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- [00:00]
Charlie Sykes
Foreign. Welcome back to the to the Contrary podcast. It is February. What is it? It is February 18, 2025. There's a significance to that I'm going to get to in just a moment. Now, just a quick word because one of the things I've learned over the years is that the people, the beautiful and intelligent people with extraordinary taste who listen to this podcast may not also be the same group of brilliant people, beautiful people with extraordinary taste who read our newsletters. So if you have not yet subscribed to to the Contrary newsletter, please consider doing that. It is free. But if you do support our work, I will be intensely grateful for all of that. So let's just set the scene where we are today while we're recording this. You have JD Vance doing Munich and blowing up the post war world order. You have Donald Trump doing his best Napoleon Bonaparte imitation. Elon Musk continues to father children out of wedlock. Not really that relevant. But at the same time is proposing massive cuts, actually implementing massive cuts in the FAA just a few weeks after a tragic plane crash. He is slashing the Federal Aviation Administration. He is also gutting the National Institutes for Health. Apparently they fired people who were in charge of nuclear safety, realized that was not a good idea, trying to rehire them back, but are not really sure that they can get in touch with them. What could possibly go wrong? Also, apparently they're asking for individual taxpayer data from the irs. And meanwhile, while all this going on, the new Attorney General, Pam Bondi is presiding over mass resignations after that Thursday night massacre. And we are two days away from, we are two days away from the one month anniversary of the Trump presidency. We are still in the first month. Just get your head around that. All right. Joining me today to try to sort through all of this is my good friend Brian Rosenwald, who is a political historian of the modern United States. Think about that. You probably need to have a degree in psychology as well as one in political science. And Brian specialized in the role of media in shaping our political culture. Which means, Brian, we have a lot to talk about today, don't we? Anyway, thanks for coming on the podcast. I appreciate it very much.
- [02:45]
Brian Rosenwald
Charlie. It's always great chatting with you. Maybe we can make sense of this, but maybe we can't. With Donald Trump, who knows?
- [02:52]
Charlie Sykes
Okay, so you wrote a piece a couple of weeks ago on your substack newsletter. Actually, a couple of weeks ago it was February 7th. We're in a time warp here. The left needs to abandon hysteria and scolding if it wants to stop Trump. And you make it clear that you regard a lot of what's happening as completely horrible and dangerous. But then you wrote, and I think this is one of the key things, is how we modulate our response to all of this. That it is horrifying. Let's stipulate that. But you wrote, issuing hysterical warnings nonstop and fighting indiscriminately won't stop Trump. If anything, they'll backfire. I actually think the tendency of people to melt down over everything Trump does was one of the reasons that many voters ignored the warnings about the threat he posed during the campaign. For eight years, huge chunks of the left have been sounding the alarm nonstop. Every single thing Trump does that's bad and that's a lot of things is a five alarm fire. And after a while, people tune out hyperbolic warnings. The people issuing them lose credibility and look like they just hate Trump so much they have no perspective. I agree with that. But how do we do this? Like, think about the things that I just went through. So how do you create these buckets? Like, okay, bad, but I'm not setting my hair on fire. Bad, but I'm really upset about it. And holy, what are they doing today? So, Brian, how do you, how do you sort this out?
- [04:21]
Brian Rosenwald
I have three tests, Charlie. I, the fir, the first test is, is this reversible? Is this something that we can fix down the line? If the answer is yes, then I try to notch down my, my panic. If the answer is no, then obviously, yeah, that's the five alarm fire. Right. That's the thing that we can't let go. But so, so I try to balance, especially with the executive actions. You know, yes, they can fire a lot of people, but if they can't actually eliminate the agencies or departments, then those staffs can be repopulated if need be. The other thing that I really.
- [04:59]
Charlie Sykes
Okay, wait, let's, let's stop. Let's start with that. I mean, I like that and I, and I agree with that in theory, but on Friday, my wife and I are getting on an airplane and we are flying. And so if they're firing all the FAA people, they may restock them, but it kind of feels like, I mean, really, what could go wrong?
- [05:21]
Brian Rosenwald
Well, that brings me to test number two, which is, is this something that we can translate for people and say, this affects your life.
- [05:29]
Charlie Sykes
Right.
- [05:30]
Brian Rosenwald
And I had written that column as the left was going crazy about usaid and I support usai, think international development money is important, otherwise you're driving countries into the, the hands of China. And that is not, you know, good for American interests. But I also don't think that defending foreign aid is a hill on which Democrats want to die, because I don't think that the average voter can be compelled to think this is super important to my life. If anything, I think they tilt towards saying, hey, Trump is doing that America. First thing that I support, which is use our money to help us make our lives better, whereas FAA people firing FAA people. Then you could say to the average Joe who's about to get on a plane, do you want to feel safe, you know, do you want your flight to go well? Or, you know, Medicaid is another one. The Congressional Republicans are talking about cutting Medicaid. And some of what they're talking about, let's be honest, is probably not bad policy wise. Some of it is stuff that I think is terrible policy wise. But the point is it's a lot easier to say they're going to take your, your brother in law off of his health care or your neighbor down the street's going to lose health care. Or if we're talking about, you know, food stamps and things, you could do that or you could talk about money to schools. Like there are things that affect people's lives and those are battles that Democrats can win. My issue is if you're fighting every battle, you're fighting battles you can't win and where Trump can say, see, they just don't care about you. They're worried about everybody everywhere else in the world, or they're worried about this or they're worried about that. And people do tune out when you're constantly at the five alarm fire stage.
- [07:12]
Charlie Sykes
You know, I think this is a really important point and we, you know, look, I mean, I am morally offended by what they're doing with USAID and the fact that people are starving and people will die. But from a political point of view, I can't argue with you. I also think that it's important not to get fixated on what's happening in Washington. As much as you and I might care about the bureaucrats, the real, I think the real political impact is going to be the downstream. It's going to be in, in people's lives and they're going to see it. And it's kind of interesting that of all people in the universe, Steve Bannon is the one who's standing up, waving his hands and warning Republicans, you're about to make a big mistake if you slash Medicaid by $800 billion. Because a lot of our MAGA people are on Medicaid. And I really get the sense that Elon Musk has no idea all the things that he's breaking. He has no idea the impact this is going to have in small towns in Kansas and Iowa and Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. And so there's going to be a real disconnect at some point between what Elon Musk is doing and what elected representatives in Congress are gonna have to do when they put together this reconciliation bill. I mean, that's the big one, right? I mean, right now, this big piece of legislation. And I gotta say, I as shocked and horrific it is watching Republicans roll over on confirmations. I would really be shocked if they went along with the kinds of cuts they're talking about right now. What do you think?
- [08:43]
Brian Rosenwald
Well, this is where the legislative politics get fascinating and murky because the, the dynamic in the two parties has always been fundamentally different. The centrists in the Democratic Party drive the train. You know, the Joe Lieberman's of the world say you're not cutting the Medicare age in Obamacare and Ben Nelson from Nebraska and people like that and they get their way. Or Joe Manchin dictates the terms of, you know, Biden's big reconciliation bill. In the gop, it's the opposite. The far right guys, the House Freedom Caucus drives the train. They say, you know, they just went through a budget committee markup last week where the guys on the right said, we're not going to vote for this unless you do this. We're, you know, cut how much? We're going to let you cut taxes unless you cut spending, $2 trillion. And then what usually happens is the guys who are less far to the right in the GOP caucus rollover, they either say, well, the Senate will fix this or they say we're team players. But there's a, there's an interesting dynamic here, which is if those guys could get to Trump and say, sir, this is not what you ran on, you MAGA is different. These guys sound like, you know, Paul Ryan 10 years ago, 15 years ago, what the GOP was. And that's not where you are. If they sound the Steve Bannon mornings and get in his ear, I could see him coming out and saying, we're not going to support Medicaid cuts. And I don't think that the Freedom Caucus wants to tangle with Trump because in a Republican primary, if you ask me what sells better right now, an endorsement from Donald Trump or ideological, you know, purity, I'm going to say it's the endorsement from Trump, like Republican primary voters care more about that. So there is that dynamic. But I, I would be, you know, I would be careful in ever thinking that there are going to be Republican legislators who are going to save us from something like this because they, you know, a lot of them, even some of the more moderate guys say ideologically, like we, we support work requirements for Medicaid even though that's going to kick people off of, of Medicaid. And look, I, I, I think that there's nothing wrong with work requirements for Medicaid in theory. I can explain the, the practical problems that come from that, why it costs people health care and why it's probably bad. Even for those of us who think philosophically this isn't bad. But I'm not sure that like they're going to be moved by that. But the big difference is that is a place where Democrats can say this is going to hurt you, it's going to hurt people. You know, it is a much more compelling case to be made. And let's be honest, Charlie, you and I know that, that firing bureaucrats left and right indiscriminately, which is what they're doing. If they're firing the people who oversee the nuclear program and they don't know that eventually this is going to blow up on us. I hope I'm wrong, but there's going to be some tragic outfit, feel, feels.
- [11:37]
Charlie Sykes
Good short term, long term disastrous. Yes.
- [11:40]
Brian Rosenwald
Right, right. Whether it's something with a plane, whether it's a terrorist attack, you name the risks that are there. You, anyone who pays attention to this can see the risks coming. Or, you know, Food and Drug Administration, they cut people over the weekend. And you know, I don't know about you, but I care that my food is safe and my, my drugs are safe and things like that. So like downstream. Yeah, they're going to be really bad impacts. But I don't think that you can, it takes two minutes to explain that. And you're not usually winning in politics when you're explaining. But they are kicking your Uncle Joe off his health care or they're kicking your cousin Bobby off his health care. That resonates. People understand that. And so that is a place where Democrats can go to the five alarm fire thing. I think they were actually doing pretty well during the House markup last week where they say, look, this is just cruel. You're cutting taxes for billionaires and you're taking people's health care away to pay for it.
- [12:34]
Charlie Sykes
No. So, okay, I wanted to talk A little bit about Donald Trump, you know, pretending that he's Napoleon and saying that someone who saves the country, you know, cannot break the law. But, you know, again, I wrote about that in my newsletter, and my main point is that don't, don't get bogged down. And this is not about Napoleon. I mean, Donald Trump barely knows any history, right? He vaguely knows. I mean, he does. I can guarantee you. He's never read War and Peace. He doesn't know anything about that, Charlie. But the sentiment, I think, is important, because whether Napoleon actually said that or didn't say it, I mean, that's what all authoritarians think, right? That if I am the savior, if I'm the man on the white horse, that I am above the law. And Donald Trump means it and he believes it. And I think we ought to act under the assumption that he's going to act on it and that neither MAGA or the Republican Party will provide much pushback to that.
- [13:29]
Brian Rosenwald
I, I think that that's 100. Right? I, you know, I think we sometimes have to be careful with this. So did social media posts, because I think some of what he does is he knows it's going to upset people like us, and so he's saying it to tweak us, so then he can say to his supporters, look at these nasty skulls, that they're, they're no fun, they have no sense of humor, they, you know, melt down over everything I say. So I think there is some element of that, but I do think that he does not fundamentally understand that we are a nation of laws. We are a nation where, you know, and I've seen people on the right trying to claim, well, Joe Biden didn't listen to the Supreme Court when they said, you know, you can't do away with student loan debt. Well, Charlie, I'm here sitting here telling you I didn't get any student loan debt relief, you know, so I know that he didn't just ignore the court. Yes, he tried to work around them, but presidents in the past have understood that we are a nation of laws. When the Congress or the courts step in, there are limits. The guy who didn't understand that was Richard Nixon, and we saw how that ended. So I do think that there is a real risk that Trump does not understand this fundamentally and does not respect this, that we are a nation of laws, that there are limits on his power. And unlike in this first term, he has surrounded himself with people who are not interested in saying, no, sir, this is illegal. I don't feel like going to jail for you. He's surrounded himself with a bunch of people who are really interested in just doing whatever he wants or whatever he says. I mean, we've seen this now very repeatedly in terms of who they're firing, in terms of none of these Cabinet secretaries standing up, in terms of Marco Rubio doing an about face on everything he seemed to have believed before. You know, so I do think this is a danger. And I think that in so much as we can pen Trump in, you know, legally, we have to try to do that. And my point to people on the left is, look, don't melt down. That doesn't mean, don't fight. That doesn't mean that Democrats should not use the leverage point of the fact that they're probably going to be needed to keep the government open next month and that that is an opportunity to get concessions in the law. And I'm not going to tell you that Trump will follow those laws, but at least if you put things in law, you give the courts an opportunity to say, no, sir, you can't do this. This is illegal. And then if he defies the courts, then, yeah, you're at the constitutional crisis stage where, you know, we have, the whole system is on the brink.
- [15:54]
Charlie Sykes
Okay, let me ask you about this, because it seems pretty obvious that they will need Democratic votes to keep the government open. And I'm wondering, you know, in their closed door caucuses where the Democrats are saying, should we help this guy at all? I mean, you know, there's the kabuki dance where we say, well, of course we're going to cooperate. We don't want the government to close. But given the trajectory of things, might the Democrats not say, screw it, you control the presidency, you control the House, you control the Senate. This is your problem. We're not helping you in any way. There is no cooperation. What are the chances of that?
- [16:32]
Brian Rosenwald
I think that there is a greater than zero possibility of that. And I never thought that before because, you know, Democrats want government to work. They believe in government, so they don't like government shutdowns. I absolutely think that's possible. And I think that they're going to drive a hard bargain. Because here's the thing that the people have not grasped adequately. It took the D.C. press corps, like, two weeks to figure this out. If Donald Trump can just do whatever he wants and not fund things that Congress has appropriated money for and shut down agencies and offices and things that Congress has funded and created, then there is zero incentive for Democrats to cooperate, because any concessions they get in a deal. Usually what happens in these deals is Democrats secure money for domestic spending and domestic priorities, and Republicans get defense money. That's always kind of been the norm. But if Democrats get that money and then Trump can just not spend it, then what have they actually gotten? They've done nothing. So I think that it's going to take some real concessions by Republicans in terms of provisions that will limit Trump in terms of what he can do for Democrats to even think about playing ball. Now, there is a flip side to this, which is to say that the Trump is, is very malleable. Right. Charlie, that you. One reason he does a lot of stuff that's right wing and wacky is because the Freedom Caucus guys cultivate him. They are in his ears. And so there is a part of me that says, you know, should the Democrats be trying to manipulate him instead of just fighting? But they don't seem inclined to do that. And so I think that the best option is to, to just fight, but to fight, you know, using those leverage points. The government funding thing is a leverage point. They don't have a lot of these people who are saying, well, why aren't they doing more now? Well, the answer is they really can't do anything. They can, they can, you know, have stunts, they can stage stunts and try to make noise, but that's not actually going to achieve much of anything. But the government funding thing, that is their leverage point.
- [18:39]
Charlie Sykes
But here, here's, here's my other question that let's say they decide that, you know, let's use our leverage. We're not gonna work with him, we're not gonna cooperate with him, and if they shut the government down, we're gonna blame him for it. There seems to be an element on the right at the moment that wouldn't mind that. I mean, does Donald Trump, given, given what Donald Trump and Elon Musk are doing to the federal government, would they really, I don't know, dislike the idea of shutting down the federal government? I mean, that seems kind of on brand for them. Them.
- [19:11]
Brian Rosenwald
I don't think that they mind it. But what I don't think that they fully understand is the implications for the average American, whether it's Social Security checks, whether it's not being able to get your passport renewed when you have that vacation to someplace a lot warmer than where either of us are in the middle of winter, that, you know that there are a lot of different things where people interact with the federal government. And I think most Americans don't even know those are interactions with the federal government. In summer, it's always national park vacations. You know, in some communities, it's government workers who are, you know, core parts of people's community who don't get paid. And then there are downstream effects of that where landlords are not getting money or, you know, those kinds of things. So I think farmers don't get paid.
- [19:55]
Charlie Sykes
For their things, you know.
- [19:56]
Brian Rosenwald
Yeah, that's right.
- [19:57]
Charlie Sykes
There is a lot.
- [19:58]
Brian Rosenwald
There's a lot of impact, and I think that the Democrats can politically win that fight. Realistically speaking, when you have unified control of the government and the majority party is not interested in protecting the law or protecting Congress's power, there's not a lot that the minority party can do for the two years. You know, their big thing that they could do is get better candidates, raise more money, and win the next election. That's the best, you know, overall hope. So my strategy is, you've got to look for spots where you can win the political fight, where you can say, look, we are, you know, the government is shutting down because they want to slash people's health care. They want to do this, they want to do that, and we're fighting against it. Things that. Where you can win the political fight so that in two years, you win that. That's sort of the best thing that Democrats can do. You know, I like, there is no great option. It's like 4th and 15, and there's no great play to call.
- [20:57]
Charlie Sykes
There's no great play. Okay, so we're about 20 minutes into this conversation, and now I want to get to the meat of.
- [21:03]
Brian Rosenwald
Of.
- [21:03]
Charlie Sykes
I want to get to the meat of what I really wanted to dive into with you, which is, how did we get here? And we don't have, like, forever. But I, you know, I get very frustrated with people who say, well, what's happening now is just a logical extension of everything that conservatives have been doing for the last 40 years. It's just, you go back and it's just basically Reagan 2.0. And I wanted to talk with you about it because I push back on that. You're the historian. So you correct me that, yes, there's lines of continuity, but that you cannot watch what Donald Trump is doing on foreign affairs, on free trade, and say that this is Ronald Reagan 2.0. There's another tradition, there's another line there that I would argue would go back through people like Father Coughlin in the 1930s, maybe Spiro Agnew with his populism, but also George Wallace and you and I were chatting about this online a little bit. I think there's insufficient appreciation of how much what you're seeing right now draws its, you know, has its historical roots in George Wallace rather than traditional Republican politics.
- [22:27]
Brian Rosenwald
I think that there is a line of continuity here, Charlie. You know, I saw recently a chapter by a couple of scholars who actually rooted in Joe McCarthy and then said, you know, it was Joe McCarthy, and then you get to George Wallace. But you mentioned another guy, Spiro Agnew. I think Wallace and Agnew are the progenitors of this. These are the guys who showed us that conservative populism can be very popular. And Ronald Reagan did a lot of this rhetorically in cases where he was kind of sounding like a conservative populist, not necessarily governing that way. But what's different about the conservative populism thing versus what I call movement conservatism? The movement conservatism of Ronald Reagan and of Barry Goldwater, Paul Ryan is the most modern kind of purist example of that. But what you get with these conservative populace is, first of all, they are not opposed to government and using government power and government spending. They are opposed to using government for people who are perceived to be as undeserving. And obviously there is a racialized connotation in some of that. But, you know, George Wallace was raising teacher pay. He was doing new highways in Alabama. He was paying for in regressive ways. He was using bonds and things like that, mostly because the businessmen in Alabama were funneling him money for his various schemes and envelopes of cash. And he wasn't going to do anything that hurt them. But he was willing to use the power of government to make his supporters lives better. And his supporters wanted that. You know, they wanted government power to be deployed to make their lives better, to improve their neighborhoods, to give them a new community center, to make their schools better. They didn't want their money going to people who they thought didn't deserve it. And they didn't want government power being used to do things that they thought were bad. So there's a book by a scholar named Tim Lombardo on Philadelphia people who went from being kind of FDR Democrats to not just Reagan conservatives, but Frank Rizzo conservatives, who was a mayor of Philadelphia, former police commissioner in the 70s. And one thing that's going on here is they think that, that all of a sudden government has turned on them. Government is hurting their communities. Government is making things less safe were the trick.
- [24:47]
Charlie Sykes
What were the triggers there? School busing, crime?
- [24:49]
Brian Rosenwald
What were the ones School busing. It was school busing. It was crime. It was feeling like, you know, the liberals, after the Columbia avenue riot in 1964, which was, you know, Philadelphia's version of the riots that were happening across the country. The, the liberals said, look, we have to get at the root causes of this, the poor relations between police and neighborhoods and things like that. And they, these people said, well, wait a second, if I went in loot a store, the cops would shoot me. They were mad that the police commissioner would not let the cops use their guns during the riots and didn't do much to stop looting. They tried to contain it and limit the damage, but they said, yeah, we're not going to have a war here that's going to lead to a lot of bloodshed. And these people said, well, wait a second, you're hamstringing the police. So the police were one issue. Another issue was, certainly was school busing. But also they actually wanted funding for parochial schools. They wanted government funding to keep their Catholic schools going. They were worried about that kind of thing. There was a couple of places where it was about building low income housing, including one neighborhood that took millions of dollars in federal money to improve their homes. And then when the last piece of the project, which was low income public housing, but they were townhouses, these were not some big project, they said was they, we don't want that in our neighborhood that's going to reduce our property values and all this. So you get these kinds of things. And Wallace is a master of playing on it. And you know, he gets 14% of the vote in 1968. And then people forget that the most popular public politician in America in the early 70s is probably spear Agnew before his ignominious downfall. And while he doesn't have the charisma of Wallace, he certainly is not the showman that Wallace is. Even if the lines the Pat Buchanan is writing are similar. He's very popular because why? What, what are these guys doing, Charlie? They're painting an us versus them thing.
- [26:46]
Charlie Sykes
It's us versus them.
- [26:47]
Brian Rosenwald
We versus the elites. The elites who defend the hippies and the undeserving who they just want to give money to. And the, you know what Wallace call them? The briefcase. The briefcase toting bureaucrats. You know, it sounds very trumpy. And when I listen to Donald Trump, every time I teach George Wallace, I'm underlining lines in his speeches and things saying that sounds like something Donald Trump could say.
- [27:13]
Charlie Sykes
Okay, so what's interesting about that now let's fast forward because one of the critiques among, I would say a lot of centrist Democrats, people like Ruiz Teixeira and others, David Shore, is that the Democratic Party became increasingly dominated by these intellectual elites. That what George Wallace is talking about in the late 60s and early 70s actually accelerated as the Democratic Party became not the party party of the working class, but really dominated by the groups, by people who are college educated, even higher income. I mean, what you saw was over the years this complete inversion, right, where the Democrats went from the party of the working class to then perceived to be the party of the elites. And the new right, the Trumpian right, really has weaponized that, haven't they?
- [28:12]
Brian Rosenwald
Yeah, I mean, I think that this transition starts, you know, to some extent in the early 90s. You, you could date a little bit earlier, but 1992, Bill Clinton wins my county, and I think he's the first Democrat to win this suburban Philadelphia county since 1916. In Woodrow Wilson, I could have the year wrong, but I think it's in that the Wilson administration and Democrats start gaining in the suburbs. And then I think NAFTA is certainly a big factor because, you know, people forget that H.W. bush negotiated the agreement, but Clinton pushes it through over the objections of the Bernie Sanders and the Sherrod Browns, the labor wing of the Democratic Party and more Republicans vote for it in Congress. But Clinton becomes the figurehead of this. And what ends up happening is that starts to take white working class voters who are already kind of sour towards the Democrats on cultural issues. They had been, you know, this, you know, fissure have been happening going back to Wallace. And again, some of it is definitely race and racism in some places, but it's also issues like abortion. A lot of these hard hats are Catholics, you know, and it's other issues along those lines. You know, some of it even goes back to like school prayer and things like that. But they're already kind of intention on the cultural issues with Democrats. And now NAFTA kind of says, well, wait a second, you can't really trust these guys to protect your economic interests. And there are other free trade things that happen after that. And you know, Clinton is not really an economic populist in the old fashioned, you know, Rust Belt kind of way. He's popular with those voters because he knows how to talk to them, but he's not necessarily, you know, that kind of guy. I go back, I wrote a few months ago, Charlie, about West Virginia. And West Virginia is a place that was to the left of the country in 1996, which means they voted for Bill Clinton by more than the national, you know, vote was for. Solidly Democratic, solidly Democratic. They even voted for Mike Dukakis in 1988. By 2000, they are voting for George W. Bush. They gave George W. Bush the presidency, and they are to the right of the country. And it only goes from there, like, further and further away. Even though Democrats talk a good game in the early 2000s of, oh, we're going to invest and bring it back. Well, one reason that that happened, I found some contemporary newspaper articles, is that the Clinton administration weighs in on some suit about mining, and they weigh in against the coal miners. They weigh in on favor of the environmental side of things. And what happens to these people is they say, well, these guys care more about the environment than they do about my ability to make a living. And Democrats start to run into these tensions in their coalition between the environmentalists and the union workers, between people who want to deal with real racial disparities that are legitimate problems and that have been caused by government policy, but that may actually have a cost for white working class. Democrats like these people are not just imagining the negative costs to them on some of this stuff. Some of it they are, but not all of it. The other thing that I think accelerates this is that the activists in a lot of cases cease to speak for their membership, so to speak. Which is to say that, you know, you get a very. A bunch of activists who are, you know, college educated, who are, you know, on the left in things, and they start pushing things, whether it's language policing, whether it is, you know, just changing the language, Latinx and terms like that, that the average Joe doesn't even know what they are or it's what they are fighting.
- [31:52]
Charlie Sykes
They said they send a signal that, that you, you're, you're not one of us. You perhaps look down on me. You're using a different language. So, I mean, right, all of these things sends signals, right?
- [32:03]
Brian Rosenwald
And Democrats are listening to these people. You know, there was a piece just either before or after Trump was inaugurated by Frank Sherry. And I forget who the other longtime immigration activist was, but I interviewed Frank for my book. He was one of the staunchest champions of comprehensive immigration reform and legalized path to citizenship. This is no right winger. And he said that, he said, look, these activist groups have gone nuts on this issue. They pushed Democrats into a cul de sac, basically where you have to be for everyone migrating, no border security, let everyone in. And he said, you know, that that was not what their memberships Wanted, so to speak. That was not what the average Latino American voter wanted. That was what these activist groups want. And Democrats started listening more and more of these activists, their staffers came from these activist groups. And what I think ended up happening is there was no one big rupture. There was no Donald Trump moment. It was just a little bit by little bit that they went down this pathway where they became very out of touch with what their average voter or the average non college educated American thought about issues. And they adopted positions that were just too extreme for those voters. In a lot of cases, you know.
- [33:18]
Charlie Sykes
I'm trying to think, what is the quote about how you go bankrupt? You know, gradually, gradually, and then all at once, suddenly it feels like this. And they suddenly. So let's talk about the Donald Trump moment because, you know, it's interesting you mentioned about West Virginia in 2000, because I remember the first time that I thought, wow, something's happening here, was looking at Wisconsin in 2000. Now, if I remember correctly, Bush still lost narrowly in, in Wisconsin, but I could see from the rural and suburban votes that communities that had been reliably Democratic were now becoming Republican. Republicans were becoming Democratic. You could see that. But. But then again, it was sort of easy to, then to go back to politics as usual because, well, Republicans, I mean, let's talk about Republicans. You know how they got there? Because they nominate George W. Bush after George H.W. bush. Well, let's just go back a little bit further. You know, you have George H.W. bush, you have, you know, George Bush, you have Mitt Romney, you have John McCain. I'm getting them out of order. These are normie Republicans, these are centrist Republicans. Right. Would you. I mean, they would talk conservative game, but they were clearly recognizable in the same way that this is a party that would nominate a Bob Dole. And then you get to 2016 and Donald Trump comes in. So tell me about that moment. What broke there? Because I was part of that. You always knew that there was this populist kind of, you know, wingnut. Right. But they were the recessive gene. They were always there. You would always have a primary where, where a Michelle Bachman would have her moment and then a Newt Gingrich would have his moment, but the center would generally hold and you'd end up with a McCain or a Bush or a Romney. What happened? What was the breaking point in 2016?
- [35:16]
Brian Rosenwald
I actually think that there are three factors, Charlie. I think one that we don't pay enough attention to is, you know, this stuff is starting to Surge in the early 90s. Pat Buchanan, you know, as challenges to incumbent Presidents go in 1992 stages are strong enough challenged to George H.W. bush that he lets Buchanan basically ruin his convention and hurt his reelection prospects with a speech that, you know, the culture war speech that has become legendary.
- [35:42]
Charlie Sykes
Lock and load.
- [35:43]
Brian Rosenwald
I think lock and load. I think if you, if you follow the trajectory of Congressional Republicans, Newt and the revolution, especially on foreign policy stuff in the 90s, this stuff is bubbling up and I think 911 really changes the trajectory temporarily. It knocks back the populism, America first, ignore the rest of the world kind of stuff that is brewing because the Cold war is over all of a sudden. The Cold War, which is unified Republicans, we're going to be anti communist, we're going to be engaged with the world because we have to fight communism, that goes away. And I think that some of this is happening in the 90s. And then 911 puts a stop to it temporarily. But I don't know that the festering ever goes away. You have that along with the impacts of free trade and immigration starting to happen in globalization. And these things are starting to cause real dislocations in these communities which is giving Republicans the opportunity to pull in people who had been Democrats. And it's creating a little bit of a populist moment. So that's piece one, Piece two is I think that where I do blame the Reagan's and the Bushes of the world for this is they are always willing to throw rhetorical red meat to the, the conservative populace, to the extreme right, both in terms of what they're willing to promise to do, which they, a lot of it they can't do and they know they can't do it. They don't have the math legislatively to make these things happen, but they promise it. And they use the kind of language of demonizing the Democrats where all of a sudden Bill Clinton, who was, you know, you could argue an Eisenhower Republican. I think a lot of historians have agreed that basically there's not too much distance between Bill Clinton and Dwight Eisenhower ideologically, that he was some sort of satanic leftist in the world of, you know, this rhetoric. And these Republicans are stoking the fears and the furies of the base and they're never deliberate and they're making people angrier and angrier so that they're saying, well, you know, George W. Bush, yeah, he was a church going conservative. I mean some of this is on cultural issues, right? You know, Bush is an actual evangelical Christian, he goes to church he, you know, reads the Bible, he talks that the talk, he walks the walk. And yet they don't really, social conservatives get nothing from him. Basically, you know, he grudgingly supports an amendment to ban gay marriage, constitutional amendment, but it doesn't go anywhere. He doesn't do anything to actually ban abortion in the short term. And you know, they get along to Donald Trump and all of a sudden they say, well, we've had the true believer, the guy who promised us things, it didn't work. So maybe this guy can make this work. And his rhetoric, for as extreme as it is in a lot of cases appeals to them because they say, oh, these mealy mouth politicians, they talk a good game, they never deliver. Which brings me to the third point, the accelerant that is convincing these voters that this is, that the stuff that the Republicans are promising is achievable if they just fight. And of course I'm talking about your old pals it in conservative media who have burgeon during the 90s and the, the aughts who are screaming that the Republicans that they just fought hard enough they could deliver on things. And they sound a lot like Donald Trump. And so for someone who consumes conservative.
- [39:03]
Charlie Sykes
Trade, you're telling the base you are constantly being betrayed, you need to do something.
- [39:09]
Brian Rosenwald
Yes, they, they are selling you out every day. If they just fought for you and stopped going to Washington and cutting deals with the, with the Democrats and wanting everybody to like them in the establishment, you'd get what you wanted. And they say, you know, if they just fought back. And the other thing about these hosts, and it creates a stylistic template for Donald Trump. You know, we go back to 2016. This has always stuck in my mind. Two elements of this is stuck in my mind. First, Trump coming down that escalator in 2015 and he's literally giving the speech as Rush Limbaugh is on the air. And Rush Limbaugh is doing a Donald Trump impersonation. And he said, you know, he said, snurdley and I, his producer, we're sitting here laughing our heads off at this. But then he says, you know folks, the drive bys, which is what he calls the mainstream media, as if they're shooting something, they're not going to get this. But he's going to resonate just like Perot did. He understands the populist conservatism because he's heard it in his audience. And the second piece is, you get to the summer of 2015, or is it. Yeah, I think it's 2015 and Trump starts to say the things that we all confidently say, okay, he's done. You can't say John McCain is not a war hero because he's captured. You can't pick fights with gold star families. Well, Rush Limbaugh says something different. He says, you know, folks, I don't know what's going to happen here, because usually when the establishment tells these people that you've committed an unpardonable sin, they tuck tail and go away. They slink off, they resign. This guy's not doing it. He's punching back. And we don't know what's going to happen when you, the voters make a decision. And I think he got the sense that his audience wanted someone who was unvarnished. They might not agree with everything he'd say, but they wanted someone who sounded like him, who was willing to say to the establishment, you know, you don't like this, but I'm going to be unvarnished. I'm going to be honest. There was a.
- [40:58]
Charlie Sykes
Well, I will, I will, I will tell you what I thought was back then, because I remember noticing it, that, that Donald Trump clearly was paying very close attention to what was resonating on conservative media and would often play it back, and that some of the things that you would hear come out of Trump's mouth that everybody thought, you know, sounded crazy where, no, this is the way it sounds, you know, in this world. And he really was kind of, you know, the longtime listener, first time caller, candidate.
- [41:30]
Brian Rosenwald
Exactly.
- [41:31]
Charlie Sykes
Out there. And so, and I think Rush Limbaugh heard that echoing going back and forth. And then, of course, Rush changed his position completely on him. I mean, we could speculate endlessly, what if Rush Limbaugh would have said from, you know, early on, this guy is not a real conservative. This guy is full of shit. Why don't we go with a real conservative like Ted Cruz? And this is an interesting question. Ted Cruz was trying to capture that sort of populist moment. He was willing to demagogue the issues of spending. He was willing to shut down the government. But they didn't want a Ted Cruz. They wanted Donald Trump. Right.
- [42:09]
Brian Rosenwald
Well, I think there's two elements. I think Limbaugh actually tried to do that. It wasn't as overt as it could have been. It wasn't as consistent. But there was a show in like February of 16, right, as the primaries are kicking off, where he says, you know, we have an opportunity, folks. You know, he says, I don't endorse, but we have an opportunity here we are Closest we've been to having that Reagan 2.0 as we've been. That's Ted Cruz. He is one of us. He sort of tries it and I don't know if the tentativeness was because he realizes that if you pick a guy, you're going to piss off some element of your audience because he had run down Buchanan and it had hurt him a little bit in the ratings in 96. So maybe he's understands echoes of that or maybe it's that he understands that this is not going to work and doesn't want to be on the losing end of things. But he sort of does go down that pathway and say, you know, Cruz is our guy if we want this. And then, you know, by the fall of 2016, he says, I don't know how to break this to you folks, but conservatism lost. We had the chance in the primary with Ted Cruz and we lost. You know, he goes on to make a case for Trump, but he's clear eyed that this guy is not really a conservative. The reason that I think these voters wanted Trump over Cruz is that part of conservative media was entertainment. Well, there's two elements. That's why the base wanted him, that the base voter. Donald Trump's a lot more entertaining than Ted Cruz. And and quite frankly, it's interesting because Donald Trump, his relationship with the truth is kind of like his relationship with his first two ex wives. You know, the fact that it wasn't very good. His relationship with the truth didn't last very long. But he has this way of painting himself where even as he's lying through his teeth, he comes off as authentic. Ted Cruz has that smarmy politician thing going and Trump and so did Craven.
- [44:07]
Charlie Sykes
Yeah, I mean, that's also. Ron DeSantis thought that he was going to be, you know, Trumpism without Trump. And people said, no, no, we want the show and you're a stiff. And.
- [44:17]
Brian Rosenwald
Right.
- [44:17]
Charlie Sykes
I don't think you need to be a rocket scientist to figure out why they didn't want to go with Ron DeSantis.
- [44:21]
Brian Rosenwald
Right. You're stiff, you're not entertaining. And even worse than that, we don't think you believe anything that you say. It's weird to say that because Trump doesn't believe anything that he says, but he does it in such a way where people say, well, he's so unfiltered that we're getting the real him. They forget that this guy has a background where he did time in professional wrestling a little bit. He was a reality TV Star like, he's an actor. He understands how to make this come off as real, whereas these guys are poor facsimiles. They come off as fake and phony. The other thing that I think that we're seeing here is Donald Trump has, and this is where the Wallace analogy is germane. Donald Trump has an appeal to populist conservative types who are not opposed to government, but want government to help them. There are a lot of Obama, Obama, Trump voters out there in places, you know, better than most, in places in Wisconsin and Michigan and Pennsylvania. You know who they're not philosophically opposed to government in the way that, you know, the Reagan conservatives in the suburbs might have been. They are opposed to government that they think goes to the undeserving. They are opposed to government that they think wastes their money, and they want government to do more for them. They want government to do more for their community. And Trump draws them into the gop, whether they were independents, whether they were Obama voters, whether they were swing voters, maybe some of them were Bush Obama voters, but he draws them in. And, you know, there are a lot of people out there who feel like Obama doesn't deliver, especially after the financial crisis. He bails the big banks out, and he doesn't do anything for the little guy. They don't want to hear that TARP was one of the most successful government programs ever, that the government actually made money on that. They just see it as they bailed the big guys out and they did nothing for the average Joe, got thrown, nobody went to jail. Yeah, right. You know, when I teach, as I play for my students, the John Rich song, Shutting Detroit down, the country singer who's as far right as it gets, and if you watch the music video about this guy's work for 40 years at this plant and getting fired and escorted out by security, you get the sense of, like, there's this populist right thing, that that guy was maybe not a Ronald Reagan voter, or if he was, he certainly wasn't voting for Reagan because he cared about shutting the Department of Education or something like that. You know, these people, Trump is able to bring them in. And as he repels these suburban Republicans who might have been, you know, very comfortable with Mitt Romney and John McCain as he repels them, the people who thought Bush's compassionate conservatism sounds good, he's bringing these other more populisty elements, and he's changing the Republican coalition. Now, what's going to be real interesting to see is he's not really delivered them populist economics, because of what we were talking about before, which is a lot of these guys in Congress are not populists. They have no problem cutting Medicaid. And so it's going to be interesting to see whether he has to back up populism with some sort of policy and whether he can do that, though.
- [47:24]
Charlie Sykes
Yeah. Because. Okay, that's because Donald Trump sees everything through the lens of the show. Right. He wants to be the executive producer, not just of the Kennedy center, but of all of America. Talked about that with Tim O'Brien the other, the other day. But in terms of this populist appeal and the popular show and the populist programs that he's going to have to deliver, how do you see the billionaire bromance narrative playing out? Because he has stocked his cabinet with billionaires. He has turned over power to people beyond the, you know, who are rich, beyond the dreams of avarice. Do those voters look at that sort of in admiration? Like we, we like the fact that, that these rich people, I mean, it's. I, there, there was always that, that cognitive dissonance of the blue collar worker in Michigan looking at Donald Trump, you know, with his, with his own plane and his supermodel wife and the golden toilets and thinking, this man is my voice. Are they going to play it this way with the billionaires? Or, or is that, or is that a potential wedge for the Democrats to say, this guy's not for you. Look what he's doing. And especially, and I'm throwing a lot at you here, not only has he surrounded himself with this cloud of billionaires, but he's about to go to Congress and asking for trillions of dollars in tax cuts for billionaires, is that the moment where this populist image is going to clash with the actual reality? Or what do you think?
- [48:54]
Brian Rosenwald
I think that there is a real possibility there. Because, you know, if Donald Trump was smart, one of the things he would have said about his tax bill is, I want to make the Trump tax cuts permanent on everyone making under $1 million a year. And I want to raise the rate for people making $1 million a year or more. It's heresy to Reagan conservatives.
- [49:12]
Charlie Sykes
He could do it.
- [49:13]
Brian Rosenwald
But if you're a populist, that sounds good to a lot of people. And I, but I do think that there's this real tension. If they pass a bill that includes billions in tax cuts for wealthy people, millionaires, multimillionaires, Elon Musk, and cuts Medicaid and takes people's health care away and cuts food stamps and makes it harder on people who are already struggling. I think that there's going to be an opportunity for Democrats to say, he's a phony, he's a fake, he talks a good game, he sounds good to you, but he's not actually fighting for you. He's fighting for them. And what hurt Kamala Harris the most in the campaign, it was that ad where the tagline was, she's for they them, he's for you. Or, you know, something along those lines. And if you could do that to Trump and say he show pictures of Howard Lutnick and Elon Musk and say he's for them, these are his buddies, these are the guys he's giving power to. And look at what they did. He might talk a good game, but he's not actually running things here. Then I think that that is certainly a possible wedge issue. It may not matter because he's convinced some of these people that trade and immigration and culture stuff, that that's more important. But there is a real opening here from a populist standpoint. If he goes down this pathway, notably Charlie, he proposed closing the carried interest loophole, and congressional Republicans don't seem to be rushing to do that because that was the most populous thing he proposed.
- [50:48]
Charlie Sykes
Yeah, okay, so you mentioned that this, this one ad, the they them ad as. As a wage issue, that ad wasn't about class, it was about transgenderism. As we all know at this point, the Trump campaign spent more than $100 million on one ad, basically taking something that Kamala Harris had said in a. Had said back in 2019, when she was running the first time, that she would support what taxpayer funding for transgender surgery for prisoners, which was kind of the way to talk about the sum of all culture war issues there. And I think that this is one. We can't have a discussion about, 2024, about the culture wars, without understanding that Donald Trump's campaign recognized that the transgender issue was a wedge issue. They would not have spent a hundred million dollars on one ad unless they thought that that was one. And the Democrats never were able to respond to that, that they were never able to find a way to counter that going forward. Issues like that are going to be the test, right? Are they going to be willing to antagonize their more activist base and come up with a more nuanced position? Because there is a nuanced position, which is you treat people with respect and dignity and rights, but then maybe you do draw the line at, you know, boys playing in or transgender women playing in women's sports and things like that. So that's one that I sense on the left a real sort of cringy reluctance to acknowledge how potent that issue was for them and how hard it is to extricate themselves from it. What do you think?
- [52:34]
Brian Rosenwald
I think. And look, I would say that personally, I am more sympathetic to the left on this issue. I think that, you know, Doug Burgum vetoed a bill to ban transgender girls from playing girls sports because he said there isn't a single case in the state of North Dakota where this has happened. And I think that this is much ado about nothing. But it is a potent much ado about nothing where, realistically, people like me are out of touch with where the majority of Americans are. And I don't think that, you know, people are voting solely on this issue. I think that it's so potent because it fits with this broader characteristic or broader characterization of the Democrats as out of touch as the Democrats are fighting for everyone but you. They're worried about people in Africa, you know, who are getting foreign aid. They're worried about the Ukrainians. They're worried about trans people. They're worried about this group, that group, the other group. They're worried about the environment, but they're not worried about you. If you come into conflict with any of these other groups, they're happy to cancel you. They're happy to destroy your community. And that, I think, is what makes it resonate so much. I definitely think it's true that over the past five to 10 years, the Matrix of what we're discussing when we talk about LGBTQ issues shifted from very good terrain for the Democrats, LGBTQ marriage and non discrimination and things like that, to issues where Republicans could caricature it and to issues where they could, you know, most people at least, were somewhat sympathetic to what they're saying. And I think that the one detailed poll I saw on trans issues shows that people have very nuanced positions on this.
- [54:23]
Charlie Sykes
Did you?
- [54:23]
Brian Rosenwald
They are not where Trump and the Republicans are on everything. They are there on the sports issue, but they're not there on everything. So it's very possible they overcompensate on this issue as much as it's as Democrats have an issue, have a problem here. But I do think that there's this broader narrative that Democrats have to understand. And I actually think you highlighted one real problem here, which is the same thing that has bedeviled Republicans for 30 years is starting to bedevil Democrats, which is primaries, which is you play to these activists and these groups and primaries because they're the ones who show up to vote in primaries. You know, Harris said, and somebody was saying that, that Pete Buttigieg said the same thing that she did on trans prisoners. They're like, you know, he's going to run in 28, or he's talking about Senate run now. And he's got the same baggage. And the reason was they went in front of these activist groups, they wanted endorsements, they wanted foot soldiers knocking on doors. And just like the Republicans have had this problem where, you know, if they nominate Marco Rubio in 2016, it's a blowout. Probably the eight year itch kicks in, the antipathy people have for Hillary kicks in. And it might have been a blowout, but primaries push us towards the extreme because the people who show up are the furthest to the right and the furthest to the left. And Democrats are going to have to be cognizant of being willing to tangle with their base. You know, one of the big moments in the making of Bill Clinton is the Sister Soulja moment where he condemns condemned sister souls of the rapper in front of an African American audience. I forget if it was at Jesse Jackson's annual gathering or something like that, but he condemns her and it's his way of saying, I will bring the truth to my base. I will say what is right, even if it makes them angry. And Democrats need to do that on a couple of these issues to show that they are not captive to an activist base and that they hear the average American. I think that's really important. And they also have to up their messaging game on this stuff dramatically because right now they're not reaching a lot of Americans, especially Latino Americans.
- [56:31]
Charlie Sykes
Yeah, no, they aren't. Okay, so we're running out of time, but we haven't spent enough time, I think, on, on, on the media. But I wanted to bounce something off of you because I keep trying to figure out, where does this go? Because, you know, I think you and I first spoke back in 2017 where we talked about the role of the media and what was happening and, and, and that seems like a kinder, gentler era now because things have accelerated so rapidly. The proliferation is so great. We weren't even dealing with TikTok. We weren't dealing with, any of, you know, a lot, a lot of this. But. And we certainly were not dealing with a Twitter owned by Elon Musk and the initiatification of Twitter. But here's Something that I ran across just in the last day or two, Ben Dreyfus Wright wrote, and I'm going to get your take on this. Increasingly, he writes, I am convinced that Elon Musk buying this website, which is X Twitter, and letting a niche band of far right culture warriors become so intensely confident they speak for the masses will in fact be as terrible for the GOP in the long run as liberal dominance of these apps was for Democrats. In other words, it used to be that this was a liberal bubble where everybody thought that everybody felt the same way. And now the right is becoming increasingly convinced that these wackadoodle ideas have resonance. And Eric Erickson, who is a conservative right wing host, he then responded, he said, I've been saying this too. The left lost in large part because they began to believe their online echo chamber. Now more and more on the right are convinced that the daily outrage on Twitter is the reality that matters. That the right is, you know, is, is now forming its own echo chamber that is leading them to defend things. That the average normal swing voter is going to go, that's, that is nutty. What do you think about that, Brian?
- [58:26]
Brian Rosenwald
Well, the right has actually been trapped in an echo chamber for like 30 years. You know, it's, it's self serving for someone like Eric to say, okay, the problem is now Elon Musk's Twitter because the talk radio host drove Republicans to a lot of positions that were not particularly popular over the years that they created. You know, Limbaugh was helping driving the push for a shutdown in 2012 over the fiscal cliff and things like that that were cul de sacs, you couldn't win that fight. So I think it's some of a continuation. But what I think is true here is two aspects. The first is if Trump and Republicans start to listen too much to the Elon Musk's and his fans on Twitter and less to the Steve Bannon who seems to have the savvy, as you mentioned, he's saying, hey guys, we don't want to cut Medicaid because there's a lot of our people on Medicaid. If they start listening to those folks, to the people who don't get this, who are just glorifying anything that makes the liberals angry, there is a real chance that they overdo it, that they go too far. You know, the issue, there's all that, the old saying about power and absolute power corrupting absolutely. Well, when you have unified control of the government and you're not particularly bothered by disobeying the courts or the laws, that's about as close to absolute power as you get. And they can definitely make mistakes and go too far and push in the wrong direction. That's sort of what happened on a lot of these issues over the last five, ten years with Democrats. The other element of it is that where I think that the echo chamber hurt the left is, is the left. I saw, I've seen several people say in the last couple of weeks or month that, you know, the thing with the left was the right was always the scoldy side. They were the Christian right, sanctimonious, trying to force their worldview on everyone else. And then over the last five to 10 years, it's been Democrats who've said, ooh, you can't say that you're immoral. How dare you do that or say that? Or how can you, you know, you hate the environment. You want the world to die if you don't support this climate policy or that one. And I think that kind of scoldy, sanctimonious, unfun thing hurt. And Trump didn't win by necessarily playing to the Elon Musk Twitter outrage base. Who did he go and play to? It was the Joe Rogan, Theo Vaughn. You know, we are right of center, but in a populist and incoherent kind of way. You know, Joe Rogan was a Bernie guy before he was a Trump guy kind of thing. So I think that there's a real issue here of if they misperceive what has worked for them and misperceived where this is working, if they become more Stephen Miller, who is that dour, overly serious, you want to be like, lighten up, dude, kind of, you know, Trump aide. If they become too much of that Elon Musk and Stephen Miller and not enough of the populist thing, then I think there's a real problem here. One guy to watch, Charlie, is Josh Hawley from Missouri, who is one of the very few guys who's really trying to devise a more populous gop. He and Bernie are co sponsoring a bill to cap interest rates on credit cards. And, you know, this is an issue. A lot of economists say it's the dumbest thing you could possibly do.
- [61:54]
Charlie Sykes
Right.
- [61:55]
Brian Rosenwald
But it is a real sign that he is not necessarily sticking to Reagan conservatism on economics. And that is a guy to watch on some of this stuff because he's not necessarily buying into the Muskian thing full stop. And, you know, it's also going to Be watching. Some of these Republicans are starting to make rumblings of Elon, you're cutting the major employer in my state kind of thing. And do they understand that this is people's livelihoods and that the Doge thing and the kind of craziness of musk, then only do you risk alienating those swing voters who voted for Trump and there were plenty of them because they thought the economy was better under him and where we're overreading the whole thing because a lot of them are more flexible ideologically and just thought he was better for the economy. Not only is he risking alienating those people, but you're risk risking alienating some of these MAGA people. There have been, you know, FL things screenshotted and posted on X and on Blue sky and elsewhere of these people were like, well, wait a second, I'm a MAGA guy and you fired me or you fired my relative or you did this or this thing that you did away with. Surely you didn't mean to do this, Mr. President. You know, you want to protect us. You know the kind of cognitive dissonance where, oh, the president just doesn't know this. It's, it's his underlings who are the problem. Well, there's a real risk to over, you know, know, doing things here, overreading their mandate, overdoing things on a lot of these things if they're not going to be populist about them. And you've seen it, even with deportations, where people are like, wait, I thought he was going to deport the criminal who flocked here, right?
- [63:32]
Charlie Sykes
Hit me.
- [63:32]
Brian Rosenwald
Me. There was a story in the Post about a guy from Ohio who had four kids and has been here since like 2000 and wasn't eligible for DACA because he never finished high school. Guy had a job, you know, and now his kids are going to have to go to work as teenagers because he has to leave the country. And I'm thinking to myself, this is real family values for you. Like, there are cases like that that people are going to say, I didn't vote for this, I voted for you to get rid of the guys who showed up under Biden. And I think that there's some real risks here if Trump doesn't keep his finger on the pulse of the actual voters who voted for him. If he is too focused on what the echo chamber of social media and of conservative media. We know he talks to Hannity and Ingram and all these people all the time. You know, if he's stuck in that bubble, there's going to be mistakes that he makes, just like he did in 2017 where it led him to a blowout in 2018.
- [64:31]
Charlie Sykes
Brian Rosenwald, thank you so much for joining me on the podcast today. It is always great to talk with you. Thank you, Brian.
- [64:38]
Brian Rosenwald
Charlie, it's always great being with you. We'll do this again soon and maybe we'll get more into those media guys that I know you and I are both fascinated.
- [64:44]
Charlie Sykes
Oh, absolutely. No, we could go on. Brian Rosenwald is a political historian of the modern United States who is teaching now at the University of Pennsylvania. I am Charlie Sykes. Thank you so much for joining us on this edition of to the Contrary podcast. If you have not yet subscribed to the to the Contrary newsletter, please do so, because pretty much every day we find some way to remind remind you that you are not the crazy ones. Thanks.