← To The Contrary with Charlie Sykes
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- [00:00]
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- [02:13]
Professor Nicholas Grossman
Did I talk too much? Can I just let it go?
- [02:22]
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- [02:56]
Charlie Sykes
I'm Charlie Sykes. Welcome back to the to the Contrary podcast. I am joined by Professor Nicholas Grossman, who is an expert in all things political. Nicholas, thank you for coming back. I appreciate it.
- [03:06]
Professor Nicholas Grossman
Hi, great to be back with you.
- [03:08]
Charlie Sykes
You know, where should we start today? I wanted to start with the fact that over the weekend we found out that Donald Trump wants the new Commander's NFL stadium named after him because everything has to be named after, you know, Trump Stadium. He's going to have to have a, he's going to have a coin with his, you know, his face on both sides of it. But it's interesting. He goes to the game, the Lions Commanders game, and he is, I, I think the, the phrase would be roundly booed by the crowd. So I'm not sure how that works. Is there any, is there any sports stadium anywhere in America that's named after a living politician? By the way? Can you think of any?
- [03:42]
Professor Nicholas Grossman
I was after a living politician? Not that I can think of. I mean, there was RFK Stadium, though. I think they've changed that name, but that right after somebody who died in honor of them. So, no, not a living politician. That's like a monument to ego. And most of them do not.
- [04:00]
Charlie Sykes
A little bit. And this felt like the kind of the weekend where he was sitting around the White House just throwing spaghetti up against the wall, like, hey, 50 year mortgages. What could go wrong there? I'm going to send out $2,000 checks to people, et cetera. And, and so there was a kind of a, and also we had this, these suboptimal optics of yet another one of the lavish Mar A Lago parties the same day that he was going to the Supreme Court to shut down SNAP benefits for hungry people. I mean, it was this Marie Antoinette perfect moment coming after the elections last week. And it kind of felt like they had really lost the plot. And then of course, Democrats do what Democrats so often do. They caved. Now, let me, let me tell you something, Nicholas. I have spent most of the day on Monday trying to be really reasonable and moderate and thoughtful about what the eight Democrats who caved did, that maybe they have a point. Angus King is a smart guy, right? Tim Kaine is another smart guy. You know, is there something that I'm not getting here? Because, you know, it's when you have a podcast called to the contrary. I don't want to necessarily just jump into the rush of social media outrage about this, but I have to tell you, and it is late Monday afternoon, I have failed to come up with a coherent defense. That doesn't sound like complete bullshit in my head to what they did here. And I see that you've written a piece which we're going to link to on the newsletter about this. The Democrats have to get out of a normal democracy mindset. So let's just talk about this. It just, it felt and I'm trying to think of was it, was it so somebody on social media said that the weekend can be summed up with the Democrats are winning. The Democrats are winning. We surrender. So how do you read this? Give me your sense, how bad was this?
- [06:04]
Professor Nicholas Grossman
Similarly, and I think the timing really stands out of them waiting until just a few days after you the election and one where they did really well. And that suggests to me that they were worried that voters wouldn't like this, that it would dampen enthusiasm, that essentially they knew it was bad. And so instead of doing it in advance of the election, when that's what people would be thinking about, they waited until after voters went and said, you know, we like that you're fighting and we want you to do it more. I mean, you can add the big no Kings protest happened shortly before it also sending that message and then they folded. I could make a case the positive case. I think it's a good way to actually to start of trying to defend it. And part of the problem is that the senators themselves have defended it very poorly, which really doesn't help. You know, you mentioned Angus King and his argument was that, well, fighting Donald Trump didn't work. And it was like, well, of course you didn't see it through when you quit early. Then of course it doesn't work. And why that would be a pitch to the voters of we have decided that standing up against this authoritarian president who we disagree with on everything and isn't worth it, it doesn't work. But no, I was going to do positive. Right. So I think the case for it is one that there was a lot of harm being done in the shutdown that would be at least temporarily mitigated by passing a bill. So it will likely get snap money to a bunch of hungry families. Could be literally millions of families that depend on that for food. It's going to get air travel up and running again in a way that was disrupted, especially heading into the Thanksgiving. Their various federal employees that we are effectively asking to work without giving them paychecks. And this way they will get paychecks. All of them have families. You know, some of them are living check to check. So all of that is positive. And I think you can make a case that Democrats helped their midterm chances to the extent that something a full year before an election can help by putting the Republicans in the position of being openly opposed to health insurance or to health insurance being cheap, to basically wanting to make health insurance more expensive. And they'll probably get them to take some votes in which they vote that way, and those votes will end up in ads. And so in that sense, you could say they made their point. That's the best I can do because I think that that's a good example of the normal democracy mindset, as if this is, you know, 2014 or 2006 or something. And that's what I was in that situation at all. And that they need to move on from.
- [08:30]
Charlie Sykes
Yeah, I was kind of working down that path, realizing that, okay, so the one thing that they had been holding out for was, you know, the vote on the extension of the Obamacare, you know, premium supports. And look, they're not going to get that, you know, whatever the concessions, you know, are not going to work, but it's going to force all the senators and all the members of the Congress to vote on that. And so that will be in every single ad. So, you know, that's still a live issue. It's not gonna do anything for the people who are going to get stuck with the premiums, however. So that was the one thing I was thinking, is there some part of this that we outsiders don't get? Is there some insider knowledge? But basically what it came down to, and I read your piece where you said, you know, that by going into a government shutdown, rather than validating Trump's lawbreaking with a vote for his budget, Democrats were finally acting like a real opposition. But what did they do? You know, 40 days in, after all this pain, all this suffering, they say, yeah, it wasn't worth standing up to Donald Trump. He wasn't going to cave. So you walk through. I'm sorry, to get ahead here. You know, let's walk through the three options. If Democrats had kept holding out, they could have succeeded. If. And let's walk through the various. There are three ways they could have succeeded, right?
- [09:51]
Professor Nicholas Grossman
So one was, and this is, you know, the really unlikely one, but that Trump makes sort of concession, a credible commitment to follow budgetary laws. And the fact that, you know, he's such a liar and lawbreaker means that he probably couldn't be credible. But in theory, something where Trump folds to them. So I think, you know, but that one's Unlikely second option would have been that Republicans in Congress make some sort of real policy concession. And this both, you know, on health care subsidies, for example, doesn't have to be all the way, just partial or on snap or really just about anything that Democrats want policy wise.
- [10:23]
Charlie Sykes
I think that was plausible.
- [10:25]
Professor Nicholas Grossman
That gets help to people. And it also establishes a point of leverage where next time when Trump tries some of the shenanigans, Democrats can just immediately turn around and say, well, okay, those things that you agreed were important, well, now we're just going to lose them again and rerun the same process and would have been in a stronger position as opposed to what they did, leaving themselves in a weaker position where, where they revealed to Trump and the Republicans what are things that have leverage over them, what can make them fold. And then the third one, the third possibility, which I think was probably the logical way out, was that Republicans changed the rules in the Senate to change the filibuster rules, allow a normal super, a normal majority instead of 60 votes, super majority, which Republicans have done multiple times before, for example, to confirm Supreme Court justices, the three in Trump's first term that were all done with fewer than 60 votes, all because Republicans change this rule. And I find the way of treating the filibuster almost as holy writ to be very odd, where it's just assumed that, okay, so the minority can say no, there's a 60 vote barrier, and then the majority can say no, there's not, it's just 50. And for some reason that move by the majority is just taken as a, well, of course they're not going to do that. It's on the burden of the minority to pass things. And I don't think that makes much sense. And one of the big problems with the normal democracy mindset that where a lot of Democrats were uncomfortable with the fight itself, thinking that as long as the fight goes on, that is bad for them. And really it was a lot worse for Trump and the Republicans and then by extension for America and for American democracy would have been better if it's bad for Trump and the Republicans, because things like we saw his approval rating declining and the public blaming the Republicans and of course they're blaming the people who are totally in charge. So even seeing it as the, you know, almost an endurance contest of a similar, similar thing like war of attrition or when Trump sues people just to have these frivolous lawsuits, the attitude always his strategy is consistently that I can handle a situ, a chaotic situation with enduring pain more than you can and so I'll just cause us both a lot of pain, cause everybody pain, and eventually you're, you'll fold because you care about people and I don't. And Democrats effectively communicated, yes, that works on us. That's correct.
- [12:40]
Charlie Sykes
Yes, hostage taking works. The hostage taker was rewarded here. The thing about this, that is the most baffling to me was this timing that you had the elections less than a week ago, and Trump himself said that it was, you know, the Republicans did so badly because of the anger at them over the shutdown. And so what do Democrats do? We're going to take you off the hook. There was no reason to do it, especially because the pain was ratcheting up. We had not yet gotten an answer from the Supreme Court on the snap benefits, whether or not they were effectively held hostage. But I do suspect that your final point was the key for some of the institutionalists, that they were so afraid that the Republicans were going to invoke the nuclear option and end the filibusters, that they felt that they had to cave on this, that they were so committed to the worst. The belief that the worst case scenario here is that Republicans take complete ownership of this, take away the filibuster, and that we're left out in the cold. And that's the only explanation I can get for this sort of panicky folding so quickly. So you think it was about the filibuster in the end?
- [13:53]
Professor Nicholas Grossman
In part, I think that that's a possibility. I also think that's very, I don't know, weird, stupid. I'm not sure the right word for it. But what is the point of that if you just give it away when the other side, you know, oh, if you try to use it, we're going to get rid of it. So then you just keep something that you can't ever actually use to gain anything. And in fact, then if Democrats ever regained power, that Republicans could use. But I think the other factor was probably air travel, that the disruptions to air travel. The members of Congress themselves might have had delayed flights. They probably had donors or family members personally saying, you know, this is going to mess with my flights. You really need to do something about it. And I think that was probably quite a bit. And so another good example of that not fighting mindset because the Transportation Secretary, Sean Duffy, was on television practically giddy when he was talking about all the different ways that they were hurting air travel and trying to blame the Democrats, as if somehow the Trump administration doing something it doesn't have to do. Is because of Democrats in the Senate. And instead of looking at that as here, you know, it's really bad that this is happening to people. But Duffy and Trump and the Republicans are shooting themselves in the foot. And if they really want to do that, well, fine, let them do it. You know, classic Napoleon line of never interrupt an enemy when he's making a mistake. And Exactly. For whatever reason that they really wanted to.
- [15:16]
Charlie Sykes
Okay, now, Schumer, Chuck Schumer, the Democratic leader, voted against this, but he's taking a lot of the flak. Ro Khanna is, you know, saying it's time to move on. The I don't know whether they anticipated the amount of anger or blowback that they're getting now from the Democratic base, but what do you think is this, that moment, that breaking moment where the base is just not going to tolerate this and the leadership has to go? I mean, as you point out, Dick Durbin, the number two, the minority whip, Dick Durbin was one of the eight to fold, and Schumer apparently made no attempt to stop them. So should Schumer go? I won't ask whether you think he's going to go. Do you think he should go?
- [16:01]
Professor Nicholas Grossman
Right. I don't know. As a prediction, I think unquestionably, yes, that Schumer should go, Durbin should go. If they thought that it was really important to end their career, to kind of put this stamp on that what they did was a genuinely good thing, even if it was unpopular, sort of like how Democrats felt when they originally passed Obamacare. You know, they thought, okay, even if this costs us votes, it's going to get millions of people health insurance, and that's good, it's worth it. So if, you know, Durbin thinks that what he did here was a good thing, it was totally worth it, that's fine and he can retire happy. But, yeah, that this has been the, a lot of the problem the whole time. And I think Schumer is a good example of this. Of he earlier in the year when there were discussions about whether to do a shutdown or not, he argued that Democrats should essentially just kind of lay back and let stuff happen and that the public would figure things out so that two years later that, you know, then they would possibly vote Democrats in. He has argued about how he effectively governs based on trying to appeal to a imaginary moderate white couple in his head that he nicknamed the Baileys, which he just made up the Baileys and is maybe something that made since I grew up on Long island, you know, it makes sense Maybe of thinking of that as how to be a New York senator or a congressman from New York and appealing to those particular constituents, but really is unsuited for a moment of Democratic backsliding into authoritarianism, where the next election is not all that matters. The protecting the institution in the process matters a great deal. Come back and get it. If they win, you know, then if they have a much weakened institution without checks and balances, then it doesn't matter that much that they want it. They need to also defend those checks and balances, defend whatever leverage they can in the institution, which granted, as the minority is not that much, but even that to give that away here and not to get anything in return, to also give it away in exchange for nothing to effectively announce or sorry, not nothing. The promise some Republicans said that they will hold a vote on health care subsidies, which, you know, based on a nose count, the Democrats will lose. And a number of the senators. I mentioned King saying, you know, earlier his excuse, Jean Shaheen of New Hampshire was another one. And she said that, well, the Republicans in the Senate and the White House have told her that, that they're going to work with her in the future. And so now, you know, she's going to see if they will. And that reminded me of, you know, Charlie Brown and Lucy with the football that how can you fall for this so many times that how can you say, well, these serial liars who have, you know, clearly don't care about norms or even laws are going to, you know, work with me because they, they said so? That either is terribly naive or I think more sounds like she wanted to do it for reasons she doesn't think are all that defensible and this is the best excuse she can come up.
- [18:45]
Charlie Sykes
With, or she's been hanging out with Susan Collins for too long. Earlier in the year, when Chuck Schumer did not go along with the idea of shutting down the government, I actually very reluctantly thought that he probably made the right decision. I mean, it was one of those where the Democrats really wanted that fight. I think they needed that fight, but they were never going to win the fight. So I thought he made a prudent move. The way he handled this, though, does really raise the fundamental question that you're suggesting, which is that here's a normal politician acting as if the politics are normal when we are in a deeply abnormal moment and he is clearly unsuited. But also just the. And I keep coming back to the timing of this. I mean, at some point they were going to have to cave or compromise or some point this was going to come to an end at some point. Why they had to do it over the weekend continues to baffle, particularly if you were at all in touch with the Democratic base, if you were all in touch with the political trends that were occurring out there, if you were any kind of a strategic thinker, you would not have done what Chuck Schumer allowed to have happened. Now, one of the questions I've asked all along is what was their exit strategy? And I think this is part of what's been exposed is they never really had one. As you pointed out, you know, the Democrats decided not to make Trump's law breaking and rights violations their main pitch. They, they went all in on this health care premium issue, which was a definitely a winning issue. I mean, this was a, you know, a 75, 25, 80, 20 issue that they could have, you know, you know, continued to push. So, and I was never quite sure how they were going to say, okay, if we get the premiums, we're okay with everything else. You know, maybe the solution of the nuclear option would have done it. But now they've given up everything. I mean, they not only have not made Trump's authoritarianism and his law breaking, his lawlessness central to their issue, they basically gave up on their 8020 issue of the health premiums. And that's one of those where Chuck Schumer is not only not a, an effective chess player, I mean, I wouldn't trust him in a, in a check, in a checkers match. So I don't know where this is going to go. But it's certainly, you know, at the moment when Democrats seem to have the wind at their back and Trump was kind of flailing, this, this throws him a lifeline. I don't know how there's any other way to see it. And that's why people are so angry about it.
- [21:31]
Professor Nicholas Grossman
Especially when you step back and look at the whole thing. So that if you were going to fold in exchange for nothing, why not just pass it in the first place? You know, why impose all that harm on people? That the part of the logic was that it was Republicans that were being unreasonable, both in the sense of, you know, not passing something as majority and wanting that bipartisan cover for what they're doing, and also all the law breaking. But then if you're going, the only reason why that harm would be worth it is because it would help degrade or help slow the slide into authoritarianism. It would help wake up more of the public to the problem and I mean, I guess maybe it drew some more attention for a little while, but there's a real danger that it fades into the same old, more Washington infighting. So a lot of the political junkies really care, and a lot of the, maybe average voters, once you don't pay attention, care less and, and largely forget about it. And. Well, I don't. I don't totally know what I meant. Like, what appeals to me, and I follow this stuff very closely, is not necessarily what appeals to swing voters. And so while the making the health care pitch was not the focus, what I would have liked, you know, maybe that's better politics and certainly something that resonates for a lot of people. So maybe that works better. But then if you're not going to at least get something on the subsidies, just hold out and say Republicans can pass us on their own if they want to, and if not, give us this thing that we asked for.
- [23:01]
Charlie Sykes
Yeah. I mean, again, the only upside is that, is that they'll now force a vote on all of this. And I think that's a big, big political loser for the Republicans. But, you know, part of it is, is this also just demoralizes the one alternative party that can stop Donald Trump. It demoralizes them at a time when things were going in their direction. I mean, that was the significance, I think, of the no Kings rally. I mean, the no King's rally. Change the dynamics of power and politics. No, but, you know, it, you know, it was, it was necessary to do, to make people think that, that in fact, resistance was not feudal.
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Professor Nicholas Grossman
Okay.
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Charlie Sykes
So in this news cycle, because there's. Yeah, I'm sorry, you were gonna say something.
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Professor Nicholas Grossman
Oh, yeah. Just out of one more where you mentioned the base. So the one part where I am curious to see is it is demoralizing to the party as a whole, but there's some time before they would have to act again. And it's possible that it is motivating to a lot of the Democratic base. So the Democratic Party's approval rating is in the toilet, including among its own voters. And when you ask about what are they bothered by with it, the answer is not. They are failing to compromise as much with Trump as they want. It's overwhelmingly that they're not opposing this stuff. They're not fighting hard enough. And so analogously, we saw decently smaller Tea Party protests early in Obama's term, and that was followed by a bunch of primaries that then made the. Where the angry base really asserted itself, and it made Republican leadership get nervous and suddenly Kind of stand up and listen and think where a lot of the way that the congressional Democrats, Democratic Party in general, seems to operate is really taking its base for granted of thinking that, you know, they don't have anywhere else to go. A lot of them are, you know, either too left or weird or off putting or whatever it is that they really want to distance from the base, want it, you know, at arm's length and try to govern for a small slice of the country that they think are swing voters or moderate voters. This is the Chuck Schumer Bailey's thing like that. That's who they're trying to appeal to. There's always an asymmetry, or at least in 21st century with the Republican Party that is a lot more afraid of and appeals to and governs to its base. And so I think there's a pretty good chance that in the next year that the Democratic base is heard from and that we see a number of established legislators, both House and Senate, ones who notice that the Democrats carefully avoided having any senator that is up for reelection in 2026 be the ones to, to vote for this. Couldn't help but notice that, but that maybe we'll see the base primary, a bunch of them demand leadership changes and try to get more of a fighting, oppositional, pro democracy Democratic party than they have currently.
- [25:38]
Charlie Sykes
Well, I mean, and you saw the reaction of Governor Newsom and Governor Pritzker who were saying how pathetic all of this was. Okay, so, you know, given the flood of news also today, and again, in case there was any need to be, you know, reminded how lawless this administration is, we have another tranche of the January 6th revisionist pardons, including Rudy Giuliani and a host of others. I think it was nearly 80 people, you know, the entire big lie crew, you know, Christina Bobb and John Eastman and all of that, you know, thrown out and it almost seems like gets lost in the wash. But once again, Donald Trump is trying to turn what happened on January 6th on its head, turn the lie on its head. And he's able to do it and he's willing to do it. And so if you are trying to resist what's happening, there are very few points of leverage and I think that's why people are so angry. The Democrats have given it up. But just, just your thoughts on all of this. I was over the weekend and I have written about this. I was watching the, the movie, the, the Adam Kinzinger movie. I don't know if you've seen this. The last Republican, which is actually hard to watch because it recounts January 6, but also that moment, actually, I had to, I had to put it on pause about seven minutes in where Kevin McCarthy and Mitch McConnell were both giving the speeches about how horrible it was and how responsible Donald Trump was. They knew it at the time. They, there was no question what happened, who is responsible, that it was outrageous. Donald Trump has engaged in this project to turn reality on its head, you know, and to, you know, it was one thing to pardon all of the rioters and now he's pardoning all of the lawyers and all of the other, you know, people who tried to the architects of his attempt to steal that election. And this is another one of those moments where it feels like we've become numb to it.
- [27:43]
Professor Nicholas Grossman
I feel similarly in that the event itself. So January 6th was shocking on its own with the attack on Congress. It was, as we learned later, in part due to Kinzinger's efforts on the January 6th committee, that and the rest of the committee, that it was part of a larger coup attempt, you know, that it was a three pronged coup attempt of lying in the state electors, of trying to get fraudulent Justice Department investigations. And a lot of the people who just got pardoned were those lawyers, were those conspirators, the ones who literally tried to overthrow the Constitution and failed, but then regained power. And a lot of people, I guess, have just sort of accepted it, you know, as that's just another thing that happened and it is still unprecedented. It was also to me, the mark and where you mentioned the Republicans kind of bending the knee afterwards or defending Trump for it afterwards of I thought that was the clear like a last stop off the highway, that if you were on board for a conspiracy to overthrow the Constitution and violently attack Congress, then what would you not be on board for? You know, if you were going to parrot the lies that led to it, like what would possibly be your line? So it was effectively a no line announcement. And Trump has taken a lot of advantage of that, is able to warp what the official government records are. Not all that different from trying to do things like censor the Smithsonian, you know, or other ways to change what the official record of history is and to, you know, make it more friendly to himself. But also in the combination of the pardons for the rioters themselves, a lot of whom then got let out of jail, but also a lot of the pardons for these lawyers, politicians, co conspirators who weren't in jail, who in some cases were faced some, a few facing charges, but most of them facing nothing worse than maybe some public shame and perhaps losing a law license, something like that, that it is a signal to all levels of his undemocratic, anti rule of law, anti constitution, pro violence supporters, hey, if you commit crimes for me, I got your back, you know, so it will do it more. And that's the sort of thing that it isn't really biting. Now, except for a few of the pardoned January 6th attackers who have been arrested for additional things that someone yesterday when arrested and charged with sexual assault, for example, that, you know, that's classic. You don't let the criminals back on the streets before they have their reform sentence up because then a lot of them commit more crimes. But is something that will be perhaps dangerous in 2026, but especially in 2028, that given that we already saw them try to keep power illegally, there's it would be naive to assume that they won't try again. And this time they will have a bunch of people who were willing to take some risks for him before, who maybe were nervous about that there might be legal consequences, but did it anyway. And now who are feeling like there won't be legal consequences or maybe that there won't be legal consequences as long as he wins, but there will be legal consequences if he loses, which is even more of an incentive for them.
- [30:45]
Charlie Sykes
Well, exactly. I mean, and that's why was it, was it Adam Serwer who wrote the piece over the weekend in the Atlantic about basically the Mafia presidency? You know, the sense that if you stick close to Donald Trump, he will protect you. He will, you know, you pay protection to him by sucking up and supporting him. If you are on the outside, you are a target. So you have to make a decision. You're either inside, you're protected, or you're on the outside. And he's created that environment, by the way, in the Kinzinger movie. It's very, very clear, you know, that the key moment that he really highlights is when Kevin McCarthy goes down to Mar a Lago and does the thumbs up there. That that's the moment when he resurrected Donald Trump. And that was the moment when Republicans were headed down this, you know, had not taken that final exit ramp that's going on there. So, you know, this just continues now. Speaking of which, a couple of the other stories that we've gotten over the last couple of days, and I mentioned this to you before we started when I wrote my book about what's happening I call how the Right Lost Its Mind, which on one level is about how they went crazy. The other though is the incredible degradation of the intellectual conservative infrastructure, including the Heritage foundation, which used to be the most respected center, right, right wing organization. Did you see this piece over the weekend from the Wall Street Journal which did a deep dive into how Kevin Roberts has initiated. Kevin Roberts is in the news because he was defending Tucker Carlson and appeared to be defending Nick Fuentes. And there's a lot of blowback and people are saying, okay, you know, we know you're into a lot of crazy shit, but defending neo Nazis is a bridge too far. The thing that just jumped out at me from that story was, and again, you have to. People need to understand that the Heritage foundation was the establishment conservative think tank. You know, they were the people that came up with the agenda for the Reagan revolution and everything. So this Kevin Roberts comes in and reverses the think tank support for Ukraine employees who had tweeted out pro Ukrainian things, were told to delete their tweets and then were told they needed to listen to Tucker Carlson videos of his interviews where he was peddling these wild pro Russian conspiracy theories. And you realize the degree of the rot. And I am fascinated by whether or not Kevin Roberts survives, whether or not the, the, the, the, the, the the donor class is willing to, you know, well, continue this, you know, years long project of, of surrendering. But that was really something. The fact that this new guy comes into the Heritage foundation tells people we're no longer supporting Ukraine. You need to listen to Tucker fucking Carlson.
- [33:52]
Professor Nicholas Grossman
Yeah, I mean, I guess this is what happens when you abandon core principles. So if the, you know, say where Heritage foundation and you know, of course would have their left wing critics and the, but where they had a pro market position and in supporting Trump they have to abandon that and go with crony capitalism or go really with you know, mafia state style things of give me a percentage of the company. You know, the idea, just the idea that having lived through the 20th century, you know, the later half, the later part of the 20th century, the idea of seeing the Republican Party or even into, you know, the 21st with George W. Bush of that the Republican Party supporting a leader who says that, you know, things like I'm going to arbitrarily put a tax on stuff via tariffs and breaking the law, you should give me a percentage of your, the federal government should own a percentage of the company or the White House should, or he personally should like shook down intel for 10% of the shares. That is incredibly anti market crony capitalism stuff that it's amazing that you have people like Heritage supporting. And the other one is just completely flipping on the Reaganite foreign policy of leader of the free world and defending, you know, European democracies, US Allies against Russian aggression, being opposed to it. And to see that reverse is, even though we're years into it at this point, is still. I still find it weird. Still find it very unsettling.
- [35:17]
Charlie Sykes
Oh, I agree. Okay. We ought to have, like, touch upon something that's a little bit more positive. You know, one of the questions that we've always had is, does anything make a difference? You know, does Donald Trump, you know, famously say, I could shoot somebody and not lose any votes? I think it's pretty clear from the elections last week, which, by the way, were less than a go. Seems so long ago now that the. And I hope people don't think this is a trivial point. The ICE videos, I think, made a difference. These, the viral videos showing these masked, you know, members of the brute squad going after moms and grandmas and firing, you know, pepper balls at priests and at children. I think it's had an effect. I mean, you look at the demographic shifts in New Jersey and in Virginia, and you're seeing an absolute hemorrhage of support for Republicans among young people who I think have been exposed to all of those images, but particularly among many of the minority groups that had been trending. Right. More than a 40% drop in the Asian margin Hispanic votes, which Republicans, I think, had gotten a little bit cocky about moving, you know, sharply against the Republicans. These things matter. And what's interesting to me is normally a political party would find a way to pivot after something like this, realizing, holy crap, we are hemorrhaging support among Latinos. We have bet the farm on the Latino vote in redistricting in places like Texas. We need to recalibrate. There's no. I don't get any. Any indication whatsoever that Stephen Miller, Kristi Noem, Tom Homan, Donald Trump have any attempt to do anything other than to escalate the massed ICE Squad attacks on the Hispanic community. I mean, what your take on that.
- [37:14]
Professor Nicholas Grossman
I think that's absolutely right. And that one, that a lot of things matter. A lot of the. If anything, this was my normal democracy mindset. Part of that point also is that the only thing, it is not true that the only thing that matters is elections and nothing else matters at all. And so I just strongly disagree with that. But I think you're right in that the ICE image is making a big difference, and especially with a lot of the different communities that shifted towards Trump. And one of the biggest reasons, probably I think the most telling stat of the 2024 election is how many Trump voters, double digit percentages, did not believe that he was going to do what he said he was going to do. And what his critics wanted, that they simply didn't believe it, that they took it all as like just a joke or a show or a, I don't know, deportation signs.
- [38:02]
Charlie Sykes
It's just a metaphor.
- [38:03]
Professor Nicholas Grossman
Yeah. Or whatever. And it was. And so much of it built on the first term. So it took, you know, a decent amount of, I don't know, either effort or ignorance to get to that position. But regardless, for whatever of the many complicated reasons, a lot of them did. And so then once they see it actually in practice, they don't like it, you know, so once they, they feel things like the tariffs or health insurance premiums going up, but especially once they see this overt cruelty, that's the real fascist stuff that a lot of the Trump critics were warning about, that they were so dismissive of, that people treating it as a normal political situation was like, you know, it's just liberals who don't want tax cuts for rich people and are being hysterical about it, you know, or something like that. And then it's not. And so where we've seen a couple of the big changes is also in media is that a number of the big manosphere figures, ones that seemed influential last time around, have certainly been a subject of a lot of press, like Joe Rogan, for example, have been very negative about the ICE raids. And I mean, which they should, you know, it's just blatant rights violations, but very negative about it. That it is showing how the just go after criminals, just go after, you know, the nasty people was totally a lie. If anything, they are both leaving more criminals alone because it's easier to like go after, you know, the day laborers in a Home Depot parking lot or the abuelas or nannies at a daycare or something like that. And also they're facilitating more crime. The FBI even warned about this because since they're going masked and refusing to show id, a bunch of criminals figured out, you know, if I just put on a mask and wear like a vest, it looks like a tactical vest and say that I'm ice, then, you know, and take peeps, take stuff from people and point a gun in their face, what are they going to do about it, you know, and get away with it. But the Republicans not only don't seem to be changing from it. They seem locked into it. And part of that, I think, is because the Trump administration is operating as if things like laws and politics and elections don't really apply to them. In fairness, they did a lot of this then in the first term, then they openly advocated doing it much worse in the second term, and, and then they regained power even after attempting a coup and breaking the law. So the lesson to them was, I don't think it's totally unreasonable for them to say that the people who are upset about this are not their voters or not people that they need to worry about. And also because they are so beholden to their base that as much as a chunk of Trump voters are appalled by seeing the ICE videos and are reconsidering whether that was a good idea, there's also a big chunk, probably bigger chunk that thrills to them that this is maga porn.
- [40:36]
Charlie Sykes
They love this.
- [40:37]
Professor Nicholas Grossman
Yeah, exactly. Yeah, they, this is what they want. This is explicitly what they wanted. So that for so many of the people are not personally impacted by immigrants, illegal immigrants or legal immigrants, that there are a number of places in the country that don't have that many. The places with more immigrants mostly voted for Harris that are more integrated immigrant communities. So you have, you know, some, all, nearly all white rural community that is railing about immigrants somewhere else. And so to them, it's just images on their television or things that they see in their social media feeds when they scroll along. And so then as much as the lie about all this crime that wasn't really happening was making them angry and scared, then seeing the federal forces go and beat up a bunch of brown people is making them, I don't know, excited, thrilled, happier. And I suppose some probably aren't paying attention, but there's clearly a chunk of the Republican base that is into it that you quoted Adam Serwer earlier and he had a famous line from the first term of the cruelty is the point. And for this, it's the images of cruelty is exactly what this audience wants.
- [41:45]
Charlie Sykes
The brutality is the point. Yeah.
- [41:48]
Professor Nicholas Grossman
And since and Miller and others are so into it, I don't see why they clearly like it themselves. They're not just doing it to try to please some voters. And I don't see why they would change everything they say.
- [41:59]
Charlie Sykes
Also, all the money is still coming for ice. I mean, they have, they have, you know, the ICE is going to have, you know, it will be better funded than the US Marines. But again, you know, this may play in an all white rural community, but in the Hispanic communities, you Know, I actually quoted Jim Garrity from National Reviews and imagine what it's like being an Hispanic U.S. citizen right now because we already live in a show me your papers environment. The Supreme Court is essentially green lit racial profiling. And if you are an Hispanic, if you don't look like me and you're walking down the street and somebody thinks you might be an illegal immigrant, you might be in the wrong place at the wrong time, an ICE agent might slap handcuffs on you, take you away, take your kids away, all of those things, the number of events that have been canceled, Hispanic cultural events, other kinds of events, because they are afraid of these kinds of the raids. So the Republicans, I think, had become kind of cocky about the fact that Hispanics were more open to their message in Texas. A lot of the redistricting is based on the assumption that Hispanics are going to continue to vote for Republicans. If the Hispanic community as a whole, which was open to more enforcement of the border, is appalled by this, this is a real political problem. Okay, speaking of real political problems, in the time that we have left, I'm trying to keep track of who we might go to war with in the next couple of weeks, particularly when the Epstein files come out, because you know that when that, when that document drop happens or when Trump has to veto it or something, you know, I mean, you know, wag the dog had, you know, the imagination fell short. So who are we going to go to war with? Mexico, Nigeria, Venezuela, Greenland? What do you think? What is our war stance right now, as far as you can tell?
- [44:00]
Professor Nicholas Grossman
So if anybody, it's Venezuela. And this is a good example of to, you know, Trump's rhetoric matters and it's worth paying attention to him, but the actions matter decently more. You know, he says a lot of stuff and he blusters a lot and sometimes he follows through at least partially and sometimes he doesn't. And so with Venezuela, the United States military has moved a lot of hardware into the area, just a lot of combat power. There's an entire aircraft carrier group. It's actually America's newest, most advanced aircraft carrier that went there, plus all the vessels that protect it. There are a number of destroyers that have gone there. And these are massive anti state military platforms. These are not the sort of things that you use to fight drug dealers or terrorists or anything like that. And even it. So it seems like an awful lot to move into position. It costs a lot of money to move it in position. It seems like a lot to not go to war. And given that Trump has been killing people on these random boats in. Or I guess maybe not totally random. I should be careful on that one. But on these boats in the Caribbean at which they say are drug dealers. And I think it's important to note that drug traffickers are not terrorists. There is no terrorist attack against the United States that the US Is responding to. They are trying to make money. They're not trying to change politics. The move against drug traffickers is to try to. Would be to interdict the vessels. The Coast Guard is very good at this. Then you get evidence and you get people you can interrogate. You can flip them on their supporters because they're not terrorists. They're not ideological. They are easier to flip that. You know, offer them a nice place in Oklahoma and they might very well turn on their boss. And so. And that's even if they were drug dealers. And also it's blatantly illegal under US Law and treaties that the US has signed. And also various countries have looked into it, like Colombia and said that some of them clearly were not drug dealers, were basically just fishermen. So even the. I don't really know what the point as a military. If you think military strategy, the point of blowing up all those boats is supposed to be. Is it supposed to be to try to get the cartels to shift even more to land routes? I don't know why that would make a difference. The administration has talked a lot about fentanyl. Fentanyl doesn't come from South America. Cocaine does. So that is not what's causing the overdoses. But then they move all this military hardware in the off the coast of Venezuela. And Trump is talking about maybe we'll do some bombing on land. And reading between the lines a little bit Secretary of State slash national security advisor, slash USA administrator, and I think he has one or two other posts. Marco Rubio has long had it out for the Venezuelan government, who is quite bad.
- [46:45]
Charlie Sykes
Yeah.
- [46:45]
Professor Nicholas Grossman
The logic here is not any sort of Maduro and before him Chavez in Venezuela. Good. No, they're terrible and bad ruler, bad. You know, government for the people of Venezuela, for the region, for the world. That is not the issue. The issue is then what is the strategically best thing to do about it For US Interests and perhaps for regional or global interests, what's the best thing to do about it? And for the amount of military hardware that they've moved, it's a lot to potentially bomb a bunch of stuff inside the state, but nowhere near the type of occupation force to then go in and rebuild something afterwards like the US highly imperfectly, but did in Iraq. And so it looks like either another one of those kind of Trump blusters where he spends a bunch of money and makes a bunch of threats and doesn't really do anything about it, or not really regime change war, but regime destabilization efforts where bomb some targets. The way they're talking about opposition to Maduro, talking about it in a way that eerily reminds me of overrating the opposition to Saddam Hussein and taking the word of some of his opponents that they could, you know, everyone will greet you as liberators and we can take it over so easily and it'll be smooth. But destabilizing the Venezuelan government, if the problems with Venezuela are that the Trump administration's articulated are migrants and drugs, if you destabilize the government, you create a lot more migrants and you open up a lot more space for drug traffickers to operate. So by their stated goals, it wouldn't work by any sort of regime change. Get a democratic or more American friendly government to Venezuela. They don't have nearly the forced to do that. So that won't work. I suppose they could maybe drop a bunch of bombs like in Yemen earlier this year, they dropped about a billion dollars worth of bombs on the Houthis in Yemen, didn't accomplish what they set out to do, but then just lied. That's interesting. Stopped or with Iran with bombing some of the Iranian nuclear sites and then lying at the Iranian nuclear program was totally destroyed when it isn't and then firing the head of the Defense Intelligence Agency for reporting to them that it isn't. And so I guess there's some elements maybe of put on a show for the American people. But I can't totally figure it out except that there doesn't seem to be any clear strategic benefit, any sort of real plan in what they're doing.
- [49:06]
Charlie Sykes
But I think you put your finger on it is the show, it is not the strategic plan. Donald Trump doesn't think long term on all of this. He thinks, you know, that I can be the war president, I can topple Maduro and there is a democratic opposition there. So, I mean, within a small window, it might look like one of the worst regimes in the world is replaced by, you know, a regime headed up by Nobel Peace laureate winner, Peace prize winner. But as you point out, then you have the long term fallout from the destabilization which would be there. But Donald Trump, you know, doesn't think about that. He doesn't worry about that. He doesn't think that's going to be his problem. He wants, he wants the show and quite frankly, it'll be a hell of a distraction when comes and I think that we know some of the things that it might be used to distract from. Nicholas Grossman, thank you so much. We covered a hell of a lot of ground here. Hope people didn't get too depressed by the discussion of the Democratic cave in, but I have a feeling the fallout from that is going to last a long time. I sense a level of anger, probably as much anger at the Democratic leadership today as we've seen since January 20th, since, since the beginning of Trump 2.0. We've had outbursts before, but my sense is this is, this is. I, I feel this is the angriest I have seen the base so far in Trump 2.0. What do you think?
- [50:32]
Professor Nicholas Grossman
I think so too. That I think so pretty clearly seem incensed. And in part it's because they were waiting for there to be a fight. They saw Democrats actually standing up and fighting. They got themselves. They backed it with protests, they backed it with votes, and then Democrats fold. It's that the bait and switch, the pulling the chair out that is probably.
- [50:51]
Charlie Sykes
Going to bother them the most. That's. That is exactly it. And thank you all for listening to this episode of to the Contrary podcast. I'm Charlie Sykes. You know why we do this, why we have these conversations? Because we're not going to cave, we're not going to bend the knee. And we need to remind ourselves that we are not the crazy ones. Thank you.
- [51:22]
Professor Nicholas Grossman
Did I talk too much? Can I just let it go?
- [51:26]
Charlie Sykes
I was thinking so much.
- [51:28]
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