← To The Contrary with Charlie Sykes
To The Contrary with Charlie Sykes
Peter Wehner: Trump, Denial, and the Collapse of Civic Courage
00:49:03
Loading summary
Transcript42 lines
- [00:00]
Peter Wehner
Foreign.
- [00:11]
Charlie Sykes
Sykes. Welcome to this episode of to the Contrary podcast. One of my very, very first podcast guest joins me again today. Peter Weiner, you know him from the New York Times, the Atlantic, a senior fellow at the Trinity Forum, former White House Aiden, and all around smart guy. So Peter, first of all, welcome back to the podcast.
- [00:31]
Peter Wehner
Great to be with you, Charlie. Thanks. Love your work and it's more important than ever. So it's thrilled to be with you.
- [00:37]
Charlie Sykes
Okay, so we are recording this in the midst of the third consecutive day of a global meltdown. You have real panic across the markets. Internationally. The global markets crashed overnight and Donald Trump has reacted by number one, going golfing and number two apparently now midday on Monday, threatening even more tariffs against China. That I think if you do the math, that if he raises the tariffs as much as he's now threatening, it would be 130% tariffs. So I guess let's take a deep breath because, you know, day by day by day, we've had another extraordinary story. Whether it is the attack on the rule of law, whether is the attack on the health system, whatever. I guess this is what I'm really wrestling with right now. Why are so many people surprised? Why are they shocked by this? Given the fact that, you know, guys like you and me, and I'm not saying I'm not trying to do the I told you so, but for eight years we've been saying, look, it's right there. Why are you not seeing this? Do you understand what a dangerous thing this is to put him back in the Oval Office? So why are people shocked by what we have been telling them was going to happen?
- [01:58]
Peter Wehner
That's a great question. The short answer is they shouldn't be. But in terms of why are they, that I think is complicated. And I think human psychology bears a lot on the answer to that question, which is that if you chart the support that Trump has gotten over the last 10 years, you know, it started somewhat gradually. Some of his qualities were more of a bug than a feature. But over time, a series of accommodations were made by his followers that became more and more deeply invested in him. And then as the polarization increased, the acrimony, the cruelty and crudity of Donald Trump, the antipathy between Trump supporters and his critics grew and grew. And I think a while ago that an awful lot of supporters simply cannot at this point break with him. Not just because it would be breaking with him, it would be breaking in some fundamental way with themselves.
- [03:03]
Charlie Sykes
And it would sunken cost.
- [03:04]
Peter Wehner
Essentially saying to Pete Wehner and to Charlie Sykes and to a lot of other people, maybe you were right and maybe we were wrong. And I think that that is too psychologically painful for a lot of them and they won't do it. And then on top of that, I think that Trump has rewired the emotional brain of a lot of his, his supporters and the, the acrimony, the intensity of the conflict is actually almost addictive. It's like a dopamine rush. So I think a lot is, is going, going on that, that is understood in, in the realm of human psychology. That doesn't make it any, any better and, and in some ways it makes it worse. But I suspect that's part of the explanation.
- [03:50]
Charlie Sykes
Well, and there are people who rationalized it. There were people who made the Faustian bargain. It was transactional. There are other people who have just been in denial. You know, I wrote about a guy who was saying he was just assumed that with all of his flaws that there would still be adults in the room. But I think there's been a failure of imagination that Donald Trump was who he told him, told us that he was all the time. So here's, here's a quote from, and this is from Susan Glasser's column. It's a quote from Garry Kasparov, who, you know, attributed the failure to anticipate Trump's trade war to an epic level of denial about Trump's Vladimir Putin like brand of autocratic personality disorder. After all, Putin's unprovoked invasion of Ukraine didn't make any sense either. To many of those presented with irrefutable evidence, he was playing it. Instead, Kasparov suggested a maxim for our unhappy times. Dictators always lie about what they've done, but they're often quite plain about what they want to do. And Trump's made it very plain what he wants to do.
- [04:54]
Peter Wehner
Yeah, I think that's quite right. I mean, Garry Kasparov has been a clear and powerful moral voice during this whole period. And I think he's right. For an awful lot of Americans, the idea of an authoritarian takeover and authoritarian mindset in the present, simply alien to our experience. And so I think a lot of people find it hard to assume that's the case. Beyond that, Charlie and I have been saying this really from 2015. I remember having a conversation with a very well known Washington Post reporter in the spring of 2015 who was making calls to Republicans about how to cover Trump. And I told him at that time, it was about a 45 minute conversation. I said the most important thing that you can do, if you want to understand Trump is talk to psychologists and psychiatrists. Because I said the fundamental thing to understand about him is at the time I was using the phrase disordered personality. He's a sociopath.
- [05:59]
Charlie Sykes
Yeah.
- [05:59]
Peter Wehner
And I think even people that might nod their head in agreement if I said that still have a very, very hard time knowing what that means and accepting that reality. There's a book called the Sociopath Next Door, which is a very good book in part because it explains how difficult it is for people who are non sociopathic to understand people who are. It's just a simply a different universe. And, and Trump, I think, falls into that category, this sort of authoritarian, sociopathic category, and people aren't used to it, so they keep giving in the benefit of the doubt. Like, you know, your friend, and I have friends, too, somebody that I know who actually didn't vote for Trump or Harris, but in the conversation leading up to the election, he told me, I think that Trump is going to spend just a lot of time on his golf game and he's, he's not going to do a lot of the things he says. And my response to him was, you know, given his record and his history, you, you better assume something more than he's going to go on play 18 holes, you know, every day.
- [07:12]
Charlie Sykes
Well, I mean, and let's, let's, let's stick with this psychology because he did go and play, I don't know how many holes he played over the weekend. And he's, he's at least publicly, you know, suggesting that he is not going to budge, even though we had these confused messages over the weekend that we're going to go negotiate the tariffs. No, we're not going to negotiate the tariffs. Maximum amount of confusion. You have Howard Lutnick out there saying, we're going to bring back these jobs and then saying, well, actually we're going to make them robotic jobs. I mean, what a moron. But is Donald Trump, as he's watching this meltdown in the global marketplace, as he's watching all these numbers go down, is he alarmed or is he enjoying the power that's come to him and the drama that he's created around him, is Donald Trump worried or is he pretty, like, this is what I want. I've come into my full power?
- [08:09]
Peter Wehner
Oh, I think it's much more the latter. And that's important to understand. It's part of the reason why the normal political laws of gravity don't apply to him, which is provable. Rating goes down, party gets Anxious midterms on the horizon, special elections in the horizon. President adjusts in light of that. I don't think that really applies to. To him. I imagine he's having the time of his life. I don't think, in fact, I would. I'm almost certain he doesn't care about the pain that he's inflicting, because as I've said before, I think try morality, empathy, sympathy. For Trump, it's like trying to explain color to a person born blind. I just think it's possible for him to see it. And his life has to be understood as a life in large part, not totally, but in large part a vengeance. That is what he lives for. That is what motivates him, gets him up in the morning. And I think that if you compare him this term to the first term, and people within the administration have said as much, he's much happier because the chaos is unconventional, checks on him. Exactly. And so I think there's a line in the Dark Night of the Batman movies where Alfred says to Bruce Wayne, who doesn't understand the Joker, and Alfred says, I think it's actually you who don't understand him. He said, some people just want to watch the world burn. And I think Donald Trump just wants to watch the world burn, or at least he wants to watch much of America burn. And that's what's happening.
- [09:56]
Charlie Sykes
Okay, but he. Okay, I don't disagree. But Donald Trump's image, what he will tell his supporters, is that he is the great builder, that he wants to make America great again, that he wants to create vast new prosperity. So on the one hand, you have this image of somebody who claims that I'm going to do this, and yet we are seeing him running around with a box of matches, burning down, the burning down. So, again, I hate this question, but is this just another one of those moments that just passes, or is this a hinge? Is that cognitive dissonance, the great builder who, in fact, in front of the whole world is burning things down? Does that actually. Do you think that this will be different than in the past? I'm not saying things like turning point or hinge of fate or anything like that, but will this be different, do you think? And we don't know, of course, yeah.
- [10:49]
Peter Wehner
I think it will be different. I just think it's a more dangerous moment. I think once he got that second term and he surrounded himself and what he believes, what he's internalized, is this relentless persecution on him, that is his mindset. Now, the important thing, I think, to Also always understand with Trump is that there's not a strategy involved. And these different parts of him don't necessarily cohere. He is often at war with, with, with himself. And, and it's why one day he may say one thing, and the next day he may say, he may say something else. He's an almost entirely impulsive, reactive creature. So I think these things can, can exist at the same time, but I think at the end of the day, what will drive him most is the nihilism and the, and the cruelty and this sort of unchecked power. And that if you under, if, you know, if you go through and you've studied, talk to psychologists about, about sociopaths, narcissistic personality disorder. There's something else that I think is probably relevant here, which is he won. And he won on his own terms. Lot of people were saying you can't win a second term, you know, closing by talking about Arnold Palmer's penis size and, and, you know, the J6 choir and all of that. And he did it and he still won. So what that does for him in particular is ratifies and says your judgment is best. Ignore what the other people are saying, saying around you. So what's the storyline now? The storyline now is that these tariffs may cause, you know, a collapse of the global economy, but relax, everything's going to be fine. That's the talking points of the right wing. They don't believe it, but he may.
- [12:39]
Charlie Sykes
Well, you know, the other thing that was interesting over the weekend is Maggie Haberman, who's studied him from the, the reporter for the New York Times, she studied him for years. She says, you know, he just no longer cares about certain optics. You know, he's all a lot of fucks to give. He, you know, and to your point about how he won that campaign, was Trump in full? That campaign was, there was, there was no pretense whatsoever. You wrote about this at the time. Everything there was to know about the darkest impulses of Donald Trump were right there front and center. Each rally was, you know, pushed that line further, and he won anyway. And then he comes into office and he, and he surrounds himself with this group of misfit toys who are selected basically by their most slavish loyalty to him, but also their extreme politics and the fact they owe everything to him. That should have been an indication. And I want to keep coming back to this point because something happened on Monday morning that I thought was maybe kind of a warning sign. Stock market was plunging. And by the way, by the time People see this, we don't know what the numbers are going to be. But during the morning, stock market was plunging. A tweet goes out, a fake tweet implying that Paul Hassett, the economic advisor, had said on Fox Business that they were going to have a 90 day pause in the tariffs. The stock market soared. Trillions of dollars changed hands. Then people realized it was fake news, it was bullshit. There was going to be no. There was going to be no. And the market went again. And it occurs to me that right now the most valuable thing in the universe, or at least in the world economy, is in Donald Trump's head. And I hate to say this because we now have an economy that is at the mercy of the whims of Donald Trump. We talk about authoritarianism a lot, we talk about one man rule, but Donald Trump can move trillion tens of trillions of dollars by just changing his mind. First of all, he's got to love that. But also, how on earth do we get to the point where we gave him that power? Including, let's start with Congress. That Congress, Article 1 ceded all of this power to him. The Parliament of Great Britain did not give George III the unilateral power to impose massive taxes on the colony. They would have thought you were crazy if you'd said no. Well, he's the king. No, the king can't do that. But our president can.
- [15:24]
Peter Wehner
Yeah, well, that is the question that historians.
- [15:27]
Charlie Sykes
The whim economy.
- [15:30]
Peter Wehner
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And I, and I agree completely. And I also agree that having that much power, being able to move markets is for someone with his psychological makeup, just an extraordinary, terrifying sort of addictive quality. Yeah. You know, how did, how did we get to this point? How did people not anticipate it? Why didn't, why didn't they stop it? I, I think it was a CAT scan on, on, on America and an awful lot of Americans, a plurality of Americans, most especially, I might say, as a person of the Christian faith, among evangelical Christians and fundamentalists, who are the group that are most responsible for having put, put this, this freak and this freak show into, in, into power. And you know, I think what happened over time is in terms of what you raised about Congress and the fact that there are no checks, it really is a remarkable thing to look back at the last 10 years and just to plot how this, not plot in the sense of, on a timeline and in terms of events, you know, what happened and how month after month, year after year, they gave more and more. And then as he gained control over the Republican Party. First, the grassroots, not the so called elite or the establishment in the Republican Party, they came later. But the grassroots had this bond with Trump which is unlike anything that I've ever seen, including with, with Ronald Reagan. Then the establishment falls like dominoes. People like Marco Rubio and J.D. vance and Josh Hawley, I mean, you go through them, Pete Hegseth, all, all of them, you know, have, have collapsed and, and come into line. They're fearful of, of taking him on. They're worried about the fate of Adam Kinzinger and Liz Cheney and Mitt Romney and so forth, forth. And so they do his bidding and then they enter that world and they become more and more a part of that world. Look, look at Marco Rubio now what he was 2015, right? He was a leader of the so called Reformicons reform movement of which I was a part of. And now he is one of the authors of a set of policies that is going to kill literally millions of people overseas with the gutting of USAID and pepfar. And it doesn't seem to bother him at all. He doesn't seem to be lifting a finger to do anything about it. And he's hardly the worst of it. So these people have just gone in the tank and we are where we are.
- [18:16]
Charlie Sykes
Well, and Marco Rubio is, I think, completely unrecognizable from what he used to be. And his transformation is extraordinary. Also, it's worth remembering that when he was confirmed as Secretary of State, he was the normie, he was the safe one. Every single Democrat in the United States Senate voted to confirm him as US Secretary of State. And apparently he did not consider that in any way limiting on his zeal to become as magnified as possible. The other thing, and again, this is now an old story for, for the two of us, but it certainly turns out that the ideological commitment of free market conservatives to free markets was extremely thin. It was millimeter thin. That you go back and you look at, for example, the speeches that Ronald Reagan gave about why protectionism was dangerous, why tariffs were dangerous. And then you watch the embrace the MAGA embrace the entire, not just the Moga embrace, but the embrace of the Congressional Republican Party of tariffs. It's truly extraordinary. Now there are some voices pushing back against it, weirdly enough, people like Rand Paul who remember why they're fiscal conservatives. There are others who are putting legislation through. My guess is nothing will come of that. But just a reminder that this is not about conservative economics in any way whatsoever.
- [19:46]
Peter Wehner
I completely agree with you, Charlie. And it's not confined, by the way, to conservative economics. You should take the pro life movement, which would have had an uprising against the slightest act against the pro life cause, from their perception, and now what do you have? A person as head of hhs, which is the most important federal agency when it comes to abortion, who as recently as last year didn't believe in any restrictions at any point with abortion, Trump himself is de facto pro choice. And you see it with America's role in the world. So you've seen a complete flip. Ideologically, this is not a conservative party. It's a nativist, populist, nihilistic party. And it also underscores just what a cult of personality it is. I mean, I know, as you do, many people who I think at the time really believed what they said about traditional conservative policies, but once Trump came in and he decided to flip them on their head, those people just went along with him because their loyalty was to him, not to, not to the ideals, not to the convictions. And so now the entire party has been, you know, has been, has been transformed. In some cases, of course, people had a financial incentive to do it. If you're part of the right wing ecosystem, you know, there's a lot of money, you can't upset your audience. So that exists. But even apart from that, I think it is a kind of cult like moment, unlike we've seen in this country.
- [21:28]
Charlie Sykes
Well, I want to get your thoughts, though, on how this has spread from the Republican Party, which feels like the, you know, last year's story, to, to civil society as a whole. Watching these big law firms, billion dollar law firms, basically go into receivership for Donald Trump, the universities caving in, even media outlets now suddenly being afraid. And I'll give you my theory is that part of it is this is the sense that there are no checks and balances on Donald Trump, that the courts, I think, have been good guardrails thus far, but I think that there's a lack of confidence in them, that there's not a belief that it's just not worth fighting because Congress is not going to protect you. The independent agencies are not independent anymore and we can't count on the courts that have granted him immunity. So there is this kind of sense that none of the normal protections any longer exist in our society. What do you think?
- [22:22]
Peter Wehner
Yeah, I think that's a very good analysis. I agree with it 100%. Very, very little that Donald Trump has done over the last 10 years has surprised me or the reactions that he has elicited. What has surprised me a little bit is how quickly the across the board capitulation took place. As you said that the law firms, the universities, many media outlets, thankfully not the ones I write for, including the Atlantic, they've remained strong and principled, but the others have collapsed. Why has that happened there? I don't think it's the spread of, of, of a cult like mentality. I think it's just sheer fear and terror for the reasons you said. I think they feel like, look, this guy is unhinged. He's the most powerful man in the world. There are no checks on him and he can go after us, he can isolate us, he can try and destroy us. And we've got to do everything that we can to, to duck, to hide, to placate him, to cut deals with him, not to upset him, because there's fear. That's how authoritarian takeovers happen. It's not simply that you convince the majority or vast number of people to believe in what the authoritarian leader believes, but it is that the other people who don't believe become part of the lie. They live the lie. This is what Solzhenitsyn wrote and warned about and Havel and others. So I think that's really what is going on. I feel like we've just got to try and survive for the next four years plus and this is how we're doing it. John F. Kennedy said that there's a reason that profiles encourage is a thin volume. And I think we're seeing that play out.
- [24:09]
Charlie Sykes
No, and what's interesting is how quickly it's become normalized. This is how you do business with Donald Trump, right? That you have to slavishly praise him, that you need to go on cable television if you work for him and sound like some sort of North Korean television anchor, that you need to come bearing gift.
- [24:25]
Peter Wehner
That's an insult to North North Korean television anchors.
- [24:29]
Charlie Sykes
I think so. But I mean, you even see like the mainstream smart kid analysis saying, well, you know, why did Vod, you know, Volodymyr Zelensky not come in and grovel? You know, why don't, you know, again, it's become systematized that you pay him off, that you praise him, that you cave into him, because this is the way you do business in a prudent world, which is like, wait, this is also how you, you know, how a president becomes above the law and without any restraint. And of course, now we're seeing what, what if you give the President this maximum power to hold the entire world economy hostage and that, that's why I wonder. It's like, where did you think this was going to lead? Where did you think it was going to go? Did you think this was a man with a plan, with great strategy? And by the way, I love the Fox News spin. He's a billionaire. He's been talking about this. He has a plan, he knows exactly what he's doing. If anything is clear right now, Peter, it's that there is no plan. There is no thing about that. And I think the embarrassing part about it is that you look at the numbers, the way he's doing it and it's so deeply incompetent. And I think this is the other thing, is that you can make a case for radical change. But whether it's Elon Musk and his 19 year old doge guys or this, you have to ask yourself, you know, are these people who have any clue of what they're doing, I mean, and the damage that these misfit toys almost at every level of government, I mean, they can't even put together, you know, a chat, a group chat about bombing the Houthis. Right. I mean, this is incompetence, stupidity at an epic level. If you wrote this in a script, nobody would accept it. It would be like, oh, come on, you're not gonna do the group chat thing, right? That's like too much. Let's just stick with Elon Musk.
- [26:14]
Peter Wehner
Yeah.
- [26:14]
Charlie Sykes
And the chainsaw, right?
- [26:17]
Peter Wehner
Yeah. No, even the chainsaw might not make, make the final cut. I agree, agree with that. I will tell you what's interesting and I, and I don't know how this is going to play out because you do see this across the board, capitulations. We've been talking about this institution by institution, but there is an authentic grassroots revolt that is happening and we're seeing it. You know, the signs are all around us. We, we saw it in the town hall meetings a few weeks ago, which Republicans have now stopped the reaction against Tesla. We've seen it. And then we saw these, these gatherings and protests around, around the country. I think what's happening with the tariffs and the destruction of the, of the global economy, that is going to cut in a way that nothing else really, really, really has. It's, it's, it's a sad commentary that you could destroy USAID and pepfar and costs millions of lives and people don't care. They care about the price of eggs and, and cars. Exactly. But that is, that's where we are and that's what's happening. And I think there's going to be a huge public reaction against what is happening. And then the question is, what unfolds after that? What does the Republican Party do? What does Trump do? Does he, does he respond and, and adjust in light of it? Does it push him like a wounded animal and that he becomes more unhinged, more aggressive? You know, is there a danger of the Insurrection act or, or martial law sort of in our future? We don't, we don't know. But I, I think something significant and fundamental is, is, is happening. And we're at the early stages of what I think is going to be a very powerful public revolt against Trump.
- [28:09]
Charlie Sykes
Okay, I want to come back to that in a second. But, but your, your, your point here about we need to use our imaginations in terms of, like, what could he do? You know, when the President, United States declares an economic emergency, it does unlock certain powers. He has people who are, you know, ferreting out those powers. And will he, can he, I mean, sorry, can he abuse them? Yes, Will he abuse them? He's going to be tempted. I think it was George Conway who might have. No, who was it? It was somebody who tweeted out, keep in mind that at some point, Donald Trump's gonna become much more interested in all the nuclear weapons he has, too. I mean, we need to really get our heads around it. So let's talk about these protests. I was surprised by how successful they were. I didn't really pay that much attention beforehand. It looks like as many as a million people might have turned out. Now, I think that's necessary, but not sufficient. Probably the most important thing was there was no, there was no violence. There was no excuse for Donald Trump to say that there were thugs or to invoke the Insurrection Act. So you are seeing this turnaround and there's no question last week there was a, you know, the anti Trump forces needed last week, what happened in Wisconsin, what happened in Florida, the people turning out, I think that folks who were shocked by the election kind of took a deep breath, have gotten off the floor, but there's a long way to go. And I guess one of the questions, though, is will Democrats overread this in the sense that as an excuse not to fix some of the problems that they have, because there are some systemic problems, people like Ruiz Teixeira says, look, you still got the culture issue problem that has not gone away. You can't just pretend that there was kind of a fluke here. And if you overread this, then you won't fix the problems you have.
- [30:05]
Peter Wehner
Yeah, yeah, I agree with you 100%. In fact, I'm at the beginning of working on an essay, maybe a joint essay on exactly this question. And one of the things that I would counsel Democrats to, to do is to think through what they want to do, what they stand for, without mentioning the words Donald Trump or Republican Party, just as an exercise, because I think it has been so deeply ingrained in them for the, for the last 10 years that we're running against him, that I think it stopped them from thinking what is our mission? What is our identity apart from him? And certainly you're right that at least up until now they've consistently said, look, we have a communications problem. They, they thought what happened in 2016 was a parenthesis rather than a pattern. We know now it's, it's a pattern. I think a lot of them do too. They're having this internal debate. They should, I hope the, the, the voices of, of reform win. To, to me, I would look and I would urge Democrats to look to Bill Clinton in the early 1990s and Tony Blair in the mid-1990s. Right. That the context for your listeners is that the Democratic Party had been wiped out in three straight elections. Four out of five especially I think what, what left a mark on the Democratic Party and opened them to Reform was a 1988 election in which George H.W. bush beat Michael Duak as 40 states to 10 Democrats had thought, well, okay, Reagan has put this magic spell over the country and it'll break. And it didn't. That created the opening for the Democratic Leadership Council and Will Marshall and Bill Galston and Elaine Kmart and Bill Clinton. Right. And so he comes in, he runs as a reform minded government governor and welfare as we know it, Sister Soulja. And he wins and Democrats begin to dominate. Run Tony Blair. Similarly, in the UK the Labor Party had been destroyed by Margaret Thatcher. Starting in the late 70s, it almost ceased to exist as a party. And Tony Blair takes pages out of the Clinton playbook. They had different application, obviously, because the UK is not the United States. But it was the same approach, symbolic statements and issues to signal we're not where we were. Policy changes and a young and impressive kind of centrist, reassuring, talented figure comes onto the scene. So I think the Democrats have to do that. I don't think that they should or it would be wise for them to assume that the Republican Party will collapse of its own weight. And of course, on the Horizon is the 2030 census, which is going because of the number of people who have left fled blue states to red states. The electoral map is going to change the Electoral College, and that's going to make it harder. So Democrats have a lot of work to do, I think, both public policy wise and in terms of culture. How do we signal to the, to the country that we're not crazy?
- [33:17]
Charlie Sykes
No, and I think that's. That, that's really important because there's been all this focus on, you know, how to communicate. We know, we know. Which podcast do you go on? Should you be on TikTok? I think that it's also a crisis of values, by which I mean, people want to know, do you share my values? Do you look down on me, or do you understand who I am? Those are crucial. And I think that a lot of voters simply look to the political parties and they say, will I be better off with you than with the other guy? Will you make me richer? Will I be, you know, be able to, you know, send my kids to school? Will you keep me safe? You know, those two things. Will I be able to rise and will you keep me safe? And it used to be the Democratic Party could answer, yes, we were the party of prosperity for the middle class, and yes, we were going to keep you safe. But the Republicans have taken both those things away, you know, as well as. And in part because Democrats have become dominated by their professional elites who became concerned with a lot of other things, identity politics, other, you know, things that go under the name of woke, which I think is misleading. But at some point, people need to believe that the Democratic Party is a party of prosperity, of safety, of national security. And Donald Trump is opening the door for them to do that, but they have to take advantage of it. And I think they need to think in those terms. You know, am I on your side or am I not on your side? Do I care about people like you, or do I not care about people like you? And I think they were losing that argument, that when they looked at the Democratic Party, they thought, your concern is with other people, not with us. You don't really understand me. You kind of desperately despise me. You look down on me, you make fun of me. Not a formula for electoral success.
- [35:09]
Peter Wehner
Yeah, I think that's. I think that's right. And, and strength, that's always an important quality in, in electing a president. And I think it's. It's the way that a lot of Americans understand strength is, Is. Is distorted to an extraordinary degree. But a lot of people thought Donald Trump is a strong figure and the Democrats are, you know, are, are, are weak. The other thing that we just have to see Democrats do and they'll get the chance is to see what that bench that they have is. I mean, I know James Carville says that they have a great, great bench and maybe they do. But at the end of the day, you know, you, you can promote certain policies, but you just need a political figure, somebody who's really, really talented. And the Democrats got it with, with, with Clinton and with Obama. They didn't get it with Joe Biden. He still won in 2020, but he was obviously a mediocre political, political talent. Republicans got it, you know, in their recent history with, with, with several of, of the presidents that has to, that has to happen. And so there's going to be a lot of Josh jostling. I do think it's interesting that someone like Gavin Newsom with his new podcast seems to be, you know, running, running away as fast as he can from the sort of so called woke policies. I'm, I'm glad he is, he's not exactly California. Yeah, there's something about him that just, I don't know, a little too smooth, a little bit, sort of too much out of central casting. But the point is that the message I think is being received. And I think a lot of different Democrats, Josh Shapiro, obviously his name was bandied about a lot and there are others. So we're going to see what they do. I think a couple things have to happen. One is that there has to be an opening, which I think Trump is giving the Democratic Party. But then, as you said, they have to take advantage of it.
- [37:11]
Charlie Sykes
You know, you mentioned the bench and just here's the cautionary note because I remember going to one of the Republican debates in 2016 before it was all over, when everybody was still in the rays. And do you remember that cast of characters? And there was Donald Trump there. But remember thinking, boy, the Republicans have such a deep bench. Look at all of these impressive characters. And yet in the spotlight, particularly up against Donald Trump, how each one of them, each one of them in turn was exposed as a phony or a weakling or flawed in some way. And so presidential politics can expose people in ways that are, that you will never be able to guess until they actually get into the race. A lot of people look great on paper and they absolutely implode when they get in that race. And I can think of a lot of people who that would apply to on both sides of the aisle.
- [38:05]
Peter Wehner
I can too. I'm 100% with you. I've been involved in a couple of presidential campaigns. There's nothing like them. And if people think that running as governor or senators the same as running for president, it's. It's not. I will say it's. It's an interesting observation about, about 2016, as I thought a lot about it. And you're, you're right. I mean, those people went up against Trump were obviously consumed and devoured by him. I do think that part of it was the base of the party had become so radicalizing, much more radicalized than most people understood. I'm not sure that Donald Trump's act would have worked in 2012, 2008, or any other time. So all these other candidates, some of whom really were genuinely talented, never had any experience in dealing with somebody like Trump, and they didn't know how to do it. And they, they tried to ignore him sometimes, like Rubio, they went, they tried to replicate him, and it just didn't work. Now, some of it was because of their own limitations, but I think, think an awful lot of it had to do with. Nobody was as good at being Donald Trump as Donald Trump. And that's what the Republican primary voters wanted. And I think that's, That's a, an indictment of them more than it is of the candidates, even though, at the end of the day, the candidates didn't rise to the degree they had to.
- [39:36]
Charlie Sykes
So two of the things that, and again, I know that you know this as well, the Democrats really hate getting any advice from, from us because, you know, who are we? You know, since we did such a great job with our, with our, with our own party, but on these cultural issues, obviously they need to do some rethinking, but clearly they also need to think through things like the importance of good governance. And I'm really glad there's this debate that's broken out with the, with the Ezra Klein Thompson book about the abundance, you know, the abundance agenda. Because, you know, the reality is that the Democratic Party became the party of NIMBYism. They became the party of red tape and bureaucracy. And it's a legitimate question to ask how you can spend, you know, billions of dollars on charging stations around the country and end up with only five of them. So there was, there was, I think, a lack of attention to, okay, if you want people to vote for you, you need to get shit done. You can't just pass a bill and say you're building things back better and then not build them back. You need to do that. The Second thing is that, and you and I have lived through this, watching the echo chamber form on the right, there was a bubble on the left as well. And I worry, I've been reading a lot of these books now about the last days of Joe Biden and I, I'm really troubled by the level of delusion that must have taken place. And I'm raising my hand as somebody that believed that, that, you know, that somehow that Biden was going to be able to get through this. But the Democrats did create this bubble of delusion that really, I don't think is gonna look good in the eyes of history. And I think that this is something that we all need to do. It's like, how do we not fall into this incredible grip of wishful thinking, of not seeing things that are right in front of our eyes? Now, we've talked about, you know, MAGA people looking at Donald Trump and not processing what they see in front of their eyes. But let's be honest about it, there were a lot of anti Trump folks, a lot of Democrats who look right at Joe Biden and it was right there and we didn't see it or we weren't willing to admit it. Your thoughts on that?
- [41:41]
Peter Wehner
Yeah. Yes, that's right. Just on the first, I agree that the book abundance and what they're trying to do is very, very important. And I never heard liberals give a response when I would ask questions about what was happening in cities like Portland and Seattle, San Francisco and some of the cities I know well. I went to school at University of Washington in Seattle and just seeing parts of Seattle, which I remembered when I.
- [42:12]
Charlie Sykes
Was a student born in Seattle and.
- [42:13]
Peter Wehner
Just being hollowed out. And this was really a product of liberal and progressive governance. So I think that's very, very important and relevant in terms of the delusional bubble that you referred to with, with Biden. Yeah, that is, that is right. I mean, I remember I have email conversations leading up to, you know, the, the utter collapse of the, during the debate. But I mean, months and months in advance and, and just checking with people like, are you seeing what I'm seeing? This, he, he really, this age issue is really, really worrisome and to the point that I, I would write doctors and ask them, what do you think that he's, he's, you know, he's suffering from? Of course, it's hard to diagnose from a distance. But on the other hand, there's a kind of clinical, clinical eye. And then of course, what was happening within his inner circle, his closest aides and his wife that what we've been talking about, the psychology of politics, which is psychology of human life, it's true of human beings across the board. Now, at different moments, it afflicts one side more than the other. But it is not as if it's. It's any one side is. Is immune to it. And Democrats for, for sure it is the nature of what life is like. Wishful thinking, not wanting to admit things that are going to be painful. So in the case of Joe Biden, these people loved him. They kept telling themselves that this was just a bad day or it was a bad week, or there are moments in which he's able to rise up. So I don't think all of them were being cynical. I think that they were telling themselves stories and then they had convinced themselves in a way similar to what MAGA World has done. And how do you cure that? Well, sometimes reality cures it. In this case for Democrats, it was a debate in which 50 or 60 million people saw it. But beyond that, you need people within your life who have different perspectives than we do, whom you trust to be able to say, you know, you're not seeing something. Because our own judgment, it's so easy. There's a reason we call them blind spots.
- [44:35]
Charlie Sykes
Yeah, no, no, it is so easy. And it's not a rip on people to say that the people do in fact, you know, process things in a certain way. I mean, that's the way that we are wired. And by the way, I'm having the authors, John Allen and Amy Parnas, on the next podcast. They wrote the book about the final days of Biden. We're going to spend a lot more time on all that, I guess. Here's the other challenge of dealing with Donald Trump. And we've done this, you and I have done this now for what, 10 years? Is that Donald Trump is so malevolent. He is so. And he poses such a deep threat that it's very easy staring at that to minimize any of the problems on the outside. So therefore, it's one thing to oppose and really recognize and internalize the threat. Threat that Donald Trump poses. And I understand where people then become emotionally attached to anyone who is not Donald Trump and are willing to overlook all of their problems. So you had people who are saying, Joe Biden is not just, you know, okay, Joe. Joe Biden is the best president of my lifetime. Joe Biden is absolutely great. Let's hug Joe Biden. Joe Biden is absolutely wonderful. Everything on the other side. And I think that there was a blind blindness on the part of a lot of folks to what was happening to cities like Seattle and Portland that hollowing out the extremism. The rest of the country saw it, but we were so focused. And the problem is that Donald Trump will continue to be malevolent and dangerous and we're going to continue to have that challenge of. And again, I'm balancing this out because, you know, the enemy of my enemy is my friend. We have to have a big tent. I don't have a purity test for anyone that wants to get involved in the coalition. But I do think that we need to make a really strong effort to be clear eyed because otherwise then we are going to get blindsided again as we were in 2024. And I think this is hard, this is psychologically hard to do. Sometimes.
- [46:30]
Peter Wehner
It is hard to do. It's hard for all of us to do. I do think that working to the advantage of Democrats and a lot of the critics of Trump is the fact that this kind of reality is setting in. It's harder than it was for people to live in this hall of mirrors and to think that everything was fine with the Democratic Party. So we'll see. I mean, these are epic dramas that are, that are playing out right now. These are interesting times. As the Chinese proverbs said, we live in, we have, we have the gift of living in interesting times. Part of it is what's happening to the, to the two parties and, and how they're sorting through this. And of course, the major one is what's happening to the, to the country, it itself. And, and it's a kind of an open question how we're going to get through this. Not as if the nation is going to, you know, dissolve and fall off the face of, of the earth, but whether when we're through this process, the country is going to resemble anything close to what it was at its best. And whether American ideals are, are, are, are destroyed in, in the, in the process. Exactly. That hasn't been determined. And that's why it's an unfolding drama. And it's why we need people to speak up as best they can and not to give up hope because there's too much at stake, too many things that we love and care for that are under attack. And, you know, we don't know if we're going to be successful or not, but you can't control whether you're faithful or not. And I think all of us in our own ways have to figure out how to be faithful.
- [48:30]
Charlie Sykes
Exactly. Peter Wehner, thank you so much for joining me once, once again. It's always great talking with you, Peter. And thank you all for listening. And thank. And thank you all for listening to this episode of to the Contrary podcast. This is why we are doing this. Because now more than ever, it's important to remind ourselves that we are not the crazy ones.