Loading summary
Transcript49 lines
- [00:00]
Mint Mobile Advertiser
As summer draws to a close and the kids go back to school, I know I'm going to want to keep in touch with my kids at a price I can afford. Back to school Shopping can be a hassle, but your phone plan shouldn't be. That's why I made the switch to Mint Mobile. For a limited time, Mint mobile is offering three months of unlimited premium wireless service for 15 bucks a month. So while other parents are sweating overage charges, I have a little bit more room in my budget for cool back to school threads. Say bye bye to your overpriced wireless plan's jaw dropping monthly bills and unexpected overages, Mint Mobile is here to rescue you. All plans come with high speed data and unlimited talk and text delivered on the nation's largest 5G network. Use your own phone with any Mint Mobile plan and bring your phone number along with all your existing contacts. Dish overpriced wireless and get three months of premium wireless service from Mint Mobile for 15 bucks a month. This year, skip breaking a sweat and breaking the bank. Get this new customer offer and your three month unlimited wireless plan for just 15 bucks a month at mintmobile.com newyorker that's that's mintmobile.com New Yorker upfront payment of $45 required, equivalent to $15 a month limited time new customer offer for first three months only. Speeds may slow above 35 gigabytes on unlimited plan. Taxes and fees extra. See Mint Mobile for details.
- [01:16]
Dorothy Wickenden
This is the Political Scene, a weekly conversation with New Yorker writers and editors about politics. It's Friday, October 14th. I'm Dorothy Wickenden, executive editor of the New Yorker. I'm On Wednesday, the Clinton campaign released a web video called Donald Trump the Final Meltdown, set to the tune of the 1986 song the Final Countdown.
- [01:37]
Adam Davidson
I have never been so ashamed of this country.
- [01:42]
Dorothy Wickenden
Donald Trump appears to be in total meltdown.
- [01:47]
Adam Davidson
The shackles are off and now I.
- [01:49]
Evan Osnos
Can really do what I want.
- [01:51]
Adam Davidson
Are you going to be more outspoken? I don't think I'm that outspoken. I was so surprised to see him sign on with the devil.
- [02:00]
Evan Osnos
He threatened to jail his opponent. That is something I think is a new low in American democracy. Lock her up is right.
- [02:07]
Adam Davidson
You're behind with women.
- [02:09]
Dorothy Wickenden
Adam Davidson and Evan Osnos are here to sift through the wreckage Donald Trump has wreaked on the Republican Party and the country. Thank you both for joining me.
- [02:18]
Adam Davidson
Thank you, Dorothy. Great to be here.
- [02:20]
Evan Osnos
Hi Dorothy.
- [02:21]
Dorothy Wickenden
We had to begin on a moment, sort of a moment of levity, although it really isn't funny at all. Evan, let's step back for just a moment. After Romney's defeat in 2012, the Republican Party agreed that in order to survive, it needed to appeal to minority voters and women. Trump furiously defies that conclusion. Just since you've been following Trump so carefully from the beginning, how did this happen?
- [02:44]
Evan Osnos
I feel as if that's going to be, you know, written up in a 12 volume work by somebody, you know, the heirs of Schlesinger and Theodore White. The most germane explanation, I think, for our conversation today may be that this was the utter collapse of the institutions of politics that used to organize the way that this very strange process worked. No matter what the party did from the very beginning, when you had 17 different candidates, some of whom had well established track records with the party, they were governors, they were members of the United States Senate. And no matter what the party did to try to put them at an advantage against Donald Trump, every turn in the road, the voters themselves managed to thwart the will of the party. And it's now become a bit of a cliche in this election to declare the end of this powerful concept in political science. But the idea that the party decides, which really was the sort of prevailing thesis of American political science for the last 10 or 15 years, that idea, it's sort of been left in shards on the floor and Donald Trump is standing over it sort of gleefully.
- [03:55]
Dorothy Wickenden
Adam, I assume, based on what you've been writing lately, that you agree with that.
- [03:59]
Adam Davidson
I do agree with that, although I worry and I've been thinking a lot about what happens in January. I feel now comfortable saying when Hillary Clinton is inaugurated as president and it looks like maybe Democratic Senate, but almost certainly a Republican House. I think there's a lot of narratives that the Republican Party can tell themselves that will allow them to learn no deep lessons about this election.
- [04:26]
Dorothy Wickenden
How is that possible?
- [04:28]
Adam Davidson
The opportunities to say, we lost because we didn't elect a true conservative, or we lost because this was a one off, this was just a weird freak show event. It doesn't matter. The institution of the Republican Party, leaving aside ideology, leaving aside any particular personalities, political parties are some of the most robust organizations that exist in our society. I mean, the two major ones here are 100 and whatever it is, 160, 180 years old in England, they've lasted even longer. And that's because they're very good at weathering storms like this. The people who want there to be a thing called the Republican Party that wins elections and raises money and has Power. They will construct a narrative. Mike Pence and Reince Priebus, and certainly Paul Ryan's already halfway there to dismiss this, this figure of Donald Trump. I don't think that's gonna be a big hurdle in the short term for them. What we've learned is making what had been implicit in the Republican Party for many years as sort of, you know, not being very enlightened on gender and race. Making it explicit really only meant that they had to worry about 20 or 30% of their electorate, which is not nothing. That's a lot of people, but it's a lot less than I think we thought. So they only need to convince, you know, the famous Republican suburban women. That's not going to be hard for them. I think Mike Pence, Paul Ryan, others, they do his heartfelt speech and they get there. I think 2018 is a really good election for them. It's Paul Ryan, others are looking at a very strong position for 2020. It feels to me that the fundamental structure is there to weather this storm, to sort of not have deep lessons, but continue on as they were. The Civil War, the deep issues we're talking about, that's still 10, 15 years down the road.
- [06:13]
Evan Osnos
It's such an interesting point. I agree with Adam that there's sort of. There's a short term dynamic and a long term dynamic. But, you know, as with so many things in this context, it will depend partly on what the actual result is in November. I mean, at this point, it looks as if Republicans are going to lose the Senate. They will probably hold on to the House. What that means then is that when Reince Priebus is up for election, if he chooses to serve another term, if he wants to run for another term as chairman in January, the choice of the next chairman of the party will not be made by a president, because if you have the president in the White House, then it's made by the president. If not, it's made by the members of the committee. And the committee itself, you remember, is 168 party activists around the country. These are people who are not political professionals. They're the absolute die hards. And so it's perfectly conceivable that we could get to the end of this process where your average layman would look at this and think to themselves, how in God's name could Reince Priebus be reelected after driving his party into its most ignominious defeat in modern history? And yet on the terms in which it's internally organized, Priebus has fulfilled his mandate. The one thing that I think is still a big question, and this is evolving, really in real time, is whether or not he loses so many donors that the party is essentially then failing in its primary responsibility, which is to raise and organize money for the party.
- [07:37]
Dorothy Wickenden
And that is happening now, as we've seen in the latest headlines as of this morning, that many of the biggest Republican donors are urging Priebus to sever its ties to Trump. But it sounds like both of you are saying that you don't think over the long term, this has been damaging to Paul Ryan. A lot of people I've been talking to recently have said his cynicism has been so baldly on display. He has his own aspirations to the presidency. Adam, do you think that people are just going to forget and let him go on?
- [08:04]
Adam Davidson
I do. Unfortunately, I do. I mean, I. You know, I've never agreed with Paul Ryan, but like many people, I thought of him as a man of principle, and he seems like much less a man of principle today. That being said, when Mitt Romney made his 47% comment, in a sense, that's a harder thing to distance yourself from because that does get to the core of the Paul Ryan wing of the Republican Party. And I think Trump has created such space to distance himself from it. Paul Ryan, he's done everything he can to project his discomfort. And I think there's going to be some moment where he can say in a heartfelt way, look, I was in this terrible bind, but this man is disgusting. I hate him right now, today. I mean, a lot can happen. Paul Ryan looks very strong for 2020 as a presidential candidate. I think he uniquely, as we saw when he was literally the only person in America who could become speaker of the House under the fractious Congress. He's gonna have a very tough Congress.
- [09:01]
Dorothy Wickenden
Because that's my next question. And how does he deal with the Freedom Caucus? And does he want to reach compromises with Hillary Clinton? That's gonna be an interesting dynamic to watch.
- [09:12]
Adam Davidson
Yeah. And you get the sense that his instinct would be to reach immigration reform, even corporate tax reform, something like that, that who he is. He would love to work with Hillary Clinton. They're not that far apart on corporate tax, on immigration reform. The more antagonistic the Republicans are, the less they let Hillary get away with, the better it is for Republicans. I mean, that's not a bad story for them to tell. Look how ineffective she is. Look, she doesn't get anything done. Look, all those scandals. We've had 47 special committees of the House investigating her. And yes, we haven't found anything, but.
- [09:47]
Dorothy Wickenden
And there will be more committees.
- [09:48]
Adam Davidson
Yeah.
- [09:51]
Katie Drummond
I'm Katie Drummond. I'm Wired's Global Editorial director.
- [09:54]
Adam Davidson
I'm Michael Colory, Wired's Director of Consumer, Tech and Culture. And I'm Lauren.
- [09:58]
Dorothy Wickenden
I'm a senior correspondent at Wired. And our show, Uncanny Valley is all about the people, power and influence of Silicon Valley.
- [10:07]
Katie Drummond
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.
- [10:16]
Adam Davidson
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.
- [10:27]
Katie Drummond
Make sure you're following Uncanny Valley in your podcast app of choice so you don't miss an episode.
- [10:36]
Dorothy Wickenden
Evan, I want to ask you, since you've been out on the campaign trail, you've been reporting from Virginia, swing state, and concentrating on the Clinton campaign. Nevertheless, you've been talking to voters. Virginia has its own interesting political history. Talk about that in the context of this discussion.
- [10:53]
Evan Osnos
Historically, Virginia was as red as can be. It was a capital of the Confederacy, Richmond was. It voted for Republicans in 10 presidential races between 1964 and 2004. And then something profound changed and in 2008, Barack Obama won Virginia and he won again in 2012. And what happened was that the demographics of the state changed in a way that reflect what's going on nationally, which is that you had this rapid shift in the number of native born Virginians. By 2008, the population of the state had grown and many of the new arrivals, Asians, Latinos, people from northern states, really managed to transform the political complexion of the place. There's a really interesting moment in the story of Virginia's political transformation and I think it was in its own way a preamble to what we're dealing with now, which is that in 2008, when Obama was elected, Tim Kaine, who was then the governor, went and gave a speech at a civil rights memorial in downtown Richmond. And he said, old Virginie is dead. And it was a reference to the old state anthem, which was a racist song. And for Democrats, that was really a moment to cheer. But for part of the Republican electorate in Virginia, that statement was an insult. I think that was a precursor to the sensibility that we're now confronting at this moment across the country, which is that for a certain portion of Americans, a significant portion of Americans, they look at where the country's going. And they say, not only are you leaving us behind, you're leaving our occupations and our traditions and our customs and our ideas behind, but you're doing it with enthusiasm. That's the problem. I think that's going to be left behind after this race. You know, we started this conversation talking about the wreckage, and that's the wreckage is how do we then begin to try to tell people in some way that there is a new coherence, that there is a way of holding onto parts of the past while also continuing this abiding struggle to try to improve on it.
- [12:53]
Adam Davidson
And this is where I think Trump has a horrible opportunity. All eyes need to shift to what does Trump become in America after this election? The thing Trump could do, which would be terrifying, is he could become the voice and even create an organization around that resentment and have it be either a formal new party, the America First Party, and it could never be a governing party, but it certainly would win, you know, some local elections, maybe even a state or two, and it would be a permanent spoiler. Or he doesn't have to have a formal party, but he just now knows that any morning he wants to, he sends out a tweet. And that deal that Ryan was about to sign with Hillary Clinton is torpedoed because 20 million Republican voters are calling every Republican member of the House. I was imagining yesterday, what if we had the financial crisis again? What if we had to have one of those votes like the bailout, where it's an ugly political vote, but it's literally necessary for the continued survival of our nation? I would say that would be impossible today. Trump would gleefully send out the tweets or go on TV and say, this is a scam. Trust me, I know money. This is a scam. The debt ceiling, which is one of the most suicidal moves the Congress has done over and over again, saying we're going to not pay our debts. I don't see any reason why Trump wouldn't gleefully put that kind of pressure on. He has it in his power, unfortunately, to destroy the Republican Party, which is not something people on the left should be happy about.
- [14:27]
Evan Osnos
I think, you know, this week there was something interesting, which is Steve Schmidt, who was the GOP strategist who ran John McCain's campaign in 2008, who has, you know, been a stalwart, been committed to the party for his professional life. You know, he came out and predicted that basically the party will split. You know, Adam and I have now talked about the short term scenario in which this might in Fact strangely enhance Reince Priebus stature over the medium term. In the long term, though, the party is facing this major cleavage and you'll end up with something like an alt right party, you know, a white nationalist party, whether it's led by Trump or by Steve Bannon or whoever. And then you'll have the room for some kind of center right conservative party. That's where, you know, I feel compelled by sentiment and I suppose also by analysis to say there is a sunny scenario here. The sunny scenario, yeah, the sunny scenario. And maybe it's grasping at straws, but this week you saw Paul Ryan's camp sending out signals in the press basically saying Paul Ryan is ready to deal with, he's ready to deal with Hillary Clinton as president. And not just on immigration or on corporate tax, but on three things that people really want. One is infrastructure spending, another one is criminal justice reform, and the third one is some sort of anti poverty agenda. If there is any room for them to deal, it's not inconceivable that you could end up getting some sort of unlikely alliance between the center right, Paul Ryan's of the party and a Hillary Clinton White House.
- [15:54]
Dorothy Wickenden
And Evan, you think he could conceivably control his House members enough to make that happen? That seems to me the big question.
- [16:01]
Evan Osnos
I think it depends partly on what the results are on election Day. And no, by no mean is it guaranteed. But the fact that he's saying that now, I think is at least some minor reason for encouragement.
- [16:13]
Adam Davidson
Some other areas of optimism are that both Trump and Bannon are very disorganized, erratic people who have not shown an ability to build organization, to do the hard work that it would take to truly be an effective spoiler. So, and then I also think that Donald Trump will face truly catastrophic news about himself either before or after the election. I mean, the.
- [16:37]
Dorothy Wickenden
How could it get any worse?
- [16:39]
Adam Davidson
I mean, I think some of the stuff that's come out this week about the foundation that nobody's paying attention to. I mean, we're now looking at what seem to be possibly real legal violations. I think as a longtime business reporter, when you. This is the sloppiest organization. David Fahrenholt at the Washington Post said that back in 1989, the Trump foundation got credit for more than 250,000. I don't 268,000, something like that, in a charitable gift for the Central Park Conservancy. I might be getting which particular organization it was, but the Central Park Conservancy took that as payment for service, not as a charitable gift. And that's what I've seen. That's the clearest. Like, oh, you did something against the law. You hid a payment for service as a charitable gift just because it was to a nonprofit. But generally, when you see a level of sloppiness and lack of professionalism in basic accounting systems, as we already know exist, that you just imagine there's a lot more there. So it's very easy to imagine a scenario in which Trump is not this potent force we're afraid of, and Steve Bannon is not a potent force. I also do believe the two of them truly have a misunderstanding of how human beings interact. They truly seem to think that we act as these coherent groups, that white European men think this way and Jews think this way, and. And it's not true. So. So I think they don't seem to have the capacity to really imagine how to build a spoiler force. That being said, a wounded, but not fatally Donald Trump with a Twitter account could make the next 410 years of our lives just considerably worse.
- [18:20]
Evan Osnos
The example that I sometimes think of when I'm trying to imagine whether or not Trump can maintain his prominence in American life is to think about the trajectory of Sarah Palin, who was in 2008 an enormous figure and for a brief period after that really was the center galvanizing force of a certain new kind of Republican constituency. And then the centrifugal force of her own craziness and lack of discipline and the troubles surrounding her and her family eventually consumed her, and so she's now irrelevant. And I think it's not inconceivable that if Trump has already, even with all of the support and the apparatus that being the nominee provides, has already become as unhinged as he is, it's not impossible that we might find that he just spins himself into disintegration. And I think the real question from my perspective is not what Trump does, but what Trump's heirs and successors do, because there will be more disciplined, smarter figures who try to pick up some of Trump's message and stitch it together into a more durable frame. And those are the people, frankly, that I really worry about.
- [19:37]
Dorothy Wickenden
Thank you both. Adam Davidson, the co founder and former co host of NPR's Planet Money, is a contributing writer for New Yorker.com Evan Osnos is a staff writer for the magazine and the author of the Age of Chasing Fortune, Truth and Faith in the New China. This has been the Political Scene from the New Yorker. You can find more political analysis and commentary on new or on the New Yorker apps available at no extra charge from the App Store and Google Play. And you can subscribe to this and other New Yorker podcasts by searching for the New Yorker in your podcast app. The political scene is produced by Alex Barron and Jill Duboff. For New Yorker.com I'm Dorothy Wickenden.
- [20:23]
Katie Drummond
What the hell is going on right now and why is it happening like this? At Wired, we're obsessed with getting to the bottom of those question on a daily basis. And maybe you are too. I'm Katie Drummond, the global Editorial Director of Wired, and I'm hosting our new podcast series, the Big Interview. Each week I'll sit down with some of the most interesting, provocative and influential people who are shaping our right now. Big Interview conversations are fun.
- [20:51]
Evan Osnos
I want a shark that that eats.
- [20:52]
Katie Drummond
The Internet, that turns it all off, unfiltered and unafraid.
- [20:56]
Evan Osnos
So in a lot of ways, I try to be an antidote to the unimaginable faucet of reactionary content that you see to the best of my ability.
- [21:05]
Katie Drummond
Every week we're going to offer you the ultimate luxury of our times. Meaning and context. True or false? You, Brian Johnson, the man sitting across from me, one day, at some point as of yet undefined in the future, you will die. False. Tell me more. Listen to the Big Interview right now in the same place you find WIRED's Uncanny Valley podcast. Subscribe or follow wherever you get your podcasts.
- [21:35]
Dorothy Wickenden
From.
- [21:36]
Evan Osnos
PRX.