← To The Contrary with Charlie Sykes
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- [00:00]
Nicholas Grossman
Foreign.
- [00:11]
Charlie Sykes
Welcome to this episode of the to the Contrary podcast. I'm Charlie Sykes. Just a quick word. If you have not yet subscribed to our newsletter, to the Contrary on Substack, please consider doing so free or paid. It's actually all freedom, but in order to keep doing this, I really do appreciate your generosity. It is difficult to build an audience given the insidification of the rest of social media, but we have had remarkable success so far. We have more than 2 million views a month right now and have been growing exponentially. But still, look, we need to keep reminding ourselves that we are not the crazy ones. And I just kind of want to start with this. And. And I really appreciate, Nick, you joining me. Nicholas Grossman, who is the editor of ARC Digital and a professor of political science at the University of Illinois. We have talked before. Thanks for joining me. I appreciate it today. And I need your help. Okay.
- [01:07]
Nicholas Grossman
Great to be here and, you know, great to see you with the new podcast.
- [01:11]
Charlie Sykes
All right, so I'm just trying to get my head around this weird combination of clownishness and corruption that we're in right now, trying to decide, do we point out that we're talking about absolute clowns, or are we going to point out that those clowns still actually have the flamethrowers? So, on Tuesday, in the midst of a stock market meltdown, Donald Trump turned the White House into a car dealership. There's no punchline. That's what actually happened. I mean, on a day when millions of Americans are seeing their 401ks go down to getting hammered in the stock market, Donald Trump decided that this was the moment to bail out the world's richest man. And, you know, photographers caught the picture of him holding in his hand actual talking points from the Tesla website. And he's pretending to know what a Tesla's like. He gets in the car, goes, hey, there's lots of computers here. You can tell the last time that Donald Trump drove a car, like, I don't know, never. And meanwhile, we have this on again, off again trade war escalating, although it's changing by the hour because, of course, confusion and uncertainty is exactly what the economy needs right now. I don't know. I guess. Meanwhile, Donald Trump keeps talking about turning Canada into the 51st state. And even the anti, anti Trumpers at National Review are starting to get rattled by this, because it's one thing to simply troll about it, but is he actually serious about this? What's actually going on? But it gets weirder and more serious as we See the measles outbreak spread. We have RFK Jr. By the way. Every one of these things seems like it's like a line from a satire, you know, a satirical movie. We have RFK Jr going full witch doctor telling Americans that measles vaccines are overrated. These would be the vaccines that actually eradicated measles as a disease in this country, and that the best protection against measles is the breast milk of a woman who has not been tainted by the vaccine. This is the world that we live in right now. What could possibly go wrong? Meanwhile, half the staff at the Department of Education is fired and their cuts are so deep at the Social Security Administration, seniors and the disabled may no longer be able to get anyone on the phone. So I asked that question again, what could possibly go wrong? And the answer is that Elon Musk has no idea and does not give a shit. But I think we know that. And of course, we continue to play chicken with a government shutdown. So with all of this happening, we may actually get. We may see the government actually shut down at the end of this week. Meanwhile, our betrayal of Ukraine continues, although there was a little bit of a blip. And I wanted to start with you, Nicholas, on this question. We got Ukraine to agree to a 30 day ceasefire, but of course that depends on what Russia is going to do. I suppose this is an uptick from the humiliation in the Oval Office and cutting off of all of the aid and cutting off intelligence. But give me your take right now, because I know you have been watching this very, very closely and writing about this. What is your take on the US brokered ceasefire deal? Where are we at?
- [04:22]
Nicholas Grossman
Well, it's not really a brokered ceasefire deal because Russia is not a party to it. It was the United States pressuring Ukraine, using as much leverage as it could, cutting off things like intelligence and weapons, denigrating the leaders, saying that they wouldn't guarantee security, meaning that they wouldn't keep the peace stable afterwards. And the US kept on pressuring Ukraine to agree to what amounted to a agreement of this ceasefire that is really empty. So if you look at the actual statement that came out of the U.S. state Department from this meeting in Saudi Arabia, it makes a point of saying that Ukraine praised Donald Trump and, you know, said that he's great, and otherwise. It doesn't really require anybody to do anything except for them to stop. The U.S. says stop for 30 days. And I guess the Ukrainians did manage to get the US to say it will seek some sort of reciprocation from Russia, but it includes no demands from Russia on anything short or long term. And that has always been the problem, both in the war itself that Putin started. It could stop at any time, but is choosing not to, and from the Trump administration's approach, which is treating it as if Putin is a victim, Russia is a victim. They just want peace. If only we could help them. And of course, that's not what's going on. It's Russian aggression and they're trying for conquest. And so they are likely to not take this all that seriously to continue pressing because the US Keeps on showing Russia that Ukraine side is getting weaker. So why would Russia bent on conquest, be now looking to back off once as it started looking better for them?
- [05:55]
Charlie Sykes
Okay, so it is, it is Wednesday afternoon right now, we don't know. We haven't gotten the formal answer from Russia, but they seem not to be open to the cease fire. In fact, I was just before we began recording this, I saw pictures of Vladimir Putin in military fatigues, which is not necessarily the costume that you would wear when you were about to sign on to a peace deal. So what, what Donald Trump, to your point, Donald Trump has given Russia everything it wants. He refuses to criticize Russia. He votes with Russia in the Security Council. He seems to be relying on Putin, his buddy Putin to do him a solid on all of this. When Vladimir Putin turns down, if Vladimir Putin, Putin turns down the ceasefire, what do you expect Trump to do?
- [06:44]
Nicholas Grossman
I'm not sure. I mean, my instinct says lie about it because that's usually what he does when things don't go well for him. But I don't know. And in part because I can't really tell from afar how much they believe their own bullshit. So do.
- [06:58]
Charlie Sykes
That's always an interesting question, right?
- [07:00]
Nicholas Grossman
Just like how much did they really believe it? So they are taking a lot of actions that seem aimed at trying to help Russia win. And, and a lot of their rhetoric for a long time had been very pro Russian, anti Ukraine, and yet they would always talk about it as trying to create peace. And so were they conscious that they were aping Russian propaganda about how Russia was a poor, innocent victim and just had to attack a country that was not in NATO or, you know, the Ukrainians are warmongers, or the Ukrainians were somehow tricked into wanting freedom by the United States, as if that isn't something people just want because they want it. So if they believe that to some extent, then they will probably be surprised if Russia does not go for this deal now that they finally got the warmongering Ukrainians to agree to at least something. On the other hand, if what they're really doing is just consciously trying to help Russia win and trying to string along everybody else while they work on that and work on extracting the US from NATO, if that is really what they're doing, then they, they'll probably just continue stringing it along of having more of a show of peace talks, or they'll blame it on Ukraine or they'll say that we need to do something else along the way. Anything other than blaming it on Russia, which, as you noted, Trump has very studiously never criticized them, never blamed them for the war, never criticized Putin in the way that he criticizes many other leaders.
- [08:22]
Charlie Sykes
Yeah. So that makes his response all the more interesting. Look, there are so many different scenarios there, including, you know, Vladimir Putin, you know, playing the victim and saying, you know, I would have agreed to this, but look what, look what the Ukrainians have done. And then the United States, then, you know, echoing whatever is Russia again, I don't want to get go down that particular rabbit hole. But let's go, let's go back to this point that for the last 10 years, Donald Trump has ripped just about everybody. He has insulted friends, foes, political rivals, people in the media, people in entertainment. The one person he has never criticized is Vladimir Putin. Now, we went through the whole Russia, Russia, Russia thing early on with the whole Mueller report and all of the, you know, the walls are closing in and of course, nothing came out of that. Well, that's not true. I'm sorry, let me back up. You know, obviously the criminal charges didn't come out of that, and Trump was able to claim absolute complete exoneration. But it still raises the question, Nick, what is the deal between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin? What is your best theory of the case?
- [09:40]
Nicholas Grossman
So, first off, I just gotta say I don't think it really matters in that. What matters most is his actions, that just how he's acting. But the reason for it.
- [09:49]
Charlie Sykes
So weird.
- [09:50]
Nicholas Grossman
It is very weird, but I think it is genuine affection and envy that he admires Putin. He wishes that he could have the degree of domestic control that Putin has.
- [10:01]
Charlie Sykes
What does it he admire about Putin? What is it about Putin that has triggered this incredible deep admiration? Because outside of Elon Musk, I've never seen Trump behave this way to somebody else. So what is it he admires so much?
- [10:18]
Nicholas Grossman
Just the strong man. He's rich, he's powerful, and people look up to him. People treat him as if they are simultaneously respectful and afraid and show him a level of not the sort of respect that you get when somebody thinks that you're a good person and admires you that way, but as the respect of other people, whether they like him or not, treat him as if he is important and respectful. Often it's common, though, that people will say in response to this that the Russians have something on him, that, you know, sometimes they hear the word kakramat or that they have something on him and or on other people, like, say, Lindsey Graham. And I think that really lets them off the hook, that that's the wrong way to think about it, that it is implying that Trump and company don't want to do this, but that they have been coerced against their will into doing it. And I see absolutely no sign of that. It looks to every point, every sign that we have is that they're choosing it. They're choosing it voluntarily. He, J.D. vance, Elon Musk, others have been arguing this for years. And their arguments, their Russian sympathetic arguments are very consistent. And it is nearly impossible for somebody to be so consistent, so enthusiastic, when they have been forced behind the scenes and are having to be constantly have the screws turned so that they don't deviate to whatever their real opinion is. And this is unsettling because it's easier to think if we can just get rid of that coercion, then we could flip him, you know, where if we could coerce him better, we could bribe him better or something, or embarrass him better. But if it's just the case that they like this, they think that Putin's worldview is the right one, they would like to adopt that. Also, they want to see a more Putinist world and a less, say, I don't know, like Eisenhower, Reaganite type of world. And if that's the case, then they're really pursuing it, and all their actions indicate that that's what it is.
- [12:07]
Charlie Sykes
So what is Putin's worldview? I want to stick with this for a moment because, you know, I remember when Trump was asked, I think it was by Bill O'Reilly, well, you know, Vladimir Putin is a thug. He's a murderer. He kills people. And Trump didn't blink. He basically said, well, you know, we kill a lot of people. A lot of people do that. So what is the worldview that Donald Trump likes so much? Is it where does the brutality, where does the fear, where does the, you know, complete thuggishness play into this admiration?
- [12:42]
Nicholas Grossman
I think that's it. The thuggishness a might makes right or not even caring whether it's right or not. A line from this is Thucydides, you know, ancient Greece of the. The strong do what they will and the weak do what they must. And that. So for Putin, he has always been opposed to the European Union, to NATO, to the broader liberal world order. And so we're talking about more of a Pre World War II, pre World War I, even world order in which things like liberal democracy and human rights and international law play even less of a role that they do. I don't want to claim that those are, you know, say that the US Never violates those. Of course that's not true. Right, right. But that it's a hypocrisy. Being able to charge hypocrisy is better than being able, than where the values are rejected entirely and openly.
- [13:32]
Charlie Sykes
So, so does Donald Trump merely admire Vladimir Putin or does he want to be Vladimir Putin? Putin? We've had some very interesting commentary from Peter Baker in the New York Times that a lot of what Trump is doing is kind of Putinesque, which again, seems like a conversation that is almost inconceivable that we would have had even a few years ago. But does Donald Trump want to become Vladimir Putin? Does he actually think that that's a model for what he is doing right now and his presidency, which, and I understand how unhinged that sounds. Right.
- [14:13]
Nicholas Grossman
I mean, a whole lot of stuff sounds unhinged. If you said to me at any point, I mean, think of how if someone said the United States is going to side with Russia against a US Partnered European democracy, that, you know, who would believe you? And on top of that, it's going to be a president from Ronald Reagan's party that is going to be the one who's doing it. So, yeah, there's a whole lot of that. But that's the world as it is. And I see, I don't think it helps to shy away from it or, you know, pretend it's not that case. So, yes, I don't, I wouldn't say that Trump, you know, has a plan to be exactly like Putin. But the degree to which Putin has domestic control and you can apply other models for him, like say Viktor Orban of Hungary. Also applies to this, of where Trump expressed jealousy of the Chinese government, of how, how great it was. It's said this even before the presidency, that they put down the Tiananmen Square protest with force, which he also admired.
- [15:03]
Charlie Sykes
Yeah.
- [15:03]
Nicholas Grossman
And he admired when Putin ordered the invasion of Ukraine Trump went on television and called it savvy and genius. He was positive from the very beginning. And I think he was somewhat surprised that it didn't work, or at least it didn't work right away. And we can see this also with things like the tariffs or bullying Canada, that the way that they have stood back, you know, I'm not going to be pushed around. Yes, this will hurt us, but we can hurt you, too. And the bullying doesn't work. Does seem to throw him, meaning Trump, throw him a bit. And that the transformation of Russia in the 1990s in which the country got poorer and less powerful, but it also got, this is the rise of the oligarchs and then Putin in the late 90s, early 2000s consolidating control, that then the country might be weaker and poorer, but Putin and his corrupt friends have a lot more power within it. And that very much seems to be what Trump and Musk are trying to do in the United States, that if the US Gets poorer from, for example, from the tariffs, well, there'll be a lot more opportunities for corruption, for special exemptions for terrorists or favored people. Or if things like breaking a lot of these government agencies and firing a lot of people and making it where it doesn't work, you or I might argue, but that's bad for public health, but that's bad for the economy. And those arguments don't seem to work on them because in both cases, they see it as path to reduce a alternative domestic power center and gain more power and potentially corrupt money for themselves.
- [16:29]
Charlie Sykes
Okay, well, I agree with that, and I probably don't even need to ask this question, but that's their mentality. And then we have elected Republicans all around the country who have to understand that is not good politics, that it clearly is contradictory to the populace. We are the champions of the little guy campaigns they have been running. And yet, as you and I are speaking, they are all in. There is no dissent in the Republican Party to what Trump and Musk are doing, no real significant dissent. This is also one of those extraordinary historical moments where you have congressional Republicans surrendering their power without even a whimper, turning themselves into potted plants. And this was not what the founders expected, Right? They, they figured that Congress would be jealous of its power and its authority. And yet they're not only giving up their, their authority, but to your analysis, there's a real danger that this politics of oligarchy and corruption is not smart politically, unless we're missing something. So why are they going along with it?
- [17:43]
Nicholas Grossman
The possible thing that we're missing. I think this is more for the Trump administration, especially the musk wing of it. But they're operating as if they won't have to face voters again, that Democratic accountability is not an issue for them. And as dark as this is, I don't think that's totally unreasonable, given that Trump already. Well, he already attempted a coup and already proved that he can beat impeachment and already proved that he can beat the legal system. So they are currently operating without fear of any of those checks on presidential power. The most always administrations operated with people in the White House saying, having a little voice in the back of their head that, you know, this might be illegal and then I could be brought up on criminal charges later.
- [18:23]
Charlie Sykes
Yeah.
- [18:23]
Nicholas Grossman
And they're none of that way. And so, you know, given that they did already try to overthrow the government, I see no reason to expect that they will leave power willingly and will, you know, go by normal democracy. But that's at least the administration that would be separate from the Congress.
- [18:38]
Charlie Sykes
Okay, but say now, this is the kind of thing I would. I would normally want to push back against, except that I think one of our failures over the last few years has been the failure of imagination. They have constantly pushed the lines, and we keep thinking, well, they're not going to cross that line. And they do cross that line. And I do think that this is part of the problem of not realizing how much they are going to push and how far they can actually take it. Okay, so before we get to domestic politics, I guess I'm also struck by the juxtaposition of the admiration for Vladimir Putin, the psychological and political need that Donald Trump had to not just abandon Ukraine, but to humiliate President Zelensky. I mean, there's no real parallel in diplomatic history to what happened a couple of weeks ago in the White House. And there was something, it felt visceral and personal in his need to humiliate Zelensky rather than simply say, we're going to be switching sides. Your thoughts on that?
- [19:46]
Nicholas Grossman
I think part of it is personal that, you know, remember Trump tried to extort Zelensky back in his first term, and Zelensky stood strong, and then Trump got impeded, got caught. Then he released those funds that he had been impounding. And so that also a preview of current impoundment, smaller version, but. So one is that Trump, Zelensky wouldn't play ball, wouldn't help him out. Another one, I think that applies to Trump and a lot of the online. Right. A Lot of the culture war, right, is that Zelensky has been displaying what actual strength looks like. And it's the sort of thing where he is. He's not blustery, he doesn't make a big show of it, but when the moment of testing came, he was there, he stayed there. He's been directly under threat and under target this whole time. He even goes and accepts things like dealing with insults from Trump because he knows it's important for his country. And I take that as real strength. And The Trump, Musk, etc. Contingent, take yelling and bluster and sort of putting on a show as what strength is, and then often backing down when there's an actual moment. The amount of people that Elon Musk has challenged to a fight in person, and then when every one of them says yes, just disappears and never does it. It's a great. It's the, you know, the guy in the bar who's going, hold me back, hold me back. He doesn't want to actually get in a fight. He wants to be held back. So I think, you know, that's part of it. And the broader geopolitics of it, that where Trump has focused a lot of his attention is another example of weakness instead of strength, but instead of taking on a real adversary like Russia, instead trying to bully friends. So Ukraine is smaller, and Trump is ganging up with the Russian bully to bully the Ukrainians, and he, you know, picks countries like with Greenland and Denmark or Panama or Canada or others that are US Friends, but that are smaller than, say, Russia or China, and therefore, you know, more of an opportunity to bully people that were on our side as opposed to stand up to adversaries.
- [21:51]
Charlie Sykes
Okay, this is where I wanted to go, because we started off with his admiration for Vladimir Putin and all things Russia. You and I are both old enough to remember when war with Canada was a South park joke. And the visceral loathing of Canada is now hard not to notice. It's gone beyond the trolling. And, of course, his presidency 2.0 began with Panama, Denmark, Greenland. Is it just the schoolyard bully looking for somebody weaker that he can kick around, that as part of his emulation of the strongmen, he. He needed somebody in his own backyard that he also could humiliate. Where does this go with Canada?
- [22:35]
Nicholas Grossman
I don't really know, actually. And that's my answer to both of those of that. It's. It is very odd. And where the bullying is clearly part of it, I don't. There's such a void of actual American interest or policy interest in this. And you have to be so ignorant, and I'm guessing willfully ignorant of how this stuff actually works. So things like the degree to which the US Agricultural companies rely on potash from Canada and with US energy companies interacting with them, or the fact that North American Air Command is integrated, it's not us defending the continent, it's us and Canada together defending the continent. And even just extracting that would be difficult of a very close intelligence partner where there's so much trust. And that's the part that people who are more flippant about this, I think are missing of how serious it is that some Americans might say, oh, you know, he's trolling or he's putting on a show even as he continues doing policies that are harmful to Canada. But for the Canadians, this is deathly serious. National security is something that requires long term planning. And if you don't plan in advance when the problem actually comes, if you haven't hedged against it, it's too late, especially when you're dealing with somebody stronger than you. So from you've got this new upsurge of Canadian nationalism, you've got the, you know, Canadians genuinely worrying about a friend flipping to an enemy. But even if the United States doesn't follow up on any of that stuff, even if we never escalate to something as insane as this sounds, I used to be able to say absolutely not to a Canadian invasion. And now I have to at least say I'm not sure, I don't think so. But really, really, I mean, I very much doubt physical force against Canada. But I can I say concretely, definitely not totally rule it out the way I would have a year ago probably. No, not really. I'd say small, small percentage chance, but just merely that those threats are undermining trust that take a lot of effort to build up over time and is very valuable. And we can't simply get back. I would America if I were them.
- [24:33]
Charlie Sykes
Okay, well this is the key thing. And it's not just them, of course. It's. It's many of our allies who are going through this process of realizing that America has switched sides now in what we used to call the Cold War, is certainly no longer a reliable ally, is no longer a trustworthy ally in I think there's real doubt whether or not we are an ally at all. Which means that we're going to see the tectonic plates of the world order perhaps shifting here. What are the implications for say, nuclear proliferation or for new Alliances forming. Do you think so?
- [25:10]
Nicholas Grossman
I had. I've been unfortunately been about predicting this for a while, and I see it panning out of that. Nuclear proliferation was one of the big legacies of Trump's first term, and I thought upon him getting elected that that would likely accelerate a lot. So in his first term, the two things he did along these lines were to normalize North Korea's nuclear program by saying, lying, that North Korea is no longer a nuclear threat and treating Kim Jong Un as more of a normal leader rather than as a pariah. And to let Iran out of nuclear restrictions in exchange for nothing. And in both cases, that increase proliferation risks, and now by undermining the U.S. commitment to various allies, has prompted a lot of nuclear talk in countries that are no longer as secure as they thought they were. So Poland and South Korea are two that are already openly talking about it. I've seen some conversations start up in Canada about it, and I wouldn't be surprised if others are at least having this now as a more serious conversation. Part of the reason, and this one goes back to Eisenhower, part of the reason for the US Nuclear umbrella was to convince countries that they could be secure from things like, say, Soviet attack by US Protection and didn't need their own nukes because of the fear that the more countries have them, the more chances there are for accidents or for somebody to steal one and sell it on the black market or mistakes to happen, any other disaster scenario. So that in general argument against proliferation and the lack of the. The US did so much to try to make that credible, to make that commitment credible, to make it that all the Europeans and the Russians and say the South Koreans, North Koreans, the Chinese, that all of them really did believe that America would do it. And that's a hard thing to convince people of. You would actually destroy the world if we invade, you know, I don't know, Latvia, something like that. And so the US Would do things like put a lot of US Troops there so that you couldn't invade Latvia without also killing American, which would prompt an American reaction. And it's that commitment, that level of trust, that all these countries, adversaries and allies alike, believed that if you mess with the US Ally, you're messing with the world's most powerful country. And that's the thing that Trump has undermined. And it's sending a lot of not unreasonable panic through national security establishments where they're starting to take more seriously. If we can't rely on the American deterrent, maybe we need our own and somebody Like Poland can see that the United States doesn't invade North Korea, even though it's a, you know, would like to see regime change in North Korea. But North Korea has nukes and a powerful military. And they can see that Russia attacked Ukraine, which isn't in NATO, but has not bombed any country that is in NATO. It still fears NATO's deterrent. And so from Poland's perspective, if America won't be there for them, well, then maybe the only way they can actually keep the Russians out is with nukes of their own.
- [27:56]
Charlie Sykes
Well, and this is not a switch that you can turn back on again. You know, when Biden came into office, he said, America is back. But I think it's pretty obvious now that. That Europe has to. Has to forge its own path. I'm trying to think it was the French official who, during the election said, you know, we can't have the security of the world dependent on swing voters in Wisconsin every four years, which I took personally as Wisconsin, but I think that's the way the world is looking at us, that, in fact, we are no longer a stable and reliable ally, and so they need to reevaluate the world. Speaking of not being stable, this is always fraught to talk about domestic politics. I want to talk about the cr, this continuing resolution. And I have to admit, I have a certain bias about this, that it feels like there's the periodic kabuki dance that we all go through, and then eventually it gets settled, or maybe there's a shutdown. But not to get too deep into it, but this is a rather interesting moment where you have Donald Trump and Elon Musk dismantling the government, and then we're just a couple of days away from the possible shutdown. Right before you and I began recording this conversation, Chuck Schumer, the Democratic leader in the Senate, said, we're not gonna. The Democrats are not gonna bail you out on all this. You had the continuing resolution pass the House by the narrowest conceivable margin along basically partisan lines. It needs Democratic vote. It needs Democratic votes in the Senate. They're not gonna get very many. What do you think? What happens here? Does Donald Trump and Elon Musk want to see the government shut down? And will Democrats be blamed, do you think, if, in fact, there is a shutdown on Friday?
- [29:43]
Nicholas Grossman
So, like you, I'm used to thinking of this, thinking of it for years of it's a bunch of posturing, and that they're trying to set up future blame games and maybe we'll get A short shutdown for like a few hours, but then we'll get this announcement of something or other and, you know, the markets dip and then we're cover. And that's just how it goes. And the big difference now and unprecedented in US History is that the executive branch has openly declared and followed up with actions that it doesn't think Congress has power of the purse, that it thinks it can just, you know, ignore that part of the Constitution whenever it wants to. And there's so. And not only violate the Constitution and Article 1 of the Constitution, but also explicit congressional law of the Impoundment act that makes it clear in case there was any ambiguity. No, you cannot just simply not spend the things that are signed into law. And given that it is not the same sort of situation, because Congress, when it does, if it does pass something, that something will be treated by the executive branch as advisory, not as binding. And so that is hanging over this entire fight. I think at least for the time being, it looks like that Republicans will maybe squeeze through a sort of continuing resolution on their own. I don't know if Democrats will go along with that, but at least for the time being, they didn't get it through the filibuster in the Senate. That doesn't mean if maybe if they don't in the future, they'll change the rules. They only need a narrow majority, you know, 50 plus one, to get rid of that. So if Democrats stick to it, I wouldn't be so surprised if they do. But I don't really buy the Trump and Musk want a government shutdown thing, because government shutdowns look bad. And the problems that they've been causing have been happening very quickly and causing more problems for all sorts of regular people throughout the country. And people are noticing those. And this is where you see things like showing up at Republican town halls and Republicans running away from it, and they're just not able to shut down as much as they would like with doing, say, with a lot of the impoundments. So some people argue that, oh, well, then if the Congress doesn't do it, then they'll like it and it'll get worse. But I think that seems almost like negotiating against yourself that it's sort of too cute of. The public tends to blame the President when things go badly and tends to credit the President when things go well. And this president in particular has said more than others about how it is entirely him that is doing stuff, and he can do it and do it really quickly and fix anything. And so if things are going badly. No, I don't think that that is good for the people in charge. The people in charge tend to get blamed when things go badly and that it would be a mistake for Democrats to effectively signal that they are, that things are normal and they're going to validate the actions that the president is doing. And that means, if so, they fight really hard to get something in a bill. And then the White House just says, no, we're not going to do that, and tells the treasury to free the, freeze the money. And then that is all the leverage that Congress had just evaporated.
- [32:51]
Charlie Sykes
So I think if I, I don't have it right in front of me. But back in November, I'm sorry, back in December, before, you know, this administration began, you wrote a piece, you know, talking about the, the bending of the need to Trump was troubling, but the normalization by Democrats was, was even worse. Talk to me a little bit about this because the Democrats do seem, with some exceptions, to be flailing around and that many of the things they have done have treated many of the abnormal things that the Trump folks have done as if it is just sort of same old, same old. Have they figured this out? Have they figured out how to navigate the existential abnormality of this moment?
- [33:39]
Nicholas Grossman
I don't think so. I mean, do you now? But in fairness, it is, it's unprecedented in the United States. It is a very difficult moment. There are many things going on at once. So I don't think the fact that they don't really have a full handle on it is, is devastating on its own. That it's, that strikes me as reasonable. I don't have a full handle on it. It's not like I'm sitting here and saying they should do exactly this and I'm confident it will work. I can't be confident that it'll work. That said, I have been unsettled and, you know, somewhat disturbed by how much they seem to be treating it as, or at least some of them, and this is less so than they were before, but as business as usual. As and a number of them have regretted it one way or another. There were, I remember early Bernie Sanders and Rep. Rohana and there were a few others who spoke positively of Doge and how excited they were to work with Musk on cutting whatever their personal priority of cutting something.
- [34:33]
Charlie Sykes
They all voted for Marco Rubio.
- [34:35]
Nicholas Grossman
Sure. Another good example of some of them voted, some of them voted for rfk. Some of them and some of the Senate Democrats have come to say now publicly that they regret voting for somebody or that they, oh, he told me something privately, but then he acted in the way that he has been consistently acting in public for years. And that I wonder, did you really believe it or did you just think that this excuse of I trusted his words in private makes you sound good. But either way, the backtracking where they, oh, I wish I didn't vote for them. Or now that we see Senate Democrats saying that they are not voting to, for this continuing resolution that Republicans tried to use to keep the government open while they work on a bill that shows maybe a little more of the spine, that anger from constituents and calls to their offices and things like that probably helped the fact that the economy has a lot of metrics that are going negative. Probably helped. If the economy was going well and Trump's approval ratings were rising rather than falling or something like that, I bet more Democrats would be warier that they were really on the back foot from the election, took the election results as, as opposed to what it really was, was a, yes, a Trump victory, but an awfully close election in which you showed millions upon millions of people preferred the Democrats and instead treating it as this big national referendum in which like the, the will of the American people had, you know, the American people as a whole were really into this and don't want Democrats to do anything about it. And I think that initial shock is wearing off, and I think so, too, Trump and Musk are screwing up in various overt ways is helping Democrats strengthen their spine.
- [36:09]
Charlie Sykes
Okay, so we also, we still actually still have three branches of government. How do you think the judiciary is looking at this? And by the judiciary, I mean the Supreme Court, which broadly immunized Donald Trump. You know, we talked about how unprecedented it is that you have someone who is almost literally above the law, unaccountable in many of the ways that the founding fathers thought that the presidency would be unaccountable. You've had a series of legal challenges. The most interesting of which, though, was watching Chief Justice Roberts and Amy Coney Barrett actually break with the administration on their spending. And of course, MAGA is up in complete hair on fire that Justice Barrett has betrayed us and everything. But do you sense that the judiciary, or at least the Supreme Court is thinking, yeah, we're responsible for a lot of what's happening right now and the dangers that we face. Are they rethinking their posture vis a vis Trump?
- [37:19]
Nicholas Grossman
I don't, I don't know what they're thinking or have any insight directly into that of course not, but I'm not willing to give them credit for that. And for one of that.
- [37:30]
Charlie Sykes
Need the hope man do.
- [37:31]
Nicholas Grossman
Sure. Well, I do think that there's, there's hope in a broader judicial reaction and that you can see the Trump administration arguing various cases in court rather than just declaring that they don't have to listen to any case result that they don't like of with things like different things have been put on hold. That there was the recent arrest without any charges of the former Colombian student Mahmoud Khalil. And that was one where a judge stated and at least as far as I know, that he is still in the United States and that is going through at least something now that is kind of like due process or moving in that direction more that they've with when they tried to get rid of birthright citizenship. That's been blocked by the courts because that's just so wildly unconstitutional constitutional. But with the Supreme Court, as much as I had objections to, say some decisions if, you know, maybe I disagreed with as a citizen or disagree with on policy, the immunity decision I thought was one of the grossest un American things I'd ever seen and belongs on the list of infamy with Dred Scott and with the Korematsu decision that allowed Japanese internment. That just the very idea that it more or less was George III was right and all of the founding fathers were wrong about what the presidency is. You know, George Washington and later Teddy Roosevelt was saying no man is above the left. They were just all wrong. And the only person who ever got the presidency right was Richard Nixon when he said, you know, if the president does it, it's not illegal anyway. That's just absurd. And they, they made up so much stuff that's not in the Constitution to do it. But the reaction with 5, 4 on the recent vote to say that Congress does have at least to some extent power of the purse, that I found it that four justices were willing to vote against that pretty disturbing and that it should have been just a very clear nine zero. Of course you have to follow the law. Of course you have to follow legislation. The article 1 is very clear about who controls the money. It is not the president, it's Congress. And that even there were four that wouldn't do it. So what it made me think of more, especially with Roberts being a swing vote, was the Muslim ban in Trump's first term, which is a bunch of judges said it was unconstitutional. And it reached the Supreme Court and it was executive order and it reached the Supreme Court. And what they said was, you know, it doesn't quite fit. There are some issues with it. And so then they technically struck it down. And immediately the Trump administration just did it again with a few tweaks and that made it through the courts. And the Supreme Court said, you got to leave it in place while we adjudicate it as opposed to you have to stop it is fully within their power. You know, put a stable adjudicate it. And then this happened a second time where then, ah, they hadn't dotted all the right I's and the T's. So we shot it down. The administration did it again. And when lower court stopped it, the Supreme Court said, you have to allow it. And then eventually made it to them. And they said, okay, now it complies with the law. And so I am, wait and see on a lot of this impoundment and power of the purse fights, because they could get to a point where they say could very easily, just one vote would change it. And where they say something like, you know, this is, I guess, technically closer enough that we're not going to get involved in a dispute between the branches. And they could, I do not have faith in them that they will stand up for rule of law rather than come up with some lawyerly way to give Donald Trump special exemptions, much as they made up the whole idea of official acts and unofficial acts of presidents, with official acts being ones that were no longer subject to law.
- [40:59]
Charlie Sykes
Yeah, that was bullshit with Heron. Let me grasp for a couple of straws of hope. I always distinguish hope from optimism. Optimism, the belief things will get better. Hope is the belief that if you strive that you can improve things. It was interesting that as Trump marches through the Department of Justice, weaponizing the Department of Justice, purging senior lawyers, purging the FBI, that you are having a number of people from that world, Federalist Society world, who are saying, you know, I'm not going to do this. You had the one prosecutor in SDNY who, when he was ordered to drop the charges against Mayor Adams of New York, said it was never going to be me. And this is a former clerk to some of the justice. This is somebody that they know from that world. So I do wonder as they move through, because they're not doing it in a. They're not doing it in a careful way. They're not doing it in a prudent, you know, a prudent way. And you do have an entire generation, I think, of conservative jurists and lawyers who are not necessarily going to Go along with, with maga. That's number one. Number two, and this is, this is maybe a little bit more speculative. The law firm that has been targeted by the Trump administration. How do you pronounce it, Perkins? Coey. Is that, is that, is that the.
- [42:28]
Nicholas Grossman
You know, I've only read it. I've only read it. I've never seen outlines. Sure, let's go with that.
- [42:31]
Charlie Sykes
All right. Let's call it just Perkins. Perkins. I would suggest that people go and look at the brief that was filed by this law firm. This is a big law firm, lots of influencers. And given the pattern of watching one institution after another bend the knee or cave in or try to appease, the fact that these big law firms who have a lot on the line, are pushing back so aggressively, at least for now, makes me think that, okay, at least now we've come up against something that is. And the lawyers are not afraid to put their names on, and there's a lot of them that are stepping forward in doing that. And the reason I'm mentioning this, that given the collapse of the political opposition in the Republican Party in Congress to Trump, you have to hope, at least at this point, that there is still some resistance in the legal community and in the judiciary. I share with you the skepticism, but it's there. And we don't have a definitive answer. We have a definitive answer about Congressional Republicans. Right, we know that one, but we don't know how the judiciary is going to respond yet.
- [43:45]
Nicholas Grossman
We don't. And I agree that that is a reason for at least some hope, that the, at least some members of the judiciary and the bar are acting as if they care about their own power and authority and principles in ways that, as you mentioned, the Founding Fathers thought that faction would check faction, that ambition would check ambition, that people in Congress would just not. They would never want to give up their own power and own authority. What type of ambitious person, you know, would want to give up that? And so that part's been surprising. But that I have seen people, I agree with you that in the legal profession, not all of them, of course, and they're, you know, ones we could criticize, but that there have been, and we even saw some of this also in the time in between the terms when Trump was facing legal charges or when there was the judge Ludic as a maybe great example of this, as a conservative judge who, you know, stellar credentials and who made a strong argument that the 14th Amendment barred Trump as an insurrectionist from running. Another thing, the Supreme Court changed of the Law clearly saying that they're not allowed to run unless Congress grants them an exemption. And the Supreme Court changed that into they are allowed to run unless Congress passes something saying they can't. But so again, not really, you know, say trust the courts. But I have seen so in terms of hope that I think the conservative number of conservative judges and lawyers, at least a subset of them, is one some business leaders, you know, I saw that maybe some like in the finance world are realizing their mistake, that they seem to have told themselves that all that stuff Trump was talking about, about tariffs and all this, you know, other volatility, he's not going to do that. That's just for the rubes.
- [45:21]
Charlie Sykes
And you know, they really had convinced themselves of that. Yes, they really had.
- [45:25]
Nicholas Grossman
Yeah. And you know, who's the roof now, guys? But the, but I have seen some, you know, Jamie Dimon or other sort of big CEOs starting to change, different, even changing forecasts. Goldman Sachs lowered its target for Tesla. I think of, you know, what it's expecting along those lines. I've seen things of a protest against Musk specifically. And like the Tesla takedown campaign seems to be informing more people and in a way that does seem to be bugging him. You know, you mentioned with Trump doing an advertisement for Tesla from the White House, just wildly corrupt, but would not be the sort of thing that he was doing if the decline of Tesla's stock price was not something that was genuinely concerning Elon Musk. And looking at, you know, potentially something that could damage their power. And also you mentioned with the Europeans, I think the fact that in so many ways that the Trump administration and a lot of this goes on Musk, but has been so reckless with it that, yes, that makes it harder for people to get a handle on it, but it also is disabusing people of illusions. The Europeans, they could have strung along a lot of Europe for a while with, you know, if maybe and if. And well, we would just like you to do more of this instead of denigrating them outright and saying that the US doesn't really think their security is a priority. Same thing with a lot of the tariffs with Canada or other economic management with a lot of the Musk Doge stuff destroying parts of the government, firing a lot of people that thought that arguments like but I'm trying to cure cancer or but this will hurt children or this will make us all really a lot poorer. Why do you want to do that? That those arguments aren't resonating with the administration, but they're resonating with people that people in communities will know when they you can't help but notice when you got fired. And when you ask, why did I get fired? And the answer is because Elon Musk cut our funding and illegally cut our funding, that's something that people care about. So I think there are many hopeful signs of a larger societal reaction. And whenever people, as much as you know, I am fairly pessimistic in the sense that I think this is going to get worse before it gets better. And I've been pretty, I think my track record on that is quite good. I'm happy to go back and look, you know, but in the ways that I thought it was going to go bad. But also, people can often get too doomerish, too defeatist, that decently more entrenched authoritarian governments, more, more entrenched and more authoritarian governments in the Trump administration have fallen. And the way that they end up falling is many. Much of the time ultimately, is rising popular opposition. Nobody knows exactly where that threshold is, but there is a limit of how much of broader society, how much civil society institutions like those lawyers or just the general public, how much people you can really hurt and really piss off before you start getting a overwhelming reaction. So I don't think we know where.
- [48:25]
Charlie Sykes
It'S going, but we're going to find out, aren't we? We're going to find out over the next few years. Nicholas Grossman, thank you so much for joining me. You can find Nicholas's work over at Arc Digital. He's a professor of political science at the University of Illinois. We will have to have you back again. So thank you very much for all your time today.
- [48:44]
Nicholas Grossman
Sure, I'd love to. It's a real pleasure. Thanks.
- [48:47]
Charlie Sykes
And thank you all for listening to this episode of to the Contrary podcast. I'm Charlie Sykes. We do this several times a week because now more than ever before, we need to remind ourselves we are not the crazy ones. Thanks.