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- [00:04]
A
Ronald Reagan's presidency of the 1980s is known as the Reagan Revolution, while Franklin D. Roosevelt, the only president who has served for more than two terms, is known for his reformist agenda. So now that it's officially a year on from Donald Trump's inauguration for a second time, how does the scale of what he has upended and changed compare? I'm Tammy Mills filling in for Samantha Salinger Morris. And you're listening to the MORNING EDITION from the Age and the Sydney Morning Herald Today, North America correspondent Michael Kosiol on the deliberate chaos of the Trump presidency and whether he's likely to toss aside legalities again and run for a third. So, Michael, thanks for joining us.
- [01:00]
B
Thanks for having me.
- [01:01]
A
So, Michael, it's kind of hard to believe what's happened in the first 12 months in terms of what's being dismantled, disbanded, introduced, changed. I mean, take your pick of the words. But how would you describe the first year?
- [01:16]
B
Well, that's right. I mean, it's kind of deliberate chaos. Right. It's funny. I was talking to or I interviewed Steve Bannon, the sort of prominent MAGA figure, the other day, and, you know, he was saying that even he was shocked by how fast Trump has moved and the extent of the disruption. And, you know, we were talking about the capture of Nicolas Maduro, the Venezuelan leader. We were talking about Iran. We were talking about the Gaza Peace board, changes to drug policy here in the US the events in Minneapolis and the kind of ramifications of Trump's immigration crackdown. And these are only things that are happening in the last three weeks, like this year. So that kind of you sort of have forgotten all the things that even happened back in February. I mean, this term started with a flurry of executive orders. You know, day one was pardoning the January 6th writers. You sort of almost forget about that now, except some of them have signed up to ICE and are now enforcing immigration law on the streets of big cities. So it kind of comes full circle. But, you know, domestically, on the global stage, it has just been one thing after the other. And as Bannon, you know, was explicit about, this is partly because, you know, they want to change the country after four years of Biden. And, you know, fair enough, it's a new government. When you change the government, you change the country. But also that this is part of a deliberate strategy to, as they say, flood the zone, to overwhelm the system so that there will be so much change, so much chaos, that the institutions, like the media, like the judiciary, just can't keep up listeners will probably be.
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A
Able to hear some sirens in the background there, which, I don't know, we haven't put in for dramatic. For dramatic effect.
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B
It's not some sort of ice raid or whatever. It's. It's pretty standard. For some reason, American sirens insist on being incredibly loud at all times and unnecessarily loud. So that's just part of American life.
- [03:29]
A
So with all the changes that have happened in this first year, can you give me a bit more context? Historically? I mean, is it completely unprecedented for a president? Have we ever seen a president in US history change so much so quickly?
- [03:45]
B
Oh, not really. I mean, you know, you can make the case that FDR was, you know, a big reforming president, Ronald Reagan was a big reforming president. They call it the Reagan revolution in the 1980s. But no one has kind of done this much this quickly and also, you know, in such a deliberate way by expanding the personal power of the president. You know, I mean, other presidents have sought to change the country, but Trump has done it in a particular way where he is expanding what the office is capable of and, you know, in many ways rendering the Congress irrelevant. You know, the judiciary arguably has given him a harder time, and, you know, we've seen a lot of his policy changes kind of held up in the courts or blocked in the courts, but, you know, then they sometimes get overturned by a high court, and he's got a Supreme Court, you know, that is. Has a conservative supermajority that has, you know, when cases eventually make their way to the Supreme Court, has, you know, ruled pretty often in his favour, including on these big questions about Article 2 of the Constitution, which deals with the extent of presidential power. So, again, you're seeing a very deliberate effort to sort of use that part of the Constitution to make Trump not only the commander in chief, but the chief magistrate, the chief legal officer, the CEO of the country, as Steve Bannon put it, and really, you know, rule with an iron fist almost.
- [05:27]
A
And something that kind of typifies the Trump presidency, you know, the last 12 months has been the tariffs. Right, which is the method that he's used in this first year in order to force nations to bend to his will. So tell us a little bit about that.
- [05:40]
B
Yeah, I mean, that's his number one economic policy. Right. And it's kind of a foreign policy as well. It's a. It's a, for all purposes policy. You know, at home, the tariffs are designed to sort of bring back domestic manufacturing. This idea that there's going to be another golden age of American manufacturing that companies are not going to want to pay these tariffs. So they're going to move jobs back to the US and they're going to invest trillions of dollars in the United States. And then in the foreign policy sense, he's using these tariffs to basically bully other countries, using the power of the American market. And, you know, we've seen that just this week with Greenland. So, you know, unless Denmark and all these other European countries do what I want and give us Greenland, I'm going to hit you with additional tariffs. And, you know, I mean, look, we've seen that it works. Countries don't like them, they don't want their products to be hit by them. And so they're willing to jump pretty high when Trump threatens them with tariffs. It's been pretty effective. Although that could all end any day now when the Supreme Court makes its decision as to whether these tariffs are legal or not. We're sort of just, you know, waiting for that to come. It could be any day. And that would just blow up Donald Trump's agenda. Having said that, the administration says that they are, you know, they've got a plan B, they reckon they can, you know, reconstitute the tariff framework using other laws. We'll see about that. There's no doubt that if the Supreme Court were to knock those tariffs down, it would represent the biggest defeat Donald Trump has had to date in his second term.
- [07:20]
A
And it could really kind of upend one of the hallmarks, I guess, of his presidency so far. And some of the things, other things that he's done on the global stage has also been significant. And you've touched on a bit of a highlight or a low light, depending on which side of politics you're on. But talk to some of the more significant changes that he's made on the global stage.
- [07:39]
B
Well, look, I think blowing up the sort of liberal world order that has been normalised for the past decades is, you know, it hasn't been completely destroyed. But we're certainly seeing at the moment just how much stress Trump is putting on it. You know, we see that traditional alliances like the NATO alliance are not a sort of, you know, rigid, principled thing for this president that he feels like if there's some advantage that he wants to extract from some country, whether it's an ally, he will do that. If he wants to whack tariffs on an ally, he will do that. So all of the kind of rules based order that, you know, the west has kind of rallied around has gone out the window. We've seen him. You know, I don't want to say cozy up to Putin because I think, you know, I think a lot of this is designed to kind of long term counter Moscow and Beijing. But I think there's also no doubt that Donald Trump has different ideas about power and how that power is owned by countries like China and Russia, which is sort of these, you know, regional, regional histories, Hegemons or semi hegemons. I think there's no doubt in Donald Trump's mind that, you know, Russia is a large country with a big military and therefore it kind of gets to do what it wants a bit, including, you know, in Ukraine, where he, you know, wants to end the war, but has been prepared to indulge a lot of Vladimir Putin's whims and really not put the pressure on Vladimir Putin that people would like to Donald Trump to put on him. And the same with China, I think, you know, although a lot of this kind of American policy is designed to counter China so that it doesn't threaten the US Too much, he's also prepared to say, well, you know, China, it's a big, powerful country and, you know, to some extent he respects that. And, you know, he hasn't wanted countries like Japan to push back too hard against China's plans. On Taiwan especially, at least not vocally. Trump has been very much saying, you know, he believes Xi Jinping, there's no way he'd make a move on Taiwan, at least not while, you know, he, Trump is president. And so, you know, it's a, it's a different approach to that kind of geopolitics, where it is, you know, survival of the fittest. It's law of the jungle, as some analyst put it, where, you know, the, the big strong countries get respected and in a sense get bowed down to and the weaker countries get taken advantage of. After the break, he's been banging this drum for a while on his podcast that, you know, Donald Trump is going to run again in 2028, to quote Bannon driver Mack Truck through the 22nd amendment of the Constitution, which is the bit that prevents someone being elected president more than twice.
- [10:57]
A
So let's turn to now, like, what is actually upended or changed within the US and you read a list of all of them, and it's kind of mind boggling. So take us through some of those.
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B
Look, I think the biggest one at the moment is immigration. I mean, and there's multiple facets to that. I think one of Trump's first and arguably most successful policies was to basically crack down on border crossings on the southern border. Now, a lot of those border crossings had started to come down anyway. I mean, it did get out of control under Joe Biden, and that was a large part of why the Democrats lost that election. But those numbers had already started to really fall. Joe Biden had been cracking down on illegal border crossings, but Trump, you know, has got it down to a trickle. Basically nothing. Now things have turned to the deportations, which he also promised before the election. You know, the biggest deportation, mass deportation drive the country's ever seen. You know, the numbers change, but, you know, they talk about getting 11, 13, 15 million people out of the country. That's a lot more difficult. And we're seeing the repercussions of that right now on city streets around the US because that means ice, the, you know, sort of immigration enforcement squad going around pulling people over at traffic stops, trying to hunt down. Now, you know, sometimes they're hunting down criminals, and, you know, heinous criminals at that, murderers, rapists, what have you. There's plenty of those. But it also means hunting down people who are just here without, you know, they're not here lawfully. They don't have the right documents, but they could have been here for a long time. They might have families here. They've got jobs. They're a part of church communities, school communities, and that is creating great tension. So that's one thing. We're seeing that play out every day. We're seeing it play out in Minneapolis at the moment. But, of course, every other aspect of American life has been upended, too. I mean, there are changes to the vaccine schedule which have been enacted by Robert Kennedy, the Health Secretary. He's basically been empowered to, you know, bring his considerable vaccine skepticism to. To bear upon American children. And those changes are being made. The Education Department was abolished. You're seeing the size of government shrunk. We had Elon Musk and his, you know, team. He's raised a gang of young cost cutters. The Department of Government Efficiency sort of, you know, run right through the American government. We had the dismantling of usaid, the foreign aid program, again, you know, you can hardly remember it now, because so much has happened since then. The, you know, really big. The really big consequences for transgender people in the US who, you know, the administration now says don't exist. They do not believe that there is such thing as a transgender person. They say that there are only two sexes, male and female. And that policy is now being reflected through, you know, every aspect of American life, whether it's sports or whether it's in the military, you know, no longer allowed to serve, being kicked out of the military. So these are massive changes, and, you know, no part of American life is untouched by them.
- [14:16]
A
Do you think he still has the support of Americans, given all these changes? Do people feel like this is the mandate that they gave him, or are these kind of critical things that have occurred? Particularly I'm thinking of the shooting of Renee Goodbye, an ICE officer, recently. Has that changed the level of support for Trump?
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B
Well, it's interesting. Trump's level of support generally is. Has come down a lot. Now, it did not start from the highest point of, you know, most presidents, because he's a known entity, Right. You're not getting that kind of honeymoon that a new president would get. He's back for his second term, so it didn't start that high, and it's come down a lot. I think his approval rating in the aggregate polls is about 40% at the moment. His disapproval rating somewhere between 55 and 60%. So people are overall not that happy. His approval rating was higher on the immigration issue. When you kind of ask people, you know, what kind of job do you think the president's doing on these issues? But it, too, has fallen into negative territory, and that has correlated basically with ice kind of moving on from, you know, arresting the criminals to, you know, detaining people on farms and at car washes and, you know, those sort of everyday people who are not criminals. People don't really like that. They seem to think that he's going too far and that ICE is going too far with its methods.
- [15:39]
A
Now, when we talk about the level of support, it brings me to the great story that you did have this week, and you mentioned him before, Steve Bannon, MAGA loyalist. So can you just tell listeners who Steve Bannon is and the level of influence he still has?
- [15:55]
B
So, Steve Bannon, he was a very important White House strategist. He was Trump's chief strategist in the first term. He's, you know, he would call himself the ultra maga, right. You know, he's a nationalist and, you know, and very much on that hard right end of the MAGA kind of cohort. He even went to prison rather than testify about the January six riots before Congress. He did not get rewarded with another White House job in this term. So, you know, look, it's a bit unclear how close he is to Trump these days. He says he still, you know, talks with Trump, and then he, of course, has kind of external influence in the MAGA ecosystem through his very popular podcast, War Room, where he sort of, you know, I think his role is to kind of shape the MAGA discourse, right, and to extend the Overton window of what's acceptable. And, you know, arguably, he's helped do that over the last, not just the last year, but the last four years, where he's been one of those kind of thought leaders in terms of, you know, when Trump gets back in, what do we want to do? We want to flood the zone. We want to totally change the joint. And you're seeing part of his agenda now, you know, being enacted by the president. So, you know, yes, he's not in the inner circle anymore, but he retains relevance.
- [17:19]
A
And he told you. Well, he's told you something kind of quite significant in your interview with him. What did he say, Michael?
- [17:27]
B
Look, he. And he's been banging this drum for a while on his podcast that, you know, Donald Trump is going to run again in 2028. And that banner, you know, he says he's Bannon, he's working on a legal strategy. He's doing a book with Alan Dershowitz, which apparently is going to lay out how legally this could be possible, that, you know, they think they can, to quote Bannon, drive a Mack truck through the 22nd Amendment of the Constitution, which is the bit that prevents someone being elected president more than twice. And so when you have him saying that and apparently making moves to kind of come up with a legal justification, that's significant. And, you know, who knows what's going to happen in the next two or three years? So at the same time, Trump has kind of played it down more recently. You know, earlier on, he was saying, yeah, I've got people looking at, you know, how we might do it. He's more lately been saying, oh, I think the Constitution's pretty clear. I can't do it. Which is a shame. I think he likes to kind of troll a bit, Trump. But, you know, we thought Greenland might have been trolling early last year, and now it's kind of become real. So you just never know with these things. And that's why I think it's important to keep an eye on it.
- [18:48]
A
Well, if the first year's anything to go by, then a lot could change and a lot could happen between now and 2028. So thank you, Michael, for joining us on the Morning edition.
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B
Not a problem. Thank you.
- [19:05]
A
In other news today, senior politicians will be stripped of their uncapped entitlements to fly their partners and children around Australia as the government moves to implement recommendations from an independent tribunal on expenses. Also leading our websites today is the result of a late night vote in federal parliament on tougher gun control laws and the government's Hate Crimes bill. And there's been four shark attacks within 48 hours in New South Wales after heavy rainfall flushed bull sharks from rivers and estuaries into harbours and beaches. You can read these stories and more on our websites theage.com au or smh.com au Today's episode was produced by Josh Towers, and our podcasts are overseen by Lisa Muxworthy and Tom McKendrick. If you like our show, follow the Morning Edition and leave a review for us on Apple or Spotify. I'm Tammy Mills. Thanks for listening.