← To The Contrary with Charlie Sykes
To The Contrary with Charlie Sykes
Susan Glasser: Lame-Duck is Just Another Word for Nothing Left to Lose
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- [00:00]
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- [03:11]
Charlie Sykes
Things happen. Things happen. Great, great Moments in Presidential Rhetoric hey, welcome back to the to the Contrary podcast. I'm Charlie Sykes. We are joined by the New Yorker's Susan Glasser to talk about really kind of a remarkable day in Washington, D.C. susan, welcome back on the podcast. I appreciate it.
- [03:31]
Susan Glasser
Thanks, Charlie. I'm so glad to be with you.
- [03:34]
Charlie Sykes
Well, let's talk about what happened in the Oval Office on Tuesday. I suppose by now we should get used to these horror shows, but here we have mbs, the man who ordered the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, who is given the royal welcome in the Oval Office. I know that you watched it a very, I would say, plucky, brave ABC reporter Mary Bruce asked him right to his face about the the murder of Kamal Khashoggi, Jamal Khashoggi. I'm sorry. And how 9, 11 families would feel about all of this. And so talk to me a little bit about Donald Trump's reaction where he defends mbs, he downplays the murder, says that he was a controversial guy on Earth 2.0. It was a standalone, breathtakingly horrendous awful moment. But your thoughts?
- [04:33]
Susan Glasser
Yeah, I mean, that's right. Standalone, breathtakingly awful moment as opposed to all the interrelated, breathtakingly awful moments. It is one of those things where you almost have to go back and watch it twice because you can read these quotes or you can even see the clip and still not fully process it. And I think that's actually what happened to me because I got stuck on the breathtaking comment from Donald Trump. A lot of people didn't like that gentleman. Right. Okay, great. So that's what he said about the guy who was hacked up with a bone saw. Packed up with a bone saw. According to the US Intelligence community, on the orders and approval of the man who's being greeted with all these smiles in the Oval Office of the United States. And so I got stuck on that. But if you go back then and you listen, you see a lot of other remarkable things in this rant. Not only the President of the United States, just literally, rudely and without provocation, personally attacking and demeaning a reporter, which is one of the things that we've gotten so used to, I think people don't even, you know, bat an eye at the President, you know, treating others in such a disrespectful and rude manner. But he actually starts going on about ABC News and he says ABC News's license should be revoked. I have a commissioner, he means the head of the fcc, and essentially he'll do what I want. And your license for asking a question in the Oval Office should be revoked. So that's an amazing threat in and of itself that would be a headline news under any president of any party, any time in our lifetime, period. Just that sentence. Forget about the part where he's defending the murder of a journalist, the part about demanding that the license be taken away of ABC and the fact that he's doing it in front of, you.
- [06:41]
Charlie Sykes
Know, the world press.
- [06:42]
Susan Glasser
A leader, well, not just, no, not just the world press, but a leader of one of the most repressive societies on earth. Okay, so MBS has gotten unbelievable amounts of credit for reforming Saudi Arabia so that rather than being medieval, it's, you know, merely perhaps, you know, got a 17th century view of women. You know, but just when the President of the United States does things like this, I think it does reverberate. I mean, who's cheering for that if not, you know, the world's dictators? And it's just, it was a very painful moment, but there's, there's a lot to unpack there that I think you miss when you just focus on.
- [07:29]
Charlie Sykes
Well, I missed that too. No, no, I'm glad you, I'm glad you brought this up because I mean, it is, it's certainly revealing of, of his, of his mindset that, that a reporter asked him a tough question and was the day before he referred to a Bloomberg reporter as Piggy, which, which again on, you know, in a, in a different world would be, would be a shocking moment, but has now his signature insult that he would do that. But, but the point that he would specifically then threaten the license of a network because of an insubordinate reporter, that he would actually cite the FCC and you know, obviously trying to send a signal to everybody else, including, let's Face it, you know, some of these major media companies that have tried to appease him. And here's a reminder that you cannot, you do not make yourself safer by appeasing him. You do not make yourself safer by paying him off or groveling to him. There's no middle ground. But in his mind, he does think that I am the President of the United States and I am above being asked these tough questions and I will put you out of business. Who outside of places like the most authoritarian regimes, Russia, Hungary, China even thinks that way? I mean, even Richard Nixon would never have said that out loud.
- [08:48]
Susan Glasser
No, absolutely not. Absolutely not.
- [08:52]
Charlie Sykes
Well, let's go back to the, the justification of the murder thing. Things happen. You know, what struck me about this was two, two things. This is very much on brand for Donald Trump. We remember when he was asked years ago about, you know, his admiration for Vladimir Putin. And I think it was Bill O'Reilly who said, well, Vladimir Putin murders people. And we all remember Donald Trump's response. Well, lots of people do. We've done lots of stuff justifies, justifies that or when he was staying next to Putin in Helsinki and he basically threw the entire American intelligence community under the bus, which he again did because he exonerates MBS from the murder of Jamal Khashoggi when in fact the CIA had made a finding that in fact he had ordered his murder. So you had these things, and again, they're shocking, but they're again, very consistent. There's definitely a through line that Donald Trump likes, emulates admires people like MBS who he thinks can do him favors, that he just likes, likes the cut of his jib. What do you think?
- [10:01]
Susan Glasser
Well, I mean, look, in this case, it seemed to me that we know the color green is what he's looking for here. And I don't mean, you know, the flag. You know, he's, he's, it's money. It's all about money. And you know, I was just thinking the amount of sucking up and even groveling that Trump is willing to do for a guy he perceives to have money is really remarkable. And he, on and on he went, I'm proud of this young man. He's done a fantastic job. Here's another thing he said, Charlie. He said that he had done a great job with human rights. That one really got me. That one really got me. You know, it's the kind of suck up Bree, that sort of underscores why people use it on Trump. This is what he thinks a world leader is entitled to. This is what he wants. It's the coin of the realm. And, you know, it doesn't matter if it's insincere. I don't think there was, you know, one, one bit of it that was sincere, but, you know, he lavished it on him. I saw a lot of commentary today talking about Trump rolling out the actual red carpet for Mohammed bin Salman. And I guess on some level, right, the, the, the, the thing to comment on here is just that people are commenting on that. A guy who would roll out the red carpet for Vladimir Putin on US Soil at a US Military base in Alaska, you know, if there's a red carpet in America today for Vladimir Putin, then, you know, why not bring it? You know, red carpet for Mohammed bin Salman. I mean, you know, if he could get Kim Jong Un to come here, he'd give him a red carpet, too. And, you know, that's just one of many ways that there's just a feeling of profound sort of unease, right, that this is, this is something that's just not American in a way that fits our definition of what any American president would do. Now, again, American leaders from FDR on have been highly opportunistic and situational, let's say, in their ethics in dealing with Saudi Arabia. And so, you know, Joe Biden, after calling MBS a pariah, goes to Saudi Arabia, has the famous fist bump with MBS and gets an enormous amount of shit about it from his own supporters. And, you know, the difference here is, again, with Trump, you know, add a lot of zeros, you know, to the.
- [12:38]
Charlie Sykes
Level, many zeros, right?
- [12:40]
Susan Glasser
He's getting money going directly into the coffers of his family and deals with the Saudis at the same time. He's hosting them here. He's, he's saying things and, you know, we're not going to hear a damn thing from any Republican, even raising the mildest sort of like, gee, really, did you want to call the boonsaw murderer a fantastic human rights guy? So here we are.
- [13:05]
Charlie Sykes
So let me, let me digress into a trivial point, if you'll let me, because I was watching the visuals and the optics of that particular meeting and what Donald Trump has done to the Oval Office with all of the gaudy gold. And it felt as if he had done the decorating in order to impress somebody like mbs, because that's the way a Middle Eastern potentate would decorate his office. And it was like, you know, welcome. See, I am like you. I mean, you understand what I'm saying? It didn't feel like the Oval Office no longer looks like an American institutional setting. It looks like some just weird. I don't know, how would you even describe what he's, what he's done with the, the engulfication of the Oval Office.
- [13:56]
Susan Glasser
Yeah, exactly. Although, by the way, it's kind of insulting to the taste of Middle Eastern potentates to say that that's what their office would look like. I mean, you know, I was debating this actually with some, some other journalists before, before even he came on and you know, somebody said, I said, well, it looks like a, you know, kind of casino magnates version of what they think the White House should look like, except if you covered it in gold. And somebody said, yeah, it's like the Venetian, right? And somebody said, yeah, but that's kind of insulting to the Venetian. It's really more like, you know, the Excalibur or something. I don't know enough about the nuances of different Las Vegas casinos. What I will say this is that, you know, in the same way that Donald Trump's view of the powers of the presidency is basically antithetical to what the founders envisioned with this document, you know, this is in physical form, the version of that. Because the White House is a neoclassical mansion, you know, that's meant to, with its relatively small scale compared with the palaces of Europe, its modesty, its restraint and its lack of visible ornamentation, it's, you know, representative of this late 18th century style, but it's also representative. It was literally meant to be the physical manifestation of, of the principles, the Enlightenment principles of our Constitution and the foundation of the country. And so it's like in the same way that Trump himself, you know, is the. Is what the founders feared most. Is what the founders feared most. Someone who aspired to be a monarchy and would use the tools of this republic that they had created in order to aggregate powers to himself that they didn't believe any executives should have. And, and so it's just like, I know that sounds all like fancy and whatever, but. No, honestly, I really believe that every time I look at the gold, I actually think about the Constitution. And also, because it's like, it's a beautiful thing, the modesty of this, the idea of it.
- [16:24]
Charlie Sykes
Yes.
- [16:24]
Susan Glasser
Yeah. When he, when he was in his office in the first term, he, he hosted Emmanuel Macron here for the first state visit of his first term presidency. And he helicoptered one night with Macron and their wives to Mount Vernon so that he could show Macron Mount Vernon. But of course, Donald Trump wasn't familiar with Mount Vernon, and he was kind of a little underwhelmed at the modest scale of it. And he told Macron on that visit that he was really surprised that George Washington had failed to put his name on the estate and to call it, you know, I don't know, like the Washington estate or whatever, because Trump explained, you really needed to put your name on everything. But also he was basically apologizing for the. The modest nature of Mount Vernon compared to Versailles, when in fact, literally that was the point.
- [17:18]
Charlie Sykes
Yes, literally that was the point. But now the. The Sun King, or he wants to emulate the Sun King. Okay, so yesterday was also, though. So we had the gaudy version of the Trump presidency, but also there was not a good day for him. We had the near unanimous vote in the House of Representatives to release the Epstein files. This comes after a humiliating climb down by Donald Trump after days of feverish activity to get somebody to break. And we have this split with him and Marjorie Taylor Greene and with Thomas Massie. So give me your sense of the state of play.
- [17:56]
Momentous Supplement Advertiser
How.
- [17:57]
Charlie Sykes
Okay, let's go for the meta question here, because there are people who go, MAGA is unraveling. And I caution against irrational exuberance because we've had this story before, but it does feel a little bit as if the sands are shifting, that there are people who are willing within the MAGA movement to treat him like a lame duck, to challenge him. Where do you think we are when you see something, you know, his, his inability to distract from the Epstein files, the, you know, the fact that he, he was faced with this jailbreak and had to do something he very rarely does. Right. Which is to surrender. What do you think? Where are we?
- [18:39]
Susan Glasser
Yeah, no, I mean, good points all. You know, I caution, as you do, against sort of over exuberance in the market here. Right. This is a specific fault line that has existed for some time within maga. You know, Trump being Trump sort of played with fire a bit by, you know, endorsing in his campaign that he was going to release these documents. He knows that. That he had a friendship with Epstein, that, you know, bringing up this subject was not going to cause any good for him. Remember, it already took out one of his cabinet members in his first term. Alex Acosta was his first term labor secretary who had to resign when controversy resurfaced about a sweetheart plea deal for Epstein that Acosta had signed off on when he was a Florida prosecutor. And so, you know, Trump knows that it was kind of living dangerously to have encouraged this wing of his MAGA supporters in the campaign by suggesting he was going to release everything. It's just usually he gets away with it, right at this point. I think he's used to getting away with stuff and it not biting him in the ass. I mean, I basically think that we'll see whether we have full and complete documents here. Remember, he's now reacted to this controversy by demanding that the Justice Department launch investigations of various Democrats whose names are mentioned in Epstein emails. And you know, we have Pam Bondi who literally will go from tweet to prosecutor in, you know, instantly a record land speed, you know, and so maybe they'll use that as an excuse not to release documents. Maybe they will be selective in what they put out and it will just coincidentally only have, you know, names of well known Democrats in there. Who knows? I certainly don't, I find it painful. I don't, I'm curious what you think and maybe I'm overreacting, but every time I hear on TV or you know, these members of Congress and the clips being like, now we're going to have accountability and justice for these survivors. And it's so painful to hear these women in this horrible stories of the terrible exploitation by Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell. And yet the political cynicism of promising these women that the release of these papers is going to mean accountability and justice. I find it very painful. It's not going to lead to accountability and justice for them. And I find it upsetting.
- [21:40]
Charlie Sykes
Well, the whole thing is upsetting because, you know, you have the COVID up, you know, supposedly worse than the crime, but the crime was pretty horrendous here. And it really is kind of a symbol of the differential of our criminal justice system and the way that elites protect one another. I do think that it is interesting that the victims survivors have found their voice and have been able to win this victory. By the way, I agree with you that I don't think that we should give the Trump administration any bet benefit of the doubt that they're going to behave in a good faith manner about this. On the other hand, it was not a given that they would all come forward. These victims would come forward. Earlier this year I did a number of these podcasts where we talked about, you know, what are they thinking, what are they, what are they saying? And many of them were afraid. Many of them had been beaten down, they'd been threatened, they'd been sued. And so to see this moment where they take on the President of the United States and inflict this Humiliating defeat on him is something. I also think it's interesting that Trump really did think up until a couple of days ago that of course he was going to get the Republicans to cave in. And it was not an irrational thing when he brought people into the situation because it's worked so many other times. Everybody else has caved. Big institutions, billionaires, a few random Republican congressmen probably didn't seem that was going to be that hard for him. And yet here we are. So give me your sense about the, the Marjorie Taylor Greene thing. I, I'm watching her strange new respect and she's saying things that are, I suppose, laudable. I've written something that basically says, could we all, like, not go into complete, you know, embrace of full spectrum amnesia with, with her? You know, she did not fall off the horse on the way to Damascus. She is not seeking sobriety. Can I give you my analogy of her right now? She's like a member of a meth gang and she's turned on the meth boss not because she's decided to become clean and find God, but because she doesn't think the meth boss is actually peddling pure enough meth, you know, that she was, you know, but it is interesting, this breakdown. And for Donald Trump to get this kind of criticism from maga, this is, this has rattled him. I mean, it's one thing for, you know, Paul Ryan or somebody to break with him, but somebody who is a MAGA superstar who's ripping him from a MAGA point of view, he seems extremely rattled by that.
- [24:16]
Susan Glasser
What do you think Revolutions eat their young, Charlie? You know, the ineluctable logic of the revolutionary is, is, is taking effect here. You know, we are, you know, this is, this is how you go from, Sorry, I just, I met a, I'm at a loss for words. You know, like anyone who is listening to you in this podcast who, you know, thinks that, well, now we, you know, wait a minute, don't we. We love Marjorie Taylor Greene now, you know.
- [24:54]
Charlie Sykes
No, no, stop.
- [24:55]
Susan Glasser
No, it's moment. I mean, I, Is it, is it a bad thing for her to go on CNN and say, I apologize and I recognize that I've played a part in this toxic culture? No, I think that's a good thing. I'm glad. I wish more people would do it. But every single day we are living, we are swimming and rivers of heat and division and it's, you know, it's a business model for her and many other people. Now, what's interesting to me about this phenomenon is that she represents possibly a shift in the incentive structure. Right. She is. Politicians, generally speaking, are highly responsive to the incentive structures around them. And so the theory of the case in Trump's first term, in fact, was that if you could shift the incentive structures, then you would get enough Republicans to sort of turn on him and then, you know, constrain him. That didn't happen. And in fact, Donald Trump shifted the incentive structure along with a lot of the dysfunction in our politics. So one thing it tells you pretty clearly is that Marjorie Taylor Greene has a different incentive than the one she's had up until now, and that she's obviously not looking at just staying in the House of Representatives in her current role, because what else could explain such an abrupt shift? So, you know, I tend to buy the explanation that she's looking at a statewide office of some kind or, you know, wanting to play a different role in our politics. My concern about this moment is that we are going in the other direction, at least when it comes to incentives. And the U.S. house of Representatives, where she currently serves, this race to redistrict in the middle of the decade in Republican states initially and now in Democratic states in response, that is, unfortunately, from my perspective, guaranteeing that there will be more incentives for people to be the kind of divisive. Exactly. You know, choose the most extreme flank of your party kinds of politicians, because that's what this extreme form of redistricting does. And arguably that's already what created the presence of so many Marjorie Taylor Greene's in our politics up until this moment. And frankly, it's one of the reasons I think, that Donald Trump was able to accomplish this takeover of the Republican Party. The redistricting, extreme partisan redistricting had been going on for years, combined with, you know, the abandonment of all meaningful restrictions on campaign finance in our politics and a number of other factors that predated Trump's advent in national politics. But I think it made it much easier for him to take over the Republican Party. And so I think it's a little bit scary when you think about the longer term consequences that we're doing even more and more of those things that already led us to this very extreme moment.
- [28:02]
Charlie Sykes
No, I'm really glad you brought that up because in fact, it does feel as if we're in this vortex where fewer and fewer congressional districts will be competitive, which means fewer, fewer and fewer members of Congress have to care about actually appealing to the general electorate or being worried about moderate or centrist voters or people on the other side. All you have to do is win the primary. And then all in order to win the primary, you just have to appeal to the most fervid elements of your base. And that's not just a vote counting phenomenon. I think if we look at conservative media, conservative media, for years, even before Trump was training its sights on other Republicans, making them fall into line because they were not pure enough or they were not aggressive enough. Because again, the point was the power of the conservative media was within this Republican primary world and you didn't have to worry about answering or even arguing with the other side. So, yeah, it's created this incentive. And that's why the Marjorie Taylor Greene thing I think is going to be interesting. And by the way, I've written something basically saying could we just like, slow the roll on the Marjorie Taylor Greene thing, the strange new respect? Because look, if she really wants to look for redemption, that is fine. I am in favor of that for obvious reasons. On the other hand, she hasn't actually asked for it. We haven't heard from her. Have you changed your mind about who won the 2020 election? We haven't heard from her about, have you changed your mind about January 6th? Could we talk about the Jewish space lasers? Do you think the school shootings were really false flags? Was, did Democrats put a body double in for, you know, Ruth Bader Ginsburg? I mean, she has said a lot of stuff over the years and it's like we kind of need to ask her about, where do you come down on all this stuff? I mean, there's a long track record here. But it will be interesting to see what happens now. If, in fact, the grassroots responds by increasing her fundraising, that's a tell. If the local Republican Party rallies around her and she doesn't get a primary opponent, that is a tell. Because all of these guys are looking around going, what can I do to survive? And if there is a shift, it is that moment where they realize, well, wait, so Thomas Massie survived. Marjorie Taylor Greene survived. I haven't lost my MAGA credibility, but I also haven't been killed. So, I mean, I think that's the way it plays out internally in Republican politics.
- [30:47]
Susan Glasser
Your thoughts, Charlie? First of all, I guess plaudits to you for writing that. Although what does it say about our age that it's necessary to write a piece saying that the Jewish space laser lady is not, you know, the, you know, our new, our new liberal hero. Deep sigh. Deep sigh. I think that. Trump pushed into a corner of lame duckness of, you know, rebels within the party He. He has one play here. Right. Which is escalation. And I think considering that we really have a very long time to run still, you know, three years left of this, that suggests that lame duck Trump can be as, or more dangerous than running for reelection Trump. And, you know, another way of thinking about lame duckness, you know, the traditional way is to say, well, this is a guy whose power is ebbing away from him. But another way to think of it is this is a leader with extraordinary powers, vaster powers than, you know, anyone has ever had in that office, courtesy of the Supreme Court and no constraints at all, because even the voters aren't a constraint on him. What does he really care? You know, if it weren't for the prospect of Democrats taking over branches of Congress and then having subpoena power and investigating him again and impeaching him again, he certainly doesn't care very much about the fate of individual Republican members of Congress. You know, if they lose elections, he'll say, that's their fault, not my fault.
- [32:31]
Charlie Sykes
Yeah, absolutely.
- [32:33]
Susan Glasser
Yeah. So lame duck can be, and I think we should take this seriously, a synonym for Donald Trump with even less of it giving a damn than he does now and even less constraints.
- [32:49]
Charlie Sykes
So lame duck is just another way of saying nothing left to lose, right?
- [32:54]
Susan Glasser
Yeah. You know, I can hear the music playing here.
- [32:56]
Charlie Sykes
I know it was playing that when you were speaking. And when you think about it, is that if he feels that this power is slipping away, he's more likely to do a wag your dog. He's more likely to invoke the Insurrection Act. He's more likely to use all of these powers which remain intact and like nothing that we're talking about has removed those presidential powers, whereas claimed presidential powers. And I think that sometimes we do make the mistake of mistaking vibes for the reality when, again, he still holds, you know, he's still got the buttons, he's still got the levers of power. And. And now, to your point, he's got less to restrain him. A president who's running for reelection has to be somewhat concerned about it.
- [33:44]
Momentous Supplement Advertiser
Right?
- [33:44]
Charlie Sykes
He has to be concerned about holding the base together, has to be concerned about not having certain things that will flip, you know, swing states. A president who has nothing to lose in that respect becomes much more. And he is behaving that way. I mean, he is. Let me get your take on this, though. His. The corruption is so blatant, it is so extreme, it is so out there in the open that even some people from Magaland are Going, do you guys ever think that you might ever be held accountable, that you honestly don't think the Democrats are ever going to be in charge? You never think there's going to be a Democratic Attorney General again. You know, is there a tipping point at which they just cannot give up power? And I know we're getting into the Garry Kasparov zone here, but where it becomes just too risky for them to give up power because they, they are so extreme, they are so blatant. Or do you, or do you, or do you think that's tds?
- [34:44]
Susan Glasser
Well, I don't, I don't accept that, that acronym. So I don't, I don't use the TDS because it seems to me, I've always felt that, you know, it's like fake news, which started as a critique of, you know, the pro Trump bots and, you know, server farms that were spewing misinformation in the 2016 election. Trump derangement syndrome is what's happened to the Republican Party in my view. I agree, you know, and I don't that's it, period. But, you know, I, I don't think we need to pretend that we can see into the future here because it's what we see in the present that already suggests we're in a different place. Right. You know, a president would never undertake these actions of personal self enrichment of himself and his family, the co mingling of official business and private business in the way that Trump has done. And again, we're talking enrichment to the tune of billions of dollars here. If he did not believe that he would had complete impunity. I believe that the Supreme Court's immunity decision, by the way, gave him some basis for believing that the scale and scope of some of his other powers, I think are under question still. Right. Like we need to understand from the Supreme Court, which has been remarkably enabling of Trump so far, but still we need to understand from the Supreme Court, are they going to let him unilaterally revise the definition of the, you know, 14th amendment, birthright citizenship? Are they going to let him, you know, decide that a national emergency can be watching a television ad that he doesn't like and declaring a trade war on Canada? Like, okay, they might, they might say yes to that, but those powers still remain to be litigated. I think his power to be a very, very corrupt man, commingling official acts and other things, it seems like they've already told him he can do that.
- [36:47]
Charlie Sykes
I think so, yeah.
- [36:48]
Susan Glasser
So, I mean, he's, he's, proceeding. It seems to me like he already has that power and therefore, you know, no one can stop him. He's also his use of the pardons suggests that he's willing to give a blanket pardon to everyone in his administration who might conceivably be accused of corruption in a future Democratic administration. So I anticipate that they wouldn't necessarily have to hold on to power for them to continue looting. You know, I think that's true government.
- [37:24]
Charlie Sykes
Yeah. Well, let's go back to this, this MAGA split because, you know, obviously you have the personality of Marjorie Taylor Greene and the Epstein case, but there, but there are other schisms out there. And I have to say I'm not going to say that I'm surprised or shocked, but it is notable that one of the big debates that's going on now at very high levels of the Republican Party is whether or not their tent is so big that they have to include neo Nazis and anti Semites. They, I mean, really, we're at the point, I mean, I had thought that this had been litigated back in the 60s with William F. Buckley or when they, when they pushed Pat Buchanan to the side, you know, push the, the Klan and the John Birch Society. But, but now we have, you know, Tucker Carlson giving a very, very friendly interview to Nick Fuentes who's a, you know, Hitler, Stan Holocaust denying neo Nazi. The president of the Heritage foundation endorses it. The Heritage foundation is now really riven with, with, with, with dissent. Trump and J.D. vance seem to be siding with Tucker Carlson and the graper adjacent faction of the party. But I mean, this is really quite a remarkable moment for MAGA that somebody like Nick Fuentes, I mean, we've seen this, right? People from the fringes moving to the mainstream. I have to say that even I was skeptical that Nick Fuentes would ever be part of the conversation, and he is, and which is ought to be terrifying and yet feels like, yeah, this is where we've been headed. I mean, Nick Fuentes. Is Nick Fuentes going to be the successor to Charlie Kirk? I mean, is that where we're headed here? Where did this beast come from? I mean, the beast of right wing antisemitism revived in the 21st century?
- [39:19]
Susan Glasser
Charlie, there's not one bone in my body that's surprised by it, I have to say. You know, and I, maybe that's, you know, a reflection on just, you know, how, how painful it's been to watch the last 10 years. And.
- [39:40]
Charlie Sykes
But Nick Fuentes, he was already.
- [39:44]
Susan Glasser
At Mar A lago. Donald Trump said, oh, you know, well, I didn't know who he was, but he gets me. Look, the Heritage foundation staff is up in arms in their leader for saying it was okay for Tucker Carlson to interview him. But where's the White House staff? Up in arms at their leader for saying that it's okay. Right. So the Heritage foundation staff cares more than the staff of the United States White House about, about this or the Republican Congress?
- [40:19]
Charlie Sykes
Yeah, I mean, yeah, it's whatever Tucker Carlson did. Donald Trump himself did that.
- [40:24]
Susan Glasser
I mean, that's really what really gets me, of course, is, you know, these are the same people who campaigned in 2024 with this sanctimonious like, we're the party to stop anti Semitism. They are literally withdrawing billions of dollars or hundreds of millions of dollars in scientific research grants to work on things like curing cancer because of alleged antisemitism at America's campuses. But it's totally fine to platform the actual anti Semite if, you know, if the, you know, the, the Harvard Medical School, you know, platformed the anti Semite, you know, forget about, you know, their funding from the federal government. But it's totally fine if the president does. I mean, again, you know, it's like paging Bill Ackman, dude. Like, what do you think about this now? I mean, wait, so who's more anti Semitic? Explain this to me. Like a bunch of college kids who don't know what the slogans they're chanting mean, or the President of the United States who knows exactly what he's doing and exactly the message he is sending when he decides to weigh in on that Tucker Carlson controversy.
- [41:35]
Charlie Sykes
No, I think you're right. And again, this is also consistent. I remember back in the 2016 campaign when it became very, very clear that he was not going to distance himself from these extreme right wing figures. We saw what happened in Charlottesville and is this calculation no enemies to the right, including the anti Semites, and I guess the complete collapse of any sort of immunity or guardrails against the most extreme bigots out there. There was once, at least as I remember, the Republican Party understood the importance of policing itself. And that's all gone. And so it is interesting watching people like Ben Shapiro and others who appear to be shocked, shocked. Where did all these anti Semites come in? Well, maybe when you hired Candace Owens, you know, that was not a good call. Maybe when you look the other way, maybe when you flipped on Donald Trump. There are a lot of these folks who back in 2016 understood exactly what the danger was, who he was allowing back in the mouth breathers from the swamps that he was bringing back in, and yet that for some reason they make the calculation that we can still go along with this, we can still support this. And they are genuinely sound like they're surprised to find out that, you know, the baby alligator has grown up into a big alligator and is now walking down the street and might turn on and eat them. That, to me, is the great irony. Like, you are really surprised. Marjorie Taylor Greene is shocked to find out that Donald Trump is not loyal to his loyal supporters.
- [43:13]
Momentous Supplement Advertiser
Really?
- [43:14]
Susan Glasser
Huh.
- [43:14]
Charlie Sykes
If only she'd been warned. Right.
- [43:19]
Susan Glasser
The alligator analogy, I think, is, is, unfortunately, it's, It's a pretty apt one right here. I just come back to the idea that if you, you know, your brand in politics is, is hatred and division and, you know, that these are all of a piece. Right. You know, you can look away from a lot of things, and then what's the thing that causes you, other than self interest, to speak out? You know, every day we have to avert our gaze from, you know, real harms being done in our collective name. Right. You know, and seeing these shock videos, I mean, it's hard for me. I don't want to look at them. And then I think, well, you know, we can't look away too much. But, you know, it's, it's the, the people who are platforming Nick Fuentes are the same people who have unleashed violent, armed masked men in our society to pull, yes. You know, moms out of cars and the school dropout line. Okay. And, you know, it's, it's a very.
- [44:35]
Charlie Sykes
Yeah. Ideas have consequences.
- [44:37]
Momentous Supplement Advertiser
Yeah.
- [44:38]
Charlie Sykes
How did we get ideas?
- [44:39]
Susan Glasser
These are the same idea, is what I'm trying to say. These are the same idea.
- [44:43]
Charlie Sykes
I think they are. And let's end on a positive note. It seems to be seeping out there into public opinion. I mean, the hemorrhage of support of the Latino vote. I think that there are a lot of people that I know who are in favor of strict borders, who would like to see illegal immigrants who commit crimes deported, but they are appalled when they see the windows being broken and the moms being dragged out in the pickup line. And my guess is that we're going to see a lot more of that rather than less of that. Of all the thing. Donald Trump may pivot on a lot of stuff. He's not going to pivot on that.
- [45:19]
Susan Glasser
Oh, he thinks that's a winning issue for him. And I just, I would just Say.
- [45:22]
Charlie Sykes
That he likes it.
- [45:23]
Susan Glasser
You know, to these anti Semites and to these haters, you know, today's immigrants, 100 years ago, that was your family, okay? That was my family. You know, we're, we're all immigrants to this country. That's, that's who we all are. And you know, you, you demonize these folks at your peril. If we failed, if our Congress and our presidents failed us, you know, for a generation to come up with meaningful legislation and meaningful enforcement of our border laws, is that, is that what you want to take out on the bodies of these children, these women? I mean, come on. You know, that's just, it's antithetical to who we are as a people. And it is absolutely connected. Anti Semitism comes from the same source. These people don't belong here. There's a definition of who an American is that is not compatible with the definition of America that you and I have.
- [46:22]
Charlie Sykes
Well, I agree on that note, because I actually thought that that was a settled issue. From the before times, I thought we all understood that we were a nation of immigrants, stronger because of immigrants. I come from Wisconsin, which is a state built by immigrants. And to see all of this, how far we have come, and I just wonder that residual sense of who we are as Americans, I, you know, I'm kind of clinging to that hope. Maybe we should end with that. Clinging to that particular hope. Susan Glasser, thank you so much for all your time today. I appreciate it every time you come on the podcast. Thank you.
- [47:00]
Susan Glasser
Thank you, Charlie. It's really always great to be with you.
- [47:03]
Charlie Sykes
And thank you all for listening to this episode of to the Contrary podcast. I'm Charlie Sykes. We do this because it is so urgently necessary to remind ourselves that we are not the crazy ones.
- [47:31]
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Robert Mays
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