← The Political Scene | The New Yorker
The Political Scene | The New Yorker
David Frum Talks to David Remnick About Opposing the Trump Administration
00:14:51
David Frum Talks to David Remnick About Opposing the Trump Administration
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- [00:00]
A
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- [01:34]
B
Being a Washington insider in the age of Trump just got a lot more complicated and complicated for people like David Frum. Frum has gold standard credentials as a neocon. He was a speechwriter for George W. Bush, credited with inventing the term the axis of evil, and he's done work for the Manhattan Institute and the Weekly Standard. But those are exactly the kind of conservative institutions that Trump's campaign and now his transition team is treating with a degree of contempt. And David Frum, in the end, voted for Hillary Clinton. David, you've been very skeptical about the direction of the Republican Party for a long time now. I've been reading you in the Atlantic and articles elsewhere where you've been very worried about the course that conservatism has taken, particularly within the gop. And Trump has had you worried for a long time, hasn't he?
- [02:30]
C
Yes, but at the beginning, I have to say I was susceptible to some of his appeal. When Trump appeared on the scene as a serious candidate in the summer of 2015, I was impressed because he did touch on some issues that I thought were important. The need to reorient toward a more middle class kind of economics, to not to promise what could never be delivered, radical changes in programs like Medicare and Social Security. And I also agreed with him that the United States needed a more cautious approach to immigration. So I suppose I fell into the category of those whom my friend Ross Douthat has called Trump curious. The problem with Trump is that Trump's own character and personality and deficiencies overwhelmed some of the more interesting and promising things that he talked about, at least at the beginning of his campaign.
- [03:27]
B
Well, you've been worried about the state of the party for a long time and its ability to win and retain power. And now here it is.
- [03:35]
C
Well, elections aren't one on policy, elections are won on identification. And he was able to persuade sufficient numbers of people in the right states to believe in just enough way to give him the presidency without actually winning the popular vote, that he could make a massive improvement in the job prospects of his voters, blue collar voters, especially men. But by the way, you can see it shaping up, what he's going to do, we are going to have, it looks like a massive fiscal stimulus in the United States. We're going to have a big tax cut, a big defense buildup and a big roads and highways bill. You put all those things together and you are going to see big increase in demand led growth, tax a lot, spend a lot, borrow a lot. It always works. It doesn't always work forever. It doesn't always work for a very long time. It often results in inflation. It may distort the structure of the economy, but within the four year cycle, it works.
- [04:32]
B
Now, let's be clear. You voted for Hillary Clinton, which I assume to a great extent, David, was a painful act for you.
- [04:39]
C
I voted in an absentee ballot and the ballot remained in my outbox for three days. It was painful.
- [04:47]
B
Well, describe your thinking. What did you have to decide over? What made you decide what you did?
- [04:53]
C
I became convinced that what was on the ballot were this time were not policies, but the very structure of American legality, the rule of law, the constitutional system. And the anxiety I had and have about Donald Trump is will he follow the basic rules of how American democracy is supposed to work? Here's just one telling indication of what we have to worry about. On the night that Donald Trump put away the Electoral College. There was a giant collapse in financial markets, but those markets recovered over the next 18 hours, and things sort of got back to normal. But among the biggest spikes was the stock of Deutsche Bank. Deutsche bank is the only bank that will lend to Donald Trump. The Department of Justice had imposed or was demanding from Deutsche Bank a fine for misconduct during the financial crisis of $14 billion. The markets clearly decided that if Donald Trump is the president, that fine is going to go away. Now, presidents aren't supposed to meddle with fines, especially of their lenders, but the markets clearly said Donald Trump is not going to abide by that rule. And Deutsche bank stock, which had been in terrible trouble before, spiked dramatically.
- [06:04]
B
I was on a television show, and the host of the show, Fareed Zakaria, said, you know, it's impossible for me to get anybody from the, you know, traditional conservative intelligentsia to come on the show and speak up in favor of Donald Trump. You get the usual surrogates and talking heads that you always see on CNN or msnbc. The same half a dozen people who've never written anything or were not deep policy thinkers. They're there as surrogates. What does this mean for conservative thinking in this country?
- [06:34]
C
Well, Fareed Zakaria's show airs on Sunday, but it records on Thursdays. Had he waited one more day, I think his problem would have gone away. People jump on bandwagons. That is the nature of politics. It's the nature of Washington and I. Every day, every day, hour, every hour, you see people who had been previously opposed to Donald Trump, who are prominent intellectual names, making some kind or other peace with him. The demonstrations that have happened over the past few nights have stimulated it that a lot of people who had disliked Donald Trump could look at those demonstrations and say, right, these are people I dislike even more. You know, the safety pin movement is everything that irritates me about liberal weepiness. And I'm reconciled to Donald Trump, or at least I'm hopeful about him. And that is happening at a very.
- [07:24]
B
Fast pace to the alt right, whether it makes its appearance on Twitter or Facebook or aren't you just like me, but with a redder complexion? In other words, the cartoon of you has gotta be someone who's disconnected and elite and out of it. How are you received? I know how I am as a liberal. I wonder how you are as a conservative.
- [07:44]
C
Oh, well, you know, there's a lot of abusive stuff on social media. I seem to get off rather lightly. The question of being, however, an elitist cut Off. I mean, yeah, that's all true. I mean, I have a fancy education, I live in Washington D.C. i spend most of my time in the nicer parts of North America. I'm reasonably financially secure, don't work with my hands. That's all true. And I don't take that as a self indictment because one of the things that I strongly believe about politics is that, look, you're always going to have in any human society, people who are more privileged than others. That's just the way it works. And the job of those people then is to realize their privileges and then to be extra responsible. One of the things I don't like a lot about the campus left with all of these attacks on people's privileges, that their goal is to drive people to pretend that they don't have advantages that they have. My concern is not that we have these out of touch elites. My concern is that we have these irresponsible and ungenerous elites that will not accept the duties that go with their position.
- [08:56]
B
You've written that Trump's first order of business will be to protect and further his own brand, his finances. This seems almost optimistic to me, the idea that he'll be so absorbed with his own affairs to straightaway follow through on all the hateful campaign promises he's made. Is this really the best scenario?
- [09:14]
C
Oh, well, maybe I'm influenced here. I've spent a lot of time this year, as you have done over your distinguished career in East Central Europe, and it's full of rising demagogues. And when American journalists go to Hungary or Poland, what they are struck by are the bigotries, the anti Semitism, they are a very strong force. Attacks on gypsies, on migrants of various kinds. And they also notice in the background a certain amount of stealing. But the stealing is the point. That's what all these other things are there to enable. I mean, somebody like Viktor Orban, who was in Hungary, in Hungary, the Prime Minister of Hungary, a highly authoritarian leader who started off at the beginning of his career as a European liberal admirer of Margaret Thatcher, somebody who wanted to make Hungary a modern country integrated into the EU and NATO, discovered enormous economic possibilities and realized the only way to get them was to inflame people's fears. But it was always about making themselves rich in the course of self enrichment. You can do a lot of damage to a country's institutions and rule of law of a kind that endures for decades. And if the Trump administration were to play out the way I fear it will, you know, you're not going to see Jim Crow reimposed, but what you may see at the end of it is the Department of Justice no longer works the way a first world Department of Justice is supposed to work.
- [10:35]
B
And what will it be used for?
- [10:37]
C
It will be used for protecting the president's interests and those of his friends from investigation.
- [10:43]
B
I just want to emphasize this. This is a conservative Republican intellectual warning us that the Justice Department might be used as an arm of the presidency to protect his economic interests. Am I getting that right?
- [10:56]
C
To protect him from investigation?
- [10:59]
B
That's an incredible, incredible thing. And how else would you fill out the notion of what the worst case scenario of a Trump presidency is?
- [11:07]
C
I think that that's bad enough. I mean, the very worst thing that Trump will do or could do in his first year of his presidency, he's already done, and that is during the campaign to raise a question about whether the U.S. commitment to defend NATO partners will be honored. That's one of those things that once said can't be unsaid. The question mark now is always there. And everybody, friend and foe, has to take into account that possibility.
- [11:34]
B
So if your concern is that if Vladimir Putin wants to make a move on Estonia, which is a NATO member state, the game's already up.
- [11:43]
C
Yeah, he's been given information, by the way. That's how you get into wars. By the way, what's very important in these security situations. And this is, I mean, the lesson that President Obama taught us with his Havering about the red lines in Syria. For a great power like the United States, it matters less where you draw the line than that everyone knows that the line is enforced. One of the craziest things that people said during the last phase of the campaign was that if the Hillary Clinton is elected, will have a war with Russia because she'll be clear about what the lines are. Russia is much weaker than the United States. Clear lines they will respect. Blurry lines tempt them. Because when you think about what Russia might do in Estonia, for example, don't think about, you know, tanks rolling across the border. Think about small groups of irregular forces who the Russians can disavow, who then carry out sabotage. Think about cyber warfare, thinking about the planting of false news stories, thinking about manipulating the political processes of these countries. We've seen pro Putin leaders elected just in this past week in Moldova and Bulgaria. Moldova is on the other side of Ukraine and makes it that much more difficult for a democratic Ukraine to get off the ground. These are major, major concerns. And above all, and this is the thing I think we say, what is it? That puts me to 11 on Trump alarmism. It is the very clear probability that Russian intelligence directly manipulated an American election. This is not just a partisan issue, because the fact that this could happen on President Obama's watch is such a statement of contempt and disdain for what I regard as his weak leadership. I mean, how could the Russians dare? How could they think they could do such a thing? But they did it. The intelligence operation succeeded. They had an impact on the election. In such a close electoral college contest, probably enough to put their preferred candidate over the top, and the rest of us have to live with the consequences. I don't know that Donald Trump will continue to feel any gratitude for Vladimir Putin. I rather doubt that. But the Russians have scored a win at the expense of our institutions.
- [13:53]
B
David, you are Canadian and you Live in Washington, D.C. are you sticking around or are you going back home?
- [13:59]
C
You mean to escape the Trumpite terror?
- [14:00]
B
Something like that.
- [14:03]
C
I dual national now. I have a family here. And of course, you know, people sometimes say things when you get some negative comments on social media, but, you know, you're being very courageous to stand up for this. I think, you know, if we were living in Vladimir Putin's Russia and you're presented with the offer, look, you continue to resist the authorities and you get killed. If you cooperate with them, we'll make you rich. You have to pause and think about that. But you if in this society, the downside is you get negative comments on social media, and the upside is you get invited to the White House Hanukkah Party, I don't think you have any excuse for.
- [14:40]
B
But do you think that's the limit of the threat? A lot of people are very concerned about the First Amendment under somebody who has all the opinions he does about the press and also has talked about changing libel laws, about all kinds of things, about attacking the press.
- [14:57]
C
Look, it can't happen unless you let it. So I don't agree that everything's going to be fine. And I think it's actually a very dangerous thing to say. And an aroused citizenry working to defend, I've used the word, I realize, institutions a lot in this interview. And that, I think, is what the theme of the Trump presidency is about. One of the things I try to say to my liberal friends, if you find yourself tempted to criticize Donald Trump for doing something that if Ted Cruz or Marco Rubio were the president, he would also do, bite your tongue. That's not what this is about. Conservatives get to win elections sometimes, and when they do, they will do conservative things. Just as liberals, we have a common stake in rules of the game, and those are the things that are in danger in this Trump presidency, and those are the things you have to rally to defend. We absolutely have the capacity to protect them, and so shame on us if we don't.
- [15:47]
B
David, thank you very much.
- [15:49]
C
Thank you.
- [15:54]
A
That was David Frum talking to David Remnick. Politics and More will be back next week. Have a happy and harmonious Thanksgiving. I'm Katie Drummond. I'm Wired's global editorial director.
- [16:10]
C
I'm Michael Colori, Wired's Director of consumer, tech and Culture.
- [16:14]
A
And I'm Lauren Good. I'm a senior correspondent at Wired. And our show Uncanny Valley is all about the people, power and influence of Silicon Valley. At Wired, we're constantly reporting on how technology is changing every aspect of our lives. So each week on the show, we get together to talk about one of the biggest stories in tech.
- [16:33]
C
Right. So whether we're talking about privacy, AI, social media, or a major tech figure, we will always explain the Silicon Valley forces behind these stories and how they affect you.
- [16:43]
A
Make sure you're following Uncanny Valley in your podcast app of choice so you don't miss an episode.
- [16:54]
B
From prx.