of the world, that he is strong, that he is coming in with momentum, that they are doing a lot all at once. And that whether or not you see anything changing, that the vibe will be things are changing, which in some ways, I think will be the opposite of how a lot of things felt under Joe Biden, where you had huge pieces of legislation happening. But it was so discordant with a sense of torpor in the administration, the kind of quiet, shuffling communications and image of the president, that the energy that was happening legislatively never translated to a spirit of energy. MAGA is not just about who's an American. It's about strength. And strength is something that America both shows on the world stage and also something that has to be embodied in its leader. Right. Trump, within his own coalition, is understood as this somewhat mythic embodiment of the national spirit. And who knows what he does with that? I mean, my Favorite line of his inauguration is him saying that he'll be partially judged in the wars that do not begin. The best possible thing that can happen with Donald Trump, in my view, is that it really embeds in his self conception that he is a person who ends wars and through his own strength, keeps more from starting. That would be great if we don't have crazy foreign adventures under Donald Trump. And in some ways, I think the Trump people, I mean, these are all eos we'll see even what stands they're doing in many ways, less than meets the eye, because so much of this will not actually stand. And many of these executive orders are just messaging anyway. Bring down prices is not like as an executive order, that doesn't get you anywhere. But there is this sense of energy, of, okay, somebody's back in control and doing something.
- [22:40]
Aaron Retica
He says he doesn't want wars, but he did say, and this was really the biggest difference right from the first time around, territorial expansion. Europe went unmentioned in the inaugural address. But as you said, he did talk about the Panama Canal. There's obviously been a lot of chatter about Greenland, what's happening here. He's talked about Canada, he's talked about Mexico. Right. So it's the North American continent plus whatever we want to do in South America and Mars and. Plus Mars. Plus Mars, exactly. So it's manifest destiny, a man of destiny and whatever we call the destiny of Mars. But what do you see him doing with all of this?
- [23:25]
Ezra Klein
I think a way to ask this question is why is Donald Trump's mind fastening on the question of Greenland, of the Panama Canal?
- [23:34]
Aaron Retica
It's because he believes in climate change.
- [23:36]
Ezra Klein
Right. I think there's a reason those things appeal to him in the way they do. And I don't actually think it's about shipping lanes and critical minerals. There are a lot of ways to think about shipping lanes and critical minerals. And I know a lot of people who think very seriously about them. And neither the Panama. Yes, I do. And neither the Panama Canal or Greenland are high up on their list of concerns. But if you were sitting down and saying, well, what are the best things we could do for American shipping? Right. In another part, Donald Trump is agreeing with the dock workers who are trying to fight automation and productivity improvements. Right. If you want to help American shipping, you can make our shipping much more efficient. You can come up with all these deals with other countries that give us more and more preferential access to different routes. Right. If you're worried about minerals, there are a million ways that we might want to go get minerals. They're a lot easier than getting into a lot of negotiations with Greenland's indigenous population about whether or not they should become part of America and what it even means if we do. There's no guarantee that getting Greenland to vote to become part of America, even if you can do that, is going to make for an easy access to their natural resources. So what is fascinating, his mind on this, and I think that this fits with a certain self perception he has developed and some of the people around him have developed of what America has lost. I mean, it's part of this whole shift towards a much more masculine and aggressive energy in this version of Trumpism. I think you can look at Maga and this is a argument that James Pogue made in very good piece for the Times as a strange mixture right now of 19th century nativist American movements and things that are looking towards being 22nd century, like interplanetary American imperium movements, Right?
- [25:32]
Aaron Retica
So on one side you have like Stephen Miller and Stephen Bannon and all those people, and on the other side you have all these tech people.
- [25:37]
Ezra Klein
Yes, there's the question of renaming Denali Mount McKinley, which, which, fine. But there's a sense of who cares? And there's a question of planting the American flag on Mars. And he's sort of trying to unite this both. It's a retro futurist view, right? It said America lost this energy, this daring, this courage, this aggression. It's become a country of weenies and immigrants. America's become soft, right? That's the looking back. And then there are all these futurists, Marc Andreessen and Elon Musk and Peter Thiel and others around Donald Trump and now many of them staffing inside the administration who are also looking towards these questions of AI dominance of interplanetary travel. And they have different views on immigration. So there are some schisms or at least tensions within the coalition. But what Donald Trump wants, I think, is to make America bigger and more feared and more dominant again. I don't think he cares so much about the imperium as he does care about the sense that we cannot be stopped. Told what to do, held back. He wants America to act like him. I use New York Times cooking at least three to four times a week.
- [27:18]
Lori Leibovich
I love sheet pan bibimbap.
- [27:20]
Ezra Klein
It said 35 minutes. It was 35 minutes.
- [27:22]
Aaron Retica
The cucumber salad with soy, ginger and garlic. Oh my God, that is just to die for.
- [27:27]
Ezra Klein
This turkey chili has over 17,000 five star ratings. So easy. So delicious. The instructions are so clear, so simple and it just works.
- [27:38]
Aaron Retica
Hey, it's Eric Kim from New York Times Cooking.
- [27:41]
Ezra Klein
Come cook with us.
- [27:42]
Sentry Insurance Representative
Go to nytcooking.com you have a vision for your business. Your priority might be to expand facilities.
- [27:49]
Ezra Klein
Or bring in the best talent.
- [27:51]
Sentry Insurance Representative
At Sentry Insurance, we listen, learn and work to understand your business and your plans to help protect your new locations. As your business evolves, your vision comes true. Sentry right by you. Property and casualty coverages and writer written and safety services are provided by a member of the Century Insurance group, Stevens Point, Wisconsin. For a complete listing of companies, visit sentry.com policies, coverages, benefits and discounts are not available on all state C policy. For complete coverage details.
- [28:22]
Aaron Retica
Let'S stay with the tech people for a minute, more than a minute. There they were right in the front. Governor Abbott of Texas was in the overflow room. Governor DeSantis of Florida was in the overflow room. A message was clearly being sent. If you're fomenting a coup, I guess is how I'll put it right. You want to seize the presidential palace and you want to get the Congress and you want to seize the means of communication. And there they were right in the front row. So what's happening? There is an understanding of how much the means of communication and attention, as you're always talking about it, is that the key now? And Trump sees that so that the fusion of popular culture and political culture is totally complete. Throwing the pens, as you mentioned, out into the crowd. Joe Rogan was there. What do you think?
- [29:13]
Ezra Klein
I do think Donald Trump understands that attention is the new money. Attention is the fundamental substance of power in America as he conceives of at least American politics. So here's what I think is happening here. I have been one of the people using the terms oligarchic for the structure that is emerging. And one criticism I've heard of that that I've been trying to think about and take seriously was, well, you weren't calling Bezos and Zuckerberg and them oligarchic when they were much more Biden or Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama coded. Is oligarchic just the term you use when rich people support Republicans or support Trump? And so I've been trying to think about is this just motivated reasoning on my own part and the part of other liberals? And I don't think we are. So I didn't call the coalition of rich people around Trump oligarchs in 2017. There are rich people supported him. The Adelsons and so on. But it didn't strike me that there was a deal being made in which money would give them rulership. Like the actual word oligarchic, the archic part, it comes from the word that means to rule. And so first and foremost, what I would say has been most different. The thing that has most got me thinking about oligarchy is Elon Musk, who in putting his money and his money is astonishing in its size and his attentional power. Cuz he used that money to take control of X.
- [30:50]
Aaron Retica
Yes, the means of communication.
- [30:51]
Ezra Klein
The means of communication in putting that in service of Trump to a very large degree. And then being at the Trump rallies, he has become clearly the most influential other figure in the Trump administration. The deal has not just been that maybe Trump listens to him a bit on policy, it's that he becomes a kind of co ruler. I'm not saying he's literally the co president.
- [31:13]
Aaron Retica
Stephen Miller's still very important.
- [31:15]
Ezra Klein
But Musk has developed an influence and a control that is very different. And so that relationship between the two of them, what Musk is able to buy with his support, is a kind of power that is nothing like what Jeffrey Katzenberg or George Soros or George Clooney or any of these other people had, or even, as far as I can tell, really wanted. Then there's this dimension in which there is a tit for tat that has emerged where if you anger Trump, he will at least discuss using the power of the government to really harm you. So a couple months ago, he was talking about putting Mark Zuckerberg in jail. Right? He said that he should be in jail, maybe for life.
- [32:00]
Aaron Retica
Jeff Bezos had a lot of jujitsu done there.
- [32:03]
Ezra Klein
Yes. Jeff Bezos clearly had some real problems with the Trump administration. Jeff Bezos has many interests that are before the Trump administration. But now if you turn, you will be so welcomed in that you'll actually be there in that row at inauguration. So again, the sort of deal of if you put your resources at his disposal, if you move your policy in his direction, if you come out for him, you don't just get some good treatment, you get real power. You don't just get to be heard, you get to potentially be part of ruling. Right. Marc Andreessen, who is another early tech guy, has just been incredibly influential in the transition. David Sacks. Right. I'm not saying that Democrats do not give ambassadorships and things to the people who support them, but this sort of entering into a coalitional government with these tech billionaires feels Very different. And obviously everything is a matter of degree. Right. I mean, money was a problem four years ago, it was a problem eight years ago. And one thing that a little bit annoys me about Republicans saying you're complaining about this now, it's like, well, no, actually, like most liberals, I've complained about money in politics forever and have supported every bill that has come up to reduce its power. And Republicans have killed all those bills. So that's another piece of it. The TikTok thing is another piece of it. Somebody with a very big stake in TikTok, who's very rich, went to Trump. That seems to have been what led to Trump flipping on TikTok and now TikTok and putting up these notices that President Trump is going to save us. And we thank him and we're looking forward to working with him. Well, who's to say that then in the 2028 election or the 2026 election when TikTok and behind it, possibly the Chinese Communist Party are worried about Democrats getting power that they think will be bad for TikTok or bad for China because now Donald Trump is in a more transactional relationship there that they don't begin turning the dials on what goes viral on TikTok.
- [34:07]
Aaron Retica
There's these studies that show that if you write about or post, I should say, about the Uyghurs, the embattled Muslim minority in China, you will disappear on TikTok, whereas on other platforms, Right, it shows up.
- [34:22]
Ezra Klein
Yeah, maybe just pro Trump content just does a little bit better. Like I've talked to many people who know high up people at TikTok. I've done some reporting here. I was writing about TikTok, I think in 2022, and people will say, yeah, we don't have access really to this whole system. A lot of it is controlled from China. So the question of can then after entering into this partnership, you get both the ability to help rule in the Trump administration. But then the other side of it is you're going to use these attentional platforms to help consolidate the power of Donald Trump and maga. That's what feels different to me. And I recognize that some of my friends on the right will say, well, that's what content moderation was or what it looked like to us when Donald Trump was banned by these different platforms for trying to foment mob violence on them. And I think it is different. I could understand the view that it isn't. But there was nothing like the role that Elon Musk is playing and in playing it has shown other billionaires that they can play being offered. And the final thing I'll say on this, because I know it's a long answer, but to me it's important, is a part of this reflects Donald Trump's own ideological flexibility, that the boundaries on what someone could ask of Joe Biden, of Kamala Harris, of Barack Obama, of George W. Bush, were just narrower because they were part of ideologically programmatic parties. So this trade of power for attention, it feels potent and frightening to me. And the image of it, the visual of it at the inauguration with these other kind of power centers, like the governor sitting in more seats, I think a lot of how to understand the Trump administration is visual, is aesthetic, is marketing. It's something that displays what it is in public. They really went to some lengths to display what they were in public. I think we should believe them.
- [36:16]
Aaron Retica
Even if you believe in some kind of futurist AI paradise, just seeing them lined up there, it's so far from, as you were saying earlier about the manufacturing base. It's so far from the guy in Ohio. Right. It's literally the three richest men in the world, and they are all men lined up like that. I have to say, I found it totally grotesque. And I'm less sympathetic than you are also, just to all this, you know, like, the futurist aspect of it makes my, you know, I fear it more than.
- [36:51]
Ezra Klein
But I do want to keep saying, though, because I think that Democrats keep, maybe, understandably, maybe it's even good politics, want to jam this into the box of plutocrats.
- [36:59]
Aaron Retica
Right.
- [37:00]
Ezra Klein
But what made it, this set of people was not that they were billionaires because Sundar Prashai was there. Right. Like the CEO of TikTok was there. What, what got them there was their control of attention. These are attentional billionaires. These are attentional oligarchs. I was saying this in my episode with Chris Hayes, but I think Democrats still think the fundamental substance of political power is money. And Republicans under Trump believe it is attention. And I think they are closer to. Right. And so the alliances and deals they are trying to cut have more to do with attention.
- [37:31]
Aaron Retica
Okay. Yeah. The distinction I always like to make, and I stole this from someone, but God knows who. People always talk about taking power, but you don't take it. Right. You make it. And this is how it's made.
- [37:42]
Ezra Klein
Yeah, Look, I think, I mean, Bernie Sanders has been saying we're in an oligarchy for a long time. The idea that the rich have too much power in American politics has Been true for a long time. But everything is a matter of degrees. And you break norms enough and you end up in something that becomes a difference in kind. Something separates the way Russia and its oligarchs work from the way America and its rich work. And I don't think it's just hypocrisy in America. I think that the deal between Putin and the oligarchs is different. And the amount of money that can be made out of that deal and the amount of power transferred in that deal is different. And one of the telling reports recently was that if China does have to sell TikTok, which until now, I shouldn't say China, I should say ByteDance, but they're not doing anything without the Chinese government's say. So until now they've said they won't. But then there was a report in Bloomberg that maybe they'd be open to selling it to Elon Musk. And that was very revealing because what better way to curry favor with both this administration, Donald Trump himself, but also the other most powerful person right now, who also, by the way, Musk himself, has huge amounts of commercial interest in China around Tesla and other things. So this is how these systems work. And I just don't think what was going on between Joe Biden and Jeffrey Katzenberg looked like this.
- [39:06]
Aaron Retica
No, it definitely didn't. So speaking of ominous, let's talk about the pardons, right? A sweeping 1500 people. I mean, that's a rough number. The people who actually were caught committing violence, they had their. I don't know if they were commuted, but I think they were to time served. Lots of people just had the cases swept out. That's an extraordinary. Again, I'm going to say we have to stop for a second and just think about that. So a bunch of people who tried to change the electoral procedures of the United States, make January 6th into a thing when it had been more purely ceremonial before that under the threat of violence, all those people have been pardoned. So it's sort of obvious what the message that's being sent there. But I want to talk about that. Right? He's got a little army there. What's that?
- [40:01]
Ezra Klein
I keep saying that we have entered a new regime, not just a new set of people in power, but a different way power is wielded, a different way American politics works. And this is one of the places you see it that while maybe in some other system, in some other way, you might want to say, every election is stolen and my people should go out into the streets with their guns and try to take it back. You don't, because you understand this is an infinite game. You're trying to keep playing the game of American democracy. And if one side defects from that game, then it's very hard for the whole system to sustain. That is not the way Donald Trump has ever viewed it. When he loses elections, he says those elections are rigged. Going back, by the way, to the Iowa caucuses against ted Cruz in 2016, which he lost and he said were rigged. And under the way Donald Trump sees it, he is the leader of an army. I think this is functionally accurate, that he incited his followers to try to take back power by force. They tried and they failed. And that was a battle lost, Not a horrible day in which things got out of control. And when you lose a battle and your brave soldiers become prisoners of war to the other side, hostages, hostages, as he put it. When you lose a battle and your foot soldiers become hostages, if you then win the war, you free them. And not just free them, you honor them. That is the shift in perception here. There was a lot of talk that he wouldn't perhaps pardon those who had been convicted for acts of violence, but he pardoned them, too.
- [41:48]
Aaron Retica
You're right. People who hurt other human beings. Right.
- [41:51]
Ezra Klein
And hurt police officers. So much for his support for the.
- [41:53]
Aaron Retica
Police doesn't extend to the Capitol Police.
- [41:55]
Ezra Klein
These are the new rules. I will say I am caught between a lot of frustration and anger, Joe Biden, and a certain amount of understanding by Biden sort of shifting back and forth on how he wants to view this new world. Because if you do believe that the justice system will be completely politicized, that there is no norm that Trump and those around him will not break, then I somewhat understand why you want to pardon your family and a number of the people you think might be in the crosshairs. And I was particularly sympathetic, as I say at the top of this show, to Hunter Biden, who I think there was an unusual amount of right wing vengeance was going to be focused on him in some conceptual way. I wish that pardon hadn't happened. But. But speaking as a human being and as a father, I can understand where Biden's head was. But then to pardon first so many other people, so just like pardons everywhere, and you're just hearing about pardons for weeks, and then to pardon so many members of your family and Anthony Fauci and Liz Cheney, then it's in a way an acceptance of the new regime. It's saying we play by these rules too. Now we pardon our people, they pardon their people. The pardon power is about making sure nobody can hurt your people. And I understand how in Biden's head, his administration's head, what they feel like they're doing is protecting their people from these new rules, but in another way that they were creating a kind of acceptance of them. And I'm not saying that that would change what Trump did, but in terms of the ability for Democrats to stand against it and fight it, I think it was harmful. And many top Democrats I've spoken to have said the same thing in private, if not in public. It is all, to me, frightening. In terms of his pardons, in terms of how he lined up who was in the room, he is revealing the new rules, not the new policies. The new policies are less different than what he promised during the campaign. Less in the way of tariffs, less in the way of talking about taxes. It's the new rules that are more different, the new power structure that is more different. And to me, that was the message of the first day. And to me, that, in a way to go back to your first question is what we're seeing Make America Great Again really means to make America great again. The Make America Great Again movement needs total power to remake this country and destroy those who oppose it. There is no commitment to the system. There's no commitment to elections. There's no commitment to something beyond what keeps MAGA in power. And Donald Trump was just delivering justice to those who had fought for him in a war, in a battle that lost. But now he was coming back. He is coming back as the hero who has won the war, and he is not going to forget those who fought for him, and he is not going to forget those who fought against him.
- [44:52]
Aaron Retica
The first time around, Trump was, you know, the I alone can fix it guy. During his inaugural address, he actually said he had been put here by God to make America great again. So what do you make of the Trump theory of the divine right of presidents, or specifically the defined right of President Trump?
- [45:15]
Ezra Klein
By every account, including his own, Donald Trump experienced his near assassination as a divine touch. He was saved, and he must have been saved for a purpose. And there are many people around him, including faith leaders, who have told him he was saved for a purpose. I did an audio essay before the election where I talked about the fundamental nature of. Of Donald Trump. The fundamental feature of his psychology being this disinhibition that behind his success is his willingness to do and say and act in ways that other people would not. And also beyond what makes him dangerous is his willingness to do things and say things and act in ways other people would not. That ranges from launching a meme coin under your own name the weekend of your inauguration, all the way to possibly going to war for Greenland. And that was his psychology before. Now. You add to that this feeling of being chosen, of having persevered beyond all odds, of having been persecuted. They tried to put him in jail. They tried to kill him. This is how he understands it. And he was protected and he fought. And now not only did he win, but he has won with a cultural momentum and acceptance, a level of support and friendship from the most powerful people in society. People rejected him and laughed at him and looked down on him in 2017 that he never could have immediately imagined the hero's arc. To live through that. What would that do to even a person who began as humble? What would that do to even a person who had the normal restraints on their behavior? What must it do to the kind of temperament that Donald Trump is? What will it do to his perception of risk? Well, his advisors say that launching these missiles, that sending this force, that abandoning this alliance is a bad idea. But is God not with him? I am not now, and I will never be one to say that I have some full understanding of Donald Trump's psychology, but the particular context in which he takes office for the second time strikes me as very accelerationist for the kind of psychology we have seen him to have. To add to that a sense of historical destiny is, on the one hand, quite unnerving and also speaks, I think, to the great weakness and what might prove to be, if I'd guess, the fatal vulnerability of the Trump administration and his second term, which is that in many ways, Donald Trump was saved in his first term by all the people who did not allow him to do things that he otherwise wanted to do, like shoot missiles into Mexico or unleash the National Guard to begin shooting on protesters en masse. Now he is unleashed, and not just to make policy or make foreign policy decisions, but to enrich himself. And understanding a popular vote victory of a point and a half, where you end up with the smallest House majority since the Great Depression, where you lose half of the Senate races in battleground states and where not a single governor's mansion changes hands as a kind of victory that is blessed by God for unsparing ambition and greatness. That's the kind of mismatch between public mood and presidential energy that can, I guess, it could create greatness. It seems also like it can create catastrophe. So we'll see. Aaron, thank you very much.
- [49:40]
Aaron Retica
Thank you very much.
- [50:00]
Ezra Klein
This episode of the Ezra Klein show was produced by Claire Gordon. Fact checking by Kate Sinclair. Mixing by Isaac Jones with Havim Shapiro and Amin Sahota. Our supervising editor is Claire Gordon. The show's production team also includes Roland Hu, Elias Isquith, Kristin lin and Jack McCordick. Original music by Pat McCusker. Audience strategy by Christina Semuluski and Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie Rose Strasser.