← The Opinions
The Opinions
From Hungary to the Pope, the Right’s Very Bad Week
00:36:19
What recent events in Europe can tell us about the future of Trumpism.
Loading summary
Transcript86 lines
- [00:00]
Chase Sapphire Reserve Advertiser
This is the table, the one with the view. This is how you reserve exclusive tables with Chase Sapphire Reserve. This is your name on the list. This is the chef sending you something he didn't put on the menu. This is 3 times points on dining with Chase Sapphire reserve and a $300 dining credit that covered the citrus pavlova and drinks. And the thing you didn't think you liked until you tasted it, Chase Sapphire Reserve now even more rewarding.
- [00:25]
David French
Learn more@chase.com Sapphire Reserve call cards issued by JP Morgan, Chase bank and a member FDIC subject to credit approval.
- [00:32]
Podcast Host/Announcer
This is the Opinions, a show that brings you a mix of voices from New York Times Opinion. You've heard the news, here's what to make of it.
- [00:49]
Michelle Cottle
I'm Michelle Cottle. I cover national politics for New York Times Opinion. And this week I am here with two of my fans, fantastic colleagues, columnist David French and the other Michelle, Michelle Gobark. Guys, thanks for being here.
- [01:05]
David French
Michelle. Michelle. Great to be with y'. All.
- [01:07]
Michelle Goldberg
Yeah, thanks for having me.
- [01:09]
Michelle Cottle
We're gonna test David's ability to pivot between the Michelles today. Today we're gonna talk about the defeat of a MAGA favorite, Viktor Orban in Hungary. And we gotta talk about the Pope. So there's a lot to cover. Let's get into it first. First up, the Hungarian election where Prime Minister Viktor Orban and his Fedez party got absolutely creamed. Michelle, you've been over there, you've been reporting from Hungary. You were there until like just the last couple of days or so. What is Orban's connection to Trump and MAGA and why does this loss matter?
- [01:44]
Michelle Goldberg
Sure. Well, Orban was prime minister in the early 2000s. Then he was defeated. When he came back, he really sat set about creating what he called an illiberal democracy. And it was the template for a lot of modern authoritarians all over the world, I think very much, including Trump. And you know, Vance himself has said that some of what Orban does should be a model for conservatives. Kevin Roberts, the head of the Heritage foundation, has said that Orban state isn't a model, but the model for conservative statecraft. And, and so what Orban did was, well, he had a two thirds majority, which is what you need to rewrite the constitution. So he rewrote the constitution. One of the things he did was create these, like, wildly gerrymandered districts that made it very, very difficult for the opposition. He created a network of foundations. He both was able to shut down the preeminent kind of liberal university in Budapest and then set up his own parall right wing educational institutions. He forced the sale of media outlets to regime aligned oligarchs, which maybe will sound familiar to people in the United States.
- [03:01]
Michelle Cottle
I gotta say, I'm having shades of Trump panic here.
- [03:05]
Michelle Goldberg
Well, yeah, I mean, and it's really. I mean, I think one of the things that's striking about being there is that this was a process of 16 years. And if you look at kind of how much Donald Trump has done over less than two years, it's kind of alarming. On the other hand, Hungary shows that even when this is very, very entrenched, with enough sort of popular will, you can, you can overcome it. But Orman really held himself out as the model for a new sort of regime at a time when people felt like liberal democracy was exhausted. And he invested a lot of state money, a lot of Hungarian money into building out this network in other places. I mean, there's a whole subculture in Budapest of these American expats working at state subsidized think tanks, writing about how heavenly it is to live in the Orban regime. And I was actually at an event at the Danube Institute, which is one of these think tanks, earlier in the week, and they were all kind of glum because they could sort of see where things were going. And one of the speakers actually said, you know, without the Hungarian taxpayer, we wouldn't have this right wing infrastructure in Europe. Which I thought was kind of a stunning admission. And I don't know that the Hungarian taxpayer realized that they were subsidizing this new intellectual infrastructure.
- [04:26]
Michelle Cottle
David, what are you, what are your thoughts? What hit you?
- [04:29]
David French
You know, it is difficult to understate how much for part of the Trump right, Hungary was the model. This was the wave of the future. You know, look, I would not ascribe that to Trump. I mean, I, from the beginning, I think of Trumpism as just the will to power of one man, Donald Trump. It's not a coherent ideology, but a lot of people who want to have a coherent ideology of illiberalism and authoritarianism have attached themselves to Trump. And I would say Orbanism was what you might call intellectual Trumpism. In other words, how do you create a political philosophy around this concept of the strongman in a Western democracy? And Orban was kind of the model. He was kind of the guy. Now, to me, you know, I found all of this deeply confusing. I mean, I remember in the 80s and 90s having all these arguments with my liberal friends who were, you know, holding out Norway as like the model of social democracy. And I'm like, guys, small Scandinavian countries are not one to one comparisons with the US I was completely right. I just, I didn't know which countries, region of Europe with a small country was going to be the model for the US apparently it's central Europe and a small central European country is the model. And it was important enough for the sort of intellectual Trump, right, for J.D. vance to go there to actually essentially appear in a campaign rally to interfere blatantly, grotesquely in the election. And then after Orban loses, it was like, oh, but the right one anyway, because Magyar is conservative and is more conservative than the rest of the eu. So no, we really didn't lose this. And look, he is a conservative politician by European definitions or right wing politician by European definitions, but very fundamentally different in the approach to liberal democracy. And that was always the beef with Orban. It wasn't so much that he was a right leaning politician, it was the illiberal authoritarianism. That's why Trumpists here at home found him compelling. It wasn't his right leaning ideology, it was his illiberal authoritarianism. And it's the defeat of that illiberal authoritarianism that is really the big development out of Europe.
- [06:44]
Michelle Goldberg
I just wanna say one quick thing about the comparison between Norway and Hungary, right? So I take your point that maybe you can't kind of base, you know, a model for American governance on these relatively small European countries. But I think the big difference is that Norway at least works on its own terms, right? Like Norway is a thriving, happy, rich, successful country. Whereas even on the right zone terms, Hungary has become one of the worst countries in the eu, right? It is the most corrupt on, on many measures. You know, one of Orban's big policies was that he was going to raise the birth rate. I mean, he hasn't. The birth rate is really, really low. I think it's 1.31 or something like that. And so the model doesn't even work on its own terms. Which is another reason why I think that this has been such a blow. Because I mean, think about, this is not on the same scale, but think about kind of American leftists grappling with, with the failure of communism and what it means when your God has failed. This is a much lesser God, but the failure is still, I think, going to create a sort of intellectual crisis.
- [07:53]
Michelle Cottle
So somebody talked to me about J.D. vance's role over there. It seems to me that it was extremely risky to send him. I mean, I get his fanboy tendencies with Hungary especially, he himself is a very enthusiastic Natalist. I can see some of the appeal. But to send the vice president over there to wrap his arms around Orban on the eve of these elections and then have such a spectacular belly flop. What do you make of this little adventure and what happens now in terms of where it takes the post liberal right in the US and what it does for that movement? David, go first.
- [08:36]
David French
You know, can I call this the straight of Hormuz of electoral interventions?
- [08:41]
Michelle Cottle
Please do.
- [08:42]
David French
Yeah. So, you know, one of the things that has happened is that you have seen Maga sort of take this view where they don't believe bad news now or bad polls or negative reports.
- [08:56]
Michelle Cottle
It's all fake. It's all fake.
- [08:58]
David French
It's all fake. And so now look, I mean, there's a good reason why, for example, there's some skepticism towards polls. You know, in all three of Trump's presidential elections, he outperformed his polling. But this would have been outperforming by orders of magnitude greater. But what we have seen is a consistent pattern with the administration just overreaches and overreaches and overreaches. There's this underlying hubris that they can bend the world to their will. And it's interesting, Michelle, I honestly think that what was the political project of Orbanism, if you were going to hear the right, it really wasn't to turn Hungary into a thriving democracy. The political project was the authoritarianism was sustainable authoritarianism. That was the political project because for years, you know, when I was writing against this Hungarian experiment in conservative media, and I was comparing Hungary to all kinds of other countries on exactly those metrics, Michelle, birth rate, economic prosperity. I mean, the contrast between Poland and Hungary is just extreme here. It's a large contrast, but that was not what was motivating them here. It was not really. I've gone to Hungary because Hungary has shown how to make its citizens happier, healthier and more prosperous. It was. I've gone to Hungary because Orban has shown how to deal with woksters. And it's the failure of that particular political enterprise, which was not really rooted in human flourishing and mutual and shared prosperity. It's the failure of that particular enterprise and what they thought of as sort of sustainable authoritarianism. That's the real blow there.
- [10:42]
Michelle Cottle
Right.
- [10:42]
Michelle Goldberg
And can I say something that has been driving me crazy since the election? I think you're hearing this over and over again. The new line is, well, the fact that he lost and there looks like there's gonna be a Peaceful transition of power proves that he was never an authoritarian to begin with. You know, I mean, I would point out that there was a peaceful transition after the fall of communism in 1989. And nobody says that that proves that communism was never authoritarian. But also just, you know, I went to one of the last Peter Magyar rallies in this town a few hours from Budapest in the northeast, kind of a Fides stronghold and a town of like 16,000 pretty run down, a lot of Soviet style architecture still around. And there were well over a thousand people turned out in this square. And Peter Magyar kept saying, you know, don't be afraid, don't be afraid. And the people were chanting, we are not afraid. And so I asked a woman, you know, what does he mean? Like what, what, what have you been afraid of? And she was an elementary school teacher and she told me that in the past she would have been afraid to show her support for the opposition because she would have feared that she would lose her job and her ability to support her family. And, you know, and it was only kind of seeing this tidal wave of people that made her think that, you know, there was this sort of preference cascade. But you hear that kind of thing all the time. And what's so frustrating is that on the one hand it's this kind of strong hand, to put it lightly, that the Maga, Right, admires. And now that it's been rebuked, they want to pretend that it was never there to begin with.
- [12:23]
David French
Right, right.
- [12:24]
Michelle Cottle
Well, that's part of the whole admit no defeat.
- [12:27]
David French
Right.
- [12:27]
Michelle Cottle
That is just kind of baked into that movement that, you know, nothing is truly a defeat. But you mentioned Poland, Michal, and you've reported from there where the far right Law and Justice Party undermined democratic norms for nearly a decade before it was kind of booted in 2023. So what have you they done to rebuild that democracy? And is there a lesson or lessons for Hungary to pull from that?
- [12:58]
Michelle Goldberg
Well, in some ways it was a sort of similar election in that it was the center pro European right versus the far populist right. It's actually, I think, much more difficult in Poland, even though the Law and Justice Party hadn't become quite as entrenched because of the size of the victory in Hungary. So when I was in Poland, it was just a few months after the election and what the government was dealing with is I think what we're going to end up dealing with here too, which is that when you have all of these regime cronies kind of infiltrated into all of these institutions, it becomes very hard to remove them without traducing democratic norms yourself. Right. And so it's this sort of paradox of reform. You know, in Poland, they had created these new judicial roles. They had done sort of, you know, complicated things to shore up the judiciary. How do you undo that without exerting sort of extrajudicial powers yourself? The difference in Hungary? And again, we don't know how this is going to play out, but because Peter Magyar won what they call their constitutional majority, he won two thirds. His party is going to be able to revise the Hungarian constitution. And so they have a much freer hand to undo what Orban has done.
- [14:21]
Michelle Cottle
David, what does Peter Magyar, what kind of challenge is he facing with this and ridding the country and kind of like cleansing it of this authoritarian bent that has been, you know, they took 16 years to get this project rolling.
- [14:36]
David French
I think Michelle identified the problem very well. And it's a version of the problem that we're going to face the next time there is a non Trumpist or a Democratic administration. And that is if one of the violations of norms was purging the bureaucracy and replacing it with your own loyalists, is the correction to that purging the bureaucracy again. And have you essentially created a pattern where in the desire to avoid something like the corrupt ideological spoil system, you then push it to another level because you have to try to cleanse the products of the corrupt ideological spoil system, which then the other side codes is just and understands is just a purge of my allies. And you realize how much one person who is breaking both legal and sort of traditional moral norms around democracy, how much they can do a generation long amount of damage.
- [15:39]
Michelle Cottle
Okay, so I wanna be a little bit of a worrywart on this. You're talking about happens when we have moved beyond the Trump era and how we get back to some sort of democratic norms.
- [15:55]
David French
I'm saying that may be wildly optimistic.
- [15:56]
Michelle Cottle
We still have a few years. And so what lessons do we think that this administration and this president will take from what happened to Orban and what could we be looking at?
- [16:12]
Michelle Goldberg
So I'm not sure that Trump is capable of learning these kind of lessons. I mean, you could argue that they would say, well, this requires that a sort of even greater level of repression.
- [16:28]
Michelle Cottle
That's what keeps me up.
- [16:31]
Michelle Goldberg
I hate to be Pollyannaish about this country because God knows I feel a tremendous sense of despair and horror. But at the end of the day, you know, the reason that I think Orban didn't try to steal the election. Even though there was weird dirty tricks kind of stuff in the run up to it, there was this accusation of Ukrainian sabotage, and there were things that Orban was doing that it looked like he might be tiptoeing up to some sort of state of emergency. And, and you know, we'll never know how, how real that danger was. But I think part of the reason that they didn't attempt anything like that was because the opposition was just so overwhelming. You know, you could see it everywhere. They just couldn't have, I don't think, gotten away with it. And I would say similarly, Donald Trump's coalition, although he still has his hardcore base, you already see it sort of falling apart. And a lot of the people who would have been, I think, in the past, cheerleaders for some of the most radical action that Donald Trump could take, you know, who would have been out there excusing or encouraging a January 6th type thing, those people have fallen off the wagon. You know, Alex Jones is gone, Candace Owens is gone.
- [17:55]
Michelle Cottle
You know, when you've lost Candace Owens.
- [17:57]
Michelle Goldberg
Right. Tucker Carlson is, is wondering if, if, if Donald Trump is the Antichrist, which is maybe a conversation for another episode
- [18:06]
Michelle Cottle
of this podcast, a whole episode on the religious overtones.
- [18:10]
Michelle Goldberg
And so I don't want to underestimate how much power Donald Trump still has. He has the military. But I think that the loss of a lot of his most powerful propagandists would just make it much, much harder.
- [18:24]
David French
Yeah, David, you know, I think you're already seeing sort of the smarter folks in MAGA looking at Hungary, looking at the collapse in support at the Iran war. I mean, the Iran war was a breakpoint beyond the Epstein files, especially in sort of the most hardcore elements of the maga. Right. Because, you know, if you were on the other side of them in the 2024 election, all they ever would say to you, warmonger, you want to go to war with Iran. So for a segment of these people, it has been a bridge too far. But here's where I want to introduce a thought to people's minds. This part of MAGA that has broken with him, not necessarily because this is an unconstitutional war, cuz they're furious at him because his foreign policy is distracting them from the real mission, which is the enemy within. And so part of the frustration with MAGA is that Trump hasn't concentrated enough on the left in suppressing the left in this country. You know, it could be even if Trump loses, and let's just say Trump midterms, Democrats sweep the Next presidential election, Democrats win and return to power, then the question is really going to be, is this populist reaction that is now drifting increasingly anti Semitic? Is this just what the opposition party is going to be in America? Or would the defeat of that form of the opposition party result in a change in the opposition party? And that's what we don't know. So, you know, I'm sitting here hoping that a defeat of the populist version of the Republican Party could mean at least a ghost of a chance you have a revival of a classical liberal version of a Republican party. But I could see it going the other way. And, you know, I feel like in Hungary we're getting a small European version of a dilemma we're gonna be facing. And Poland was interesting. One quick thing on Poland, I did this really fun and interesting interview with a Polish law professor, and she and a number of judges and other law professors had done a massive program on civic education in Poland where they had done things like go to local communities, judges and law professors, and teach people what is the rule of law, what is constitutional law. It wasn't vote for this person and not this person. It was a massive civic education program. And that has stuck with me ever since. One thing we absolutely need in this country is a massive civic education program so that people understand what it is that we're about to lose here in this country if the present trends continue towards Trumpist authoritarianism.
- [21:08]
Michelle Goldberg
Can I say two quick things? When you talked about the judges, and I know what you mean about the judges in Poland, something not quite analogous, but something that I thought was really interesting in Hungary was what they called these tizza circles, you know, a tizza, again, forgive my pronunciation, the. The name of Maggior's party. It's named after this Hungarian river. And there would be these circles in small towns of just people who would meet and organize and kind of shore each other up, show people that they weren't alone in their opposition. And I think that that was very important, that kind of local infrastructure. The other thing I just want to say about the. The future of the Republican Party, I mean, my guess is that the future of the Republican Party is more nakedly anti Semitic. And I say this as someone. I think it's always important to say this when you talk about criticism of Israel. I mean, I would like to see United States foreign policy break with Israel. I would like to see Benjamin Netanyahu in the Hague. This is not about thinking that criticism of Israel is anti Semitic, you know, However, I do think that there is now a lot of naked anti Semitism in the Republican Party. And what I think you'll see, you know, after World War I in Germany, there was the, the stab in the back theory, the Dolch legend, the idea that it was the Jews that had caused them to be defeated. I think you'll see something similar with maga, you know, especially because this war in Iran was so inexplicable and nobody could quite understand why. Trump just kind of turned on a dime and, you know, there's going to be a sort of obvious explanatory conspiracy theory. And so I would be very worried that we will look back on this period as the sort of precursor to an even more fascist Republican Party.
- [23:03]
Michelle Cottle
So one of the things that I'm assuming is that the recovery of the Republican Party, and I do mean like recovering from this Trumpish fever, is going to depend on how thoroughly discredited the Trumpism is. And I think the Iran war is an important point in that. And so I feel that we should also point out that in addition to his field trip to Hungary, the Vice President was sent to Pakistan to lead the highest level talks between the US and Iran in nearly 50 years to ostensibly try and reach a deal, even though that seemed very unlikely. And it just struck me as like, Vance is completely opposed to this war. He stands by the President in public, but this is a violation of the part of the MAGA base that he has always vibed with. And it seems like this is like putting a nail, so to speak, in the coffin of his future within the movement. Now, obviously that's, you know, there's still a lot of time, there's overstating, anything can happen. But it does feel like that's an important sort of schism that's gonna speak to how discredited the movement winds up and so how quickly the party can recover. Or maybe I'm just being too optimistic.
- [24:34]
David French
Well, I mean, look, political eras do end, parties do reform. So, you know, when it comes to when will this era end, I feel confident it will at some point. I just don't know when and how much damage will be done before it does. That's very much an open question. And I do think in J.D. vance's failures, we're beginning to see maybe how this political era ends. Because the question has always been who is getting the baton from Donald Trump? Who is the next standard bearer? And for a long time it's been J.D. vance. J.D. vance is sort of the heir apparent, and he has been face planting time and Time and time again. And I think one way to think of his phase as a leader of the Republican Party is that he's got all of the toxicity of Trump and none of that real charisma that Trump has. It's a charisma I don't fully understand. It's never landed with me. Although I will say early on, I did enjoy the Apprentice, but it has never really landed with me, this sort of hold, this charisma that he has. But one thing I know is that JD Vance does not have it. He just doesn't have it.
- [25:48]
Michelle Cottle
No. The man can't odor a donut without alienating people.
- [25:50]
David French
Right, right. I mean, to the point where, you know, we saw this poll where, and I never thought we'd see this, that Dick Cheney is now much more popular, much more popular than J.D. vance.
- [26:03]
Michelle Cottle
It feels like they keep throwing him under the bus. Vance had barely made it back to the US from his globe trotting when his boss picked a fight with Pope Leo. I mean, the Pope Leo. Well, let's remember.
- [26:14]
Michelle Goldberg
Can we just remember why we have Pope Leo? What happened to the last pope after J.D. vance met with him?
- [26:22]
David French
Oh, I like that.
- [26:24]
Michelle Cottle
Sorry. I just want to go back to that.
- [26:26]
David French
Michelle.
- [26:27]
Michelle Cottle
Okay. Moving along from Michelle's dark view of J.D. vance's.
- [26:31]
Michelle Goldberg
I'm sorry, that was a joke.
- [26:32]
Michelle Cottle
Supernatural powers. You know, Vance is the highest ranking Catholic in US Politics. And his basic response was the Pope should stay out of it. This feud with the Pope has not played well among a lot of conservative Catholics. He is not. Pope Leo is not as unpopular with conservative Catholics as his predecessor. A lot of them are very popular, pleased with him. David, what's going on here? What's the Pope up to? What do you make of Vance's response?
- [27:05]
David French
Boy, this is fascinating because, you know, it's interesting. MAGA will say, well, this Pope is going after Donald Trump. Well, I'm old enough to remember when John Paul ii, who was, you know, conservatives love John Paul II when he was very much against the Iraq war in 03. So it is not the case that popes, quote, stay in their lane or however you want to say it. You know, popes have been talking about war and peace forever. It's what they do. This is something that's been going on for a long time in a role that the Church should play going back to Martin Luther King. And I'm paraphrasing this quote, but the quote is in essence that the Church is not the master of the state. The Church is not the servant of the state, the church is the conscience of the state. And so it's not that the church runs the country or the church serves the country. It has an entirely separate meaning and purpose and relationship to a country. And that is to provide a moral argument, a moral argument about what a country is. And now, of course, that's not the sum total job of the church, but when in the church state relations context. So the Pope is doing exactly what popes have done. Popes, in my view, should do. But Trump is stumped by people who do not bend to his bullying and to his will. And so it was only a matter of time before he was going to do this. I felt this has been inevitable for a while, that there was going to be a direct attack on the Pope and that it was not going to faze the Pope. The Pope was not going to be intimidated by that. Because they're two very different people.
- [28:45]
Michelle Cottle
Because why should he be right?
- [28:47]
David French
They're working on two very different institutions, two very different time horizons. I mean, it's so absurd, this attack on the Pope. And Trump is giving his own people off ramp after off ramp after off ramp.
- [29:01]
Michelle Goldberg
And David, can I ask you a question? Because I think you can't talk about this fight with the Pope without also talking about that extremely blasphemous image. Oh, the Jesus of Donald Trump as a doctor.
- [29:13]
David French
Yeah, you mean the doctor image. The doctor image.
- [29:16]
Michelle Cottle
Doctor looks just like. Right.
- [29:18]
Michelle Goldberg
But yeah, of a sort of Donald
- [29:19]
Michelle Cottle
Trump coming out of his, of a
- [29:21]
Michelle Goldberg
Christ like Donald Trump healing someone with, you know, both like kind of patriotic paraphernalia, but also a demon figure in the background. But I'm curious because I, I saw people who had supported Trump suddenly saying, wait, he is the Antichrist. But I'm curious to know, you know, you know, a lot of, I think evangelicals who are still very much on board with Trump, and I'm curious, is this just think they can just dismiss as Trump being Trump, or is this causing some genuine qualms?
- [29:51]
David French
Well, let me put it this way. It has, in a small slice of people, caused genuine qualms. It's a chip away moment. But it's more than that. This is wider scale frustration from people whom I've never seen critique Trump. In other words, people who have been with him who have always had the most rationalizing, justifying kind of explanation. And this was a bridge too far. And the way they've cast it is. Well, I can disagree with him on some things or he just made a mistake very similar to, you know, remember when he put out the video that had the monkey image. You know, there was some consternation, and then it was, oh, he made a mistake. And here you're seeing more consternation, but less willingness to say, oh, he just made a mistake, man.
- [30:38]
Michelle Cottle
I'm a lapsed evangelical. And even I was like, damn, brother, I don't believe I'd have done that.
- [30:43]
David French
Well, I could tell tell you're elapsed evangelical, Michelle, when your response was damn, brother.
- [30:50]
Michelle Cottle
I'm just saying. Okay, so I feel that that was a pretty magical move on his part, and I would like us to leave it there. Just with that image of Trump as Jesus looming over all of us, it seems like a pretty good spot to leave this and pivot to something more uplifting. Dare I say, I want to wrap this thing up, as we always do, with recommendations. What are y' all watching or reading or otherwise enjoying this week? Michelle, you go first. Guest goes first.
- [31:22]
Michelle Goldberg
So I'm going to recommend a novel. It actually came out a couple of months ago, but I don't think it's gotten as much attention as it deserves. It's a novel called Good People by Padmina Sabit. Have either of you heard of it?
- [31:34]
Michelle Cottle
Mm. Mm.
- [31:35]
Michelle Goldberg
Okay.
- [31:35]
Podcast Host/Announcer
So good.
- [31:36]
Michelle Goldberg
So that shows me that it has not indeed gotten the attention that it deserves. It's this really wonderful and riveting novel about a very assimilated family where the daughter dies, and there's a question of whether or not she was the victim of an honor killing. It has the sort of pace and momentum of, like, a murder mystery, but it. And it's one of these novels written with, like, many different voices, and it has this kind of polyphonic quality. It's such a fascinating book about both assimilation and the limits of assimilation. This Fear of Losing Face is not one that I typically can sympathize with, but it makes you feel the weight of that. And it also is constantly making you revise what you think is happening. Like, you know, at one moment you'll think, oh, this really is this abusive medieval family. And then you'll think, wait, how much? How different is this really from, you know, kind of a strict parents grounding their daughter? It's just. It's so moving, but also just really riveting. Like, it was one of those books that, you know, kind of ruins your next day. Cause you're up late reading it.
- [32:50]
Michelle Cottle
Hmm.
- [32:50]
David French
Okay, David, so I'm cheating a little bit here. Cause I know what you're gonna say, Michelle, and I'm counter programming you just right off the bat. So whatever Michelle is about to tell you, don't listen to her. Watch this instead. It's season two of Friends and Neighbors just came out. This is the Jon Hamm Show. Olivia Munn, Amanda Pete, and now this season, James Marsden, who's just tremendous. And it's about a rich guy who steals nice things from rich people is a good way of putting it. He falls on hard times, loses his hedge fund job, and decides to make ends meet by stealing all the extra stuff that his neighbors in this extremely exclusive, like, suburban New York neighborhood have. And it's funny, it's lighthearted, it's got elements of mystery to it, and it's just a nice palate cleanser. After the trauma of Michelle's recommendation,
- [33:56]
Michelle Cottle
I feel targeted. And yet I'm gonna plow forward anyway and recommend DTF St. Louis. It's on. I believe it's HBO, right?
- [34:07]
Michelle Goldberg
It's HBO, yeah.
- [34:08]
Michelle Cottle
Jason Bateman, David Harbour and Linda Cardellini with, you know, other kind of smaller roles. People like Richard Jenkins. It is basically starts out with, you have a dead body, somebody's dead, and then you're gonna go back through what happened. It's a limited series. It's not gonna have a second season. Praise the Lord. Cause I hate it when they do that.
- [34:32]
Michelle Goldberg
Well, maybe it'll be one of those anthology ones where they do like, you know, DTF Baltimore or something.
- [34:38]
Michelle Cottle
Yo, there we go. David did not like the ending. Michelle has not seen it all.
- [34:42]
Michelle Goldberg
So we're not gonna go. And so no spoilers so far. I thought it was, like, riveting, but
- [34:48]
David French
it'll suck you in. It'll pull you in.
- [34:50]
Michelle Cottle
The performances are unbelievable. I am just riveted. I can't look away. So fine, David, the ending is not to your liking. I get it. But the show, and it's not a huge commitment, doesn't have that many episodes. Do it. Do yourself a favor.
- [35:09]
David French
And then as part of your therapy, you can turn on to Friends and Neighbors.
- [35:15]
Michelle Cottle
David, why the hate? Okay with that? We're going to land this plane. Michelle. David, thank you so much for coming to solve the world's problems. We will do it again soon.
- [35:26]
David French
Thank you, Michelle.
- [35:54]
Podcast Host/Announcer
If you like this show, follow it on YouTube, Spotify or Apple. The opinions is produced by Derek Arthur, Vishaka Darba and Gillian Weinberger. It's edited by Kari Pitkin and Alison Bruzick, mixing by Daniel Ramirez, original music by Isaac Jones, sonia Herrero, Pat McCusker, Carol Sabaro, Efim Shapiro and Amin Sahota. The fact check team is Kate Sinclair, Mary, Marge Locker and Michelle Harris. The head of operations is Shannon Busta. Audience support by Christina Samulewski. The director of opinion shows is Annie Rose Strasser.
- [36:50]
Chase Sapphire Reserve Advertiser
This is the Chase Sapphire Lounge in Boston. Logan, you got clam chowder in New York, dirty martini over 1300 airport lounges and one card that gets you in Chase Sapphire Reserve. Now even more rewarding.
- [37:00]
David French
Learn more@chase.com Sapphire Reserve cards issued by JPMorgan Chase bank and a member FDIC, subject to credit approval.