← To The Contrary with Charlie Sykes
To The Contrary with Charlie Sykes
David Frum: Trump’s "America First" Is Actually "America Alone"
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- [00:00]
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- [02:05]
Charlie Sykes
I'm Charlie Sykes. Welcome back to the to the Contrary podcast. Donald Trump heads off to China, a much emboldened China, and before he leaves, not only does he melt down on social media, but he accidentally tells the truth, which is that he really doesn't care about the financial situation of most American families. Meanwhile, it appears that his Department of Justice is about to settle a case that will further enrich Donald Trump. And of course, the Democrats do what they do best. They fight among themselves. It's a busy week. And joining me on the podcast is our good friend David Frum, staff writer for the Atlantic, host of the David Frum Show, YouTube Star. Welcome back, David. I appreciate it.
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David Frum
Thank you. YouTube Star is one of those. It's like porn star. Like, how much of a star are you really, if you're on YouTube?
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Charlie Sykes
Yeah, well, that's the thing is you sort of have to remind yourself, I am a star. I'm a YouTube star, whatever that means. I have to say, and I mentioned this before we actually started, I have been reading your wife's book and your interview with her. Your wife, Dan Yaniel, who's written this absolutely, I mean, eloquent but gutting book, how to Survive Losing a Child, Dealing with this. The book is Dispatches From Grief. And I have to say that it is. I think anyone who's lost a loved one knows how painful it is to lose a child is beyond imagination. So I just can't imagine with everything going on in the world, your conversations with your wife, your willingness to share, this has really been extraordinary. But. So I appreciate talking with you today.
- [03:49]
David Frum
Well, thank you. We just finished the book launched on 5 May, and some of the early interviews Danielle and I have done together. And I was just in New York with her. We talked together. She was on my podcast and we talked about it together. And I don't feel any need to justify this. Danielle sometimes has a queasy feeling about it. And there are two lessons that I've learned about the immensity of loss. And I should say, my wife and I, we lost our eldest daughter in February of 2024. The two things that I've really discovered as I've been in public with her about this subject, is a lot of people in grief are very lonely. Oftentimes there's one person in the world they really talk to, and that person is the one who's gone. And now who do they talk to? They've been cut off from the most intimate and important association in their lives. That's true for high husbands and wives and sometimes for parents and children. And they feel alone and they feel unable to talk to their friends and inhibited. And so breaking that has been that barrier has been a service. And the second thing is, for those of us, for you, for me, for my wife, for whom words are our trade, it can be hard to put yourself in the position of someone who. Words do not come so naturally. And we all have the fundamental feelings of what it means to be human. But if you don't have the facility with words, it's hard to turn those feelings into thoughts. And when they're thoughts, the rational mind can deal with them. But if they don't become thoughts, then you're just left with that horror inside you. And so, by providing people with a vocabulary, with words, what Danielle has been doing is finding a way to help people convert feelings into thoughts. And once they're thoughts, they can be expressed, and once they're expressed, they can be shared. And once they're shared, they can, to some degree, be controlled and even mastered, so they're not in control of you. So that's been the service Danielle has rendered, I think.
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Charlie Sykes
Well, I appreciate it. And as I mentioned, anyone who's gone through some profound grief or the shock of grief knows that numbness, that sense that no one can possibly understand what you're going through. And this was one of the very first things I've ever read that actually tried to articulate that. And I've always wondered about how difficult it would be to try to put words to things that just appear almost indescribable. And I think she's done a marvelous job, and I hope to have her on the podcast. So I had to mention that at the top, because when we're going through lives, people need to understand that we're not just the talking heads, that there are actual people who are going through things.
- [06:37]
David Frum
I compare this experience to. To, like, an app that runs constantly in the background, draining battery, draining energy. And so whatever else I'm doing, the app is running. It's always there.
- [06:49]
Charlie Sykes
No, I understand that. It's one of those reasons why if it's running in the background at some point in the day, you go, why am I so incredibly, incredibly exhausted? Well, because this has been going on all the time. And of course, we're all exhausted to begin with anyway, with everything that's going on. So let's talk about what the country is going through. You and I are both old enough to remember one of the great moments in modern history when Richard Nixon went to China. Nixon going to China became this incredible historical narrative. Donald Trump has gone to China, and this is not the same thing at all, is it? So let's talk about the Donald Trump that is landing in China and what China thinks about the American empire and Donald Trump.
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David Frum
When Richard Nixon did his diplomacy with China in the late 60s and early 1970s, and his pattern was really continued by his successors, by President Ford, by President Carter, by President Reagan. At that time, the way it looked to most people was there were two giant superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union, and Americans were not always aware of how much more powerful the United States truly was than the Soviet Union. They seemed like equals, at least in military power. They never were, but it seemed that way. And China was this third player at the game at the time, it was thought the least of the three, and the one that was therefore in a position to pivot back and forth. And so communist China had been in a tense alliance with the Soviet Union from the creation of Communist China in 1949 or the seizure of power by the Communists in 1949 to the late 1960s. China and Russia fought a war. China and the Soviet Union fought a war in 1969 with hundreds of thousands of troops on China's northern border. And the Chinese moved into the American camp and became a kind of uneasy ally of the United States. But that world is gone. The world that is here now is one in which China is a superpower in its own right, in many ways a much more formidable power than the Soviet Union ever was. It's not as militarily aggressive as the old Soviet Union was, but it's much more capable. It's much more economically capable, much more technologically capable, much more financially capable. And it presents the United States for the first time maybe since the United very young United States confronted the British Empire before the civil war with a competitor that's a true peer. The United States has never had that before. Germany was not a peer to the United States. Nazi Germany wasn't Imperial Japan wasn't. The Soviet Union, we now understand, was not. But this China truly is. And that creates a different kind of challenge for the United States than one that it has faced since the young United States faced the British Empire, where at least you had some agreement on values, a common language, a common legal system, other ties of fraternity. Those ties are absent between the United States and China.
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Charlie Sykes
We don't understand them. But do they understand us? And I guess this is my great fear. I think if history tells us one thing, it's the most dangerous thing that can happen between superpowers is miscalculation, not understanding what the other side is thinking, what they are doing, who they are, what they motive are. And I wonder at this particular moment, we have this erratic president who is landing in China, and the Chinese, I think, maybe. Are they overconfident in their relationship with him? Or is Donald Trump delusional about what clout and leverage he has with the Chinese?
- [10:20]
David Frum
I was a few nights ago on a CNN panel with Kareem Sagapour, the great expert on Iran, and he said something, one of those moments for which cable TV is really valuable. He said something at the end of the and it just resonated with everyone. With me, you come off the show and think, I'm still thinking about this two days later. So he teaches at Georgetown University. And he said when he teaches his students at Georgetown and he teaches on the Middle east and Central Asia, that what he used to teach them was the way to understand the Middle east was it was a country, was it was a region in which societies were dominated by the will of one man. And the United States was a country run by a system. And that was the mismatch. The Middle east was a country of strongmen, a region of strong men. The United States was a system, he said. And now that's not true anymore, that Iran, especially Iran, is a system and the United States is a one man show. And I think that's something the Chinese system is truly a system. Yes, the leader at the moment has tremendous power and the current leader has taken China in a different direction from his predecessors. But it's probably a mistake to think of him as a dictator. He's operating as the chairman of the board of an oligarchy of power holders. And yes, he can purge the military and make his own power more personal, but in the end, it's not purely personal. But in the United States, the power of the president has become very personal and the system has become very unpredictable. And one of the real dangers here is the United States used to be quite a predictable power.
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Charlie Sykes
Yeah.
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David Frum
That you can see from Nixon through Reagan. It's the same China policy. And Jimmy Carter, a Democrat, is in between. In many regions of the world, the United States has, there are more continuities than discontinuities in many places between Bush and Obama and Biden is more similar to Bush and Obama than he is to Reagan to Trump on either side of him. But with Trump, it's one person and often one person's very corrupt financial interests that are driving the policy of the United States.
- [12:24]
Charlie Sykes
Yeah, well, I mean, that's the question is when they sit down, what are going to be the asks. There's a story in Politico that said it's the incredible shrinking summit, that instead of a grand bargain, it's just going to be Trump figuring out what does he have to give the Chinese to get to. It helped to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, I guess, sort of jumping ahead and getting ahead of myself here a little bit. Is Donald Trump going to sell out Taiwan? Is this going to be the summit that we're gonna look back on and say, this is when the United States abandoned its ally the way that we abandoned Ukraine. This is gonna be another Yalta. What do you think?
- [13:06]
David Frum
Donald Trump has backed himself into a position in which he almost cannot help except sell out Taiwan. Because here's the old system. When I talked about the peer nature of the Chinese, the idea that was developed under President W. Bush, continued and expanded under President Obama was the following. China is so big and so strong and so economically powerful, unlike the old Soviet Union, and so big in population and resources, the United States cannot contain China by itself. The United States, it's just too big to lift. And so the only way the United States can balance China, and that means, by the way, compete with China, prevent them from doing bad things while keeping the peace, doing this without war, was by putting together an even bigger network of like minded countries. But because China is in the Asian, not the Atlantic sphere, the countries you have to work with are countries that it's maybe not easy for the United States to work with. It's very congenial for the United States to work with Britain and Canada in the days when Soviet Union was the problem. It's not so easy to work with India, Indonesia, Malaysia. These are very countries, very different experiences, very different histories, very different political systems. And the Bush initiated and Obama developed a thing called the Trans Pacific Partnership, which was not an alliance, but a kind of association of nations that bordered the Pacific, although not limited to the Pacific, and not just traditional partners like Japan, but new partners. Mexico was a member. Chile was a member. Malaysia and Indonesia were going to be members. And these two dozen countries, the idea was they would write rules of trade and other important international matters and not allow China into the meetings at the beginning. They would write a sort of a trade constitution of the Pacific. And when they were done among themselves, then invite China. Here are the terms. You can join or not, but we're not letting you into the negotiation the way we made the mistake of doing with the World Trade Organization or the way we did, maybe that wasn't a mistake, but the way we did with the World Trade Organization, the rules will be written around you. You can join, you can not join. That was blown up at the end of the Obama administration and then rescinded by President Trump and not put together by President Biden as it should have been. There's a brief moment of flurry where I heard Alexandria Ocasio Cortez refer to it favorably. But it turns out she had just gotten the Trans Pacific Partnership mixed Up transatlantic partnership. So be still my heart. For a moment I thought of the American left had finally come to her senses on this issue. But no. So it's gone, but that's what you have to do. So the idea, the United States should not be in a position of negotiating with China one on one, face to face, because it cannot impose power that way. It should be negotiating with its like minded partners first, China later. But of course, under Trump, the United States doesn't have partners anymore.
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Charlie Sykes
Well, also China. I'm looking at this New York Times story. China increasingly views Trump's America as an empire in decline. And they quote an article that was written by. Where is this from? It's basically a Beijing think tank which is affiliated with a local university, published a report with the title, with the title thank Trump. The report called Trump an accelerator of American political decay, with the United States sliding toward polarization, institutional dysfunction and even Latin American style instability. Trump's hostility towards China, the authors argued, was a reverse booster that unified the country and helped bring about its strategic self reliance. At this turning point in history, the Chinese authors wrote, what we hear is the heavy and haunting toll of an empire's evening bell. So Donald Trump is going to land in a country that's feeling kind of jiggy about itself right now and seeing America as a dying behemoth rather than this. Right. You know, Donald Trump's whole image was I am going to restore America. No one's going to laugh at America. We are going to be respected more than ever before. That's not the view from China right now, is it?
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David Frum
Well, of course I don't speak the language. I don't know. And I don't know that the Chinese leadership know. Because one of the dangers that besets unfree societies is the free societies often don't know about themselves. The leaders do not know what's going on. But I mean, China has enormous problems, very rapidly aging population, population that is set soon to begin to decline and decline very fast. It has overinvested in all kinds of stupid prestige projects. It's over invested in real estate because there's no other way for people to preserve their savings. They've got tens of millions of empty apartments built, often in the wrong places. You remember this famous Belt and road initiative from 10 years ago that we were so scared of. That what they did was because they needed to continually find places to invest to keep their concrete production going. They would invest in all these completely uneconomic projects all over Asia and Africa on which they get no return. So they're a kind of investing machine without regard to whether the investment pays off because they've broken the systems of truth telling. They'll let you know that. So they have many problems of their own. But the part of that assertion that is true is the key to America's greatest strategic asset was always that it was the center of a network of overlapping alliances. And America never came to the bar fight by itself. It always came to the bar fight with wingmen who were the strongest and wealthiest and most technologically advanced countries on the planet. So anytime the Chinese contemplated confronting the United States and said, well, we're not confronting just the United States. As formidable as the United States is, we're confronting the United States, plus Japan, plus South Korea on our borders, plus some non democratic countries are confronting Vietnam, we're confronting Indonesia, a kind of imperfect democracy, and Malaysia, we're confronting Australia, we're confronting potentially NATO, which has a lot of interest in the Pacific. They are not at the bar fight by themselves. And we, China, we are at the bar fight by ourselves. So let's not turn this into a bar fight, because the chair that breaks will be over our own head. Donald Trump has arrived. He's created a situation where the United States is alone. It is America first. In the beginning of the First Trump administration, H.R. mcMaster wrote an op ed in the Wall Street Journal that said america first does not mean America.
- [19:40]
Charlie Sykes
It does now.
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David Frum
Yes, it does.
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Charlie Sykes
It.
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David Frum
And the reason HR McMar thought he had to say that back in 2017 was because it was obviously the truth is so obviously correct. The opposite is rather so obviously correct. The United States is alone in a way it has not been since the 1930s. And that is a huge subtraction of power from whatever the United States brings to the summit. And that is a thing that the Chinese can see because we can all see it.
- [20:09]
Charlie Sykes
Well, let's then shift the focus back onto our one man dysfunctional government, because I think that that's correct. Right now, Donald Trump is the most powerful political figure in America preparing for one of the most consequential weeks of his presidency. What do we make of the mind of the President who spent the last few days before this really high stakes summit? And there's no hyping how big this is. This is potentially very, very, very big. Basically shitposting on social media, pictures of Barack Obama and Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi in sewage, in the pool. He's obsessed with the ballroom, he's obsessed with reflecting pool, attacking his foes. What do we make of the mindset of Donald Trump? I mean, we have these endless conversations about cognitive decline, but his lack of willingness to focus in on, you know, the fact that we're at war with Iran, the economy has at least five alarm fires, and he's about to meet with the other most powerful person in the world, and the guy's spending all night posting AI memes.
- [21:31]
David Frum
My rule for understanding Donald Trump has been, before he's a dictator, he's a crook. Yes. Before he's a crook, he's a head case. So it's a good formula. I think there's something profoundly symbolic, for example, about the reflecting. This is a project that seems driven in part by Trump's crazy vanity that he wanted to have a fancier, shinier reflecting pool in time for the 250th anniversary, which he sees as of the Declaration of Independence, which he sees as a celebration of himself. So there's the vanity there, there's the ignorance and stupidity, which is, you know, you paint an unfiltered reflecting pool bright blue, it doesn't stay bright blue because they don't put chlorine in it. It's not going to look like a swimming pool. The algae will be back because it's unfiltered. And to keep it, you don't put chlorine in it, it's not going to stay. It's not going to look like a swimming pool in Miami Beach.
- [22:27]
Charlie Sykes
Sad.
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David Frum
And then of course, there's the crookedness, which is there seem to be no bid contracts that went to a special friend of his with a guaranteed 20% profit margin. And you think, like, okay, Donald Trump has taken in this second term payoffs from the United Arab Emirates of half a billion dollars for himself, his family and the Witkoff family. I shouldn't call them payoffs. That's conclusory. But there has been a $450 million investment by a government corporation from the United Arab Emirates in the Trump Organization and the Witcoff family enterprises. He's got the plane settled. He's this, he's made all this money from his Bitcoin operations. Do you really need to do this grift on the pool? Do you really need the hundred dollars from the 590,000 Trump fans who put down the 100 bucks for a Trump phone that they're not. It doesn't.
- [23:20]
Charlie Sykes
By the way, isn't that the best story of the week? The Trump phone? The fact they have the Trump phone and there's no Trump phones, but they've taken all of the deposits. I mean, that is such a chef's kiss. Perfect story.
- [23:31]
David Frum
Did you need that hundred bucks? It's like that episode of the Sopranos where Tony Soprano just bleeds to death. A guy, a gambler who got involved with him and he's got a sporting goods store. At the end, the gambler whose life is destroyed said to Tony, why did you do this to me? And Tony can only say, it's my nature. And there's something about that reaching for the hundred dollars from the family that can't afford it, but believes in you and converting it into a probably non existent Trump. Why does Trump need to do that? It's his nature. And so that's when you think what is going on here? And the Chinese concealers, of course, and I guess they recognize it, they've seen it before. They haven't seen it at the head of a great power, probably the people. The guy who runs Turkmenistan is probably pretty similar to this. He's got imperial delusions, but he's also reaching for every dishonest dollar he can find.
- [24:22]
Charlie Sykes
So he's for sale. They all know that he's bribable, that he's for sale. And so the question is now, by the way, okay, now this leads us to another one of those. Feels like kind of a, I won't say iconic moment, but you know, it's certainly going to be memorable. Right before he's leaving for China, you know, with all these economic numbers out, you know, he's asked, you know, well, are you thinking about Americans financial situation when you're, you know, figuring out what to do with Iran? And Trump replies, not a little bit. Let's play a little bit of the sound bite. They can't have a nuclear weapon. I don't think about American financial situation. I don't think about anybody. I think about one thing. We cannot let Iran have a nuclear weapon. That's all. Okay, so he's talking about the nuclear weapon. But I think what really resonated with people is I don't think about American's financial situation. I don't think about anybody. And it felt like he just sort of said that quiet thing out loud. I mean, you know, and I wrote about this yesterday. You know, Michael Kinsley once described a gaffe as, you know, somebody that said something that's obviously true that you're not supposed to say. I mean, so Donald Trump said something that's pretty obviously true. He just doesn't give a rat's ass about America's financial situation. Your thoughts?
- [25:38]
David Frum
Yeah. Now that the United States has been war gaming a conflict with Iran since the spring of 1980, at least probably even before that, there were probably war games with Iran during the Shah's time. But from the overthrow of the Shah in the fall of 1979 and then the seizure of the American hostages by the new regime, which came to a crisis, I think the rescue mission or the attempted rescue mission of the Hostages, April of 1980, the United States has been war gaming. What would it take to defeat the regime in Iran if you had to do it? And I am certain that at every one of these war games, whatever Pentagon general played, the Iranian side move two or three in the war game was to close the Strait of Hormuz. That's like knight to king comes four. You know, that's just maybe your first move. It's not the first move, but it's the second move, the third, maybe the fourth. But it's an early move in the game. And these games are played regularly, both in full scale, but also just in memos and papers. And so since the spring of 1980 at least, the Pentagon has been thinking, what do you do if they close the Strait of Hormuz? And so the idea that this would have come as a surprise to the Trump administration, the Iranians would do this, and the administration hadn't bothered to prepare an answer. I mean, there must be filing cabinets in the Pentagon with potential answers. I'm sure many of them very costly, and that's why they weren't turned to. But you would not think it through. If we strike them, they will do this, and then what do we do? And if we don't do something, then the price of oil goes up. I think one of the things that Donald Trump, again, in this combination of head case and ignorance and disdain, I think the thing he, Donald Trump is really not a market guy. He doesn't believe in market principles. So he would have heard that, look, the oil from the Persian Gulf. The Persian Gulf now supplies about 20% of the world's needs, which is much less than it did back in the days of the Arab sheikhs of the 1970s. But 20% of the world's oil flows from the Persian Gulf. But 80% of that oil goes to Asia, and very little of it, comparatively little, goes to Europe, and very little comes to North America. So Donald Trump, I speculated and thought, well, we don't get much oil from the Middle east, so it won't hurt us if that oil is gone. And it never occurred to him, yeah, you don't buy your oil from the Middle east, but there's one world price. If the world loses one fifth of its oil supply, everybody's price goes up. It doesn't matter whether your oil, where your oil comes from, the price goes up.
- [28:10]
Charlie Sykes
But he's got economists around him, these great minds. You have Howard Lutnick and you have Hassett and you have Besant, who, I mean, at some point, should somebody have said, okay, well that's not exactly the way it works. Look, I guess in a White House where people say I cut the price of something by 600%, I guess the math doesn't like rise to the top all the time.
- [28:31]
David Frum
You're maybe when you call them great minds. I think so.
- [28:34]
Charlie Sykes
Oh, oh, yes. I, yes. I'm sorry. Sarcasm emoji, please.
- [28:39]
David Frum
So Hassett and, and Besant is a trader. Hassett is an economist. And Hassett's not an idiot. He's not like one of America's outstanding economists. But you know, he wasn't the, you know, he came from a think tank. He was a perfectly capable, not remarkable, not Nobel quality. But, you know, the thing that defines Hassett and Bessant is they're cowards. They are toadies. They say what Trump wants them to say. So I imagine that at some point in the conversation, they said something that Trump, that a more careful listener might have heard as. And by the way, one thing that might happen is the price of oil will go up, but they don't. They're not. And everything else because they tell Trump things he doesn't want to hear. And so Trump, And Trump also has a way of. Even if you tell him, he doesn't hear it because in the end he doesn't. This vaunted businessman doesn't understand that yes, most American oil consumption comes from North America or at least from this hemisphere.
- [29:43]
Charlie Sykes
So he's in a.
- [29:43]
David Frum
Other people can buy it. So the price will be the price all over the planet. And the United States cannot exempt himself.
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- [31:36]
Charlie Sykes
So he lives in this bubble, surrounded by people who will tell him what he wants to hear, which of course is always the Achilles heel of authoritarians, right? They surround themselves, they become cut off. But there was a time when Donald Trump had what I've described as a reptilian instinct for public opinion. I mean, look, he knows what the polls are. I assume he knows that these issues are taking place. And part of his appeal was that I am the populist, I am the voice of the little man. Democrats are for they and them. I am for you. So what do you make of the president basically saying rather, again, gaff, like, I don't think about anybody. I don't think about America's financial situation. It does feel, and this is not like breaking news, but it feels like he's becoming increasingly tone deaf, you know, at a time when it is absolutely crucial for his own political future and the future of the Republican Party, which he doesn't really care about to, you know, at least pay somewhat attention. And then we get that. So he does feel disconnected in a way that I haven't felt before.
- [32:41]
David Frum
Do you agree? Yes, but I think one of the differences between now and the first Trump administration was in the first Trump administration, there was a very uneasy partnership between Trump and the congressional Republican Party. They mostly did what he wanted, sometimes he did what they wanted, but there's a lot of suspicion. And Paul Ryan, whom you know so well, he obviously didn't care for Trump. Trump wasn't as Paul Ryan had an agenda, Trump had an agenda. There was overlapping and there's a kind of a working relationship. It's different now. Now the Trump, the Republican Party in Congress really is an arm of the Trump administration and they are much more aligned with the idea than they were a decade ago. It doesn't matter if we become unpopular because we can change the rules of elections. So it doesn't. So we win anyway.
- [33:33]
Charlie Sykes
It does feel that way.
- [33:35]
David Frum
The big win they had in overturning the Voting Rights act or substantial elements of the Voting Rights act makes possible a bid for non voter power. It's going to be very ambitious. Until about 10 days ago, it looked like the Republicans had lost the redistricting wars, right then they scored two huge wins. The Virginia Supreme Court told Virginia it couldn't do the counter gerrymander that Virginia had planned. And so that was a big blow. And then even more importantly, the United States Supreme Court gave a green light to states covered by the Voting Rights act to rewrite their maps without regard as they more or less as they pleased, unless there was a showing of intentional racial animus. The maps can be rewritten. And because the overlap between. Because the Supreme Court has previously permitted partisan gerrymandering like that in your state, Wisconsin, yes. So long as you, in Louisiana or Alabama or Mississippi, so long as you take care to say we want to eliminate Democratic voting power and make sure, yes, that's okay. So long as all the memos use the word Democrat, you're in the clear. I mean, if you slip off and say black, then you might be in trouble. But just go through the document, go through every transcript, go through all your voice memos, make sure it's all you always say, we're eliminating Democratic power, and then it's fine. And then you can rewrite the maps all across the south. And the Republicans are suddenly back in the lead in the redistricting gerrymandering wars and may be able to hold onto the House of Representatives even as they lose the collective popular vote for the House. And I know that that doesn't legally matter, but it's sort of interesting. They may massively lose the collective popular vote for the House of Representatives and still hope to emerge with the majority of the seats in the House of Representatives. And then what does Trump care about public opinion? He saved his House majority to the end of his administration. And the Democrats are throwing away by their own fecklessness their hope of a Senate majority. It's just, it's unbelievable.
- [35:42]
Charlie Sykes
All right, so I'm glad you. Before we move on from that, I mean, I am struck by how fast the Republicans in the south have moved to eliminate basically an entire generation of black representatives. I mean, it is rather extraordinary how quickly they have jumped to it. Obviously, the election result in Indiana made it very, very clear that Republicans needed to do this no matter what. But I'm really glad you bring this up because in my mind it's that you have the challenge in the House. I'm somewhat more optimistic. I think the Democrats will still probably win the House, but they do appear to be. Well, okay, I'm not gonna be snarky. I was gonna be determined to blow the Senate. But this is so even divided. And I have. And I want to get your take on this. I have growing anxiety that they are Democrats in 2026 are doing what Republicans did a decade and a half ago, which is to take winnable Senate seats and take them off the map. And I am specifically most worried about Maine and Michigan. What are you looking at?
- [36:47]
David Frum
Yeah, no, I think you're exactly right. First, I don't want to say I'm either optimistic or pessimistic about the House. I don't do that kind of precix wards in neighborhoods. There's so many people who do that analysis. I don't. I'm just saying that's the bid. That's the plan. I have no idea whether it will work or not. Fair your comparison to a decade ago. So in the cycles of 2010 and 2012, Republicans which were strong. Remember Obama's president in 2008, resurging backlash. In 2010, Republicans win the House of Representatives. But in the two cycles, 10 and 12, Republicans lose Senate seats in. Let me see if I have this right. Delaware, Indiana, Missouri. There's one more.
- [37:28]
Charlie Sykes
Nevada.
- [37:29]
David Frum
Nevada, thank you.
- [37:30]
Charlie Sykes
Yeah.
- [37:30]
David Frum
Where they just nominated Sharon Ingram weirdo candidates. One actually made an ad denying that she was a witch, remember? Well, and in every case. And there were better candidates available in Delaware in particular, there was a candidate who would have certainly won that, Mike Castle, remember him? Who won that seat. And they defeated him in favor of Christine o', Donnell, the I'm not a witch lady. And she lost the seat and Chris Coons won it and held it to this day. The Republicans did a similar thing in the 2022 cycle. Less in the Senate, more in governorships and state houses, where they nominated again weirdo candidates. And that happened because the Republican base was in an agitation. And in 2022, there was a lot of battle between people wanted to move on from Trump and not in the democratic case in 26. What's going on is there is this. The British have a term called entryism. So the Labour Party had rules. The Labour Party was a non communist and anti communist social democratic party and they had rules to keep communists out of the Labour Party and they had a list of prescribed organizations. If you ever had belonged to a certain to the Communist Party of Great Britain, you were not allowed to become a member of the Labour Party and to get voting rights and Labor Party. So the way communists tried to get in, they would create organizations that are personal histories that were not forbidden and try to sneak past the gatekeepers. And this was called entryism. And it was a constant problem for labor and it led to the election of Jeremy Corbyn where you had people who were much to the left, which was a disaster. Right. So the Democratic Party has an entries problem. The people who are socialists, who belong to a subgroup called the Democratic Socialists of America, which is not the Democratic Party, are entering Democratic Party politics with extreme messages on economics and above all motivated by their intense hatred of the state of Israel and their sometimes not very carefully veiled animosity toward Jewish people in general. And the Democratic Party doesn't seem to have mechanisms to screen them out. And as you say in Maine and in Michigan and maybe in other places too, there are ways that, that these Senate races may be swayed. And I think one of the reasons that the Democrats are vulnerable. It's been more than a decade of Donald Trump. And what Donald Trump has meant is he's got a very formidable connection personally with a certain segment of America. But he's hollowed out the Republican Party. And you have to be quite middle aged to remember a Republican Party that really played the game as capably as it could not enthralled in Donald Trump's ego. And I remember that Republican Party and you do. And it was sure Dick Morris had a great line about the Republicans. He said the Republican Party is like a big tank. You cross its feet with a giant cannon and you cross its field of fire on immigration, on crime, on soft on communism and that big cannon trains on you and you are dead. So the secret of success that Dick Morris taught Democrats was to be nimbler, not to let the cannon fix on you because then you're dead. And then to try to sneak around and drop a Molotov cocktail down the hatch, as Bill Clinton was able to do. So that advice has been forgotten. And the idea that you have people are going to go Head to head on Abolish ice. We're going to go head to head on America first. You say America first, we say Gaza first. And you think they've never encountered the Republican Party of Lee Atwater and Karl Rove and have no idea that a candidate like Graham Plattner in Maine, he may win in Maine. Maine's a very particular kind of state. One of the whitest states in the Union, one of the oldest states in the Union and with a strong independent streak. And Platner may connect. He may win in Maine. Platner is going to be the candidate in every state, every Republican candidate who is running against a Democrat. I'm not running against North Carolina. The Democrats have an excellent candidate.
- [41:36]
Charlie Sykes
North Carolina, wonderful chance. Yeah.
- [41:38]
David Frum
Governor Cooper. We're not running against Governor Cooper. We're running against the Nazi tattoo guy here in North Carolina. How do you in North Carolina feel about Nazi tattoo guys? And we don't care for them much. How do you feel? In every state, we're gonna be running against the Nazi tattoo guy and we're gonna be running against the candidates who campaigned with Those who denied 911 or said the United States brought 9 11. That's going to be the case.
- [42:03]
Charlie Sykes
Or who actually wrote in the last five years, I am a communist. Okay? It's like, say, this is what's exhausting because you go, I mean, Donald Trump and J.D. vance will call everybody. We're running against the communists, the socialists, the communists, the socialists. We're like, no, come on, we're not talking about that. And then these guys say, wait, no, I am a communist or I am a socialist, or I actually did think that America deserved 9 11. And I'm a big fan of Hamas. I think Hamas is great. And you do have this cadre of very online Democrats and even some of the Never Trumpers who are like, yeah, come on in, let's embrace. And David French wrote a column in the New York Times where he talked about Graham Platner. And my guess is that the overwhelming reaction was to like, you need to shut up about this because he's our candidate. He may be a lesser evil, but we're willing to embrace that. But the problem is, electorally, it's not smart. And the point you're making is. And then they become national. Everywhere, everybody has is linked to them.
- [43:12]
David Frum
I don't know if people still remember Willie Horton from the 1988 cycle. So Willie Horton was a rapist and murder. I don't know if he was a murderer, too. He was a rapist who was released from Massachusetts prison on a parole program, and he then committed another heinous crime while he's out on parole. Right. And the Willie Horton matter was actually originally came up in the Democratic primaries. And I'm going to forget which Democratic opponent of Dukakis was the one who made the first Willie Horton ads. But it was discovered in the primary process Dukakis won. And then it became a big issue for the Republicans. And Lee Atwater, who was George H.W. bush's campaign manager, said, by the time we are done, Americans are going to think that Willie Horton was Michael Dukakis running mate. And that more or less happened, actually.
- [44:02]
Charlie Sykes
Well, I mean, for Democrats, that's notorious as like, this was this racist dog whistle. And it was. On the other hand, the point you're making is their ability to take one case and to nationalize it. You need to understand that that is the dynamic. I mean, we just came off a presidential cycle where the Trump people spent $100 million about one answer that Kamala Harris had to an ACLU survey in 2019 about transgender prisoners, they spent $100 million. So then you go, let's nominate the guy with the Nazi tattoo who said, I'm a communist. I mean, well, first, I don't think
- [44:45]
David Frum
Willie Horton really was a racist dog whistle. And indeed, the most damaging part of the greatest damage he did to Dukakis campaign was in the debate between dukakis and George H.W. bush. Bernie Shaw, the anchor for CNN who was black himself, he asked the Willie Horton question and said, governor Dukakis, what would have happened if Willie Horton had assaulted your wife? And Dukakis could not answer that question effectively. But anyway, okay, have it your way. It's a racist dog whistle.
- [45:13]
Charlie Sykes
Well, we're dating ourselves because I remember that moment so distinctly. It's like, please, Democrats, be like a human being. I'm sorry, go ahead.
- [45:22]
David Frum
Democrats have this idea, I think sometimes that American politics is like FIFA soccer. And if you say, hey, ref, that was a racist dog whistle, the ref blows his own whistle and says, play's canceled. You can't use that maneuver. You know what? Suppose it is a racist dog whistle. You think Vance is not going to use a racist dog whistle? If the dog whistle. And by the way, Graham Plattner, Nazi tattoo, that's not a racist dog whistle. But if you make yourself vulnerable to these deep cultural attacks because you can't say no to a extremist faction that aren't even members of your party or weren't members of your party until 20 minutes ago. Sorry. Republicans have been complaining for years about how it was unfair that when Mitt Romney was talking about how he would get women into his government, he said, I have binders full of women. And to suggest I've pre amassed a large inventory of names of people who are so. I don't know exactly why that was supposed to be such an offensive remark. The Democrats made it. It was like he had a porn stash or something. He was weird. So the point is, it's not a game where saying that's unfair gets you very far. The question is, all you can do is make sure you have made as few possible mistakes.
- [46:45]
Charlie Sykes
Be nimble.
- [46:46]
David Frum
Be nimble. Be ready. Be prepared, and avoid the obvious errors. And you know what? Campaigning with people who say America deserved 9, 11, that's an obvious error.
- [46:54]
Charlie Sykes
Well, it's such an obvious error. And I guess part of it is we get caught up in these analogies or these slogans, and it is really, really important to have a big tent, right? It is important. You and I have talked about that. We need to make coalitions across ideological lines. And yet the big tent at some point has to have walls, right? It has to have doors. It has to have some sort of a limit. Otherwise you get the kind of entryism. And I think that right now there is this dynamic, and we're gonna get a lot of blowback on this. People saying, well, we just want people who fight. We want people who fight. We don't want milquetoast. We've tried you milk toast centers. So if that means embracing a Hassan Piker or a Graham Platner, then we're gonna go along with all of that. And we don't want to hear any warnings about how this may actually ultimately undermine your goal.
- [47:47]
David Frum
I mean, I'm going to date myself even further than even. You know, who is a great fighter, who is a courageous fighter? Self sacrifice. Pickett. Pickett's Charge. That was fighting. They really, really fought. They got massacred. They broke the army. They ran away. They retreated in defeat and led to the colossal War. But. But no loss, no lack of fighting there.
- [48:06]
Charlie Sykes
The object is the charge of the Light Brigade. Charge of the Light Brigade. Those guys were fighters, weren't they?
- [48:11]
David Frum
Yeah, they were fighters. The game is not to fight. The game is to win. And that means using this noggin, this tool, the brain, as well as whatever organ that leads you into stupid matches. And look, that doesn't mean you have to have a checklist and be constantly repudiating people, but it does mean that you need to have a very clear ability to send a very clear message, as Ronald Reagan famously did when he was endorsed. I'm going to forget who the endorsement. He got an endorsement from somebody bad. I'm going to forget who. I think this is when he ran for governor, not when he ran for president. And he said, anyone who endorses me, they are signing up for my agenda. I am not signing up for theirs. And Reagan was able to make that stick. So. Oh, so when you get. But the problem is that only works with endorsements. So if a streamer endorses you, you're not liable. But you don't have. But when you stand beside the streamer or when you actually get the Nazi tattoo on your own personal body, you can't disassociate yourself from that. And so the Democrats are taking on this association. They made a gambit in 2024 to try to condemn Trump and Vance as weird, outside the mainstream, and that was not successful. But it is a game that is constantly played, and it's something that may work better in future cycles. And it's something that a Governor Cooper can do two terms, popular governor of North Carolina, you should be able to. And that's a very much a purple state. You should be able to win that state unless you have to buck a national tide. And again, this is not just about 2026, it's about 2028. Because, you know, as Trump, there's a lot of signals that Trump is going to lead the Republican Party in jettisoning JD Vance and substituting Marco Rubio, which would be a pretty smart move if they can do it. And we all saw the chop. If you saw that clip that Marco Rubio gave when he was asked the question, what does America mean to you? And he gave an answer that, oh, that's the Republican Party that's been dormant all these years about opportunity and the capacity of the individual. I don't think it will be good for either the Republican Party or America if Trump, if there isn't some cleansing from the Trump experience of the Republican Party, returns to power without a reckoning with what Trump did. But that depends. But if the Democrats go down the path of radicalism, that may happen and they may win the House in 26. But if they win the House in 26, lose the Senate in 26 and lose the presidency in 28, what lessons has anybody learned to protect American democracy from the Trump autocracy and kleptocracy?
- [50:59]
Charlie Sykes
Well, okay, now, this is exactly what I've been Worrying about is that people need to understand that the midterm is like halftime. The eye has to be on 28, and you can win in a midterm election, even with the rig system. But if you basically plant seeds inside of yourself of this kind of radicalism that we're talking about here, you put yourself at a tremendous disadvantage in 2028 because that's a different electorate. And I think people ought to just remember the Maga Inc. I think just one super PAC has like $300 million in the bank. So people may say, well, nobody cares about this. Nobody's heard about this. Trust me, by November or certainly by 2028, there's gonna be many, many ways in which that canon is gonna be focused on your weak spots. If you are not nimble and if you are not smart about the way that you're going about doing this, this
- [51:51]
David Frum
is one thing when people who are more deeply Democratic than I am, and I think you are, say, what do you never Trump Republicans bring to the party anyway? You're not, as they said a lot in the first term, never. Trump isn't a political party. It's a dinner party. Some truth to that. But what do you bring? Say, well, you know what I bring. I know how good my former team is at this game, and I know how you guys suck at it. I know your characteristic weaknesses. And I can tell you you are right now in some kind of fever dream about your potential. And you do not know what can befall you if you do not act in a way that is more disciplined and controlled and stop the entry ism and quit treating and quit saying that, you know, people who praise North Korea and Hamas are welcome to our party because we don't think there'll ever be a price to pay for that. There will be a price.
- [52:48]
Charlie Sykes
Well, let's see, David, you and I have seen this play before. I mean, we've seen this movie before, and we know how it goes and we know how it ends. Okay, one last thing, because you mentioned this a little bit earlier, and we are sort of dialing back to the. To understand, you know, Donald Trump's corruption. But there are. There's like so many layers and so many levels. Talk to me a little bit about this report that the Department of Justice, Donald Trump's Department of Justice, which is basically does whatever he says, is about to settle his lawsuit against the irs, which will mean that he will personally pocket X amount of dollars directly from the taxpayers. I mean, this kind of feels. Next level.
- [53:31]
David Frum
There's one more Thing he's asking for. Not only for a big bunch of taxpayer money, he's asking for 10 billion. And I'm sure he'll go away for a fraction of that. But he's also, one of the terms of the settlement is. And that there never again be any audits of Trump or his family members. That's another term he's asking for. Yeah. So not only do I want to be, not only do I want to reach into the treasury for a bunch of money, but I also want to make sure that I have a lifetime get out of jail free card for any future tax fraud that I or any of my.
- [54:03]
Charlie Sykes
So just remind me, what is his suit against the IRS? He's basically suing them for $10 billion because they were mean to him. In what way?
- [54:11]
David Frum
I mean, I think he is alleging there were some leaks of Trump tax information.
- [54:15]
Charlie Sykes
Yeah, right.
- [54:16]
David Frum
In the first term. Information that Trump promised to release and never, he never kept. So somebody, and it's not clear to me that we know that it's the irs, but somebody leaked some tax information about Donald Trump. And I think including a page of his New York State tax return or a page or two. And it's unknown who did that. There have been suspicions for a long time that the Trump campaign itself leaked that document because the leak that was most specific was a leak from a year where Donald Trump got caught in a change of tax law and paid an unusually high amount of tax.
- [54:58]
Charlie Sykes
Very unusual.
- [55:00]
David Frum
So, yeah, he paid a very substantial amount of tax in this one particular year, and that was the year that happened to be leaked. And so there's been a lot of suspicion based on, I think it's just speculation. There's no reason, there's no knowledge. But whoever the leak came from, from, he's alleging it came from the IRS and is suing them for damages. Now, the bulwark against the suit so far has been the judge in the case, and this is the court of first instance. And the judge has been saying, wait a minute, Donald Trump is on one side of the battle as plaintiff, and he's also the head of the executive branch, who is the defendant. The Constitution says that Article 3 courts have jurisdiction over cases and controversies. Well, if the same person is on both sides of the ledger, both sides of the plaintiff and defendant, there's no case or controversy here. So I don't have jurisdiction. And the judge has been not yet ruled that way, but is making noises that there may not be a valid case because it's the same. It's Trump suing Trump.
- [56:04]
Charlie Sykes
Yeah, just imagine those. Yeah, well, it is Trump suing Trump.
- [56:08]
David Frum
That may be a way, an escape. I don't know, however, that every level of the federal judiciary will take that skeptical view. And even if he loses at the court of first instance, there is appealed and then there's a very friendly Supreme Court waiting at the end of the line.
- [56:24]
Charlie Sykes
Yeah, but the idea that he would sit down across the table from his own Attorney general, Todd Blanche, who will do literally anything he asks him to do, I mean, this is a guy who will indict James Comey for seashells sitting across and Donald Trump says, I think I'm owed $10 billion. What do you think, Todd? What do you think? Todd's gonna really be a tough negotiator, isn't he? I mean, he's gonna strike a hard bargain. But of course he doesn't pay the money. I guess the controversy is that you and I pay the money $10 billion and we think the ballroom is politically toxic. I think this one, this is one to keep your eye on the fact that he's trying to loot the treasury for himself. And I hadn't heard that little detail about. And never, ever, ever question me or look at me or audit me again. Sweet deal.
- [57:14]
David Frum
Sweet deal.
- [57:16]
Charlie Sykes
David Frum, thank you so much for all your time today. I appreciate it very, very much. You can read David in the Atlantic and of course watch his show, the David Frum Show. Thank you all for watching this edition of listening to this edition of to the Contrary. We will continue to do this throughout the year, even into next year because we have to continually remind ourselves that we are not the crazy ones. Thank you.
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