Ryan Lizza: Ten Years of Donald Trump

Summary

Podcast Summary: "Ryan Lizza: Ten Years of Donald Trump"

Podcast Information:

• Title: To The Contrary with Charlie Sykes
• Host: Charlie Sykes
• Guest: Ryan Lizza of Telus News
• Episode Title: Ryan Lizza: Ten Years of Donald Trump
• Release Date: June 17, 2025
• Description: Exploring a decade of political transformation under Donald Trump's influence.

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Introduction

In this compelling episode of To The Contrary, host Charlie Sykes welcomes Ryan Lizza from Telus News to discuss the profound changes in American politics and society over the past ten years, marking a decade since Donald Trump's rise to prominence.

The Transformation of American Politics

Charlie Sykes opens the conversation by highlighting the unprecedented shifts in the political landscape since Trump's emergence:

Sykes [02:03]: "You know, as you and I are speaking right now. We are 10 years into the Trump era."

Ryan Lizza agrees, emphasizing the almost total overhaul of the political game:

Lizza [02:48]: "I was going to say literally everything. I mean, I mean, the two parties."

They explore how Trump’s influence has reshaped not just the Republican Party but the entire political framework, leading to increased polarization and fragmentation.

Republican Party Reconfiguration

The discussion delves into the transformation within the Republican Party itself. Lizza points out the shift towards a more working-class base, attracting individuals previously disengaged from politics:

Lizza [04:28]: "The Republican Party has been completely reconfigured. A more working class party. A lot of people who weren't involved in politics are now involved in politics and are Republicans, or at least Trump supporters."

Sykes adds that this reconfiguration extends beyond politics, affecting cultural and social institutions:

Sykes [04:56]: "It is every institution in American society. It is culture, it is the media ecosystem."

Cultural and Media Impact

Both hosts discuss the erosion of traditional political labels like "right" and "left," noting how Trump’s tenure has blurred these distinctions:

Sykes [05:12]: "What was the preexisting condition?"

Lizza [06:37]: "He’s been the sort of like the sun that everyone is, is, is rotating around."

The rise of independent media and the decline of established political parties’ credibility are identified as key factors contributing to this cultural shift.

Current Events and Trump's Actions

The conversation shifts to recent events, particularly Trump's provocative actions such as sending Marines to Los Angeles and his plans for mass deportations in blue states. Sykes questions Trump's strategy:

Sykes [18:09]: "He picks this fight because he thought that he would win and it would be politically advantageous for him."

Lizza provides context on why these actions are unlikely to garner the support Trump may expect:

Lizza [20:25]: "I don't think he got the fight he wanted."

They analyze the potential consequences of these actions, including possible confrontations and the invocation of the Insurrection Act.

Political Violence and Polarization

A significant portion of the discussion addresses the alarming rise in political violence and extreme rhetoric. The assassination in Minnesota is cited as a stark example of this trend:

Sykes [47:24]: "The level of political violence in this country has already become beyond alarming."

Lizza [55:05]: "These things, these conspiracy theories start. There are still people on X who are saying this is some kind of, you know, this is more evidence of left wing violence and, and the disinformation echo chambers in the MAGA space."

The hosts express deep concern over the normalization of violent rhetoric and its potential to incite further unrest.

Future Outlook and Conclusions

Looking ahead, both Charlie Sykes and Ryan Lizza express pessimism about the trajectory of American politics:

Lizza [59:01]: "I don't think we're going back, unfortunately."

Sykes [61:09]: "We are a much angrier country, and you could see that bubbling anger."

They discuss the cyclical nature of political retaliation, fearing a future where both parties engage in increasingly destructive policies:

Lizza [60:11]: "Each side always has a good excuse about what the other side did last time."

The episode concludes with a sobering outlook on the enduring polarization and the challenges of healing a divided nation.

Notable Quotes

• Ryan Lizza [02:48]: "I was going to say literally everything. I mean, I mean, the two parties."
• Charlie Sykes [05:12]: "What was the preexisting condition?"
• Ryan Lizza [06:37]: "He’s been the sort of like the sun that everyone is, is, is rotating around."
• Charlie Sykes [18:09]: "He picks this fight because he thought that he would win and it would be politically advantageous for him."
• Charlie Sykes [47:24]: "The level of political violence in this country has already become beyond alarming."
• Ryan Lizza [59:01]: "I don't think we're going back, unfortunately."

Conclusion

This episode of To The Contrary provides an in-depth analysis of the seismic shifts in American politics over the past decade under Donald Trump's influence. Through insightful dialogue, Charlie Sykes and Ryan Lizza highlight the deepening polarization, the redefinition of political parties, and the troubling rise in political violence. Their conversation serves as a poignant reflection on the challenges facing the United States as it grapples with unprecedented political and social transformations.

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Note: This summary excludes advertisements, intros, and outros to focus solely on the substantive content of the podcast discussion.

Transcript

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[Charlie Sykes]

Services and the Ad Council. I'm Charlie Sakes. Welcome back to the to the Contrary podcast. We are joined by Ryan Lizza of Telus News. Welcome back, Ryan. I appreciate it very much.

[Ryan Lizza]

Hey, thanks for having me. I've done a lot of these since I jumped on Substack. And the last time we did this, it was among my favorite conversations I've done and got one of the best responses. So I'm always happy to talk to you, Charlie.

[Charlie Sykes]

Okay, so we've raised the bar here. All right, so let's. Before we dive into everything that's going on, I mean, we have the parade, we have the. We have the mass protests, we have the war in the Middle east, we have the assassinations in Minnesota, we have Trump in be clowning himself at the G7. Let's set all that aside for the moment. You know, as you and I are speaking right now. We are 10 years into the Trump era. 10 years ago today, Donald Trump came down the golden escalator. And I guess I just want to throw this question at you. What's changed in the last 10 years? And I think it's a trick question because the answer, I think, is pretty close to everything. But I wanted to get your attention.

[Ryan Lizza]

I was going to say literally everything. I mean, I mean, the two parties.

[Charlie Sykes]

Yeah. No, I was thinking this weekend, everything that happened this weekend, everything that's happened in the last hundred days would have been inconceivable 10 years ago. Nobody would have predicted it. Nobody could have even imagined it. You can't even imagine having a conversation about politics today with your tenure, younger self, can you, Ryan?

[Ryan Lizza]

No. A decade ago, if I'd come back and talk to myself, it would. You wouldn't know where to start. You know, it's the kind of game you play with like the founders or like, you know, 100 years or 50 years, usually a decade, you have some semblance of continuity. But a decade ago, he began the, you know, demolition or just complete rejiggering of our politics. I mean, but we could almost play this game like this, Charlie, like, name an institution and, or, you know, or a part of the world or part of the country and, you know, we could talk about how it's been completely scrambled by Trump. I mean, let's start with the Republican Party. Completely. The Republican Party has been completely reconfigured. A more working class party. A lot of people who weren't involved in politics are now involved in politics and are Republicans, or at least Trump supporters. A lot of folks like you have left the Republican Party. And are my life Democrats?

[Charlie Sykes]

Well, my life is completely unrecognizable, given for what it was 10 years ago. I mean, 10 years ago I thought I had a pretty good take on what American politics was, what the Republican Party was, what the conservative movement was. But you just touched on something. It's not just the Republican Party that was like the first domino. It is every institution in American society. It is culture, it is the media ecosystem. It's the way that we talk about issues. It's the issues that are important, the issues that aren't important. I mean, I just make. I mean, we were, I think.

[Ryan Lizza]

And not all of that is Trump. Not all of that is Trump, of course.

[Charlie Sykes]

No. Right. But I'm saying how things have changed in the last 10 years. And by the way, that's always an interesting question. What, what did Trump change And what did he just tap into? Right. What was the preexisting condition?

[Ryan Lizza]

Absolutely. It's a, you know, the symptom of a disease. And like the Democratic Party, I think, I think you could argue that the lurch to the left on a number of issues was accelerated by those first four years of Trump. I don't think there's any question about that. You know, that often happens with the party out of power when they respond. I think it happened to Democrats when Bush was, when Bush was president in some, in some ways. So there was this, if you think about where the Democrats have been, right, There was a lurch to the left on a number of issues that Biden then sort of pushed them back a little bit, but they, Trump successfully used those issues to get back in power. So the Democrats have been on a journey that's been, I think you could argue, correct me if you think I'm wrong, for both parties, Trump has been the most powerful influence, right. He's been the sort of like the sun that everyone is, is, is rotating around. We in the media, the, the same thing. Lots of interesting changes have gone on in the media that have nothing to do with, with, with Trump, the rise of independent media, but he's been the GR that's affected at all.

[Charlie Sykes]

But I actually think it's even beyond that. It feels like it's completely scrambled the whole right left issue. There are so many different interstices that we're talking about here. Talking about right and left and conservative and liberal. A lot of those terms have completely lost their meaning. And I think again, going back to all of the things that have changed, the impact on the culture that he's had, the entertainment wing of the Republic Party absolutely dominant. The people who were interested, the policy wonks, the quote unquote, principal conservatives, they're all gone. The fever swamps have absolutely overflowed. I mean, you think of the kinds of people that are in government now, the kinds of conspiracy theories that are now mainstream. It is a complete transformation. You think about what the parties were like back then and the big issues were right versus left. Now they feel like, you know, that, that right versus left feels like a before times analysis, because it's the vertical line is, I don't want to say democracy, rule of law, all of these things, but it feels as if it is fundamentally different, more existential. Also just our discussions are dumber, meaner, crueler, crazier. Our culture is more violent. I mean, the violence is, I mean, we are in it right now, so. And again, Trump didn't do everything. But I think your analogy is right on.

[Ryan Lizza]

I mean, I think the way some people have written about this is there's been a general fragmentation and of all important institutions have either just sort of lost their luster, lost a bit of their credibility. You know, with my nose pressed up against the glass for all these years covering politics, I think, you know, the first thing that political journalists saw was just the lack of power that political parties started to have. And that, you know, that's a long story, but it increased and increased and increased until you got to the point that a lot of political scientists pointed to and pointed to as something we might not want. Where political parties were no longer strong enough to control who leads them. And they really just anyone from the outside could sort of come in and take over. And I used to, I used to dismiss this as unfair, but, you know, there were a lot of people on the right who were critics of Obama who would say, you know, there is some continuity between Obama and Trump. And before you scream at me, I know people who are listening to this are like, what? Don't ever compare Obama to Trump in any way. But there is a, the celebrity fication of politics, the ability for an outsider, a newcomer, someone who just excited people right off the bat to come in and take over a party. That didn't happen in American politics at a certain point. Parties were much more top down driven. And I think a lot of people who like Obama on the Democratic side would say that was a good thing when it happened on the Republican side. And you probably have flashbacks to watching this play out in the primaries, Charlie, when the Republican elected officials and leaders in the party apparatus was completely ineffective and unable to stop Trump from taking over their party. That's a big change. And I think that's a change that has to do with the media and technology and the sort of fragmentation of institutions.

[Charlie Sykes]

I get what you're saying about the celebrification, but the category shift is so great. When you go to Donald Trump, and I am thinking back to 10 years ago, how absolutely inconceivable it was that Donald Trump was going to get the nomination. And when I say that, it's the fact that I was in regular contact with people like Reince Priebus and Paul Ryan and the conversations that we had about that at the time, it just could not happen. No, somebody sent me yesterday, I was trying to find this. Somebody sent me a piece. Imagine if Obama had done any of the things that Donald Trump has done, how conservatives would have reacted to any of the things. And this is also how the world is turned upside down. I mean, Remember back in 10 years ago, the whole idea that character counts was a dominant theme in the 1990s among conservatives and Republicans. And it was like the debate during.

[Ryan Lizza]

Impeachment of Bill Clinton.

[Charlie Sykes]

Right. People just decided character didn't matter, but it was one issue after another. The rule of law, law and order, the use of executive power, all of those things just so dramatically turned on its head.

[Ryan Lizza]

So do you remember during the Obama administration when it was a thing for conservatives in Congress to absolutely freak out to the point of having hearings because Obama had White House czars?

[Charlie Sykes]

Oh, my God, yes.

[Ryan Lizza]

I mean, it was just a label given to people who had a portfolio in the White House. And people thought the republic was going to fall apart because the czars were running the government.

[Charlie Sykes]

Yeah, I mean, it was. And that whole sense of also small government, that you did not want government choosing the winners and losers, that you didn't want government. I mean, the kinds of things. And this is a digression. I mean, the story in the New York Times over the weekend about how this new deal with U.S. steel basically allows Donald Trump and the federal government to control what the company does. I mean, like five minutes ago, Republicans and conservatives would have regarded that as communism. Right.

[Ryan Lizza]

Remember the auto industry takeover?

[Charlie Sykes]

Well, that was one of those moments. Okay, so here, here's, here's the piece. Imagine if Obama had held the military parade to celebrate his birthday. And you just, just go right down. Imagine if Obama had endorsed the arrest of Texas's elected governor. Imagine if Obama had targeted law firms representing pro life causes, revoking their clearances until they agreed to donate pro bono hours to support progressive causes. Imagine if Obama had accepted a $400 million gift from the dictator of Venezuela. Imagine. Imagine if Obama had pardoned dozens of people who'd been convicted of breaking into the Capitol. I mean, you just go on and on and on all of this stuff. So the way that Trump has changed it. So let me get just a sense of where we're at this, this weekend. And since we're being somewhat contrarian here, you did have this amazing split screen. And like, I don't know how many screens you want here you have the, you have these mass protests which may have drawn millions of people. Do you have any sense of how many people turned up? I'm. I don't do crowd. I don't.

[Ryan Lizza]

Those are. No, they're big.

[Charlie Sykes]

Okay. And then you had the really kind of, you know, Low energy, you know, empty bleachers for Trump's military parade. And everything is. It was this weekend in any way a turning point. I know that we pundits like to look for turning points, and they're almost always wrong, but it did feel, at least to me, as if finally the resistance has gotten up off its backside.

[Ryan Lizza]

Yeah, it's a good question. You know, Robert Reich actually had a good piece this morning about this and just sort of documenting the. The various ways that pushing back has been effective. And if you look at the polling, you know, Trump got a little bit of a bounce back after that polling drop during, you know, Tariff Palooza there when the stock, when the stock market was crashing. But he's sliding again, and his numbers on immigration, of all things, are sliding.

[Charlie Sykes]

Very interesting.

[Ryan Lizza]

The law firms that sued and didn't back down, all one. And interestingly, Trump has not appealed those cases. It's one of the few sets of cases that he's not appealing are the law firm executive order cases where he went. I think it's 0 for 4. I think there were four of them. The public, I mean, people that in my life that I never in a million years, Charlie, thought would go to a protest or be interested in a protest or who are glued to MSNBC or other independent media that is, you know, taking what's going on in this country very seriously and very worried about Trump. People in my life, family members, for the first time in their lives, are needed, you know, and are activists, like suburban Republican family members, you know, from, from, From Long Island. Now on the other side, I've got quite a few suburban Republican, Trump, Trump folks in the family. But there's a, you know, it's. You ask what happened in the last 10 years. We were all totally polarized, but there's a, There's a pushback. And like, you know, if there wasn't, we should be really, really surprised if the President of the United States is sending, you know, is federalizing troops against the wishes of local officials in California and then sending in the Marines when the police department is saying, hey, we don't. We don't need that. It would be a lot. It would be terrifying if people weren't freaking out a little bit. And it would be Trump. Trump's not a poppy. He's, you know, he's never been a super popular person. You know, he's. No, I don't think, you know, I. My explanation for the 2024 election is very simple, that it was part of a worldwide revolt against incumbents in the, you know, the post pandemic, high inflation era. I don't think you have to go a whole lot further. You could get deeper into the data and talk about this group and that group, and Trump appealed to them for this reason and that reason. I don't think it's much more complicated than that. And that's not a. That doesn't help you sustain the political capital necessary to do the crazy shit he's doing.

[Charlie Sykes]

Okay, well, let's go back to this crazy shit he's doing and what's happening in la, because you tell me whether you disagree. You know, Donald Trump and Stephen Miller honestly think that what's happening in LA was exactly. I mean, this was the fight they wanted. Right. They are convinced that the wind is at their back. And I have to say, there was part of me that was thinking, you know what, the law and order card might actually work for him. I would not have been surprised if we would have seen public opinion polls showing that they were siding with the forces of law and order as opposed to the rioters. However, that does not seem to be happening. There are numbers that would suggest that he has misread the circumstance. He picked this fight because he thought that he would win and it would be politically advantageous for him. Or what is your sense of how it's actually playing out right now? Because he obviously wants more.

[Ryan Lizza]

I don't want to overstate it because I think there's a couple of things are going on. One, you know, he's got some cards to play. Unfortunately, when, you know, a lot of people, unless they have the time to pay attention, might not understand the difference between lapd, National Guard or the Marines in dealing with a domestic disturbance. I mean, frankly, most police forces around the country are so militarized these days, they don't look all that much different than the Marines. And so I think when people understand and learn about the Posse Comitatus or why we don't have, why it's not okay for the federal government to use the military domestically, that's very reasonable and they understand the constitutional basis for that. But absent that kind of like, you know, explaining all that, I think Trump has a very strong political card, unfortunately, to play. If there is genuine violence in the streets and he's seen as doing something about it, that's a. I completely.

[Charlie Sykes]

Okay, so I completely agree with it. Yeah, no, right. Okay. Do the butt.

[Ryan Lizza]

I don't think he got the. I don't think he got the fight he wanted.

[Charlie Sykes]

Right.

[Ryan Lizza]

They're just. They're not Doing anything, there's nothing happening. So, you know, I know, like Fox News, you know, anytime, you know, someone picks up a stick and throws it, they're talking about, you know, mob violence in the streets, but there's just nothing happening in la. So you've got these. It's not Kenosha, and it wasn't yesterday. These protests were not violent, unfortunately, what was violent was what happened in Minnesota. And so just to finish the point here about that, I don't think we've seen the end of this strategy, unfortunately. I think they still believe that they want to push this, and they'll push it in another city and another city and they'll get the confrontation that they want and they'll get the Insurrection act declaration. At some point. I just, with every fiber in my being, that's where he wants to go, and he's going to continue to look for opportunities to do it.

[Charlie Sykes]

Okay, you've already answered my question. Because we also have this. This new, you know, order that came out on his true social, where he's basically taking the mask off and he's saying, I mean, by the way, you know, the couple of days after saying, yeah, we're not going to go after, you know, farms like, you know, you know, those are the good illegal immigrants. You know, we're not going to go after the hospitality industry. Maybe he got some blowback on all of that because he's now saying we're going to have the biggest mass deportation, and we're going to be targeting these. We're going to start targeting the blue states, the blue cities. We're going to go after Los Angeles, Chicago, New York. And the question I was gonna ask you is, does Donald Trump actually want to provoke riots? And I think you've already answered this. Yes, that's what he wants. He wants to go into places where he will have the confrontation, which will give him the pretext to then declare the insurrection, the Insurrection Act.

[Ryan Lizza]

I mean, absolutely. You know, I had Miles Taylor on Substack Live the other day, and Miles was there, the chief of Staff to the Dharma, to the Department of Homeland Security, when they had to go over to the White House. You know, wasn't the only time they had to go over the White House to stop crazy shit from happening. But Trump wanted to. He wanted to invoke the Insurrection act, and they had to talk him out of it. And, you know, Miles saw this in the first term, and it's one of the many things Trump was talked out of in the first term, that this time he's he wants to, he wants to go there and he obviously doesn't have anyone around him to stop him. So I think you're, you're absolutely right. He wants to provoke a confrontation where he can declare that the Insurrection act is necessary and he can control the military to do law enforcement functions, specifically the, this mass deportation plan. I think there's no doubt about it. Now the interesting wrinkle that you, you pointed to is he, you know, he tacoed the, the mass deportation plan because like with anything with Trump, I mean, he's not ideologically where Stephen Miller is. Right. Like, Stephen Miller is obviously to the right of Trump and has to like, enforce things. Trump doesn't care about anything specifically. He'll always retreat. He has zero principles.

[Charlie Sykes]

Right.

[Ryan Lizza]

So he gave up on the, you know, the Ag Secretary got in his ear because obviously the agriculture sector is entirely reliant on undocumented immigrants. So these deep red states, these places that voted 80% for Trump, if they deport reported every illegal alien, the ag sector would collapse.

[Charlie Sykes]

Which, which has been known for the last 10 years.

[Ryan Lizza]

Anyone who looks at this knows this.

[Charlie Sykes]

Yeah.

[Ryan Lizza]

And of course, you know, the hospitality industry. So we got a bunch of donors and a bunch of, you know, Republicans who, who are like, hey, you know, don't do this to our sector in his ear. And there's nothing Trump likes more than having people owe him for something. And so he's doing this as a, as a favor to God knows who. Right.

[Charlie Sykes]

Right.

[Ryan Lizza]

Now we just know the secretary asked him and he, and then he writes. So then there's a blowback from the right wingers, the Stephen Mill, Stephen Miller base. Like, you know, what the hell we thought, you know, we thought we really believe in mass deportations from the Stephen, Stephen Miller types who don't care, frankly, about the ag sector. And I don't know, think magically. Yeah, they'll magically find these, they'll find Americans to do these jobs. You know, good luck replacing all this labor. And so he wrote this absolutely deranged post on Truth Social. If this were happening in any other country, Charlie, we would be describing this as like he's declaring war on Americans Metropolis areas. Like he's. It's an unhinged.

[Charlie Sykes]

It sounds like it. Yeah.

[Ryan Lizza]

Right. I don't have it in front of me, but it's.

[Charlie Sykes]

Yeah.

[Ryan Lizza]

It'S very close to inciting violence, frankly. I mean, if this were another country and I was reporting from abroad and the leader of the country was taking over the local militias and sending in Federal troops and then writing or broadcasting in whatever way that radicals who hate their country have taken over these places. And, you know, I need to send in my own agents to clean them up. I'm not doing justice to what Trump said because it's far worse than what I just said. You would.

[Charlie Sykes]

No, it is.

[Ryan Lizza]

I was reported as declaring war on these places.

[Charlie Sykes]

No, see, I agree with you completely. This is what he wrote, okay? In order to achieve this, the largest mass deportation program in history, we must expand efforts to detain and deport illegal aliens in America's largest cities, such as Los Angeles, Chicago, New York, where millions upon millions of illegal aliens reside. And then he makes it, you know, nakedly partisan. These and other such cities are the core of the Democrat power center, all capitalized where they use illegal aliens to expand their voter base, cheat in elections and grow the welfare state. Rob. I mean, there's a lot going on here. And actually, in the back of my mind, I didn't actually write this yet, which was like, this is how you would start a civil war, right? You'd basically say we're going to treat red states and blue states completely differently. We're going to send the army into Democrat places, we're going to ignore Republican cities. We're not going into Texas or Florida, we're going into Illinois and New York. I mean, now, whether or not that's actually going to happen, we don't know. But at this point, you just have to assume that if Donald Trump says something, he's probably going to do it.

[Ryan Lizza]

Absolutely. And it hardly. And the, the, the political backstory that we just discussed, while interesting, you know, that he accepted this one group and the MAGA base got mad at him. So he decided to go like, you know, just throw some red meat, crazy stuff out there. That hardly matters. He said what he said and it's, you know, I know there's a lot going on. There's a war, you know, between Iran and Israel. But like, yeah, this should be front, this should be front page news. Like the President is declaring war on blue cities, where at least, in at least one of them, he already sent in the, the Marines. And you know, we're, we're in, we're in June of the first year. We're in June of the first year. We've got the Marines in LA and Trump writing on social media declaring war against radical left people in the cities who hate their country. I mean, that's the kind of stuff that, like, you know, the, the, the, you know, you, you, you read about in like, the. The incitement in like, places like Rwanda or something, you know.

[Charlie Sykes]

No, I.

[Ryan Lizza]

Broadcasting.

[Charlie Sykes]

And. And he gets away with it. I mean, this is the interesting thing about la. You're right, he didn't get the fight he wanted, but he did take active duty marines, which really, 24 hours before that story broke, he would have thought, well, that can't happen. We have Posse Comitatus Act. He would have to invoke the Insurrection Act. There would be tremendous pushback. The Marines are there. They are actually engaging in law enforcement. There's been no court order yet? Well, there was a court order, but it's been stayed. So he's testing. What can I get away with, what can I do? And I do think that by picking places like Chicago and New York, it is more likely, and if it's, particularly if he goes into these red, These, These blue enclaves, that there will be some sort of a pushback that he can explain. Okay, so let's talk about. Let's talk about the. The parade and a couple of angles on the. On the parade. I have a couple of segues here. So what happened with the parade, Ryan? Why was it such a. A bust?

[Ryan Lizza]

All right, so my view of this. The thing that is really surprising here is not that it was, you know, not that many people showed up. You know, they think, what's, what's the. I don't know what the most reliable, most recent, reliable number is, but there was. There were. There were crowds there. There were crowds. I wouldn't judge the whole thing by a couple of shots of empty bleachers, but.

[Charlie Sykes]

But they're embarrassing.

[Ryan Lizza]

And, you know, that's how he judges it. That's all he cares about is a picture like that. What I'm surprised at is like, they spent tens of millions of dollars on this parade. Kind of sucked. I mean, I'm as much of a sucker as anyone for a cool display of military power. I mean, I kind of like, just put all the sort of fascist part of this aside. Like, you know, it's great to see, you know, seeing our air, the planes overhead and these tanks. It wasn't that the parade sucked. The parade sucked. I mean, I mean, it was, you know, all the vehicles were too far apart, so there was no sense of, like, you know, the scale of this thing. It wasn't very scary. Right. Like, if North Korea had thrown this parade, we would be mocking them mercilessly.

[Charlie Sykes]

Well, the Russians are trolling him. They're saying this is what Trump wanted and they'll be showing Pictures of North Korea and they'll be showing pictures of Red Square and then flashing to this and it, and you could see how.

[Ryan Lizza]

Easy that video is to make. So I'm a little surprised that they just, they just didn't do a good job. I mean, maybe the Pentagon just decided, like, we're not going to waste all of our time and money on this. You know, we'll do the bare minimum.

[Charlie Sykes]

So Trump really looked unhappy. Yeah. He did not get what he wanted, did he?

[Ryan Lizza]

He did. And also like, what the hell is he doing sitting there for hours while the world burns? I mean, that's the other thing I.

[Charlie Sykes]

Thought was like, okay, well, this is actually my segue here. And I want to give credit where credit is due. Of course, trying to scroll through all of this. I think it was Tara Palmieri posted this, that the whole world is waiting for some acknowledgment of the war in the Middle east, the conflict between, potential nuclear conflict between Iran and Israel. Trump stands up and he doesn't say a word about it. And all of the national security officials who would normally be in the Situation Room are sitting there in the bleachers at this fucked up parade. And so, I mean, this was really strained when you think about it. No. Where you have one of the most serious international crises that we've experienced in our lifetime happening right now. And they went to a parade instead of being in the Situation Room. I mean, there was, that was not a good look.

[Ryan Lizza]

And of course, this is always the thing with Trump is like, you know, do you actually want him in the Situation Room meddling and doing stuff, or is it better for him to just do absolutely nothing? But this, this, this conflict, Charlie, is, I, I, I fear is going to overwhelm everything pretty soon. As if we don't have enough on our plate in the United States. I think so because, you know, we're headed towards, we're headed towards a lot of voices saying that the United States needs to help Israel do X. You know, and, you know, I've, I've seen the gamut out there. Well, give them the bunker, bunker busters so they can blow up the mountain with the, with the nuclear program in it. You know, the mullahs have to go, so we should actually help Israel with regime change. But get us involved in some way, I think, is where there's going to be pressure coming. And I think the Republican Party and I think the people around Trump are very interestingly divided on this question. You have sort of the, very seriously divided.

[Charlie Sykes]

Yeah.

[Ryan Lizza]

Yes. You've got the, you know, you got the old hawks, you know, what we used to call the neocons, who are at least filled with neocon instincts, who want, who want the sort of maximalist option here. And then you've got the new wing of the Republican Party. That's no, we don't do meddling in the Middle east. We don't do foreign wars, we don't do forever wars. And I have said this for years and years, the best thing about Trump, it's very hard for me to find anything good about this guy. The best thing about Trump has always been that he doesn't seem interested in, with some notable exceptions, in bombing places and getting involved militarily. He genuinely doesn't. And so I'm pretty worried about where this is going to go. Netanyahu is very skilled at, like every other leader, like Putin, like Xi, they're all skilled at playing Trump. They've all done it this year. Putin with Ukraine, Xi with the tariffs, and now Netanyahu with this strike on Iran. And Netanyahu must have known that he didn't have the bunker busters and the full capabilities to take out the entire nuclear program. And there was going to be another move. And I hope he didn't go into this war thinking that, well, the United States will help him finish the job, whatever that is. And so I don't know what your personal feelings are about this, but I'm pretty skeptical of US Involvement in this in any way short of trying to end it. Probably the least defensible regime in the world is the Iranian regime. Any one of us would love to snap our fingers and have the mullahs gone tomorrow. But this is not a simple situation and that's where this is headed. It's headed towards conversations about helping the Israelis finish the job. And then when you start to define the job to me, it gets very scary. And caution should be the word.

[Charlie Sykes]

No, I agree with you. Look, I mean, it is a worst case scenario for the world for Iran to have the nuclear bomb. So we've been talking about this for 20 years. How, how do we prevent them from getting the nuclear bomb? One of the first things that Trump did in his first administration was of course, to cancel the deal with Iran. But let's go to the moment we're at right now. It was kind of funny watching Trump clearly did not want Israel to go and bomb Iran right now. And yet once they did, it was like, wait, wait, wait, wait, I wanna be part of this as well. I think it's Hilarious. Watching some of the media spin. I'm kind of amazed at the free press going in, the brilliant misdirection by Trump and net Netanyahu, how they fooled Iran. I don't think that was what was going on. I don't, I think that absolutely he did, but. And the thing about it is, if you want to take out Iran, there is a right way to do it and it will involve a coalition of the willing. It will involve Iran, it will involve allies, it would involve very careful coordination between the United States and the Israelis. It would require coordination of the, with, frankly, the folks who are at the G7 summit, all of the allies that we have alienated and who are not in a mood right now to follow or give the benefit of the doubt either to Benjamin Netanyahu or to Donald Trump. So at the moment, when, if you want to get this done, this is why we have alliances. This is why we have this mutual cooperation and communication. Clearly that's not happening right now and as a result, you will have a lot of death and destruction. But at the end of the day, no one seems to think that they will actually be able to eliminate Iran's nuclear capability, at least by Israel acting alone. This has always been, I think, the understanding they couldn't do it alone. So I don't know where it goes. I agree with you on this.

[Ryan Lizza]

We're going to be seeing some pretty grisly images of Israeli civilians, Iranian civilians on our television screens. And it's going to increase calls from people in Congress for the US to do something. And what that something is, we better think very, very, very carefully about because there are going to be plenty of people who for good reasons want the Iranian regime gone and are going to think that that's what our goal should be.

[Charlie Sykes]

Sure.

[Ryan Lizza]

But ask yourself what comes the day after the Iranian regime is gone and there already are pro democracy protesters who should have our full backing in Iran. And we've seen this movie before, unfortunately, and it scares the hell out of me. I guess one optimistic scenario is that if the Iranian regime feels threatened, if there is an existential threat and it's between their nukes and the regime, maybe you get an actual deal that is something that even Republicans in Congress who hated the Obama negotiated deal would support and a full inspection regime and a full dismantling of the program that preserves the Iranian regime and keeps them in power. I think the Israelis wouldn't mind, know, might not mind that. I don't know, the Israelis really want the, you know, the kind of complete Chaos of a. Did anyone in the Middle east want the complete and utter destruction and chaos of a decapitated regime and a failed state? You know, I'm not an expert, I'm not enough of an expert, of course, on the subject to know that, you know, if there's a group of people waiting in the wings in Iran to take over and, you know, democracy is going to flourish, but the recent history on that front has not been, you know, very comfortable.

[Charlie Sykes]

Well, yeah, and I mean, obviously we are better off if we have a decapitated Iran that no longer has its tentacles in Hamas and Hezbollah and everything. But that's difficult to get to. The one thing that's very unpredictable for me. And usually I can tell Charlie, remember.

[Ryan Lizza]

You always get something worse. That's the problem. Oh, absolutely. With regimes you hate, you can always get something worse.

[Charlie Sykes]

Well, you can get exactly right. Right. We've learned this lesson through history all over again. But I, you know, normally you can predict where Trump is going to go by watching. And I'm sure you do this as well. You watch sort of the right wing media and the ID over here. And you know, and you know that it flows downhill. There's certain influencers, you know, they'll say things and then they'll come out of Trump's mouth. MAGA is really quite bitterly divided among this. I mean, you have people like Tucker Carlson and Marjorie Taylor Greene railing against any sort of intervention in this. And you have that isolationist wing that was very, very into Ukraine that is also, I think, very, you know, very consistently now, isolationist about Israel as well. But Trump has also been very, very close to the Israeli lobby and very, very reluctant to break with them. So here you have two competing forces and one is not necessarily dominant. Normally you can say he's going to go with these guys, he's going to always go with the fever swamp guys. But I'm not sure right now where he goes in all of this. And so if Benjamin Netanyahu thought that he could manipulate him, like, I'm just going to go. And of course Donald Trump will, because, you know, he'll follow. I'm just not sure that's the calculation, which I think is what you mentioned earlier.

[Ryan Lizza]

Well, I'm waiting for the group text to get leaked. So we know where all the players stand on this issue. So we've got to check Jeff Goldberg's signals to see, you know, when they, when they, when they reveal where Vance and Stephen Miller and, and Heth are on this. But I, I'm sure You know, I think we know where Vance, you know, I think Vance is fairly consistent on this stuff. You know, he, he's, they don't want to medal. This is, look, to me, this is one of the best developments. This is one of the best trends in maga. I'm not an isolationist myself, but if you're going to have a, a party that is controlled by a bunch of fanatics and operates like a cult and is completely irresponsible and doesn't care about the Constitution, if you're going to have a party like that, I would rather that party be isolationist rather than really interested in military intervention around the world.

[Charlie Sykes]

Well, I have mixed. Well, particularly because, I mean, given the incompetence of Pete Hegseth and what he's doing, I mean, to imagine that this Pentagon would be involved in any complicated military operation is in fact terrifying. But this is where I have a problem with the isolationism, which is that the isolationism of modern is indistinguishable from the appeasement of Vladimir Putin at the same time. And you're going to see this axis of evil. So here at the, while you and I have been talking, Trump goes to the G7 summit where I'm sure he is the least popular man in the room. And right out of the gate, Trump goes on this opening rant about Russia and how unfairly Vladimir Putin has been treating. He rambles on that Obama and this guy named Trudeau booted Putin for no good reason. Actually, it wasn't Trudeau, he wasn't prime minister. Then they booted Russia out of G8, G7 because he had invaded Crimea and he claimed the war in Ukraine wouldn't have happened if Russia had just stayed in the club. Which is bullshit. And so, I mean, the decision back then was unanimous among all the members. Trump, of course, didn't mention the name Crimea once. But he goes on and on and on. And apparently at the same G7 summit, all these world leaders are there and he starts off with this suck up to Vladimir Putin, which I think was kind of gobsmacking. And then came the more dangerous part, you know, what he did then. He then starts bragging about this, what we talked about earlier, this true social screed where he vowed to send ICE in the FBI into the blue states, you know, calling the sanctuary states the core of the democratic power center. And so he's talking to these world leaders, first of all sucking up to Vladimir Putin with misinformation, and then he's bragging that he is sending his troops into to Democrat areas and recycling the lie about illegal immigrants voting in the election. And it got so bad apparently that Mark Carney, the Prime Minister of Canada, had to sort of step in and diplomatically stop, stop Trump's meltdown. So that was a couple of things about this, Charlie.

[Ryan Lizza]

One, he's more interested in sending troops to and liberating blue cities than liberating Ukraine. And I can't help but think that this screed might just be connected to the hour long conversation that Donald Trump had with Vladimir Vl. Vl. Vladimir Putin. Excuse me, what was it? I think it was over the weekend, but it was since the Israel attack on Iran. They spoke for an hour. And Putin, like Netanyahu, like Xi, they understand Trump way better than he understands them. And Putin knows this guy's going to the G7. And this is speculation, I realize, but the word Crimea coming out of Donald Trump's mouth. You think Donald Trump could locate Crimea on a map?

[Charlie Sykes]

Map.

[Ryan Lizza]

He couldn't look at Crimea on a map. You said also he said it was Trudeau, you know, wasn't actually Trudeau. There's no chance that Donald Trump knows any leader of Canada. You know, he couldn't name another leader of Canada besides Trudeau. I probably couldn't either. So, you know, my Canadian politics knowledge isn't great. But certainly Trump couldn't.

[Charlie Sykes]

So of course, Stephen, it was Stephen Harper, as every school child remembers.

[Ryan Lizza]

Like, of course he said it's Trudeau because he doesn't know anyone. It's all Trudeau. But all right, seriously, he was, he was talking to, he talked about Putin for an hour and then he goes to the G7 and repeats shit that only Putin cares about. It's, you know, you don't have to be a rocket scientist to figure out where he got this.

[Charlie Sykes]

This is so weird. Okay, so we haven't talked about this yet, but over the weekend, I think this also overshadowed the, you know, the President's birthday party, military parade, the, the grim assassinations up in Minnesota and the aftermath. I mean, we have somebody, we now know a. About him. He was obviously, he was a Trump voter, a very, very anti abortion listener to Infowars. But this was a very concerted, this was targeted, this was political. It was obviously very planned, very, very carefully. The assassination of a state senator of the former speaker of the House of Representatives. And I don't know where we start on this. The level of political violence in this country has already become beyond alarming. But it was so interesting that first day On Saturday, how much of the MAGA media really was pushing out the disinformation that he was a Marxist? I mean, and it's one thing for your normal trolls, your Benny Johnson's, et cetera, or even your Elon Musk's, but United States Senator Mike Lee tweeting out a series of tweets identifying him as a Marxist, mocking this as Nightmare on Wall street, mocking the governor. I mean, it's just. You want to talk about how the world has changed in the last 10 years? I mean, maybe I'm forgetting something, but this, the way which you try to turn political violence into a cudgel and a joke, it's just part of the, just the crudification of American culture. But Mike Lee, do you remember Mike Lee from the before times?

[Ryan Lizza]

Oh yeah. I mean he was a libertarian. He actually cared about executive power and governmental overreach. And he hasn't said word about what Trump's doing. He pinned that tweet last night. I don't know if as of Monday as we're talking, it's still pinned, but even after the backlash, even after everything was known, he pinned one of those two tweets that you read to me. I was going to say the same thing, Charlie. The scariest thing about this is going on X and just living in an alternative reality. And even after they got the guy, MAGA believes this guy was a left wing waltz person like that. That is, that that is not going to die. That is not. This is, unfortunately this is going to be one of those stories. I don't think it's going to die. These things, these conspiracy theories start. There are still people on X who, who are saying this is some kind of, you know, this is more evidence of left wing violence and, and the disinformation echo chambers in the MAGA space. And look, I'll be the first to admit people on the left are siloed too and they need to get out of that. But it is absolutely nothing like it is in the MAGA right wing media where something like this takes hold and you cannot convince people that, you know, the, the truth is this guy was a Trump supporter who was targeting if abortion rights providers and, and, and, and Democrats. And you know, the, I saw last night on X, even after this guy was captured, just like, you know, if you want to be depressed and like give up on, on, on you know, ever having a like normal information environment where people can like debate the issues on a, on a, a consensus series of facts, the reaction on X to this thing Will. Will. Will make you give up. So, I don't know, Charlotte, it's. What else do you say about this? It's awful. It's going to get worse. I keep telling people things are going to get worse. You know, that's the easiest, that's the most obvious prediction in politics right now, is things are going to get a lot worse. Given what we, where we started this conversation with Trump's absolute, absolute interest in creating violent confrontations in Democratic cities to the routine political violence now that we're witnessing, it's going to get worse before it gets better.

[Charlie Sykes]

You're absolutely right. It is going to get worse, because the level of the rhetoric, obviously, has been intensified. I mean, you can't constantly be calling your political enemies scum and terrorists and vermin and vile who are enemies of America. America. Because, look, I mean, it's, it's not all Donald Trump's fault, but when it is magnified by the President, United States, when you have a violent attack on the Capitol that is endorsed by the President of the United States through the, I mean, obviously through his rhetoric, but also through, through, through the pardons, the minimization, the joking. I mean, and, I mean, how many incidents do we have to have? You know, the attempted kidnapping of Gretchen Whitmer, the firebombing of the residents of Josh Shapiro, the, you know, the, the, you know, one. One after another, we've had these incidents, the mockery of the Hammer attack on Nancy Pelosi's husband. You know, go, go back to all of that. I thought it was interesting when, when Trump was asked over the weekend whether he would be calling Governor Walls, and he just basically had this thing like, oh, he's, he's a terrible governor. He's really totally incompetent. And I might call him, I might call other people. I think we've actually internalized and maybe just become numb to the fact that we used to think that presidents would heal and bring us together and be this calming voice, would speak for all Americans. Trump does not see himself that way at all. I mean, just kind of stepping back. I mean, he honestly does not try to make all Americans feel good about it. They revel in the fact that at least half of Americans are horrified and terrified by what he's doing. They get off on that. And I'm not sure there's any other president that has so consciously wanted Americans to hate and fear him. I mean, he may not. He wants to be loved, but, but, I mean, with a lot of what he does, and again, going Back to the, the, you know, attack on the blue cities. But there's no healing going on here.

[Ryan Lizza]

And it goes back to the first question here about what's changed in 10 years. One thing that's changed is every president, even if they had to fake it, understood that it's the one office in America that the entire country elects and that he's a representative of everyone different than a mayor or a governor or a senator. And even if you had to bullshit your way through that as president, even if you were Nixon to the core and believed that your opponents were scum, you at least pretended to represent the entire country, and it was almost an impeachable offense to overtly govern as if.

[Charlie Sykes]

To try to divide.

[Ryan Lizza]

Yeah, to divide. And to. With the principle that anyone who didn't support you, anyone in the other party is simply not represented in the government, simply does not matter, and should not be, even in Trump's mind, eligible for what the government brings people. And his view is that he decides that. And it's. I mean, that is one way that things have changed in a decade is you have a president who is just completely overt about that and overt in his divisiveness.

[Charlie Sykes]

And you also, to your point about that, your political opponents are not just people who are the loyal opposition who disagree with you on issues, but they are the enemies of America. They hate America. They hate God, they hate you. And so we shouldn't be surprised that there are. Look, it's a country of 300 million. How many mentally unbalanced people do you need for things to spin out of control? And if you convince them that the acts of violence are patriotic, then you've created a really dangerous situation. And let's be honest about it, that many of the January 6th rioters may be this. This. The assassin in Minnesota thought they were defending their country. They thought that by taking up arms, they were defending America against its enemies. Because Donald Trump describes the people in the other party as the enemies, as a threat, as something that we need to be afraid of. And if you take his rhetoric at face value, what is the right response to people who are trying to destroy your country and impose tyranny on you? This is what. Well, they think they are. They think they are the successors of 1776. That is a scary thing. So people shouldn't go off on the digression that we're talking about a bunch of nut jobs or people with mental health issues. This is an ideology, and it's a potent one.

[Ryan Lizza]

And it's not as if people in MAGA are unfamiliar with this argument, it's exactly the same argument they made when that, that kid in Pennsylvania tried to assassinate Trump. Right? Their argument was, well, if you, you know, you call Trump this and that, well, that leads to people doing this. And, you know, there's, that can be overstated, but there's some, there's, there's some truth to that. You know, we are living in a world where people will have easy access to guns and are easily incited because tensions are very high. And, you know, don't say shit on truth, social or elsewhere that can be interpreted as inciting someone to violence. And Trump, of all people, who was almost killed by an assassin's bullet, you know, should, should understand that.

[Charlie Sykes]

Okay, so this will, this will get me in trouble in the comment section. But one of the most trouble developments this year, particularly on certain social media like, that I won't mention, like Blue sky was, was after the, the assassination of that United Healthcare executive, the number of folks that came out and celebrated and justified that was really, was rattling on the left. And you know, when I would write things like, guys, we cannot justify this kind of assassination. This is a dangerous thing thing. It, there was, it was. And again, social media will amplify small numbers of voices, but it was troubling. And anytime you go down that route, you know, don't be surprised when there are consequences.

[Ryan Lizza]

I'm not going to name anyone, but there are people who I know and like and respect who are on that train. And I have to say, really, I had the same experience. I had the same experience. And it's, it's, it was one of the experiences covering politics where I felt, I don't know if it was. I felt like old because it did seem to me like there was a generation divide here and just felt like totally out of touch with something that was going on among, you know, at least my interpretation of it was sort of younger progressives, left leftists. And I just, just didn't understand how anyone thought it was okay to cheer an insurance company executive's murder. I, you know, I hate insurance companies as like the, like the next person, but I just felt like that was really disorienting for me and I felt alienated from a lot of people who I sort of thought I had similar, similar views to. And I saw the same thing you, you saw. Charlie, is like, that was, it was a, it was strangely provocative to point out, like, hey, no, it's not a good thing that this guy murdered this guy on the street in Cold blood.

[Charlie Sykes]

No. And you know what? Again, going back to our original question, how things have changed in the last 10 years, and it's not all Donald Trump, but we are a much angrier country, and you could see that bubbling anger. And I think in part it's also because of maybe just the isolation, maybe post Covid, maybe it's because of social media. The kind of the dehumanization of these debates is that we don't deal with one another as actual human beings. And it is that sense that, you understand, this was a man with a family and children and everything. No, he becomes this symbol, this institution, and it is that dehumanization that we're seeing. And again, this is not new to history. This is not unknown, known. But the last 10 years, you really feel it being more visceral.

[Ryan Lizza]

And this is the thing that worries me the most about where things are going, Charlie. And I think, you know, I don't think we're going back, unfortunately. And the thing that I fear the most with what Trump has done is that he's gradually raising a younger generation. And not all, it's not all generational, but people in the opposition, people generally on the left and in the Democratic Party, who eventually, not right now, the Democrats are really good on most of these issues and standing up to him and not saying that they should do the same, but eventually people, the opposition party is just going to say, fuck it, this is the way things are. We're going to do the same thing when we're in power. We're going to cut, ridiculous, enrich ourselves, use the government to attack our enemies and completely politicize the federal government and all of its tools. And in fact, we'll take it to the next level because, I mean, you know, the history of, of, you know, tit for tat, you know, weaponization of, of laws and rules. Each side always has a good excuse about what the other side did last time.

[Charlie Sykes]

What about. What about ism? Yeah.

[Ryan Lizza]

And they'll have a good argument.

[Charlie Sykes]

Weaponization of whataboutism. Right. Well, they did this, so, yeah, and look, it's fair.

[Ryan Lizza]

Look, you know, I remember reading Biden's excuse for why he pardoned, Pardoned Hunter and all of the other officials. And if you just read it as sympathetically as you possibly can to Biden, you understand, like, okay, yeah, Trump would have done the same thing. It's totally wrong. It's totally corrupt. He shouldn't have done it. But that's a small but telling example of how things become tit for Tat and pretty soon both parties are using the stage state to, and weaponizing it against their opponents. And it's normal. And you know, when these guys, when the, when the, when the academics talk about competitive authoritarianism, you know, that's, that's where, that's where this is headed.

[Charlie Sykes]

It, it becomes an unstoppable vortex and you can really feel it happening.

[Ryan Lizza]

And I'm not saying the Democrats are dead. I'm not saying they're not, but. And Biden was not, I think Biden, you know, Biden ran on reversal, all of that. He ran, you know, he ran on, on this message of democracy and good government. And I think the next Democrat nominee will probably do the same in 2028. But the, you know, if you don't, it's very hard to break this, a cycle like, like this when Trump has taken it to such extremes. You're going to find activists, Democrats who say, you know what, what's good for the goose is good for the gander. And that's, you know, you know, that's why sometimes I just think like, we're fucked. We're not going back. We're not going back to the era when this kind of stuff didn't exist. It's going to take, you know, things getting much, much worse. Like a, you know, I don't know what the sort of cleansing, what the sort of like, reform process will be to take us back, Charlie. I guess that's what I'm saying.

[Charlie Sykes]

Okay, well, that was one of the other things I was going to say about the last 10 years because there was used, there used to be be a sense that, okay, if there was a cleansing event, if there was a massive tragedy, if there was a terrorist attack that would bring America together, it would take something, I no longer believe that. I no longer think that there's anything that would in fact be that cleansing moment. So it's not going to be anytime soon. Ryan Lizza, thank you so much for all your time today. You can find at Telus News, right? Telus News. Going great. Great. The latest of the substack of Universe.

[Ryan Lizza]

Please subscribe. Thank you, Charlie.

[Charlie Sykes]

Make sure you subscribe. And thank you all for listening to this episode of to the Contrary podcast. I'm Charlie Seitz. You know why we do this? We do this three times a week because we have to remind ourselves that we are not the crazy ones. Thanks.

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