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- [00:00]
Charlie Sykes
Foreign. Welcome to the to the Contrary podcast. I'm Charlie Sykes. And once again, we have to remind ourselves that every time we talk about politics, we're in kind of a twilight zone. And of course, we saw that with the President's. Well, with Donald Trump's unpresidential speech, the not State of the Union address, the. The other day. So to try to hash all of this out, we are very fortunate to be joined by my old friend Karen Tumulty from the Washington Post, who has covered 10 presidential campaigns. And obviously you're all over the new administration, so thanks for joining me, Karen. I appreciate it very much.
- [00:47]
Karen Tumulty
Charles.
- [00:48]
Charlie Sykes
Good to have you back. Okay, so when I say twilight zone, this is what I'm getting at. And you covered the campaign. You were everywhere, all over the country last year. But I'm looking at this tweet here from somebody saying that, you know, if somebody had said in October that Donald Trump would blame Ukraine for not surrendering, that his terrorists would do massive economic damage, that he'd ensure that none of his cronies were prosecuted while they ran steadily more absurd crypto, Scream, crypto scams, we would be told that, you know, that we had Trump derangement syndrome. And then Ezra Klein tweeted, plus, if somebody would have said, yeah, you'll have RFK Jr. At HHS, Cash Patel and Don Ben, you know, Dan Bongino at the FBI, Tulsi Gabbard as the Director of National Intelligence, and that he would be turning over half of the government to Elon Musk, and that at one point he tried to make Matt Gaetz Attorney General. We would have thought we were losing our minds. I mean, if you would have suggested that at any point in the campaign, people would have said, karen, that's just crazy talk. And yet this is the world we live in today.
- [02:04]
Karen Tumulty
Yeah. I think what we are learning is that the phrase, well, he doesn't mean it should never be applied to Donald Trump. And you also should add Project 2025, which throughout the campaign, they claimed they had nothing to do with no knowledge of what was even in there. And now you see them kind of going by the book.
- [02:29]
Charlie Sykes
No, they are going by the book. And I guess this is. We keep coming back to the fact that they told us what they were going to do. That campaign was pure, undiluted Trumpism. They had the blueprint for what they were going to do. And yet it does seem that official Washington is taken completely by surprise that Donald Trump is Donald Trump and doing exactly what he laid out. He was going to do. How do you square that?
- [02:55]
Karen Tumulty
I think a lot, a couple of things. One is that he had four years to sit there and stew and ponder and think about what he would do if he ever had another shot at this. And number two, he is now surrounded by people who are there to not only enable him, but to accelerate things. I mean, Elon Musk is the classic move fast and break things, Silicon Valley model applied to governance where you should never, you know, it should never be.
- [03:41]
Charlie Sykes
No. And he clearly is pursuing his own agenda. We're going to come back to Elon Musk, but let's talk about that speech. And I don't want to spend a lot of time on it because I think that we make the mistake of overanalyzing these set piece performative addresses to Congress. And for those of you, by the way, who are watching on YouTube or listening to the podcast, I hope that you consider subscribing to my newsletter to the contrary. Because this is what I wrote the morning after that speech. I said, really? Do we have to do this? Do we have to pretend that last night's ritualized self stroking, performative bullshit and blather was some sort of meaningful or revealing moment in our politics? Or can we just admit that for 100 minutes on Tuesday night, America collectively realized that it had picked a very bad week to quit sniffing glue? Okay, so that was me. You wrote about this as well, and you use the word delusional. We had a lot of showmanship, but it was ultimately delusional. Talk to me about that, Karen.
- [04:44]
Karen Tumulty
Well, I mean, because here we are on the most ominous day of Trump's second term. The market has crashed. A trade war that is likely to set inflation on fire and potentially damage the entire global economy has begun. And the consequences are going to fall, you know, hardest on a lot of the working class people who put Donald Trump back in office because they thought he was going to fix the economy and do something about inflation. And he stands there and announces that America has entered a new golden era. And, you know, it was just so at odds with reality. And, you know, maybe I was giving him a little too much credit in my expectations. But he's also reached this point where there are some things that to get them done. I mean, he's been doing all of this with executive action, you know, trampling the separation of powers in the Constitution. But now he's getting the point where he's got to actually have Congress do some things for him, starting with making those tax cuts permanent and, you know, money that he wants for the border. And he's also, there's a couple of big things coming up that he's even gonna need a few Democrats to do.
- [06:27]
Charlie Sykes
Yeah, he wasn't exactly reaching across the aisle, was he, though? And you're talking about the possibility of a government shutdown, which I think becomes more likely every day. What do you think?
- [06:39]
Karen Tumulty
You know, I have. My operating assumption has been that Democrats don't like shutdowns. But I've got to tell you, you know, I am talking to people on the Hill who, Democrats on the Hill who are just saying, let it, let it shut down. Which, again, I'm not used to hearing from Democrats.
- [07:05]
Charlie Sykes
Yeah, that's not, that's not their usual thing. But I, you know, frankly, I'm not even sure that Donald Trump cares whether he shuts the government down. You know, I know that, you know, he obviously has some major legislative initiatives. He very, very much wants the tax cuts, I'm going to give you that. But, you know, I'm, I'm just thinking that Donald Trump is probably pretty happy with the way things have gone, even without legislation, even if he doesn't get major legislation, because, I mean, you're seeing his ID on full display, what he's doing to the Department of Justice, what he's doing to the Department of Defense, what he's doing on foreign policy. You know, almost every one of the things that I think Donald Trump was probably brooding about at 3 o'clock in the morning, he's thinking, you know, I've done those things, I've fired those people. I have made the people that I want to fear, afraid. And, you know, this is the thing about Donald Trump. Does he actually need to build a wall on the border and have Mexico pay for it? No, he just needs to say it.
- [08:03]
Karen Tumulty
Right?
- [08:04]
Charlie Sykes
I mean, this is the bullshit factor. The delusional factor for Donald Trump is that he believes that if he just simply uses his magical powers and says, I have accomplished this, that somehow it's done. Which is why I don't think he sweats the legislation as much as the conventional wisdom might suggest.
- [08:23]
Karen Tumulty
I think he genuinely wants two things. He wants those tax cuts to be made permanent.
- [08:28]
Charlie Sykes
Yes.
- [08:29]
Karen Tumulty
And he wants some money on the border. But in terms of the big, beautiful bill that the House Republicans walked the plank for last week that, you know, included hundreds of billions of dollars in Medicaid cuts, I don't see the Senate going along with that. And I think Trump's gonna leave them out to dry. He doesn't. Number one, he's promised not to cut Medicaid because he knows who. Who benefits from it, which is his base. And he doesn't care about deficits.
- [09:09]
Charlie Sykes
No, he doesn't care about either one of those things. And when you say leave them out to dry, what you're describing is like the worst nightmare for a Republican in the House of Representatives. You vote for these draconian cuts that you have to defend back home, and then basically you're cut off at the knees because the Senate doesn't go along with you and probably Trump cuts you up. I wanna come back to the cuts and some of the things that are. Happen, happened. Let's talk about the speech, because there's an interesting divide which is going to continue to play out. Divide among Democrats is how do you fight back against Donald Trump? How performative are you going to be? And so you had the people who were waving the signs, waving their canes, yelling, walking out. What did you think? I mean, to me, it was another reminder. The Democrats still have not figured out how to fight against this fire hose. They know the base wants them to fight, but they haven't quite figured out how to do it. So you had, on the one hand, Al Green, who stands up and gets thrown out of the House. I imagine he's a resistance hero. I'm going to say at the other end of the spectrum, you have Senator Slotkin from Michigan, who gave the response, who was much more measured, much more serious. I'll tell you where I came down on that. I said, we need less Green, more Slotkin. But what was your reaction? I'm not sure that the Democrats came off the way they hoped during that televised portion of the speech.
- [10:39]
Karen Tumulty
Oh, I mean, is there any more direct way to signal I am impotent than waving lollipops at the President, the signs. And I thought Slotkin, let's start by saying giving the response to a presidential address is something. It is. Everybody blows it. And she did the best performance at that that I have ever seen.
- [11:09]
Charlie Sykes
But okay, I agree with you, by the way.
- [11:11]
Karen Tumulty
Yeah, she made so much sense. And the fact is, they are going to. I mean, Trump is going to have to ni cap himself. They just have no power, no leverage, except on a few of these votes that are coming up.
- [11:30]
Charlie Sykes
Yeah. No, I thought Alyssa Slotkin was very good. You're right. When you think back on most of the responses that we remember are responses that were disasters. Just last year, Katie Britt from Alabama became an Internet meme for how absurd she was. You had Scarlett Johansson and going on Saturday Night Live to mock her because it was so terrible. And of course, Marco Rubio couldn't get through his. Without drinking water, which, I don't know. We can talk about Marco Rubio a little bit later. But I thought she also struck an interesting note, which is to. And an important note as someone who just won an election. Now, I was thinking about this because Tom Nichols and I are good friends, by the way. Yeah.
- [12:18]
Karen Tumulty
Won an election in a state that Trump won.
- [12:21]
Charlie Sykes
Well, this is the key point. So Tom Nichols and I are friends. We agree on almost everything. He didn't like the speech. He thought she was too normal, that she didn't capture the hallucinate, you know, the hallucination of our politics. I actually thought she did a pretty good job. But the thing is that, you know, if Tom or I had given that response, it would have a very different tone. It would be much more hair on fire. But neither Tom nor I have won an election in a state that Donald Trump won. And this is important. And you could sort of see the formula there where she said, look, I'm really one, I'm one of you. I share your values. Here's where we connect on our values, and here's where Donald Trump is betraying those values and what we should do. And that's a very interesting formula. Not to reject those positions, but to say, look, we all want strong national security, we want a secure border, but not the way that he is doing it. Invoking Ronald Reagan, saying how Ronald Reagan would be so embarrassed to watch Donald Trump in the White House saying, I think we ought to cut government spending, that government is too bloated. But not the way Elon Musk, you know, and his 19 year old kids who call themselves big balls are doing it. Right. I mean, so I thought this was a very interesting, I thought that was a very interesting approach she took.
- [13:46]
Karen Tumulty
Oh, I agree. And she came off as a grown up. And I think part of this, what you have to remember is this is a woman who comes from a national security background. You know, she didn't come up kind of in partisan politics and she won her House seat in a very, very, very tough district. So she's been tested.
- [14:15]
Charlie Sykes
Yeah, she's been tested. She knows how to do. Now, we talked about the, the tariffs just before you and I began taping this podcast. Donald Trump, who apparently saw a segment on Fox News about how car prices were going up. You know, some expensive car went from 20,000 to 100,000. So he announced that he is now exempting cars that Come in under the. Under whatever is the successor to nafta. So, by the way, we're in a period now where Donald Trump is going to be picking winners and losers, maybe on a daily basis. Oh, not you, not you, not you. And we can sort of imagine how that's going to work, because Donald Trump has shown no reluctance to reward his friends and punish his enemies, Right?
- [15:01]
Karen Tumulty
Oh, exactly. These are going to be the industries that come to him on bended knee. And, you know, it's. It's like the, you know, Catholic Church in the Middle Ages selling indulgences.
- [15:15]
Charlie Sykes
Yes, exactly. It is exactly like that. And he probably would like that, that particular analogy. So talk to me a bit, because you've been out and you went out in the country, you've talked to the, the voters and everything. I mean, throughout the last couple of years. How does, how, how is the. You know what? Let me rephrase it, because it's always hard to predict, but the most extraordinary thing that's happened in the last week, and I don't want to move, Move past it too quickly, the, the way the United States changed sides in the war over democracy, how we sided with Russia, how we clearly betrayed Ukraine, and then we had that extra extraordinary meeting in the oval office where J.D. vance and Donald Trump berated Volodymyr Zelensky, threw him out in the most humiliating fashion from the White House, and then follow that up by cutting off military aid and apparently intelligence support. This is a dark time for the world. The rest of the free world seems to be rallying around Zelensky. Trump suggests that maybe there's a reset. How are Republicans and voters processing this?
- [16:32]
Karen Tumulty
It's shocking to me how Republicans on the Hill are not pushing back. Well, Marco Rubio, of all people, sitting there on the couch, our new Secretary of State, just looking uncomfortable as this whole scene is playing out.
- [16:51]
Charlie Sykes
Poor little Marco. Poor little Marco. I hope I can see if you're watching this on video. This is my. This is the world's smallest violin playing. My heart bleeds for. Marco. Oh, I'm sorry. Go ahead.
- [17:03]
Karen Tumulty
This is so what. We're six weeks into this presidency and, you know, Trump is dismantling a world order that the United States itself spent the last 75 years building. It is. It is just remarkable. And you know, that.
- [17:29]
Charlie Sykes
Is that, what, Is that what Republicans want? Is that what voters want? I mean, I understand the appeal of, hey, let's put America first. Let's put more resources into the United States. But did people really believe. Do they really Want us to abandon NATO? Do they really want us to side with Vladimir Putin? And. And is this something that Republicans really think they need to swallow in order to stay on Donald Trump's good side? I know what the answers are, but I'll.
- [17:56]
Karen Tumulty
Yeah, apparently so. I think that people legitimately feel that, you know, this is a war that has gone on for three years with slaughter on both sides. It is really hard to see how Ukraine wins this. And so there is a very good argument that it is time to move to end game negotiations. But to cloak all of that in lies about which country invaded and which leader is a dictator is the thing that I wouldn't have thought Republicans, as beholden as they are, as dominated as they are by Trump, I would have thought this was too far.
- [18:56]
Charlie Sykes
Well, of course we would have thought it was too far, but we've watched this now for the last, what, eight to 10 years, it feels like. And you talk about that scene of Marco Rubio sitting there slumped in the couch, trying to make himself as small as possible. And, you know, he. He does a pretty good job of doing that.
- [19:16]
Karen Tumulty
Yeah. Homer's hedges.
- [19:18]
Charlie Sykes
Exactly. I mean, almost. Yes, exactly. A perfect. A perfect meme for that. But again, it goes back to this. You know, we need to make all of these compromises and suck up to Donald Trump. It's important to be in the room. Right? I mean, this was the rationalization. I used to kind of, you know, poke it, you know, Paul Ryan for the kind of compromises he made, but they seem very modest compared to what Marco Rubio is doing. And again, once you're. The whole point is I need to be in the room so that when something really big happens, I can be influential. What is bigger than this? And if, if, if you don't resign over siding with Vladimir Putin, what would be the issue that would be the red line? And I'm struck by this, that not one senior official has said, I'm sorry, I just can't. I just can't do this just because we're in the honeymoon period, because there are no grownups left. There are all toadies or, you know, you know, sycophants like, like Marco Rubio.
- [20:17]
Karen Tumulty
But that's the difference between the first Trump administration and this one. The people who signed on to that one had at least a slim expectation that if they were in the room, they could change things, that they could, you know, and there were occasions when they were the guardrails. Yeah, everybody who signed on this time around knew exactly what they were signing on for.
- [20:47]
Charlie Sykes
Well, okay, I agree with you, but let me play devil's advocate here. Marco Rubio probably figured, you know, I'm going to have to swallow a lot of stuff, you know, in order to get whatever it is he wants. Who knows what that is? I'm not sure that he had the ethnic cleansing of Gaza and Trump Gaza Hotel on his bingo card, and yet he has to go along with that. We're getting these stories now that are being leaked out that, that he's being cut out, that he's feeling bad, that, you know, he's, you know, that he's, that he's being side, he's being sidetracked. But on the other hand, whenever anything like this happens, he's the first guy out there posting on social media. Yes. Make Gaza great again. And I'm sure that there was no part of Marco Rubio's worldview that really thought we were going to ethically cleanse Gaza and build a golf club for Donald Trump there.
- [21:36]
Karen Tumulty
And after the episode in the Oval Office the other day, going out and lauding how strong the President looked.
- [21:45]
Charlie Sykes
Yeah. All right, let's talk about Elon Musk, because you mentioned him before, and he's a central, he is the central figure, I would say, in the drama of Trump 2.0 so far. And again, a year ago, nobody saw this coming. Is that fair to say that it was nothing? Yeah, six months ago, maybe nobody saw it coming. I mean, and so he is rushing through the government, smashing things as you go, moving fast, breaking things. I'm not sure that he fully understands what he is breaking. I know he doesn't care what he is breaking. But first of all, the polls would suggest that he is not necessarily an asset and his lack of political experience keeps coming through. So, for example, what do you make of the fact that he goes on Joe Rogan show and refers to Social Security as a Ponzi scheme at the same time that he's slashing the staff of Social Security, which I don't know. I literally don't know a single Republican elected official who would come within 10 miles of saying something like that.
- [22:50]
Karen Tumulty
Well, do you remember in the 2020, I think it was 2012, Rick Perry was actually referring to Social Security as a Ponzi scheme.
- [22:59]
Charlie Sykes
And, yeah, that worked out well for him.
- [23:00]
Karen Tumulty
That got him.
- [23:02]
Charlie Sykes
Right.
- [23:03]
Karen Tumulty
It's, you know, the, the whole Elon Musk effect. It's, he's becoming incredibly unpopular. But so far, Trump's poll numbers are relatively strong. I mean, they're not what you usually get as a honeymoon, but they're higher than they were in Trump's first term, and they're higher than Joe Biden's were after Afghanistan. So thus far, it really does not look like Elon Musk is pulling down Trump. Yeah, and I, I think this marriage breaks up the minute Trump perceives that that is happening.
- [23:48]
Charlie Sykes
Okay, how does that happen, though? And I'm sorry for longtime listeners that I keep asking this question because I do think this is going to be one of the sort of the Shakespearean dramas of the administration, the breakup between Elon Musk and Donald Trump, because there can only be one, you know, you can't have two, you know, world beast riding narcissists, you know, in the same room. But this is. How does it happen? How does Donald Trump get rid of somebody as big and as unhinged as Elon Musk?
- [24:20]
Karen Tumulty
You know, I don't know and I've learned not to predict, but it just seems like at some point this happens. At some point he breaks something that can't be fixed. You, you know, you can go find all those nuclear inspectors and bring them.
- [24:44]
Charlie Sykes
Back, and he'd make the ultimate scapegoat. Right? I didn't do this. He did this.
- [24:50]
Karen Tumulty
Yes.
- [24:50]
Charlie Sykes
You know, and now I, Donald Trump, am fixing this by getting rid of the guy that broke this.
- [24:55]
Karen Tumulty
Right. And the, literally, somebody at the White House the other day used the, the phrase, you know, that told me, you know, we knew all along that he was gonna, he was gonna break things, he was gonna make mistakes. And this person said, but we think we have super glue. So, you know, when that turns out to not be true, I think that's the end of it. His brief, by the way, I think according to the executive order that established Doge, I think he's got until July 4, 2026, but I just don't see how he lasts that long.
- [25:46]
Charlie Sykes
So before we started, you were mentioning that. And again, the way he's going about the cuts, it does not seem systematic. It doesn't seem to be focused in any way. And Elisa Slot can mention this, that CEO that began cutting costs the way he is would be immediately fired. The fact is there are blueprints floating around the federal government about how you can eliminate waste or how you can increase revenue or lower the, or lower the deficit. He doesn't appear to be interested in all of that. But talk to me about some of the things you're working on about, you know, other possibilities for it were actually really lowering the deficit.
- [26:28]
Karen Tumulty
Well, I, and as we're as we're recording this. I have a column that is just about to post that looks at every two years since 1990, the Government Accountability Office, which used to be the General Accounting Office, puts together this report of waste, fraud and abuse. They call it their high risk list. And as luck would have it, one just came out within the last couple of weeks. And I would really recommend people, I will have a link, I'm sure, in my column. But they go over the places where the government really does either misspend money or, or needs to sort of reinvent itself. They have saved, over the years, the recommendations have saved hundreds of billions of dollars, really. And the latest one looks at a number of things that are exactly contrary to what Doge is doing. For instance, they note that for tax year 2022, the IRS estimated that it failed to collect something like $600 billion in taxes that it was owed. And rather than going and looking for tax cheats, what Doge is planning to do is cut the staff of the IRS in half. I mean, exactly the opposite of what you should be doing. And the new area that was added this year to their list of problem areas in the government is disaster relief.
- [28:20]
Charlie Sykes
Jesus.
- [28:21]
Karen Tumulty
And because we're, last year we saw a record number of natural disasters that cost more than a billion dollars. The agencies, you know, FEMA is way overstretched. It's, it's dealing. I forgot the number, but it was some huge number of disasters at the same time, some of which go back 20, 20 years. And all of this disaster response is spread over 30 something federal agencies that don't talk to each other. So, you know, the obvious recommendation is let's rationalize this. And you know, what it's proposing is getting rid of FEMA entirely. And it isn't like we're going to have fewer disasters to deal with or that hurricanes and tornadoes and floods and fires recognize state lines because Trump says all you need to do is get rid of FEMA and hand the states money to deal with their own disasters.
- [29:24]
Charlie Sykes
See, all of this seems so risky because you can see downstream some of the consequences to this if there's a disaster and the federal government doesn't respond and you have just abolished fema. Also, we now have a measles outbreak around the country at the moment that we have Robert F. Kennedy Jr. At HHS. And interestingly enough, the story, and I guess I'll puzzle by the chief spokesman for the department resigned because he was, you know, in conflict with the way Kennedy is handling, is handling this, this pandemic now Was he a holdover? Was he somebody brought in? Because if, if he was not a holdover, then you should have known exactly who RFK Jr. Was. But you're already seeing controversy within the, the agencies about. Guys, you are not taking this seriously. I mean, measles alone could be. I mean, that could be a major game changer for these folks. Do you think so?
- [30:24]
Karen Tumulty
Oh, yes. And on top of that, you have bird flu, which is looking get worse before it gets better. And, you know, in last night's speech, I don't think people should overlook the fact that Trump brought up autism. And he said correctly that the numbers of diagnoses are going up, although that could be because people have different ways of diagnosing it than they used to, more sensitive ways. But it was a way to sort of tiptoe toward RFK Jr. S long discredited theories about vaccines and autism.
- [31:11]
Charlie Sykes
Long discredited, long debunked.
- [31:14]
Karen Tumulty
But it's, you know, I mean, the real problem here is that a lot of people just aren't getting vaccinated anymore.
- [31:24]
Charlie Sykes
Well, and so the potential disaster of that, I mean, you know, having lived through, you know, watching polio be eradicated, measles disappearing from this country because of vaccination, and that we are now rolling back some of the great medical miracles of our, of our time. What could possibly go wrong? And by the way, I don't want to cast this simply in terms of the political fallout, because the implications for change, children for vulnerable individuals is obviously huge. I mean, the people will quite literally die. Okay, Speaking of all of the cuts, one of the things that happened on Wednesday morning that was seemed rather significant. The U.S. supreme Court, 5 to 4, handed Donald Trump a major defeat on his efforts to cut foreign aid. So you had a 54 majority upholding a lower court ruling that blocked his cuts in federal aid. Magaworld is completely in fuego about this, but this is the first major test, it seems, of whether or not this conservative court would stand athwart what Trump is doing right now. So how big a deal is that? What was your take on that court ruling, Karen?
- [32:44]
Karen Tumulty
Well, it's a huge deal, and, you know, we've got a lot of other cases heading their way, including birthright citizenship.
- [32:54]
Charlie Sykes
Yeah.
- [32:54]
Karen Tumulty
And the next question is, would we know? Trump doesn't have a lot of regard for court rulings, but what is he going to do when it's the Supreme Court ruling? I mean, would even Trump be audacious enough to defy the United States Supreme Court?
- [33:23]
Charlie Sykes
I would say Possibly, yes. And equally shocking, but maybe not surprising, is that the Republicans in Congress might go along with that. Unthinkable, but we've seen the pattern.
- [33:39]
Karen Tumulty
But would that finally be enough to wake up the resistance? I don't know.
- [33:48]
Charlie Sykes
Okay, so you mentioned you wrote a column a month ago that made the point, the Constitution is collapsing. A lack of character is to blame. The founders would not have envisioned a Congress so supine in the face of Trump's barrage. And I think this is such an important point, because I guess I. I have been thinking about this a lot. I think a lot of other people have it. We had thought the Constitution was this strong, impervious system of checks and balances. And over the last few years, we've realized that, in fact, it's incredibly fragile, incredibly vulnerable, that many of those norms were simply based on an honor system. And so as I look at it, you go, you know, perhaps the Constitution, you know, is a much more flawed document, is failing, failing to do what we thought. But it does come down, as you write, to character, isn't it? Because the Constitution always relied on men and women of strong character to uphold it.
- [34:46]
Karen Tumulty
Yeah. And while people use the phrase constitutional crisis a lot, I do think that it's more of a constitutional collapse. Because, you know, founders, James Madison made it very clear by making Congress Article 1, that of the three branches, this was the one that was supposed to be supreme.
- [35:12]
Charlie Sykes
This is what he wrote. In Republican government, the legislative authority necessarily predominates. That was their view.
- [35:20]
Karen Tumulty
That was James Madison. And what we are seeing is the Article 1 branch is just lying down and letting Article 1, Article 2, the executive, run right over it. And, you know, at what point do they fight back? I don't know, but I'll be. It would be very interesting to see what a lot of these Republicans would say about all this the next time there's a Democratic president.
- [35:54]
Charlie Sykes
Yeah, No, I think that the norms of, you know, you know, flip around, people reverse their positions depending on who's in office. Right. We have seen this. It is interesting, though, that you've had people warning about the imperial presidency going back, you know, into the Nixon years and probably before that, and yet now we're seeing all the consequences. But the Founders really believed, as you point out, that Congress would be jealous of its prerogatives, that there's no way that senators would turn themselves into potted plants, that they would fight to preserve their power and their constitutional predominance. That has not happened. And that was something that was not that they. That they did not predict or count on. And it continues to be amazing because, you know, despite this dominance of Donald Trump, think how thin his control of government is. You have four Republican members of the Senate that could say, bullshit, right? You have just a handful, less than half a dozen Republican congressmen who said, no, we're not going to pass this legislation. And Donald Trump's hands are. Well, they're not tied, but they're certain his power, his hubris, is limited. And yet we can't even find a half dozen honest men and women to say no to him in the Republican.
- [37:13]
Karen Tumulty
Party because their next re elections are more important to them than the institutions they represent or even their place in history.
- [37:26]
Charlie Sykes
Okay, you've been doing this for a long time. I've been doing this for a long time. Is politics attracting a different breed of people, or are we just exposing what's always been there? Because at one time, there were people who said, you know what? I have a life outside of elected office. I am not gonna humiliate myself. And now it seems like, no, whatever it takes, I cannot go home. I have to be a senator. I have to be a congressman. I am willing to do or say anything. So has the kind of person being attracted to politics or the kind of person being repelled from politics changed in the last 20, 30 years? What are you seeing?
- [38:04]
Karen Tumulty
I think that the system and the polarization of the country, the sorting of the country, has gotten to the point where people get elected by being the most extreme representatives of their party. And that's how they get here. They don't get here by promising to get things done. They get here by promising to stop things. I remember National Journal used to do this survey of voting records, and they would rank everybody in the Senate from the most liberal to the most conservative, based on how they voted. And about 15 years ago, maybe, okay, 20 years ago, you'd look at the United States Senate, and 60% of the Senate's voting records were somewhere between the most liberal Republican and the most conservative Democrat in the Senate. You can't blame this on gerrymandering. They come from states, and yet by 10 years ago, there was not a single Senator who was somewhere between the most liberal Republican and the most conservative Democrat. That the moderates have essentially been wiped out in the Senate.
- [39:29]
Charlie Sykes
Yeah, well, and I think there's also just thoughtful, you know, thoughtful members. You know, here in Wisconsin, we had Mike Gallagher, who was a rising star in the House of Representatives. I mean, he could have been speaker someday. And at the age of 39. He said, I'm out of here. I just don't want to. I don't want to do this anymore. And so I'm looking at the kinds of people who are now in office. You know, you got a guy named Van Orden out west. You have. He was a Gallagher seat by. Has been replaced by a MAGA guy. It's also a much more mediocre group. So. And we're going to live with that for a very long time.
- [40:07]
Karen Tumulty
Well, I did a piece recently on Mikey Sherrill of New Jersey and Abigail Spanberger of Virginia, two women from these national security backgrounds.
- [40:17]
Charlie Sykes
Very impressive Congress.
- [40:18]
Karen Tumulty
When Alyssa Slotkin did. Both of them are leaving, and oddly enough, they've been roommates in Washington for four years, but both of them are leaving to go run for governor. And when I interviewed them, they said, you know, Congress has just become all about the processes and not about actually getting anything done. And if you want to do things, you can't do it in the legislative branch in Washington.
- [40:48]
Charlie Sykes
Well, let's talk about one of the other guardrails of democracy. And feel free not to answer this question, Karen, because we have to talk about the way the media is reacting to all of this. And so I know where this is going.
- [41:02]
Karen Tumulty
Yes.
- [41:04]
Charlie Sykes
So talk to me. You're an associate editor of the Washington Post. How go things there with your owner deciding that he's going to be flexing his muscles a little bit? So I'm throwing out the Jeff Bezos question for you, Karen. What's going on there?
- [41:20]
Karen Tumulty
I don't understand yet myself how and if this is going. I mean, I am still writing exactly what I want to write. I have written two pretty critical columns about the Republicans in the last week. I'm not always critical of the Republicans, but my columns have gone in exactly how I've written them. So, you know, I just don't know. I mean, who among us isn't for individual freedom?
- [42:02]
Charlie Sykes
And I'm all for that.
- [42:04]
Karen Tumulty
So I, I just, I wish I could tell you how this is all going to play out. I just don't know. My. A lot may become clearer when the Post hires a new opinions editor, but for now, I'm still writing things the way I always did, and nobody's trying.
- [42:25]
Charlie Sykes
To pull the reins, so that's good. We know what the former editor, Marty Baron, thinks about this. What do you think Kathryn Graham would think about what's going on?
- [42:36]
Karen Tumulty
You know, this just was not the way she ran things when she owned the paper. And by the way, it is not how Jeff Bezos has run the paper. I mean, Marty Baron wrote an entire book that pretty much lionized Jeff Bezos and all of the times that he had that was then stood up for our independence. So I just don't know how big of a shift this is actually going to be.
- [43:12]
Charlie Sykes
Well, and we will see. I mean, you know, part of it is just the sort of, the pattern is just watching that, this, that we are now moving to this new age of the oligarchs who are now vying with one another for not just being, you know, wealthier than God, but also, you know, how powerful they are. And, and to watch, you know, Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg and Bezos and the owner of the LA Times, and there are others downstream as well, all deciding to kind of get on board this new, this new gilded, grifted age that we're in now because it's not one institution or another institution. It just seems like there's this massive cultural shift happening and we're all just spectators. Karen Tumulty, thank you for coming back on this podcast. I say coming back on this podcast because you are regular on the other podcast and it's really good to talk with you again. I appreciate it very much.
- [44:08]
Karen Tumulty
It is so great to be here. I hope I see you soon in Wisconsin.
- [44:12]
Charlie Sykes
Well, yes, make sure you check in. And thank you all for listening to today's edition of to the Contrary podcast. We do this several times a week because more than ever, it is important to remind ourselves we are not the crazy ones. Thanks.