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The Opinions
Maureen Dowd and Carlos Lozada on 100 Days of Trump’s ‘Fake Reality’
00:29:34
“Nothing like this has ever happened in Washington.”
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- [00:00]
Patrick Haley
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Podcast Host
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.
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Patrick Haley
I'm Patrick Haley, deputy editor of New York Times Opinion, and this is the First Hundred Days, a weekly series examining President Trump's use of power and his drive to change America. Okay, on Tuesday, we hit the mile. President Trump has officially been in office 100 days. So what have we learned? We've learned that he has used power chaotically, but for a purpose. The purpose? To throw an entire country off balance, to gain maximum leverage while keeping friends and enemies alike on their back heel. He's ruled by executive order to an unprecedented degree, and he's trying to remake America in his image. He decides who matters and who is disposable. And so tens of thousands of federal workers are gone. DEI is gone, trans people are erased as a matter of government policy. Undocumented migrants are being rounded up and deportations are also underway of people lawfully in the country and even American citizens. And the president is doing much of this in defiance of the courts or the Constitution. So how do we make sense of the last hundred days? And what should we prepare for as we look ahead? I wanted to talk about all of this with my colleagues Maureen Dowd and Carlos Lozada, two Times columnists in Washington who've watched President Trump closely. Thank you both for being here.
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Maureen Dowd
Thank you, Patrick.
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Carlos Lozada
Good to be here, Patrick.
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Patrick Haley
So, thinking back on the last few months, I wanna ask both of you first, how would you describe Trump's approach to power in a word or a phrase?
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Maureen Dowd
Graspy.
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Patrick Haley
Graspy. I like it. Tell me more.
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Maureen Dowd
Well, he's more imperialistic. I mean, all this craziness about wanting to annex Canada and Greenland and Panama, The Kennedy Center, D.C. ivy League school departments, law firms. But he's graspy in the sense that we've never seen a president doing business like he's doing with the Meme Coin and his crypto company, where just flouting, where the conflict of interest becomes a confluence of interest, is there Anything he doesn't want, Maureen?
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Patrick Haley
I mean, of all these things, is there anything he hasn't wanted?
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Maureen Dowd
No. I mean, he wants all the gold in the world. He actually has a cabinet maker in Florida who's called the gold guy who has come up to put all of that crazy gold in the Oval Office and ruin it.
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Patrick Haley
Carlos, what about you? What word or phrase kind of comes to mind for you?
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Carlos Lozada
You know, when I think about Trump in power, it's not just that he takes power or seizes power or uses power, he also just assumes power. The administration's working assumption seems to be to, you know, just, just do it. It's like the Nike presidency. Right. His, his justification is that the election gave him a broad mandate, but even more that as president, he embodies the popular will, and they use that vision of the popular will to justify a lot of these power grabs. When Stephen Miller, his aide, talks about 80, 20 issues, that's what he's talking about, right? Sort of like, well, this is the popular will, so who cares about the details? It's like the old line about how it's easier to ask for forgiveness than permission. Trump doesn't ask for either one. Right. Because either one is a sign of weakness.
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Patrick Haley
Carlos, you just nailed something that came up repeatedly in a focus group we just did of first time Trump voters, people who voted for Hillary in 2016, Biden in 2020, and then voted for Trump last November. And it was that just do it element that you identified. These people, even if they are now uncomfortable with Trump, some of them even regretting their choices, they do feel really moved by the idea that, as one of them said, kind of president can do something, he can do something. Is the action, the point there, Carlos?
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Carlos Lozada
Well, you know, there's barely a hop, skip and a jump from just do it to I alone can do it, or I alone can, can fix it. Right. It's a, in a sense, it's a very populist approach, but populism is also anti pluralist. It's a vision of power that doesn't admit other players or conventional limits on the one leader. So that's why the notion of the President just going ahead and doing stuff, that's part of why I think he loves to sign executive orders.
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Patrick Haley
Right.
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Carlos Lozada
That's very presidential. He loves to sign documents. And that to most people who aren't, you know, imbibing politics every moment of their lives, that looks presidential. Right. That is a president doing stuff. That is signing things to get stuff done.
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Patrick Haley
Let's go back to January. Maureen, how did you think President Trump's first hundred days would go? And then how did it go by comparison to what you might have been thinking back then?
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Maureen Dowd
Well, you know, the Times is very strict about letting us use the word irony because it's so often misused. But I think the irony of Trump's first hundred days is that he's always presented himself as this brand expert. He slapped his name on half of New York. But he has taken the greatest brand in the history of the world, which is the United States, and destroyed it in a hundred days. And he's well on his way to destroying the brand of our dollar. So I don't think anyone expected that.
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Patrick Haley
Did you think the destruction would go quite like this? Because for me, I really thought retribution was gonna be the thing, that he'd be going after his enemies and he'd be so consumed by his targets that that would really throw him off track. But instead, it does feel like, whether it's Stephen Miller or Susie Wiles, they've kind of kept him on those executive orders that Carlos was talking about. Sort of every day, it's kind of a new target. But did you see the destruction looking at us?
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Maureen Dowd
Well, I mean, we always have to go back to. People had an of him as a successful executive because of the Apprentice, but actually he had, what was it, six bankruptcies, and he wasn't a good executive. His father had to bring a bag of coins or chips to the Atlantic City casino to rescue him once. And so he's turned the United States government, they're calling it dealism, into a government of dualism. But he's undermined what America is known for, which is our idealism. I mean, he's just sort of mucked up all our values.
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Carlos Lozada
Yeah, I hadn't heard dealism, which I actually like better than the term people are using of transactionalism. I mean, when I look back on the first hundred days, you know, Trump has this ability to shock you, yet not surprise you at the same time. You know, it was clear that they were gonna be much better prepared than they were in 2017 to come out of the gate, you know, with an array of policies. The executive orders even felt, like kind of weirdly better written than they were last time around. You know, they were like actual policy documents. And so you sort of knew what he was gonna come out on. Tariffs on immigration. But the extremes to which he's gone is what can be a little shocking, if not entirely surprising. Just the immigration policies, the deportation policies, the masked federal agents in Unmarked cars kind of thing. That's not something I necessarily anticipated.
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Maureen Dowd
You know, Trump's greatest wizardry is creating this dark plane of unreality. And that's how he got to be president again, where people believe what he's saying, even if it runs counter defacts. But there have been a couple new things this week where he's having less success with that. First, where he kept saying that they've been talking to China and clearly they haven't. So Trump is getting caught in a lie. And they asked Scott Bessen about it, and then he got impatient and he goes, I'm not running the switchboard at the White House. And he can't lie, but he can't back up Trump. And as David Axelrod says, this is reality. It's not a reality show, as Trump likes to treat it.
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Patrick Haley
Carlos, a couple times during the first hundred days, you and I talked about how do we help readers understand with all this fire hose of action, what's most consequential? And I am curious, kind of looking back at the first hundred days, what you see as what Trump did that matters most, whether there's a specific policy or executive order or as you wrote about recently, how Trump changed the way we think of the phrase we the people or something else, what has mattered most?
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Carlos Lozada
Yeah, you know, that's so hard. Such a fire hose of news every day. I remember, I mean, I think about every day looking at the New York Times app or other news apps, and I look at what's at the top and I think, is that the most important thing going on or is that just the latest thing going on? Right. And I don't know, you know, like it's, that's a, that's a difficult thing. The sense of hierarchy is sort of eluding me sometimes. And it takes time. It takes time to figure out what is really the most important thing. I think that one thing I've been thinking about is the notion, as you just put it, of we the people. That's how the Constitution begins. And what I've been thinking about with, with Trump is that so much of what he's doing is limiting the universe of we the people. Right? Telling us that there are people who really don't count in that world. And that could be federal workers. Right. They're expendable. Their loyalties are suspect. We don't, we don't need them. The US Born children of undocumented immigrants also, you know, don't belong. Aren't really we the people should not receive citizenship at birth as the 14th amendment tells us, opponents of the president, former officials who have criticized him, don't deserve to be protected. You know, it's another one of the. The key aspects of populism is that populist leaders purport to speak for the people. But the definition of the people is always malleable. It always changes, it's always shifting, and inevitably, it becomes smaller, it shrinks, until the only people who are we the people, are the supporters of the leader. And to me, that's one of the through lines of the Trump era, certainly of the first hundred days of this second term.
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Patrick Haley
Maureen, what has Trump done that matters most?
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Maureen Dowd
Well, again, I come back to the fake reality he's trying to create. He pardoned the 1600 insurrectionists on January 6 and is trying to change the narrative of that day, which shall go down in infamy. He's going after the AP because they won't use Gulf of America. So it's like if he says it and you don't go along with it because it's not true, then he punishes you the way he's doing with Zelensky. And, you know, I interviewed George Clooney about this show about Edward R. Murrow and Joe McCarthy, and when I first heard he was bringing this to Broadway, I was kind of surprised. Like, what is the relevance? And it's become more relevant every minute of every day because of how Trump is going after people who are truthful but who won't go along with his fake reality.
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Patrick Haley
Maureen, you're getting at something that I hear about so much from listeners and readers of the Times, which is that tension, that total frustration that they feel about this fake reality that they see Trump peddling and the way that it is degrading and destroying the truth, the truth about America. And they ask, why isn't the fight against him much greater is the mobilization? Where's the call to action against Trump? And I want to ask, you've both worked in Washington for decades. You know, the way the bureaucracy resisted and even thwarted Trump at times in his first term, and the way Congress and the courts have slowed down or even stopped presidents before. So I gotta ask, has the fight gone out of Washington? Like, has the deep state and the Democrats and the courts lost their moxie or their creativity to resist. Because I keep hearing people telling me what a gloomy, depressed place DC Is now, as if Doge and Trump have just laid siege in a hundred days and the fight has just been leached out of the town. What happened?
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Maureen Dowd
Well, I'm A Washington native. And I can sort of understand why everyone is reeling because nothing like this has ever happened in Washington. Washington was a very stable place, no matter whether it was the Republican or Democrat. And then to have this wolf pack of doge kids coming in and either muscling their way into agencies or sneaking into agencies and getting hold of sensitive taxpayers information, information was something we couldn't have conceived of happening. A president letting that happen with no rules about disclosure or what would be private. You know, the civil service is gutted now and all the programs around the world that gave America its reputation for generosity and idealism, and it was done very quickly. And it's very hard for people to understand how to fight that, that I see something similar.
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Carlos Lozada
I've been in Washington, not lifelong, but I've been here for about 25 years now. And people are sad and people assume a certain sadness or concern or worry in others. You know, the most common way when someone approaches you is kind of with like a head tilt, like, how you doing? How you holding up? You know, it's people are losing their jobs, right? This is, this is the topic of conversation at little league baseball games, you know, in neighborhood book clubs, among the dog walkers in the neighborhood. And that's novel. You know, there was this sense that Washington would endure. Administrations come and go, but civil servants, public servants keep doing their work. And part of that is doge. Part of that is also the abdication of Congress's own powers of oversight. It's not just that Trump is doing these things that are affecting the livelihoods and the life, work and missions of civil servants, of DOJ lawyers, of NIH scientists. But it's also the sense that it seems like nothing can stop it. It seems like no one is doing anything about it or the normal checks and balances aren't operating. And so it's not just like, oh, I'm losing my job. It's no one is really stopping this thing that is moving forward relentlessly and somewhat chaotically.
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Patrick Haley
Carlos, I want to ask, are Republicans in D.C. sad, too? And I ask that because I know some are quite triumphal, but others who I've talked to, they don't like the instability. They don't like the sense that there isn't a clear plan or logic to some of what is happening. So I want to sort of include that wing of America, too. Are Republicans sad?
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Carlos Lozada
Well, I mean, I guess I would ask you what, what sort of Republican are you thinking about? Right. You know, if you're thinking about the Wall Street Chamber of Commerce, free trader, pro immigration, you know, robust internationalism, kind of George H.W. bush, Mitt Romney type of Republican. Then these first hundred days have not been good for that kind of Republican. But I don't know if that's really the party that exists anymore today. And I don't think that party is coming back. So, you know, the Republican Party we have instead is a lot of things, right? There's the kind of populist, anti immigrant wing of the party. They've had big victories. There's the kind of pro Trump, Silicon Valley wing of the party. They've had some wins, some losses, as well, as Maureen is pointing out, but those parts don't really like each other much anyway. Trump is a mix of all of those things. And so I think that it's, I wouldn't say that the, the sort of sadness in Washington or the kind of constant expression of concern in Washington is solely the province of the left or of, or of liberals, you know, but it really depends on what kind of Republican you're thinking about.
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Patrick Haley
I want to talk about how all of this is landing with voters because we've definitely seen some recent polls suggesting that more voters are souring on President Trump, particularly on the economy and even on immigration. How do you both think Americans are reflecting on his first hundred days?
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Maureen Dowd
Yeah, I asked my siblings who are two time Trump voters, you know, how they feel now that their 401s are dropping, as Dave Barry would say, fast than a pig out of a helicopter. But they are not as alarmed as I would think. They're waiting and thinking that Trump has a plan. But when people begin to realize that their VA office has been closed or Doge is messing with Social Security and Medicare, when it filters down to them, which it's going to do really fast. So it's a cliche to say he's like the wizard of Oz, but the curtain is over. You know, Toto is opening the curtain and you're just seeing that this is a con man with a lame con.
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Carlos Lozada
What was that John McCain line that he would say? You know, it's always darkest just before it goes completely pitch black. Right. I may be misquoting the late John McCain, but I think he said something like that.
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Maureen Dowd
No, he did.
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Carlos Lozada
That's great in some ways. I mean, I think about these polls and it's, I mean, I think it's not a huge stretch to say it's kind of par for the course for Trump. His approval ratings are never great, even if his approval among his base remains high. It's often been like that. What is interesting is that his approval rating on the core issues that helped him win the election, that those are also becoming weaknesses. Not among his hardest core supporters, but maybe among the voters who weren't totally crazy about him, who maybe voted for Biden in 2020, but now went back to Trump because of inflation and the border. But now those don't seem like winning issues for him. I guess it's one thing to say you want a disruptor, you want a wrecking ball in Washington. It's another to experience the disruption to your retirement account. Right. Or to see the wrecking ball against basic civil liberties, then you might not be so crazy about it. I wonder if that's what's being reflected in the polls.
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Patrick Haley
Maureen, in your most recent column, you captured some of the ways that Trump has become what you called an emperor of chaos. And I think both of those words are so key. Emperor and chaos, you know, because you would think that an emperor or a strongman would be able to prevent chaos, would have control. Why has President Trump lost a handle on so many things? Or was it an illusion that he ever had a handle on things in the first place?
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Maureen Dowd
Yeah, well, we talked about that with the Apprentice. I think that that gave the illusion. But I remember Carl Hulse, our chief Washington correspondent, saying to me, the first time when Trump got elected, it's going to be federal daycare because he's the high chair king. He's a child in many ways who wants to throw the applesauce at the wall. So he enjoys that. He enjoys the chaos. But I think he's gotten himself into a fix this time because he's, you know, when you. What's the line from Network? He's messed with primal forces. Like he's upended, you know, the American economy, the global economy, American values. In one fell swoop, he just turned everything that's important to us upside down. And I think it's going to be very hard to put it all back together again.
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Patrick Haley
Yeah, a president can only control so much, but, boy, he can make a mess of a lot of things.
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Maureen Dowd
Well, that's his whole plan, to take away control from the other branches of government and be an authoritarian.
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Patrick Haley
Okay, so now that we've experienced 100 days of the second Trump administration, we've got 1300 more to go. What are you two most worried about? About what he's doing both inside the United States, but also the country's place in the world. You know, in other words, what, what will be the hardest to undo by people who disagree with what the President is doing.
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Carlos Lozada
I think you, you hit on it right there when you said what will be the hardest to undo. Those are the things that I'm thinking about the most. You know, executive orders, like we said, they, you know, they feel so presidential. But executive orders can be reversed. They can do a lot of damage while they're still in effect, but they can be undone by future presidents. In fact, a lot of the Trump executive orders are actually undoing Biden executive orders, which in turn were undoing Trump orders from the first term. You know, it's this kind of like time traveling whack a mole or something. But there are things that are hard to reverse. The rapid decline of American leadership, say, just in scientific research. Right. In funding biomedical research in the world, that is going to have long lasting consequences, not just for science and for technology, but for American leadership in those fields. I worry about how leaders in Russia and China are going to feel emboldened due to the way Trump, you know, looks at the war in Ukraine, the signals that China might, might pick up because of that. But I mainly worry about the erosion of the American ideas and ideals that Maureen touched on and that have drawn so many people here. Right. Including me and my own family. Right. You know, to come to the United States, it's good if your country is the place where people want to come to make their dreams come true. Right. That shouldn't be a bad thing. But now we've decided that it is. We don't, we don't want to be that place anymore. And you can't unring that bell with a new president, that trust. You can't unring that bell with a midterm election. Yep.
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Maureen Dowd
Yeah. I think one of the most shocking things about Trump is just this casual cruelty, you know, that America was never known for. I mean, my father came here from Ireland when he was a teenager. Now his daughter is a columnist at the New York Times. America stood for dreams and idealism. And now Trump goes to the Pope's funeral and he's blowing off Europe. All of our friends and allies, and they're scrambling around trying to figure out what they're going to do without America as the leader of the world. I mean, the Canadian election, where someone who opposed Trump is now the leader of Canada, it's just, even in this brief time, it has realigned the entire world, and not in a way that's positive for us.
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Patrick Haley
I want to end where we started, this show, which was about Trump's desire to change America And I want to ask each of you what still gives you hope for America? I don't mean to be a Pollyanna about this, but this is one person. This is one President. This is one 100 days. And while a midterms election does feel inadequate to the task of what is going on, as Carlos was getting at, I do want to ask you, what gives you hope about America?
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Maureen Dowd
Hmm. Dead silence, Patrick. Yikes.
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Carlos Lozada
I guess maybe America itself, in a way, is what gives me hope. And here I'm just. What's the word I'm looking for? I'm just kind of retroactively affirming my own decisions, right? But I became an American citizen in November of 2014. So 2016 was the first election, the first American election I ever voted in, and especially living where I do and in sort of the suburbs of Washington, D.C. you know, I often get the joke, like, oh, you have any regrets, you know, for joining us just at this time? And the answer is never, you know, not at all. Not at all. And all the ideals and all the principles that we purport to hold dear here are what continues to give me hope. Now, they're not enough. If we've learned anything in this time, is that, you know, norms don't norm themselves. Right. You know, you. You have to realize that institutions are only as strong and as resilient as. As the people defending them. But the appeal that this place has held for so long, for so many, is what continues to give me hope, even if it means we have to work a lot harder at it than we thought we did before.
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Maureen Dowd
Yeah, I would agree. I think America is a very big, fantastic idea, and Trump is a very small, petty man. And I think that's gonna become more obvious with each moment.
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Patrick Haley
Maureen, Carlos, thanks so much for joining me.
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Maureen Dowd
Thank you, Patrick.
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Carlos Lozada
Thank you, Patrick.
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Podcast Host
If you like this show, follow it on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts. The Opinions is produced by Derek Arthur, Sofia Alvarez Boyd Vishaka Darba, Christina Samulewski, and Gillian Weinberger. It's edited by Kari Pitkin, Allison Bruzek, and Annie Rose Strasser. Engineering, mixing, and original music by Isaac Jones, sonia Herrero, Pat McCusker, Carol Saburo, and Afim Shapiro. Additional music by Amin Sahota. The fact Check team is Kate Sinclair, Mary Marge Locker, and Michelle Harris. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta and Christina Samulewski. The executive producer of Times Opinion Audio is Annie Rose Strasser.