The Political Scene Live: A Year Since Trump’s Win, What Have We Learned?

Summary

The Political Scene Live: A Year Since Trump’s Win, What Have We Learned?
The New Yorker | November 22, 2025
Host: Evan Osnos with Susan Glasser and Jane Mayer
[Live from the JFK Forum, Harvard IOP]

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Episode Overview

One year after Donald Trump's return to the presidency, The New Yorker’s top political journalists gather for a live show to reflect on biggest lessons of Trump 2.0. With Trump's presidency at a possible inflection point, plunging approval, and cracks emerging in GOP unity, the discussion probes what’s changed, what’s disturbingly constant, and what the year has revealed about both Trump and America. The panel explores core themes–from the Epstein files scandal to creeping authoritarianism, the MAGA movement’s future, and the media’s role–with candor, humor, and deep experience reporting on American power.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Epstein Files: A Turning Point?

[02:10–04:37, 04:37–09:16]

• Trump and his allies fiercely resisted the release of the Epstein files, branding efforts at disclosure a "Democratic hoax" and pressuring even loyalists to keep files secret.
  • “He called members of his party who were supporting this idea traitors. And yet, within the span of a week, you have both the House and the Senate passing the bill. The vote in the House was 427 to 1.” — Evan Osnos [03:27]
• Susan Glasser: For those who grew up politically in the Trump era, his disruption is the new normal, a reminder that what’s “crazy and unprecedented” to some is baseline reality to younger Americans.
• The bipartisan move to release Epstein files signals, perhaps for the first time, real Republican pushback against Trump, but panelists caution against "irrational exuberance."
  • “Beware irrational exuberance.” — Susan Glasser [06:22]
• “It’s a moment when both parties go against the president that begins to really tarnish his image.” — Jane Mayer [07:43]
• The scandal cuts to the visceral antagonism toward impunity for elites, crystallizing MAGA base concerns and fracturing Republican unity.

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2. Trump 2.0: What’s Different?

[14:18–19:25]

• Trump learned the lesson of “the cadres”: he replaced senior officials with fiercely loyal, often unqualified, MAGA true believers, removing moderating influences like Mattis and Kelly.
  • “Donald Trump is a president operating without any visible constraints.” — Susan Glasser [15:10]
  • “He is a radicalized version of himself... radicalized by the failure to win reelection in 2020, radicalized by January 6, and especially the prosecutions of himself and some of his inner circle.” — Susan Glasser [16:27]
• The “bad boyfriend theory”: Trump is unchanged at his core—self-aggrandizing, unconstrained by truth, and drawn to vengeance—and now has even fewer guardrails.
  • “You’re not going to change that, by the way.” — Jane Mayer [17:48]
  • “Power…doesn’t corrupt. Power reveals. And he has revealed himself to us now.” — Jane Mayer, invoking Robert Caro [18:47]

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3. Notable Images and “Seismic” Shifts

[20:03–23:16]

• Osnos recalls inauguration day 2025, where oligarchs—not elected leaders—shared the stage with Trump: “the world’s wealthiest people lined up next to a president… the leaders of Congress were relegated to the audience.” — Evan Osnos [20:03]
  • “It felt to me like a seismic geography of power.” [20:13]
• The administration's overt preference for autocrats, especially the opulent welcome for the Saudi crown prince soon after, demonstrates Trump’s admiration for and alignment with “America’s autocratic frenemies at the expense of America’s allies.” — Susan Glasser [23:19]
  • The “raising of the East Wing” and lavish White House decor, symbolic of a presidency “jumping the shark.” [23:01–23:16]
  • “There’s no polite way of describing just how much love he was lavishing on this young Gulf prince.” — Glasser [23:46]

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4. Authoritarianism and Institutional Breakdown

[22:12–24:36, 28:16–33:45]

• Trump’s rule is defined by his moves to centralize power and sideline traditional institutions and oversight: firing military chiefs on racial grounds, bringing national security and State Department roles tightly under White House control.
  • “You could say that actually the pardoning of the January 6th insurrectionists was the signature act of the Trump 2.0 presidency.” — Susan Glasser [35:25]
• The media is increasingly controlled: the White House press corps “Kremlinized” and Pentagon journalists replaced by “Trump adjacent entities.” — Susan Glasser [28:40–29:56]
• “I was really struck by the national security types… they thought that essentially having an undeclared war on a false pretext… was really crossing of a red line.” — Susan Glasser [30:33]
• Immigration and environmental rollbacks have deep, lasting legacies— but are getting less public attention.
  • “If the thing that we might look back on… is what’s happening with the environment and climate change and the policies that are just destroying natural resources.” — Jane Mayer [31:27]
• The Supreme Court, once considered a bulwark, is now seen by Mayer as deeply politicized due to “targeted political operation,” likely unable to check Trump’s movement.
  • “We can’t really count on the courts to change us because they are a political branch and they're very political.” — Jane Mayer [33:17]

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5. The Future of MAGA

[33:58–37:32]

• What will become of MAGA after Trump?
  • The Republican Party, says Glasser, “isn’t going back” to its pre-Trump establishment era. The 2020 election denial has become a “condition” for GOP leadership.
• “MAGA’s part of our history. And Donald Trump now supersedes Ronald Reagan as the signature Republican president, I would say, of our lifetimes.” — Susan Glasser [36:13]
• Who might inherit Trump’s mantle? Panelists are skeptical of successors like J.D. Vance or Don Jr.: “Expect the unexpected… but I am not seeing that kind of charisma.” — Jane Mayer [36:31]
• Osnos draws on lessons from Xi Jinping’s China: Don’t name a successor—power in movements like this is precarious to hand off. [37:32]

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• On the uniqueness of Trump 2.0

  “Donald Trump is a president operating without any visible constraints. And even where there are constraints, he's essentially bulldozing over them.” — Susan Glasser [15:10]

• On the MAGA base & class

  “The victims of Epstein, they were basically working class, powerless. They are very much like sort of the MAGA base. And these people were taken advantage of and exploited… there's a real sense that this country's not cohering anymore.” — Jane Mayer [13:38]

• On media complicity and courage

  “It’s parts of the system need to stand up and do their thing. Right? Like to me, the thing about being a journalist in this era is like, time to slide down the fire pole. This is what we got into journalism for.” — Susan Glasser [48:06] “Give more voice to the people who are standing up… it's enough that a few people do the right thing and others learn from them.” — Jane Mayer, citing Hannah Arendt [49:03]

• On optimism and backlash

  “The response to cruelty and fragmentation and every effort to divide us will be somebody who has the capacity to pull people together… politics really doesn't like a vacuum.” — Evan Osnos [44:21]

• On the new normal

  “For a whole generation of Americans… what we define as the new abnormal is, in fact, the new normal.” — Susan Glasser [05:13]

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Audience Q&A Highlights

Foreign Policy & Trump’s “Theatricality” [39:07–43:52]

• Trump craves the power and spectacle of foreign policy, where checks on presidential authority are weakest; relishes meeting autocrats; sidelines State and Defense Departments, leading to “opaque” military leadership turbulence.

Media’s Role & Responsibility [46:09–49:28]

• The panel stresses the media must not cower, despite mounting government and corporate pressure. Courage—reporting both what’s wrong and those taking a stand—is crucial to public understanding and institutional resilience.

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• [02:10] – One year since Trump 2.0: state of play
• [04:37] – The meaning of the Epstein files vote
• [14:18] – Trump 2.0 vs 1.0: radicalization, removal of constraints
• [20:03] – “Seismic” inauguration, oligarchs and new power geometry
• [22:12] – Authoritarian affinity in foreign policy
• [28:16] – Undercovered stories: Press corps, Pentagon, Venezuela war
• [31:27] – Environment/climate, SCOTUS politicization
• [34:25] – The post-Trump, post-MAGA Republican future
• [39:07] – Q&A: Foreign policy normalization, military purges
• [44:21] – Q&A: Can unity overcome rage-bait/fragmentation?
• [46:09] – Q&A: Media’s role, courage, and public trust

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Tone & Style

The episode is pointed, wry, and deeply knowledgeable. The panelists combine measured pessimism with institutional insight, not devoid of hope or humor (running jokes about “irrational exuberance,” the “bad boyfriend theory,” and the “Kremlinization” of the White House press pool). Glasser and Mayer bring decades of institutional memory, while Osnos steers with clarity, and all three speak directly and candidly about their own doubts, surprises, and responsibilities as chroniclers of this tumultuous era.

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This live episode offers a sharp, timely “rough draft” of history, chronicling how American institutions, norms, and political culture have been permanently altered in just twelve extraordinary months.

Transcript

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[Susan Glasser]

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[Evan Osnos]

Welcome to the Political Scene from the New Yorker, a weekly discussion about the big questions in American politics. I'm Evan Osnos and I'm joined, as ever, by my colleagues Jane Mayer and Susan Glaser. Hi, Jane and hi, Susan.

[Jane Mayer]

Hey, Evan. Hey, Susan.

[Susan Glasser]

Hey, great to be with you guys.

[Evan Osnos]

We are coming to you live this week from the John F. Kennedy Forum at Harvard University's Institute of Politics. It says. Applause People, You almost made me have to Jeb Bush the situation. This was really a desperate turn of events. It is a pleasure to be here with you tonight on this Wednesday evening. It has been, believe it or not, one year, one dizzying, disorienting year since the election of Donald Trump. The Trump presidency 2.0 has looked at times beyond any conceivable constraint as it slashed at federal agencies, indicted its political opponents, deployed American troops on American streets while pursuing one showdown after another with universities, civil society and news organizations. And yet today, there are stark signs of what may prove to be a turning point. This president's popularity has reached historic lows. He's facing a rebellion from members of his own party in just the last few days. These are members of Congress who were, until recently, in total lockstep with him. His own treasury secretary has said that parts of the economy may already be in recession, and the Epstein scandal shows no sign of going away. The Democratic Party is watching and strategizing and trying to figure out which paths it has forward. Tonight, we wanted to mark this moment with some serious Trumpology, trying to figure out what we've learned over the course of the last year, where it may be going and what it's been like to cover it from Washington. So we gotta start, guys, with the news of the week, which is quite extraordinary. This is, by any measure, a stunning turnaround. Let's just remind ourselves Trump and his party have spent the past year doing everything within their power to prevent the release of the Epstein files. He described it as efforts to force disclosure. He called it a Democratic hoax. He called members of his party who were supporting this idea traitors. And yet, within the span of a week, you have both the House and the Senate passing the bill. The vote in the house was 427 to 1. So, Susan, how do we make sense of this?

[Susan Glasser]

How do we make sense of any of it? It's so great to be here, I have to say. There's a whole group of amazing students here who have been part of Team Baker Glasser at the iop.

[Katie Drummond]

Yay.

[Susan Glasser]

You guys have been amazing. And, you know, really, this conversation today was inspired for me a little bit by the conversations with students all fall, because one of my clear takeaways, and this came out of one of our very first conversations, was you guys in Washington are always talking about how abnormal and crazy and disruptive and unprecedented everything is. And that's true, by the way. But it's also true that looking at undergraduates today and young people across this country, their entire conscious lives have existed more or less in the Trump era in American politics. The last 10 years have been dominated by this very singular disruptive figure of Donald Trump. So what we define as the new abnormal, I think for a whole generation of Americans is in fact the new normal. And it prompted a resolution for me, which is that I hope that I can do, and we can do a better job as journalists and laying out for people what is it that is so extraordinary and crazy and unprecedented and abnormal and undermining that we're seeing here? Can we do a better job of laying that out? Okay, so flash forward to another crazy, abnormal, insane week in Washington. Where does this one fit on the scale of outliers? Listening to your introduction, Evan, I felt a little whiff of. Is it the scent of the air?

[Evan Osnos]

Trump, Right? Exactly. How many times have we heard that?

[Susan Glasser]

Yes, exactly. So beware irrational exuberance. I would say that's a good principle when going forward. But you're exactly right that Donald Trump is the one who made this such a test of his leadership and frankly, his ownership of the Republican Party, and failed. You know, he just did a big belly flop. If you can't get Lauren Boebert, okay, Lauren Boebert from Colorado, one of the sort of MAGA TV warriors. If you can't get her to knuckle under and take the big vote for you when you need it. They brought her into the Situation Room just a week ago, worked her over. Situation Room. By the way, folks, that's for major national security crises, not for Jeffrey Epstein's emails. So I do think it's significant that Donald Trump basically was told no by his own party. That's something we haven't seen happen. I do caution against irrational exuberance. And in terms of the craziness, I know we're gonna talk a little bit more about this week, but to me, as extraordinary, disruptive, and abnormal of an event occurred just yesterday in the Oval Office. And, you know, we can talk more about that, Jane, but do you agree with me that the Epstein thing is significant but not, you know, sort of the beginning of the end or the end of the beginning or whatever that is?

[Jane Mayer]

I probably a little more hopeful about it in that I think that there's a moment when both parties go against the president that begins to really tarnish his image. And I'm thinking back to not even that long ago when both parties turned on Biden in the way that he was withdrawn from Afghanistan. In some ways, if you look at opinion polls, that was the beginning of the end. And I think, you know, going back to. I go all the way back to having been in college when Carter was president. I've seen them get irreparably damaged. It's a very strange thing, of all the things Trump's done, that this is the thing that would be causing such damage. And I think it's incredibly interesting that it is, in many ways and worth sort of thinking about why it is. But the other thing that happens when you have a moment like this is, all right, the president now may be sort of facing potential really damaging documents. And I was talking to a friend Last night, who was one of the Watergate lawyers, the special prosecutor, Richard Benvenista. And he said, this is when the COVID ups begin, and the COVID ups are always where they really get themselves in trouble. So there are things to look forward to, basically.

[Evan Osnos]

Essentially, what I hear you saying is that if it's not fundamental damage to him, at least what we know is that this idea of the kind of infallibility that there's nothing he can do, which was the narrative, which was really a big part of it for 11 months.

[Jane Mayer]

I mean, I'm not sure it's just Epstein, though, either. I mean, I think Epstein is what we're talking about right now. But the prices of groceries are really important. And people might disagree with me, but I don't think that America loves cruelty and corruption. I think those have always been parts of our history, but they're not our ideals. And he has been so apologetic, he and his administration, in reveling in cruelty and corruption. I think that hurts him.

[Evan Osnos]

I do think also, Susan, it's notable. Jane mentioned Biden's experience when the parties turned on him during Afghanistan. It is also true that it was after inflation had begun to register. And when you look at the effect on public attitudes, that confluence of events is very hard for a president to escape.

[Susan Glasser]

And also, it punctured, essentially for Biden. He had a different kind of animating story that he told about his presidency, which was the idea that he was sort of the restoration of the status quo anti including a competence to American government. After the chaos and disruption of Trump's first four years in office and Afghanistan was the very visible public sign that, in fact, competence was not back. And I think that punctured his entire sales pitch for the presidency. So now you have Trump. What is his sales pitch? His sales pitch to a certain core of the MAGA base was a sales pitch. Well, I'll give you whatever you want. You think that there's a crazy cabal of evil sex traffickers at the heart of the American power elite. Well, sure. I'll give you all the documents. Never thinking he'd actually have to produce them and that his name might be all over them. So I think it punctures a promise that Trump made to people he cares about. The difference, right, is that Trump has never for one day in this term or his previous term in office aspired to sort of govern across the board for 51% of the American population. Right. He is a guy who has defined himself as a president for Red America, and this is Red America's rebellion. But again, irrational exuberance. I caution here, the United States Congress is controlled, both the House and the Senate, by Republicans. The only time we've seen Congress assert its prerogative as a legislative body in the face of enormous encroachments by the executive branch has been on the matter of these particular documents. So Donald Trump aggregated to himself already in the first nine months, you know, the literally, he stole the power from the legislative branch to appropriate money and to decide what agencies should exist in our government. They were shut down. I haven't heard a word from Congress about that. And that's a lot more important in many respects than this. So I would wait to see, and it's very likely, I would guess not until after the next year's midterms, when you might see more organized institutional pushback on things that affect a broad swath of, of the American people, which these documents do not. And so I think it's a sign, but probably, as you pointed out, Gene, let's talk about the approval ratings. Donald Trump, maybe these Epstein things are distracting us from that. I mean, to me, that story is a pretty incredible story. Trump, historically unpopular, he's now the most unpopular he's ever been. Evan, do you think that's from the economy? I mean, is Epstein really an issue that affects the overall popularity of the president?

[Evan Osnos]

I think it has, as Jane said, it has this strangely personal quality. It is, in the end, something that Americans find deeply offensive. It transcends politics. It's visceral. Frankly, I think covering this administration has been hard because it is, as one of our colleagues put it, it is like Watergate every day. And it is very hard to help Americans or to describe things in a way that don't sound like it's just a sort of continuing momentum. This one is different because it has names, it has faces, and it fortifies what is the underlying most neuralgic issue in American life, which is the idea of rich and powerful people helping one another to take advantage of others. That's for me, why I think it's.

[Jane Mayer]

That'S how I think it really took off. When you listen to both what Ro Khanna and Massey are saying, they are talking about this as impunity for the rich and powerful, behaving hideously towards the weak. And look, the victims of Epstein, they were basically working class, powerless. They are very much like sort of the MAGA base. And these people were taken advantage of and exploited, and then they were exploited in the election. And I mean, you've been writing a lot about class politics. You know, I think. I mean, there's a real sense that this country's not cohering anymore.

[Evan Osnos]

We're gonna talk more about it, but I wanna talk for a second. Let's conceptualize where we are. Let's step back. We're a year into what is, as we've described it, Trump 2.0. Susan, you've been covering Trump in one form or another up close, up against the coal face now for going on 10 years. How do you conceptualize this administration as distinguished from 1.0?

[Susan Glasser]

You know, my big takeaway from doing the interviews for our book, the divider on Trump's first term was something actually that Jared Kushner would say about what did he conclude was the biggest mistake of their first four years in office? And he would tell people that it actually was about the personnel, which, by the way, is always, I think, the kind of tip off, you know, if you want to understand Washington or any other capital, right. It's the. You know, there's a Soviet saying, it's the cadres. The cadres.

[Evan Osnos]

The nomenclature.

[Susan Glasser]

You know, the cadres decide everything. And, you know, I think that that was what the Trump inner circle concluded, is that Donald Trump didn't have the people in place to do what he wanted. And if you look at that early focus on getting loyalists in there, even people who, you know, to our eyes, might seem wildly unqualified, he, you know, they were pretty focused on, this is gonna be the big difference. So they themselves set it out as a difference from 1.0 to 2.0. And that has led, of course, to the big thing, which is Donald Trump is a president operating without any visible constraints. And even where there are constraints, he's essentially bulldozing over them. And so far, there's another Soviet saying, right? The Lenin saying, right, about the Civil War, keep going until you hit steel. And he hasn't hit steel in many cases. We're talking about this vote this week. And so, for me, that's a big, big difference in this second term. And then the final thing is, Donald Trump is approaching 80 years old. We all know. I call it the bad boyfriend theory of the case. He's not gonna change who he is, right? Donald Trump thinks what he thinks. And if you think you're gonna change him, you're wrong. Right? But, and this is interesting, he is a radicalized version of himself. I believe that he's radicalized by the failure to win reelection in 2020, radicalized by January 6, and especially the prosecutions of himself and some of his inner circle in the years since then. And the revenge and retribution agenda, always a part of his personality. He was demanding that people be prosecuted in the first term, but now look at how many ways in which he's executing on that.

[Evan Osnos]

Jane, one of the things I hear Susan saying is essentially you've got this sort triumph of the middle ranks because there's no longer the Jim Mattis' and the John Kelly's around who were, as we know, modulating Trump to some degree, preventing the wackiest ideas from happening. You now have Lindsey Halligan, who is the White House aide who's now become the prosecutor, who is going after Comey. You've got Russell Vogt, who is the architect of the shutdown strategy. These are sort of, you know, the middle ranks of the MAGA true believers. And they are essentially willing to take him to the maximalist position on each one of these.

[Jane Mayer]

Yeah, I mean, there's nobody standing around him who's telling, no, sir, that's a bad idea. And that's a very dangerous thing when you have as much power as he's got. I am not convinced that he's changed. I mean, I definitely buy the bad boyfriend theory. You're not going to change that, by the way.

[Susan Glasser]

I'm going to trademark that.

[Jane Mayer]

Okay. But I don't think he has.

[Susan Glasser]

You heard it here first.

[Jane Mayer]

I went back and took a look at what Tony Schwartz told me in 2016. He was the true author of the Art of the Deal. He's the co author on the COVID but he actually wrote the book for Trump with Trump. He spent a lot of time with Trump. And if you go back and you look at what he said, he knew him really well. Trump is exactly the same. Tony Schwartz said he's completely unconstrained by the truth in a way that nobody else I've ever seen. He has no ability to concentrate beyond a few seconds, basically, except for one subject. The only subject that interests him is his own aggrandizement. He doesn't read books. Tony Schwartz said, I put lipstick on a pig about that book. And he said there's one line in it where Trump is quoted saying, you know, I don't care about money. All I care about is the art of the Deal. And Tony Schwartz says to me, he cares about money. And I think we're seeing that now. So, I mean, I think he's the same person. And I think vengeance has been part of his character. And I think Roy Cohen was his mentor. And if you look back at that, you can See, he's the same person. The difference is, as you're saying, there's nobody around him stopping him from being himself. And it's a little bit like, I think it was Robert Caro who said, you know, power according to Caro, doesn't corrupt. Power reveals. And he has revealed himself to us now. And that's what we're seeing.

[Susan Glasser]

So, Evan, I want to here's a slight variant on this, although, you know, feel free to answer the 1.0 to 2.0, but related to that, because we get this question all the time together and individually, which is what has actually surprised you, given that we have a pretty clear read on Donald Trump 10 years. And somebody said to me the other day, well, imagine telling your January 19th self, you know, all these terrible things happened. And I, you know, I've been thinking about it a lot ever since because honestly, I would be upset but not shocked by most of the things that have happened this year. But there are some things that are truly even for Trump whoppers.

[Evan Osnos]

I return like a fever dream to that scene of the stage on Inauguration Day where we saw something we have never seen in this country, which is the world's wealthiest people lined up next to a president, so many of them on the stage, in fact, that the leaders of Congress were relegated to the audience. That felt to me like a seismic geography of power. That that was a meaningful change in how we actually took the quiet part and just put it right there on stage. And I think there's a couple of explanations. I think you could probably write a Russian novel about just that scene, about the complexity of the power dynamics. I mean, there were some people up there who are true believers who believe in what power Trump was saying and what he's doing. And then there were others up there who are afraid, and they're afraid despite being immensely powerful. That's interesting to me. But there was a way in which that moment, which it set the pattern for months to follow, in which he started riding through one institution after another and waiting, as you say, waiting until he hit steel. And I think only now are you beginning to see perhaps, and I don't want to get irrationally exuberant, but I do think we're getting to a point where people are starting to say what in Washington is a deathly description, which is, is he a lame duck already? I mean, Jane, usually you don't get to be lame duck until the midterms if you're a second term president, but is he already a lame duck president also?

[Jane Mayer]

You usually are not about to be 80. So, I mean, you know, I think those pictures of him falling asleep in the Oval Office with everyone around him, you know, it may, may sort of push lame duckism. I have a question for both of you. I think that, you know, given that you have both covered authoritarian countries, you China, you Russia, I'm curious if he is a lame duck. And after this period where the Republican Party really is Donald Trump, I mean, it's his party, what happens, do you think, next, after Trump's maga, what happens to it? The movement?

[Susan Glasser]

Yeah, let's talk about the authoritarianism thing. Because of course, part of the answer to the what next question depends on the how successful with the authoritarian project question. Right. And Evan, thank you for bringing up that indelible image of the inauguration I'm sure haunts many of you, but actually, I thought there was an incredible update to that just yesterday. Basically some of those exact same oligarchs, right? These are American oligarchs. Jane has written an amazing book about them. Dark money. But America's oligarchs were the ones who were invited to essentially all but a state dinner for the crown prince of Saudi Arabia yesterday in the newly gildified White House, in which you had, by.

[Evan Osnos]

The way, we need to do a whole show about the interior decoration of the year.

[Susan Glasser]

I like to talk a lot about that. I personally think the raising of the East Wing is, along with perhaps what's happened that's part of the jumping of the shark for Trump. I think that was a shocking moment to many people, but that's a footnote here.

[Evan Osnos]

So they were back in their.

[Susan Glasser]

So authoritarianism. Let's talk about hosting the crown prince of Saudi Arabia who's busy giving literally billions of dollars to your family members directly, who, instead of being chided, you would think, by the United States for literally ordering, according to our intelligence agencies, the Bonesaw killing of a Washington Post columnist, Jamal Khashoggi.

[Evan Osnos]

Yeah.

[Susan Glasser]

You know, instead of that, Donald Trump is there. There's no really polite way of describing just how much love he was lavishing on this young Gulf prince. The thing that makes him stand out against any president I've covered, Democrat or Republican, is his consistent preference for America's autocratic frenemies at the expense of America's allies. He admires these autocrats. He wants to be like them, even if they're a 30 something guy. My God, he was like a salesman who thought the guy was gonna drive off the lot with every Rolls Royce we had available in America. And to Then have this dinner where you have Elon Musk and the other tech bros posing. If you guys haven't seen this picture, you know, it's just for me, an indelible image of this presidency.

[Jane Mayer]

I just have to say one other thing about that Oval Office meeting, which was, as you probably know, the ABC News reporter Mary Bruce asked a question about the murder of Khashoggi.

[Susan Glasser]

Your Royal Highness, the US Intelligence concluded that you orchestrated the brutal murder of a journalist. 9. Eleven families are furious that you are here in the Oval Office.

[Evan Osnos]

Why should Americans trust you?

[Kendall]

Who are you with?

[Susan Glasser]

And the same to you, Mr. President.

[Unidentified Speaker]

Now, who are you with?

[Susan Glasser]

I'm with ABC News, sir.

[Jane Mayer]

You're with who? ABC News, sir. Fake News. And I would just like to kind of say, hats off to the fact that the press in this country is still not subordinate to the people in power and that they're still standing up even when they can get into the Oval Office, which they can't a lot of the time. What a great, courageous question for her to Reyes right now.

[Susan Glasser]

Here's to Mary Bruce.

[Jane Mayer]

Here's to Mary Bruce.

[Evan Osnos]

Yeah. We're going to take a quick break. The political scene from the New Yorker will be back in just a moment.

[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 questions 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.

[Evan Osnos]

I want a shark that.

[Katie Drummond]

That eats the Internet, that turns it all off, unfiltered and unafraid.

[Evan Osnos]

So in a lot of ways, I try to be an antidote to the unimaginable faucet of reactionary content that you see online. To the best of my ability, every.

[Katie Drummond]

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.

[Jane Mayer]

Tell me more.

[Katie Drummond]

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.

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[Evan Osnos]

I think there are pieces of this administration that are probably being undercovered. Of course, there always are. But it's especially easy with one like this where there is so much kind of pyrotechnic distraction on any given day. I'm curious how you guys think about what do you think we're not talking enough about as we try to lay down a sort of rough draft of this first year? What do you think has not gotten enough attention?

[Susan Glasser]

What I call basically the Kremlinization of the White House press pool. I would put that on the list. And again, there are a lot of just sort of horrors unfolding and a lot of real people really suffering. So I don't want to Journalists can be inward looking, but my case for why this matters is because Donald Trump is a creature of the media. He is suffused in the media. That is essentially how he defines the job of President of the United States is a kind of continuous feedback loop. You know, he's livestreaming himself. He's getting so when he's surrounded increasingly by hand picked loyalist propagandists, many of them masquerading, impersonating reporters in the White House in this second term, that really makes a big difference. So instead of facing more Mary Bruce questions, increasingly now he's facing questions from Marjorie Taylor Greene's boyfriend, not previously in opposition. We'll see what happens.

[Evan Osnos]

You mean liberal icon Marjorie Taylor Greene?

[Susan Glasser]

Exactly. In which and he says things like Evan, were you what makes you so tall? Were you Great or really, really great.

[Evan Osnos]

Yeah. And to say nothing of the Pentagon, which, having now evicted the press corps, it's now been repopulated with Trump adjacent entities.

[Susan Glasser]

No, that's exactly right. And that's the one other thing I wanted to flag that we haven't talked as much about. I'm sure we'll do a show on this soon. But when I asked readers and informants of my column a few weeks ago helped me think through what are the kind of the biggest things that should stick of this first nine months of the Trump presidency. I was really struck by the national security types who, many of them wrote to me that they thought that essentially having an undeclared war on a false pretext, where we're literally killing random people in boats because we claim that they're connected to Venezuelan drug dealers. And by the way, you're not allowed to just kill people just because you think they're connected to Venezuelan drug dealers. That this was really crossing of a red line that, you know, in hindsight, we'll regret that we didn't pay more attention to. So I was struck that really, people who I respect, you know, very greatly, they thought that was really not getting enough attention as a red line that had been crossed.

[Evan Osnos]

Jane, I've been thinking about immigration on this question. I mean, we haven't talked about it much tonight, but the way that immigration has been weaponized in this administration in the most grotesque ways that we haven't seen since, you'd have to go back to the Eisenhower administration. And they've done things now that even previous generations talked about and never did, that I think will linger in the history books when we write about this first year. But I'm curious what you particularly have.

[Jane Mayer]

These dogs have not barked enough, to borrow a phrase. Right. I mean, there's so much you could report on if you had time right now. I mean, I think maybe if the thing that we might look back on right now and wonder why we didn't put more of a spotlight on it is what's happening with the environment and climate change and connecting the dots between the backers of Trump, some of these oligarchs you're talking about, and the policies that are just destroying natural resources in this country and nature. And it's amazing at this tipping point moment that the reverse gear that we have put this country on and why, I mean, going back to coal, I mean, you gotta be kidding. But there are reasons for that, and they have to do with one is owning the libs, but the other is Money. And I feel like you can never write too much about the big money.

[Susan Glasser]

Jane, you're going to follow the money in your new project too, which is understanding why one of the key institutions of civil society, you know, which is the judiciary and specifically the Supreme Court, hasn't really stood up in the way we might imagine. We've already talked about Congress. What does your new book project tell us about, you know, understanding Trump 2.0?

[Jane Mayer]

You know, I mean, I'm still working on it, but I sneak preview the book is taking a look at the Supreme Court particularly and, you know, somebody of, you know, my generation and outlook. I revered the court and the law and the rule of law in this country, saw so many different changes for the better take place because of what kinds of rulings we had from the court on everything from integration and women's rights and gay rights and one thing after another. And what I've found is it's changed a lot up there and it's very much the result of a targeted political operation that it's changed a lot. And I guess what I'm coming away thinking is we can't really count on the courts to change us because they are a political branch and they're very political.

[Evan Osnos]

And a year in, we see some evidence that the courts have been able to impede, slow down, but as you say, have not fundamentally disrupted the enterprise.

[Jane Mayer]

We haven't seen the end of the story yet. We've seen the preliminary skirmishes here. We'll learn a lot in June.

[Evan Osnos]

I think we are going to turn to your questions in just a second. And while folks get organized, I just want to pin you guys down on something because I think it's important to talk about what might be coming next. We raised briefly this question of what happens to the Trump phenomenon, the MAGA movement, after this guy is out of office. Do you think, Susan, that somebody picks up the mantle and carries it on, or is it running on fumes at that point?

[Susan Glasser]

Yeah, I mean, look, the Republican Party isn't going back to, you know, you mentioned Jeb Bush at the beginning of this. I mean, right. There's no more Bushes in our future, at least in our short term future. The establishment that we grew up with, even if many of you in the audience didn't, it's not coming back. And you know, remember that the sort of original compact here with this entire Republican Congress in Trump 2.0 is to have gone along with the lie that Donald Trump won the 2020 election. That is actually a condition essentially for being a senior Republican leader in today's Washington. To be someone who has access in the White House, to be a member of the Cabinet of the United States is to go along essentially with this lie at the heart of it. You mentioned the first day of the Trump 2.0 presidency. You could say that actually the pardoning of the January 6th insurrectionists was the signature act of the Trump 2.0 protest.

[Evan Osnos]

That established the pattern.

[Susan Glasser]

Exactly. And that things flow from there because you got people to believe a lie. You got them to storm our own Capitol, folks. Our own Capitol. And we just like. We're like, oh, yeah, that's bad. Yeah, okay. We moved on. And so that's at the heart of it. Right? So, sure. Parties come back from this. The Republican Party came back after McCarthyism. They papered it over. They got a new generation of leaders. They distanced themselves for the time that they needed to distance themselves. And look at, you know, here we are two generations later, the protege of Roy Cohn, you know, Keem McCarthy is in the Oval Office. So, you know, it'll be washed, it'll be laundered through. But maga's part of our history. And Donald Trump now supersedes Ronald Reagan as the signature Republican president, I would say, of our lifetimes.

[Evan Osnos]

Jane, can he hand the mantle to J.D. vance or Marco Rubio or Don Jr.

[Susan Glasser]

I like how you say that.

[Evan Osnos]

Well, I see people fighting lower in their chair with each one. Jane, what do you think?

[Jane Mayer]

I'm not a future reader, but I'd say expect the unexpected. Basically, that's from covering politics for 40 years. Things that seem immovable. Suddenly. Suddenly you're standing there as I was in front of the Berlin Wall, which nobody ever thought would come down, and I'm literally watching people from East Berlin flying over the top of it and falling in front of me. I think Trump seems to have a unique hold on his base. I am not seeing that kind of charisma in J.D. vance, Marco Rubio, maybe in Tucker Carlson. I don't know. You know, there are others that might be able to pick up that mantle. I think politics has changed indelibly in some ways. I think social media obviously is here to stay. We don't have filtered news anymore. We don't have control over what facts people get. But anyway, I'm not seeing whether it's going to be Don Jr. Or anyone else. I'm not seeing it in my crystal ball.

[Evan Osnos]

Well, I will tell you, you mentioned earlier that I'd covered China, and one of the lessons that I think that Donald Trump may have picked up from Xi Jinping is don't name a successor. You don't have to. And in fact, one of the lessons of movement history is that at least when it comes to an authoritarian movement like that, being named the successor is often a perilous condition. You don't necessarily want to have that.

[Jane Mayer]

I mean, something you've seen and we've all seen in covering sort of more corrupt parts of the world is families continue on. And I do worry about it. I think the Trump family is going to walk away from this incredibly rich no matter what.

[Evan Osnos]

We are going to take a quick break. We'll be back in just a moment with questions from our live audience at the Institute of Politics at Harvard University. The political scene from the New Yorker will be back in just a minute.

[Susan Glasser]

It's one of Britain's most notorious crimes, the killing of a wealthy family at White House Farm. But I got a tip that the story of this famous case might be all wrong. I know there's going to be a.

[Jane Mayer]

Twist one day, a massive twin at every level of the criminal justice system. There's been a cover up in this case.

[Susan Glasser]

I'm Heidi Blake. Blood Relatives is a new series from in the Dark and the New Yorker. Find it now in the in the Dark podcast feed.

[Evan Osnos]

All right, we have a question right there. We'll start with you.

[Kendall]

Awesome. Thank you all for being here. My name's Kendall. I'm a senior at the college. I wanted to see if we could draw a line between the beginning of the ending framing of the Afghanistan withdrawal and of course, the shocking scenes from the Oval Office yesterday, which is shocking as it is. It's sort of one in a series of really stark images in US Foreign policy over the last year, from Signal Gate to the Zelenskyy meeting in the Oval. And so I'm curious how y' all are thinking about this. Is it sort of part of the trend of Americans just caring less about foreign policy than one might expect generally part of Trump's ability to weather crises other politicians never could? Does he have a special ability unique to foreign policy in particular, or just does it seem to reverberate with especially red America in the same way it would for other presidents?

[Susan Glasser]

Thank you so much for asking that, because I feel like when you see Donald Trump engaging in these scenes with other world leaders, especially as he relishes in particular his meeting with autocrats and dictators, you see the most pure version of Donald Trump as he wishes to be seen. Foreign policy is where our presidents have the most unchecked power, even if it wasn't someone named Donald Trump. Right. You know, at least theoretically, Donald Trump is still supposed to get the Congress to pass appropriations to, you know, fund the government and things like that. But when it comes to foreign policy, the trend going back decades has been for more and more power to be vested in the President and even in, you know, in his White House in the NSC right now we've, I think, I feel like we've even forgotten there's essentially the Secretary of State, doesn't even work, as I understand it, most days out of the State Department in Foggy Bottom, but basically sits in the White House as a courtier all day long in the anteroom of Donald Trump so that he can go and sit in the Oval Office and then he goes to the National Security Adviser's office cuz he's wearing. And that has the effect of further diminishing any alternate sort of sources of power in our foreign policy. And then again, I think Trump craves the stagecraft and the theatricality of these moments as well. And one thing we haven't talked about, but I think if you wanna talk about shocking moments, one is certainly laying out an actual red carpet on a United States military base for a war criminal who invaded his neighbor, has caused the suffering of untold millions of people and the largest land war in Europe in a naked act of aggression since World War II. Right. So that is a signature image that we're all gonna be left with of Trump's second term president.

[Evan Osnos]

I would add too, that you can't understand how he is going about foreign policy and national security without acknowledging that the Pentagon and the senior military ranks are in turmoil. I mean, they have. Pete Hagseth, who you've written about, Jane, has chucked out senior members of some of the most important figures in the national security establishment.

[Jane Mayer]

Two dozen generals and admirals, basically.

[Unidentified Speaker]

Yeah.

[Jane Mayer]

I mean, that's another undercovered story beneath the surface in the Pentagon. What I hear is just that people are really close to the edge and they know they're not supposed to say anything, but they're almost boiling over. I've heard that they're walking all the way around the Pentagon long distance to avoid going by his suite of offices. They don't want to even be seen by him.

[Evan Osnos]

So why is he, by the way, able to hold onto a job? Can I ask that question?

[Jane Mayer]

Evan actually suggested it in a conversation recently. It's the pocket square.

[Evan Osnos]

It's the pocket square. I think that's what's holding. I think his job is as firm as that pocket.

[Jane Mayer]

I mean, but to be serious, I mean, he is the complete. There was nothing he would not support.

[Evan Osnos]

He's the ultimate slavish appointee in that.

[Susan Glasser]

You know, and thank you, by the way, Gene, for mentioning the turmoil in the upper ranks of the military, because it's a kind of an opaque thing for us. We don't have as much visibility into it. The firing of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs on a. I believe it was on a Friday, very early on in this. And you know why the chairman of the Joint Chiefs was fired? Because he was, quote, DEI because he was African American. I mean, you know, I remember in America, that was not that long ago, like 10 years ago. Again, to the point about what's normal and what's not normal, like actually firing somebody because they're African American. That's something that you would get fired for doing. It's an extraordinary breach, or maybe even sued for doing. You know, imagine if that was illegal. You'd think that it would be. Yeah.

[Evan Osnos]

So we've got another question over here.

[Jane Mayer]

Hi, my name is Cyrus. I'm a freshman at the college. In your opinion, to what extent do people respond to affirmation rather than fragmentation, as we see with Trump and his ICE raids, his incendiary rhetoric and his offensive memes and everything? I think you could even see this from the left as well as the right. What do you think needs to happen to bring us back to a country where, like, rage bait takes a backseat to greater understanding across the political aisle? Because I don't think the problem ends with Trump just leaving office.

[Evan Osnos]

You know, we've talked about this among ourselves a lot. It's kind of. It's such a great question. Cuz it is the central nerve that is running through any discussion of public life in America. Is this the new permanent condition, or is this something from which Americans push our way back, you know, in moments, brief moments of optimism? These days, I sometimes feel as if the same phenomenon which drives our politics to a feeling of such extremity, which is this backlash cycle that we go from we had Barack Obama to then having the response to him was Donald Trump, and the response to Donald Trump was Joe Biden, and the response to Joe Biden was Donald Trump and so on, that the response to cruelty and fragmentation and every effort to divide us will be somebody who has the capacity to pull people together. And I don't think it is bland, empty optimism. There is a moment you can read from history not too long ago. If you look back at, say, the 2004 election, that was a period presidential election when you had an unpopular president running an unpopular war. Reelected Democrats thought they have absolutely no way forward at this point. And within a couple of years, somebody emerged in the person of Barack Obama who was able to give form and voice and language to something that people didn't know that they necessarily. And today we discount this idea of saying, you know, there are no red states and blue states, there are American states. But it was a powerful and galvanizing and popular idea. And I have a feeling that politics really doesn't like a vacuum, and there is too much ambition and opportunism in Washington for that opportunity to go unaddressed. And I'm sort of scanning the horizon. I'm looking for somebody who might be able to find that voice again.

[Susan Glasser]

Democrats like to fall in love.

[Jane Mayer]

Oh, yeah.

[Evan Osnos]

I think we've got time for just a couple more questions. We'll go over there. I'm Wyatt. I'm a first year at the college. You guys have talked a lot about Trump and his actions. But I'm curious, as media personalities, what role does the media have up towards the midterms and towards the end of this presidency in terms of ensuring accurate information and getting through that sort of barrier to actually getting the public to realize what is happening from your more intimate perspective?

[Susan Glasser]

You know, thank you, Wyatt. This is really at the heart of it, and we're all struggling as you are. We're consumers of news as well as producers of it. And it's kind of a cesspool right out there. And so we're all figuring out our own way how to swim through it. I think when we talked about undercovered stories, there's no question in my mind that the caving of key media owners at this moment of peril for American democracy has been really one of the blinking red crisis lights of the first few months of the Trump presidency. I mean, look at the millions of dollars that the owners of CBS were willing to give Donald Trump because he didn't like the editing of a story that didn't even feature him. That was an interview with Kamala Harris. And why did they do that? Because they had billions of dollars at stake in a huge corporate sale that they wanted to get through the approval of the Trump administration. And that approval was granted after Donald Trump pocketed millions of dollars in a spurious, completely essentially bogus lawsuit. So I just think partially it's parts of the system need to stand up and do their thing. Right? Like to me, the thing about being a journalist in this era is like time to slide down the fire pole. This is what we got into journalism for, is to stand up and do this work right now.

[Evan Osnos]

Worth pointing out that just in the last few days, an appellate court handed down a decision that in fact tossed out one of the Trump suits against cnn, proving that, in fact, there may be a greater capacity on the part of some organizations to stand up, even when they think it's impossible. I hope it's a bit of a.

[Jane Mayer]

I'm still waiting to see how, how that suit he's got against the Wall Street Journal for covering the Epstein files comes out. You know, it seems it's getting a little more dubious every day, his side of the case, I think.

[Evan Osnos]

Yeah, he's getting. It's getting harder for him.

[Susan Glasser]

I would say it started out pretty dubious.

[Jane Mayer]

Yeah, he totally drew that picture, you know. Anyway, our part is like to try to try to get it right. I think what we have to do also is give more voice to the people who are standing up. We absolutely have to make sure that the rest of the country hears from them because they give everyone courage. And I think there was a Hannah Arendt statement on this who said, you know, you can't expect everybody to do the right thing, but it's enough that a few people do the right thing and others learn from them. And so, I mean, I think we absolutely have to cover everything that's going wrong, and I spend most of my time doing that. But I think we've got to cover the people doing the right thing, too, because it's really important and, you know, and I actually think it makes a difference. It gives people courage.

[Evan Osnos]

Yeah. Hear, hear. Well, credit to you for white knuckling through an hour on the subject of Donald Trump. We've made a solemn promise to you that we will be featuring the stories of people who are giving us some inspiration. I think it's a real idea for another show. Folks, we are out of time. This has been the political Scene from the New Yorker. I'm Evan Osnos. Special thanks to the entire team at the Institute of Politics here at Harvard University and to our wonderful audience here tonight. Please join me in thanking my co hosts, Susan Glasser and Jane Mayer.

[Jane Mayer]

Thank you. Thank you.

[Evan Osnos]

We had research assistance today from Alex d'. Elia. Our producer is Nora Richie, mixing by Mike Kutchman. Steven Valentino is our executive director producer, and Chris Bannon is Conde Nast's head of Global Audio. Our theme music is by Alison Layton Brown. Thanks so much for listening.

[Jane Mayer]

From prx.