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- [00:00]
A
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B
I'm Dorothy Wickenden. On today's Politics and More podcast, David Remnick talks with New Yorker staff writer Susan Glasser. They'll discuss how COVID 19 has affected policymaking in Washington.
- [01:32]
C
We're in a time now of terrible uncertainty in just about every aspect of our national life, not least in our politics. Whether the pandemic brings us to a greater sense of common good really remains to be seen. Some in the business community and on the right are now arguing that widespread death may be preferable to the economic depression that follows from containing the virus. And President Trump, meanwhile, is insisting that the country be brought back to work by Easter. And all through this, there's a presidential primary race still going on, and we have no idea how the pandemic will affect the November election. To get some insight on all of this, I called up the New Yorker's Washington correspondent, Susan Glasser. Susan, hi.
- [02:18]
B
Hi, David.
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C
Now, you've called this crisis the most clarifying of Donald Trump's presidency. What do you mean by that?
- [02:26]
B
Well, look, I mean all crises reveal and what we're seeing is the man in full with all of his limitations, his character quirks, and the strengths and weaknesses of his administration. And by sort of waging war on the institutions of government as we know it, for the last few years, creating and constructing a White House that runs or doesn't run unlike any other, of any Republican or Democratic president. Those are the tools that he brings to this most unusual battle. And you couldn't imagine a president personalizing a crisis with a virus, but somehow that's where we are. That's where we are. The Trump show applies even to the pandemic.
- [03:15]
C
What do you mean by personalizing this crisis?
- [03:17]
B
Well, look at one of these daily press conferences that he's now been holding in the White House briefing room. And what do you hear? You hear the word I an awful lot. And you hear a president who's dramatizing this as if it's something that is affecting him and him alone. He talks over and over again about how awful the coronavirus test was that he had to take, which is literally consists of a swab that was shoved up his nose. And, you know, same thing with the economy. I had the best economy. It was a growing grade. It was the best in world history. Can you believe this happened? Nobody, nobody expected this to happen. And on and on and on it goes. And it's this sort of very narcissistic kind of stream of consciousness approach to a crisis.
- [04:05]
C
It's really well documented that the President played down the seriousness of this pandemic for a long time. And do we have any sense of why that is?
- [04:14]
B
You know, this week was the one month anniversary of the President's first substantive tweet about the coronavirus. On February 24, he said essentially, this is not coming to the USA in a big way and we're all going to be fine and it's not going to really happen here. February 24th, that was more than a month after his own government had been warning him that steps needed to be taken that weren't taken. So there might be in the future some sort of a 911 style commission to look at why that was. But I think with Trump, sometimes the answer is pretty transparent. And in this case, I think the answer is pretty transparent. He didn't want anything to interrupt his re election campaign plan, which entirely hinged on the strength of the US Economy and also the strength of the US Stock market, which had hit its highest point in February. And that's the risk of personalizing government, where his overwhelming need for a personal political resurrection after his impeachment and trial absolutely overrode the increasingly dire warnings that it seems he was getting from inside his government as well as outside.
- [05:33]
C
This kind of reaction, which may be understandable for an ordinary citizen, at least temporarily, seems to me inexcusable for the leader of a country that he, rather than face the facts of a growing hurricane of cases, illnesses, death, shortages in hospitals, reacts the way he is by saying, we're going to be back by Easter. And this has to be enormously confusing to so many people in the United States and is likely to cause behavior that leads to tragic consequences.
- [06:16]
B
David, that's the essence of it that's so striking, is that in the end, when the catastrophe came and hit Trump, it was one that had to do with public health, and where his flimflammery and narcissism and insistence upon creating, constructing, and projecting alternate realities would collide with empirical reality in such a stark way. The math is the math. Look at those charts. Look at those numbers. X number of people are sick two weeks from now, three weeks from now, X number of people are going to be suffering and dying. We have X number of ventilators. And so I think that really hit home for many people this Tuesday when the President, in the face of that overwhelming scientific and empirical reality, was simply declaring willfully, well, I insist that, you know, I would like to reopen the country by Easter, and how people packed into pews. And it's. It's painful to watch it because it gets to the essence of Trump and why he's different than all other presidents of yours in my lifetime. It's not about ideology. It's about the unique flaws in his character. And for me, that's what makes him so potentially dangerous in this particular kind of a crisis.
- [07:41]
C
We've got truth tellers, whatever flaws you may ascribe to them over time. But you have truth tellers like Anthony Fauci and Andrew Cuomo who are speaking straight to the president. How is. From your understanding of what's going on inside, how are their conversations with the president going? Are they reaching him at any level? Does he just ignore them? Does he push back? How conversations going?
- [08:06]
B
Well, it seems to be almost erratic in the extreme, based on the accounts that you've heard from Fauci and Cuomo in various interviews. They both claim that the president does listen at times, that, you know, the sort of abrasive, attacking personality that you and I observe in his public performances is not always the case in private. And you see that with Trump, who has a Sort of love, hate relationship with Cuomo. Right. He often speaks of the fact that, oh, well, we get along really well. And then 10 minutes later, he'll attack him publicly and suggest that New York State is going to suffer in terms of federal aid because they're not being, quote, nice to him. And again, they have the problem of needing to speak the truth, maintain their own credibility with the public and with their own teams. But at the same time, we all know that if you alienate Trump too much, you know, that is a real risk, he'll throw you out the door. Well, and again, the public safety of New York State in the case of Cuomo and the country in the case of Fauci, to a certain extent, involves them not having some catastrophic rift with the president. And so that's a very, very delicate line that they have to tread. And it really is so worrisome. We've already seen the president publicly attacking numerous governors, mostly of heavily Democratic states. You know, he went after Governor Pritzker in Illinois. He's gone after Cuomo at various points. He's attacked many figures who are crucial to the actual on the ground response to the pandemic.
- [09:54]
C
But there's one result in terms of the pandemic. There's another in terms of public opinion. Gallup released a poll which found that the president had a 49% approval rating, which is high for him, with 60% approving of his handling of the crisis. What's driving his numbers so high, assuming that everything that you've said is true?
- [10:14]
B
Well, that's right. It is a remarkable phenomenon. So two things we've seen since the beginning of the Trump presidency. Number one, views about Donald Trump are remarkably fixed and immune to almost any kind of external change or shock. And so no matter what Trump has said and done over the last few years, you know, he's had this core of a little bit more than 40% of the country in these opinion polls that have supported him, and then a small group of waiverers. And now what you're seeing in that Gallup survey is remarkable. Essentially, the people who have gone back and forth on Trump, that small number of people who remain undecided, have swung back to approving of his conduct in office for the last few years. You don't see Democrats changing their mind about the president. And I think that's the other thing, as far as the politics of this moment go, that is notable, which is that you have essentially Blue America and Red America, very partisan and divided country right now. They're at least initially experiencing the pandemic in a very different blue state, red state way. And so you have the big cities that are predominantly Democratic on the two coasts are being hit first and hardest by this. And Trump seems to be exacerbating those divisions that already exist in the country with how he's talking about this and some of his rhetoric about wanting to return to normalcy and how it's not really that big of a deal, essentially are playing almost overtly to small, less populated states in the middle of the country that so far have not been hard hit. He actually mentioned the other day, Nebraska and Idaho, you know, they can go back to work. And so you see the president playing off of those political divides in our country at a time when others would speak of national unity. He seems to be speaking and encouraging division.
- [12:14]
C
Are there any Republican senators who are breaking with the president? We see Lindsey Graham, in a sense, Lindsey Graham arguing with this approach that the cure can't be worse than the problem.
- [12:26]
B
Yes. But to me, what's striking as it has been throughout the Trump presidency is the deafening lack of public pushback from Republican senators, Republican House members. I think that's the most remarkable thing. Where you are hearing some rumblings and some pushback is among Republican governors and officials at the state and local level whose job it is to actually protect the public safety. So Governor Mike DeWine in Ohio, Governor Larry Hogan in Maryland, those have been two of the loudest and most effective Republican state officials in terms of their clear eyed response to the pandemic. And implicitly, their behavior and their public statements have been a rebuke to Trump almost every day. In fact, Larry Hogan the other day, when Donald Trump said he wants to bring the country back to work by Easter Sunday, Larry Hogan just came out and said this is fake. This is an imaginary timeline. And no, that's not going to happen.
- [13:35]
C
Yeah, that may be true and it is. But the lieutenant governor of Texas, Dan Patrick, suggested on Fox News, on Tucker Carlson's show that senior citizens shouldn't put their personal safety from coronavirus ahead of the health of the economy. You know, my message is that let's get back to work. Let's get back to living. Let's be smart about it. And those of us who are 70 plus, we'll take care of ourselves. But don't sacrifice the country. Don't do that, don't ruin. You're basically saying that this disease could take your life, but that's not the scariest thing to you there's something that.
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B
Would be worse than Dying.
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C
Yeah.
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B
You know, it's amazing to hear that. It's really stunning. I personally am not ready to sacrifice my parents for the views of some Wall street financiers. I have to tell you, it's just shocking that people say things like that out loud. They always joke that Trump is the one who says the part out loud. Well, you often have some of his followers now doing that. And by the way, David, it's not isolated to the Texas lieutenant governor. There are some senators who have said eerily similar things and who have been downplaying the public health risks of this from the very beginning. Senator Johnson from Wisconsin has said similar, if not quite so colorful versions of the same thing. And so look at Rand Paul, who.
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C
Tested positive for coronavirus.
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B
His father, Ron Paul, wrote a column essentially saying the whole thing was a hoax. And then of course, Senator Paul, himself a medical doctor, an ophthalmologist who ought to know better, went around the U.S. capitol and put his colleagues lives in danger, many of whom, as we know, are quite old and therefore at much higher risk from this particular disease. Rand Paul went around the Capitol for I believe it was more than five days.
- [15:37]
C
Joe Biden has been not completely eliminated from the scene. We've heard from him here and there. But it's almost as if the election is no longer going on, it seems, isn't that remarkable?
- [15:49]
B
I mean, it's an aspect of our national life that's been put almost on hold. And on the one hand, I see a lot of political professionals suggesting that Biden should just step out of the way and let Trump implode himself. Obviously, many of us look at the situation and say Donald Trump is sabotaging himself and his political fortunes better than any opposition candidate ever could. The stream of lies and mistrusts, the incompetence, the failures, you would think that would be a very powerful record he's assembling of opposition research. You saw actually though, that the Biden campaign clearly is worried that they're too far out of the news cycle. And they started to have Joe Biden appearing this week in daily appearances from his confinement or whatever we're calling this quarantine era movement. So he's appearing and giving his own sort of counter briefing. So do you attack Trump right now or do you just sort of stand out of the way and let him shoot himself in the foot, metaphorically?
- [16:59]
C
Susan, Finally, Ronald Reagan once remarked that the most terrifying words in the English language were, I'm from the government and I'm here to help. How does that statement hold up these.
- [17:11]
B
Days, you know, it's remarkable when you see Republican senators and Democratic senators rushing together to pass a $2 trillion bailout package for the U.S. economy in a matter of hours and days. The same Republican senators who wouldn't do anything like that in any other circumstance. Politicians, regardless of their ideology, and that includes Ronald Reagan, are willing to throw money at a problem when it's a problem like this one. But you do feel that the sustained Republican attack on the institutions of our government, on the very idea that it can be an agent of help, has contributed to what appears to be the incompetence and disorganization of the Trump administration's response to this. There'll be plenty of time. We'll be hashing over what happened and what didn't happen in this national crisis for many years to come, I suspect. But the role of Republicans and specifically the Trump administration in how it handled this, you know, there's going to be some shocking stuff, I imagine, that we learn when it all comes out.
- [18:28]
C
Susan Glasser, thank you so much.
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B
David, thank you.
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C
Susan Glaser is a Washington correspondent for the New Yorker, and you can read her work@newyorker.com.
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America is changing, and so is the world.
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C
But what's happening in America isn't just the cause of global upheaval. It's also a symptom of disruption that's happening everywhere.
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I'm Asma Khalid in Washington, D.C. i'm.
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Tristan Redman in London. And this is THE GLOBAL story.
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Every weekday, we'll bring you a story.
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From this intersection where the world and America meet.
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Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts.
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From. PRX.