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- [00:00]
Tom Nichols
Foreign.
- [00:11]
Charlie Sykes
Welcome to the to the Contrary podcast. I'm Charlie Sykes, and welcome to week number four of the Trump administration 2.0. Okay, so, Tom, seriously, it. It can't just be four weeks, right? I mean, three weeks. It's got to be. We're in a time warp now, right?
- [00:30]
Tom Nichols
I sort of figured it was already time for the 2028 elections. I mean, it's been a lifetime.
- [00:36]
Charlie Sykes
But you know what? I will not read any articles about the 202028 election. It is just too early. Hey, welcome back to my good friend Tom Nichols, staff writer for the Atlantic. Long time. Well, just a longtime friend, you know, and it's good. It's good to see you and talk with you, Tom.
- [00:53]
Tom Nichols
Yeah, you do, Charlie.
- [00:55]
Charlie Sykes
I mean, one of the experience of the last few years has been, of course, to be that. That wonderful experience of being unpersoned. And. And you cannot. You cannot overestimate the number of people who will ghost you over the years. And I have to say that, Tom, you have been one of the people who have. What's the opposite of ghosting? And ghosting. You've been a good friend.
- [01:15]
Tom Nichols
So friendship.
- [01:16]
Charlie Sykes
Glad to have you back.
- [01:17]
Tom Nichols
So.
- [01:18]
Charlie Sykes
Yes, something like that. Okay, so let me just do a lightning round with you because you're an expert in foreign affairs before we get to Elon Musk and the. Of the rule of law and all those other things. Okay, so in the next four years, will the United States. And then this is. These are just yes or no questions. Okay. I don't want. I don't want deep thoughts. Is that okay with you? I mean, this.
- [01:41]
Tom Nichols
This feels like one of those, you know, scenes in Law and Order. That's a yes or no question, sir.
- [01:46]
Charlie Sykes
It is a yes or no question. All right. Okay. You us take over Canada as a 51st date. Yes or no?
- [01:52]
Tom Nichols
It will not. No.
- [01:53]
Charlie Sykes
Okay. Take over Panama.
- [01:56]
Tom Nichols
No.
- [01:57]
Charlie Sykes
Okay. Take over Gaza.
- [02:01]
Tom Nichols
Wow. I'm going to say no.
- [02:05]
Charlie Sykes
No.
- [02:06]
Tom Nichols
But I. That's a weaker no.
- [02:08]
Charlie Sykes
And seize Greenland as part of our manifest destiny.
- [02:13]
Tom Nichols
Yeah. No.
- [02:14]
Charlie Sykes
Okay. So none of those things are gonna happen. The reason I'm asking these questions is, you know, the President has spent a great deal of time in between. And by the way, I'm not trying to get distracted here. In between, you probably noticed this is tariff week again. He has stopped the production of pennies. He's re endorsed plastic straws, took time out from being leader of the free world to tweet mean shit to Taylor Swift. What am I forgetting? Oh, and seize control of the Kennedy center and it's like, okay, okay, clearly, kitchen table.
- [02:50]
Tom Nichols
Kitchen table issues in the heartland. You know, how many times, you know, when you were traveling out there or during the 2024 election, did they go into a small diner in Pennsylvania and someone said, you know. You know what really pisses me off? The Kennedy center board.
- [03:05]
Charlie Sykes
Yeah, it's the Kennedy Center Board. And so what's the. If the Kennedy administration was Camelot, what is this, like, the UN Camelot we're just gonna bring in? I mean, I don't know. There's.
- [03:17]
Tom Nichols
I'm not a, I'm not a Lord of the Rings fan, but I'm sure there's, like, some scary place in Lord of the Rings that's the opposite of Camelot. This is. But, you know, I mean, it's. Let's not make it too grandiose. I mean, there's also just this kind of comic opera.
- [03:36]
Charlie Sykes
Well, this is great.
- [03:38]
Tom Nichols
You know, it's not, It's. It. You could say, oh, this is, you know, the Valley of death and the, the dark place. Yeah. I mean, it is, because we're a superpower that is slowly committing suicide in public, but.
- [03:52]
Charlie Sykes
Sounds bad.
- [03:53]
Tom Nichols
Yeah, I mean, you know, we're just, we're get. I, I. We're not committing, so we're not going to cease to exist, but we're. We're parceling out what, you know, what power and reputation we once had. I mean, every time I see Trump with. There was. I was watching the news earlier, and there's a picture of him shaking hands with Xi Jinping. And I just keep thinking, these guys must go home, back to Moscow and Beijing and other places and say, this, this is amazing that the Americans are doing this to themselves on purpose. But there's also just this. I mean, I still have trouble saying the words Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth.
- [04:30]
Charlie Sykes
I don't know.
- [04:31]
Tom Nichols
DNI nominee Tulsi Gabbard. I mean, there is just a kind of. I keep. And it's a joke I've used before, but not with you, Charlie. So I'll say it again, which is this whole cabinet feels like a Saturday Night Live cold open. You know, where you're in the writer's room and someone says, okay, so here's the cold open. So we do, you know, a future Trump administration, and it's Pete Hegson, Tulsi Gabbard, and Cash Patel, and you can almost see Lorne Michaels or somebody saying, I don't know, let's not get crazy. You know, let's.
- [05:03]
Charlie Sykes
Well, I mean, at this Point. I think the great mystery is how come Laura Loomer doesn't have a position in the Cabinet? I mean, is there anybody, you know? How come Steve Bannon is not Sherman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff?
- [05:15]
Tom Nichols
Mike Flynn.
- [05:17]
Charlie Sykes
Mike Flynn. He's back there. So, no, I mean, the reason I'm throwing out this stuff and I think you go to it, is that how do we. This is part of our job, isn't it, to separate out just the distractions, the endless flooding the zone, just complete bullshit from the stuff that is actually scary, but also to leaven the genuinely scary with the recognition that, yeah, this colossus, who is, you know, ruling America, is also a really absurd clown surrounded by really, really absurd people. And the fact that he can't distinguish between the straws and taking over Greenland. So, I mean, so how do we do this? We're still at the beginning. How do we adjust the dial? We pay attention to this. We ignore this. What?
- [06:05]
Tom Nichols
That's a really, that's a great question. And I think that would be really helpful. I mean, you know, you and I do this for a living, so we pay attention to everything, and then we have to kind of write. Every morning you get up and you sort of, you know, I'm back to, I'm back to that old feeling of opening up my, my computer and, you know, going to the news and going, okay, now what? Most people don't have to do that. And I think, you know, one, one way is for I, I, I, I hate to sound like I'm arguing for disengagement, but there is something for most people to unplug just a little bit. And I'll, I'll use one example. You brought up, the thing about not minting pennies. You know, that's not a crazy idea. That could actually be a bipartisan. I mean, people have been talking about getting rid of the penny for a long time, Democrats and Republicans, that it doesn't really make sense. It's expensive to keep minting them. They don't, you know, people don't really use them. I have all, I have a whole dish of them sitting downstairs. But if you're, if you're treating the, you know, the potential that Trump is going to defy the courts or that he's appointed, you know, completely unqualified people to lead our national security establishment. And if you're gonna, if you're gonna take all that in and say, and what's this about the pennies? You know, most folks, yeah, you can let, you can, you know, don't react to every single thing. Because the goal of this, and you and I have said this many times over the years, the goal is to exhaust people. It's to exhaust them into. It's to numb them into tuning out and kind of default compliance with whatever Trump wants to do. Just throw their hands up in the air and say, well, what are you gonna do? You know, it's not all Trump.
- [07:51]
Charlie Sykes
Yeah, no, I. Right. And I'm hearing a lot of that, and I really do understand this. Okay, so you and I haven't had this conversation. Do I feel like we have a lot of catching up to do. You wrote a book about the death of expertise. When did that come out? 2018, 2019?
- [08:07]
Tom Nichols
Yeah, actually, I finished it. And I want to put in a quick word here, because people think I wrote that about Trump. I actually started writing that around 2015, long before Trump was on 2014. 2015. So it appeared in late 2016, early 2017.
- [08:24]
Charlie Sykes
So the death of Expertise, it was a pretty dark, pessimistic book. But looking back on it, could you have imagined how much worse it was going to get? I mean, you made some predictions. I mean, I think in terms of the turn against vaccines, the fact that RFK Jr. Is about to be Secretary of Health and Human Services at this point, I mean, let's leave aside the fact that he was a heroin addict and had brain worms and everything, and that he will be presiding over pandemics. I mean, could you ever have imagined that there would be this kind of an almost Luddite reaction?
- [09:01]
Tom Nichols
You know, when I wrote the first edition, I actually thought things were getting better. I thought, you know, we've hit peak insanity about all this stuff. And I opened the second edition, which came out about six months ago, almost a year ago, and I said, okay, I made an expert prediction. I was wrong. I was wrong to think this was getting better. I had no. I. I had a. You know, Charlie, I think the phrase is, I had a failure of imagination.
- [09:35]
Charlie Sykes
Yeah, a lot of people did. They still do.
- [09:38]
Tom Nichols
Yeah, I think we're still. I think. I think that's absolutely right. I think a lot of people are still suffering from a failure of imagination about how bad this could get. But when it comes to the expertise issues, you know, health, vaccines, national security, the Defense Department, the FBI, I had. I. There was something in me that always said, look, this is a. This is at. At heart, we're basically a sensible country. We have circuit breakers that kick in that make sure that people like, you know, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Never get near the levers of power or that Tulsi Gabbard is never going to be at the top of the. And I, you know, I just don't, I guess we're not, I guess we're not a sensible country.
- [10:22]
Charlie Sykes
It's as if we broke the glass and then broke the next glass and kept going and going and going and going. But, but you do wonder how this is going to go. So over the weekend, one of the big stories was cutting back on NIH research. See, unfortunately, anytime we use acronyms, I think we're losing the debate. If we're talking about usaid, we're talking about nih. But the administration had something that I think has a surface appeal to conservatives who think that universities have too much money. They limited the amount of overhead that say the University of Wisconsin or the University of Alabama or the University of North Carolina can, can, can, can charge. Right? And now we're hearing from all of these cancer researchers, all of these labs, even some Republican senators who are saying, this is deadly. You're actually going to bring cancer research to a halt. So it feels like at the moment, I want to get your take on this, that, that people, there's this visceral thrill of breaking things, but people don't fully realize what is being broken. And so we have to go through that process.
- [11:26]
Tom Nichols
You know, it's interesting that when you tell people what's going on there, I think you even, I mean, you're never going to change the hearts and minds of the die hard MAGA movement types. But I think there's a lot of people who said, well, I didn't know that was going to happen. I didn't realize that's what that meant because most people, and I say this only partially with criticism and partially just because it's a fact. Most people just don't know how anything in the government works. They don't understand how the National Institutes of Health get funded. They don't understand how cancer research gets paid for. And God bless them, most people don't have to think about that. Right? You don't sit around every morning over your coffee saying, hey, you know, Charlie, I was sitting there, I was just wondering, you know, who funds cancer research at the University of Wisconsin Medical School? You know, nobody has to think about that because sensible human beings are actually getting that done. But I think what's really interesting about this first four weeks is what an immense load of bullshit it was to say we are running, we, the Trump restoration, are running to get American workers back to work. To a fair deal, you know, economic justice, populism, they don't care about. This is the most intra elite fight in the world. When you're, when you are, you know, pissing on the Kennedy center and, and trying to stop universities from charging overhead, you don't give a rat's ass about the average person in Alabama or Indiana. You just don't. That's a very elite thing.
- [13:08]
Charlie Sykes
Right. But it's also the kind of thing that will have tangible, negative, you know, downstream effects for a very, very long time. The stuff about the pennies and all the other stuff and the talk about Greenland, this is all this, like, tune that out. But if, in fact, you know, this step wrecks the, you know, the research infrastructure of the country. I mean, it's so much easier to break something like that than to put it back together again. And I think, you know, how long will it take for people to realize, oh my, I mean, the fact that Katie Britt, you know, the Republican senator from Alabama is like, excuse me, excuse me. You understand that this might actually hurt our universities. Yeah. Katie, what do you think was going to happen when you turn Leslie the ketamine besotted, you know, man child narcissist billionaire with hammers into your china shop? What did you think was going to happen?
- [14:04]
Tom Nichols
That could be, that could be the bumper sticker for the next four years. What did you think was going to happen? But the other interesting part of this, Charlie, is the way they can spin it. Yes, there's all these horrible downstream things that they will then explain away. They will, they will say, you know, the deep state and the Democrats and recalcitrant bureaucrats because the while nobody cares about the Kennedy center or, you know, how much universities charge for overhead. They take all that as part of a simpler message. We're sticking it to the pointy heads and the chardonnay sipping, you know, latte people. You don't have to know how. We just are. And the way that, you know, that we're doing something right is, is by how much howling you can hear from the banks of the Potomac about the Kennedy Center. And I think to go back, you know, I'm still thinking about something you asked earlier about sort of how do we, how do we deal with that and how do we strain out what's important? I think, I think responding to these things a little more stoically rather than with a hair on fire, three alarm, you know, fire every time. I mean, the Kennedy center thing is stupid. But the fact that we're talking about it, you know, sort of serves Trump's purpose. Okay, you got control of the Kennedy Center. It's probably not legal. Now can we get back to talking about cancer funding?
- [15:29]
Charlie Sykes
Okay, so let's stick with this for a moment because actually, you got me thinking about something. So Trump's mind is like watching a bag of ferrets. All these things just sort of bouncing around there. And clearly he's easily distracted. Somebody comes up to him and says, hey, pennies, hey, Greenland, hey. All of these things. Whereas meanwhile, there are people who are, you know, in the bowels of the government doing stuff, and I'm guessing that someone. Listen, let's just get to it. Let's talk about Elon Musk, the co president. They must. The people who are actually dismantling the government must kind of like the fact that Trump is so easily distracted. Let him worry about, you know, the gold toilets in the White House and everything. Whereas we are, you know, in the Department of the treasury, in the Social Security Agency, in the Department of Education, in the Defense Department, in the CIA and doing all of this. So talking about this, you had a piece about, you know, Trump and Musk. You're saying they're destroying. Trump and Musk are just. You write this to the Atlantic. Trump and Musk are destroying the basics of a healthy democracy. So without overusing the term democracy, what is Elon Musk's real goal here? At the end of the day, does he want to be standing amid the rubble of the federal government with the biggest dick in Washington? What is his real goal?
- [16:53]
Tom Nichols
You know, and you know that my explanation for these guys, for all. For so much of mega world, is a psychological explanation rather than a political one. That these are all, you know, kind of angry misfits who are still mad about high school. You know, I mean, I know that's. I know that's a, you know, kind of blanket, you know, but. But it's like I, I think I. I think I posted something a long time ago that said it was like, something like, you know, the. We're going to. The country's going to. Going to be destroyed by people that are still mad about prom night. You know, that there is this kind of. When you ask, what's his goal? Take. Take the unhappiest, angriest kid you knew in high school and then make him the principal 20 years later and ask yourself, what.
- [17:43]
Charlie Sykes
Or Biff. From, you know.
- [17:46]
Tom Nichols
Biff, Right?
- [17:47]
Charlie Sykes
Yeah, Biff.
- [17:48]
Tom Nichols
Back to the future.
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Charlie Sykes
It's like an army of Biffs. Yeah. Back to the futures. Yeah.
- [17:52]
Tom Nichols
You know, that, that. And so, you know, there is this kind of, and I wrote about this here second book, plug in, a book called Our Own Worst Enemy. There is this deep itchy resentment that a lot of Americans have. And, and you see it in the very, you know, these very prominent Americans who all seem to have some kind of villain or origin story where they felt that they were done dirt earlier in their lives, that they were not given the respect they deserve. I mean, that is Donald Trump's story. Right. I mean, you know, pressed to the glass about, about Manhattan daddy issues.
- [18:25]
Charlie Sykes
Yeah.
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Tom Nichols
You know, the whole thing. And I think that, you know, when you look at Hegseth. Right. Well, you know, I was, I couldn't be at Biden's inauguration. I've been, I was, I mean, as one of my friends pointed out, you know, Hexa started as a kind of, I want to be involved with establishment Republicans. I don't want to get this wrong.
- [18:44]
Charlie Sykes
But I vaguely remember that too.
- [18:46]
Tom Nichols
Yeah, I think it was. He was kind of gravitating toward Jeb Bush. But I'm. If I'm wrong about that, I apologize. But you know, they all had this kind of. We were frozen out by the responsible gatekeepers. So now we're just going to burn it all down. Now we're just going to break everything because we. Again, I'll say it again. They are not anti elitist, they're anti the current elites. They just want to be the new elites. If there are people that voted for this or support the MAGA movement somehow thinking that like the new elites in Washington are going to be people from, you know, the voters from Oklahoma and Indiana, they're not these, this is an intra beltway fight of the worst.
- [19:25]
Charlie Sykes
Very much so. And so.
- [19:26]
Tom Nichols
And I think that that's the, I think that that's the goal. I think Musk is like, I'm. I think Musk and a lot of other guys, their goal is to get even to in some big cosmic way.
- [19:38]
Charlie Sykes
Okay, so I get that. I mean, you know, he's the, the out of control power, you know, the power grab. I mean history is full of that. Shakespeare is full of that. We shouldn't actually be shocked except that the system was set up in such a way, as you mentioned before, that it had guardrails. Right. That it had circuit breakers for people like this. That there was once a time when if some unelected billionaire tapped by the executive branch who was USURPING Congress's Article 1 responsibilities might face some pushback. So the treasure thing that he. Yeah.
- [20:12]
Tom Nichols
Be escorted right back out.
- [20:14]
Charlie Sykes
Right. Okay. So the, the thing that, I think the founding fathers, if James Madison was part of our call here, he would be saying, okay, so, Tom, what I got wrong was I really thought that there was an inherent. So the jealousy of the powers. That Congress would never allow itself to have its powers stripped away without a peep. So how do you explain that, you know, where in history do, you know, powerful individuals just basically say, sure, take it. We'd rather be potted plants other than the Roman Senate after Caesar. But I mean, I don't want to get.
- [20:51]
Tom Nichols
Well, I was going to say, I mean, if, you know, let's be careful what you ask for in terms of historical analogies, because they're out there. Two things. One is, is that I'll say this, that, that Musk and the rest of them, it was very clever of them. And I think that if I were advising them on how to destroy the government, the one thing they did right is their first attack right out of the gate was on an apolitical civil service. To, you know, to the people who say, look, my oath is to the Constitution. Yes, I work for the. Yeah, you know, that, that. Yes, I work for the president. You know, yes, I, you know, like, hey, when I was a, When I was a DoD employee, I walked in the building every day and the, Every four years or eight years, the, the, the portraits changed. Right. I mean.
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Charlie Sykes
Right, right.
- [21:37]
Tom Nichols
I started living there when, you know, Bill Clinton was president. But they, they went. And that's what I mean by going after the guardrails, because the, the, the people say, call them bureaucrats as a, As a pejorative. But if you talk, if you think of the easy target, they're an easy target. But also that an apolitical civil service is really important to a functioning democracy, that, you know, that when you go. Unlike in, you know, more corrupt countries. I mean, I, I had a lot of experience with Russia. You can't just go into an office building in Russia and do normal government business. You know, I mean, everything is done with influence. And who do you know and how is this thing? And who did you pay off? You know, we, we don't do that. So, all right, the, the.
- [22:23]
Charlie Sykes
We take it for granted then.
- [22:24]
Tom Nichols
Yeah, absolutely. And we, you know, when it's, I mean, how many times have we said, when it ends, it'll be like Hemingway's comment about bankruptcy. Gradually and then all at once. But the, the, you know, the question of why are they doing this? What is the, what is the end purpose here, I think so much of it is just venality. If you get past the psychological explanations of getting even, even, you know, there's a kind of venality and a sense that nothing, and this is, I think with foreign affairs especially, this bothers me. A sense that nothing really matters, like nothing can really go bad, nothing can really go wrong. You know, that there are really serious consequences for this. You've talked about these major downstream effects. I don't think anybody there now, you.
- [23:16]
Charlie Sykes
Know, well, they don't, they don't, they don't, they don't worry about the downstream effects of, of denounce, of treating our allies like this. I mean, so whatever happens this week or next week with Canada and Mexico and China, what's happening will have long term effects. Right? It changes, you know, in a negotiation you may, you know, have the binary, I win, you lose, you know, on day one, but by day ten, people have adjusted. Right? I mean, they're, they're not going to go back to all this. So let's, let's stick with this thing with the guardrails and vans because the big question that's hanging out there, I think today, and I talked about this with David French the other day, was what happens if Donald Trump just ignores the courts and it appears that they are gearing up to do this. I just want to, you know, and over the weekend, J.D. vance tweeted out, you know, if judges, you know, interfered with, you know, the President's duties, it would be illegal. So this is something that he's been talking about for years, goes back to 2021. Here's an interview he gave to a podcaster. He said, I think Trump is going to run again in 2024. I think that what Trump should do, if I was giving him one piece of advice, fire every single mid level bureaucrat, every civil servant in the administrative state, replace them with our people, which, okay, A then this. And when the courts stop you, because that's illegal. And when the courts stop you, he went on stand before the country and say, quoting Andrew Jackson, giving a challenge to the constitutional order, the Chief justice has made his ruling, now let him enforce it. Okay? So there's a clear signal that he has been percolating this idea that we could ignore the court. And then he had this, this interesting quote that is often cut out of this. He then explained, we are in a late Republican period. If we're going to push back against it, we're going to have to get pretty wild and pretty far out There. And this is kind of considered to be a reference to, you know, this, this right wing view of America as Rome waiting for Caesar. Well, you know, what happened in late Republican Rome, it fell. The Republic fell, and it became an empire. I just throw this out, but let's talk about this. So, Tom, I think it's pretty clear that the Trump administration is gearing up to basically say to the Supreme Court, nice rule of law you have there. Wouldn't it be a shame if you gave us a ruling that would force us to expose the fact that your power is just a bluff?
- [25:48]
Tom Nichols
Yeah. There you dragged Mr. Madison into this. And the ultimate guardrail, Madison's ultimate guardrail was the inherent decency of the American public. When he said, you know, when he was asked, you know, how do we prevent these jealous, you know, power seekers? And he said, if there is no virtue among us, then we are in a wretched condition. And I think that's partly where we are because, you know, J.D. vance, J.D. vance went to Yale Law School. He knows better than this. I mean, he knows when he says, well, judges, I mean, unless he doesn't, in which case he was just a bad law student. But he knows that there's a difference between courts serving as a check on the executive and courts trying to manage executive functions, which no one is not the issue here. When the court says you can't just erase the 14th Amendment, that's not the court's micromanaging executive business. That's the courts saying, we interpret the Constitution. You said he'll go to the Supreme Court. He won't have to go to the Supreme Court. The courts he'll defy at lower levels and then the Supreme Court's. I suspect the Supreme Court will give him a Jedi mind, you know, mind trick, hand, wave of. This is fine.
- [27:12]
Charlie Sykes
I engaged in some rank speculation in my, in my Monday newsletter, and this is just, maybe just me, you know, riffing on all of this. But I wrote about Korematso 2.0, and this is one of the worst Supreme Court decisions ever. It's the decision in 1944 where the court upheld the internment of Japanese citizens who are living on the West Coast. It's considered, I mean, it is ranked, ranked right there with Dred Scott Plessy as just one of the worst decisions ever, ever made. That you would create these massive detention centers. And by the way, we kind of memory hold that, you know, that one of Franklin Roosevelt's legacies was, I was.
- [27:54]
Tom Nichols
Just going to say concentration camps.
- [27:55]
Charlie Sykes
Yeah. These concentration camps with Just the Japanese. And, you know, when you and I.
- [28:00]
Tom Nichols
Were Republicans, and people would say, you Republicans, you know, the worst racist. You're going to set up concentration camps. So, like, you know, you just kind of meekly raise your hand and say, excuse me, it's been done already.
- [28:09]
Charlie Sykes
This. This is. This has happened. Well, so Trump is sending 30,000 migrants to camps in Guantanamo Bay where we used to send al Qaeda prisoners. And first of all, that's like a black hole. Will they have any access? The media will be able to see them and everything. You know that that's going to go all the way to the Supreme Court. So I wrote there. There are two. I think there's a lot of different options, but two really bad ones. Number one, that the conservative majority says, yeah, absolutely, we're going to basically apply the same kind of logic that we applied back in 1944 and the worst decision ever in the 20th century and say that, yes, you can have massive concentration camps in Gitmo for. For migrants. They might uphold that. Or two, they might say, no, sorry, we are not going to give another Korematso decision. We're going to tell the administration this is illegal and unconstitutional. And Trump says, basically, fuck you, I'm going to ignore you. And. And says to Justice Roberts, okay, you do something about it. You. You and the justices fly down to Gitmo. You fly down to Cuba and bring them home. Either way, you get the sense that we're on this collision course and Gitmo is. History may not rhyme exactly there between those two cases. I get there. The differences. But, you know, I think. I mean, they may not be exactly, but. But the rhyme is unmistakable. Okay, I'm sorry.
- [29:35]
Tom Nichols
Oh, yeah. And I mean, the difference, of course, being Korematsu was worse. And because these were American citizens again, which people. Just the memory holding of Korematsu really was always a pebble in my shoe during these arguments back in the before times when we still had partisan arguments about the parties and race. But the scary part of this is, let's go down the Gitmo road, which is the Supreme Court says, you can't do this. Those migrants have to be released. Well, who's holding them? U.S. military. Right. So Trump says, okay, you've made your decision. I'm not issuing that order to the Pentagon.
- [30:17]
Charlie Sykes
Right, yeah.
- [30:19]
Tom Nichols
And now what? You know, and here's. Then you have America's military leadership saying, supreme Court has clearly said, do this thing. The commander in chief says, I'm not going to do this thing. Now, I think the default for them is say, well, until somebody straightens that out, we follow the orders of the commander, Commander in chief. But, you know, if Trump just says, okay, noted, thank you. You know, there were supposedly. Not supposedly, actually, Richard. When Richard Nixon was vetoing the War Powers act, he.
- [30:50]
Charlie Sykes
Robert.
- [30:50]
Tom Nichols
Apparently it was Robert Bork. This is the part I'm not. I think it was Bork who wanted to add a note that said, we should just send this back to Congress with a note that says, thank you for your essay on my constitutional powers. When I have time, I will send you an essay on yours. Now, you know, with the War Powers act, that. That was not an immediate. There was no forcing function. There was nothing. Actually, you know, Vietnam was just about over. Nixon vetoed it. His veto was overridden, and presidents have lived with it ever since. But, but imagine this situation where the Supreme Court says, you know, the US Military must release these people and transport them out of Gitmo, and Donald Trump says, only one person give that order, and I'm not going to give it. Well, then, as you say, it's a. It's a collision course. What do you do?
- [31:36]
Charlie Sykes
And I think he will win. Yeah. No, they don't care. In fact, I think. I think they would like. I think they would like to flex that. That muscle.
- [31:45]
Tom Nichols
Yeah. Almost as if to say, please give us a ruling where the President can sit back and tent his fingers and say, I'm not going to do that.
- [31:53]
Charlie Sykes
I. Yeah, I think. I think. And MAGA would rally around him and Republicans in Congress would rally around him, and it would play out the way so many of these have. Okay, so, Tom, you and I basically spent 2024 doing pretty much the same thing. Okay. Waving flags, sending off flares, issuing warnings. You had a cover story in the Atlantic, as I recall, in October. What was the headline again? November.
- [32:21]
Tom Nichols
Yep. But it was. It's called the Moment of Truth.
- [32:25]
Charlie Sykes
Right.
- [32:26]
Tom Nichols
It was about George Washington and how far we've fallen and that this. That Donald Trump is the guy that Washington and the founders were worried about.
- [32:36]
Charlie Sykes
And so I. I've argued and see whether you agree. Everything that could have been said about Donald Trump was said. Every warning was. Was issued. The public had no excuses. This. This campaign did not conceal Donald Trump. This campaign was Donald Trump in full, all of the time. Right. So, Tom, we haven't talked since the election. What happened? The American people is presented with this man, the historical context, the personal context, him at his worst, and they chose to put him back in the White House. What? Not.
- [33:12]
Tom Nichols
Not Just the people who chose to vote for him affirmatively, but the millions of Democrats who shrugged their shoulders and stayed home. You know, I never want to hear again about the resistance and the, you know, existential, you know, emergency and all that. I mean, you know, a lot of, a lot of people just stayed home. And I think that that was a triumph of the flood the zone with shit strategy.
- [33:38]
Charlie Sykes
Is it a failure on our part that we weren't talking to the right people?
- [33:42]
Tom Nichols
I don't, I don't. I mean, I think that overestimates our importance. Not that I'm. Not that I'm ever reluctant to overestimate my own importance, but, but, I mean.
- [33:54]
Charlie Sykes
All the warnings, what I'm saying, I mean, all the people were issuing the warnings. Were we, were we just, was it just fan service for the already converted? Did we not get those warnings or did people just not give a shit about the warning?
- [34:04]
Tom Nichols
A lot of people just didn't believe it, Charlie. I mean, I keep telling this story, this story about three, three, three or four days before the election. I was in Pennsylvania and I was with Heather Cox Richardson doing a talk in Pennsylvania. And when it was all over, you know, went back, go to the airport, I got on the plane and I, and it turned. The person next to me is a all out, like the way, you know, it's kind of like the old joke about atheists and vegetarians on the Internet. How do you know they're there? Because they will tell you. They will be sure to tell you this. This woman, within 10 minutes of sitting down, had already tried to suss out my politics, you know, and started to, oh, yeah, you know, oh, what do you do? I said, well, I'm a writer, you know. I said, I used to be a college, a college professor and write. She said, oh, you must be one of those Harris liberals. And I was like, okay, it's going to be a long flight, but the.
- [34:56]
Charlie Sykes
Big noise, canceling headphones.
- [34:59]
Tom Nichols
But I was fascinated. I mean, it was a fascinating discussion and one I've had multiple times over the past three or four years where I kept saying, and I'll give you one example because it's very timely right now. I said, so you support. Oh, yeah, you know, I, I think he's done great things. He did, you know, the economy and so on. I said, so you're, you're looking forward to tariffs again? And she said, oh, he's not going to do that. Like with this absolute certainty, he's not going to do that. And I said, he did It. The first time she looked at me and she said, he did. And this was a business owner, by the way. I don't want to be too. You know, Pennsylvania is not that big. It's a big place. It's not that big a place. Was. It was a western Pennsylvania business owner. And I said, yes. Don't you remember, you know, bailing out the farmers and the billions of dollars and the. And she was like, well, I don't recall that, but it's not going to happen again. Now, you can warn people until you're blue in the face, but that, that really does become the leopards eating faces problem, where you just say, these leopards eat people's faces. Yeah, no, it's not going to. Not mine, not me. Not really a leopard, not really an aggressive. I mean, it's just there are all these defense mechanisms. And I think if you're asking the big question about how did this happen, people decided beforehand who to vote for when it came to Trump. That's like, I can't vote for Kamala Harris. Too liberal, too female, too black, you know, too California, whatever reason. So I'm going to vote for Donald Trump. And they start there and then reverse engineer all the reasons, the rationalization, the.
- [36:36]
Charlie Sykes
Pretexts, all of that. Because it is. The, the way you're describing is, is a certain elasticity of mind that will. Yeah. Everything you like and say he will do it. Everything you don't like and say he won't do it. And that really shows up, I think, a lot of the, the coverage, and.
- [36:53]
Tom Nichols
It requires you to kind of delete everything you once knew or to simply say, none of that matters. He doesn't really mean. You know, the Canada thing is, is so perfect, Charlie, because it's another perfect Trump moment, right, where he comes out and says, hey, I have this crazy idea. And speaking of Atlantic pieces, an idea so crazy that I pointed out that it was the plot of a 1965 book about a crazy president. Right. Same thing.
- [37:24]
Charlie Sykes
Night of Camp David. Right.
- [37:26]
Tom Nichols
Written by the guy who did Seven Days in May.
- [37:29]
Charlie Sykes
Okay. I want to say I went back and I read that book, and in comparison to what's actually happening, it's pretty mild. You're supposed to know the guy has completely lost his mind. I'm sorry, go ahead.
- [37:39]
Tom Nichols
And actually, what the guy's talking about in Night of Camp David almost makes more sense than what Trump is saying right now. I know, but he comes out and he says this, and then right away, right, the maga. The MAGA machine goes and says, I didn't really mean. He means, you know, and it's a negotiating ploy and it's a tactic, and it's just a thing. And Trump. And then what does he do? He sits down, he says, no, I really mean it. And this. Every time they defend something outrageous that Trump says, he pulls the rug out from under his own people. But, you know, their answer, Charlie, could be, okay, you're right. What difference does it make? We still win. People don't hold us responsible for it. We win elections, nobody cares.
- [38:24]
Charlie Sykes
Yeah. And I think that that's also been internalized. Okay. So at the risk of switching back to a much graver topic, and maybe I probably should have led with this this time. The one thing that, I mean, Trump did so many of the things that he said he was going to do, including, you know, the January 6th partners. I do feel that I'm letting down. Letting down America every time. I don't mention the fact that he pardoned the people who rioted, tried to stop the election and attack cops, because that still, you know, was one of the. Should be considered one of the most appalling decisions ever.
- [39:04]
Tom Nichols
But I didn't think. I thought he would pardon some of them. I didn't think. I think the quote was, he said it. Right. Just like he. It was too complicated for him to figure out who was, you know, I mean, just. He says, okay, it. Pardon them all. I. That I.
- [39:20]
Charlie Sykes
Which is reassuring in itself. Right? Yeah.
- [39:24]
Tom Nichols
Somebody in the White House would say, hey, you know, that's a bad idea.
- [39:30]
Charlie Sykes
Okay, so this is the we're living in the presidency era. Like, is he gonna go, okay, so which vaccine should we ban? Ban them all. Which. Which country should we nuke? Just fuck them all? I mean, I don't. Who knows? Okay, so. But what he did not do on day one was end the war in Ukraine, and we still don't have a resolution. He said that he would be able to do it with a single phone call. I think the expectation, the fear, my fear was that he would, that he would. I still fear that he will sell out Ukraine, that he will hand Vladimir Putin a massive victory. But we're in week four. Where are we at? Is Ukraine hanging by a thread? What do you think?
- [40:12]
Tom Nichols
Interestingly, I think the Europeans and the Biden administration front loaded some. Some of this so that they, you know, that despite Trump's attack on bureaucrats, there are things that you just can't stop, you know, overnight. But interestingly, there's been no movement. There's been no discussion. When's the last time you heard about a readout of a call with Xi or Putin at this point? I mean, it is all focused on internal revenge politics. It's almost like the external world doesn't exist. And I keep going back to Hegseth at Defense. You know nothing about the challenges we face in the world. It's all about making sure federal employees go back to the office.
- [40:56]
Charlie Sykes
Okay, but what are the Russians thinking? But what are the Russians thinking with the Russians and the Chinese? They are watching what you and I are watching. What do they see? Do they see chaos? Do they see opportunity? Do they see. Vic, what do they see?
- [41:10]
Tom Nichols
I think they can't believe their dumb luck.
- [41:13]
Charlie Sykes
Yeah. You know, so what do they do with that dumb luck?
- [41:17]
Tom Nichols
So what do they do? You know, in the 1970s. Let me put on my scholarly hat from my old professor days in the 1970s when. When the United States. I mean, think about where we were by the late 1970s. We'd been through a president that nobody elected and then, you know, knocked out of office by a southern governor nobody had heard of, whose foreign policy was kind of, you know, whipsawing back and forth from left to right. Yeah.
- [41:46]
Charlie Sykes
For you young people, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter. I'm sorry, go ahead.
- [41:49]
Tom Nichols
Gerald Ford. Yes, Gerald Ford. The. One of the best presidents that America ever had that nobody ever elect. And the Soviets at that time, if you look at the memoirs and the documentary record, they said in later years, we basically acted as if the United States didn't exist. We were able to act in places like Africa and the Middle east, as if the United States just didn't exist. We didn't have to take into account what Washington thought about anything. And I think that's where they're going to go with this, because they realize that Trump can be so easily manipulated, so easily whipsawed about, you know, with praise or shiny objects. You know, one. I think one reason you haven't heard anything about Ukraine, Charlie, is that he. He's just not. It's. He's outsourced it. I mean, I don't know what Keith Kellogg is doing right now. I don't know what the Ukraine shop is doing right now. I don't know who's running this stuff. And I don't think anybody in the administration knows who's running this.
- [42:54]
Charlie Sykes
So maybe it's because this is a hard decision. It's complicated. And he is going for all the easy stuff right now. Or it's not easy. He's letting Elon handle it. Or somebody else. He's not actually doing any of the complicated hard stuff. He's going through every single piece of low hanging fruit for. I'm going to mix the metaphor so that he can throw the meat, the red meat, to the MAGA base without. And the less complexity, the better. The, the simpler the idea, the better.
- [43:20]
Tom Nichols
Get even with his opponents, you know, stick it to the Americans who didn't vote for him or didn't support him or criticized him. Everything is focused inward at this point. And none of it, by the way, on that and you know, we talked about this a minute ago, none of it on the agenda of what was the. I'm going to lower prices. I'm going to, you know, make eggs. Hey, we haven't heard anything about eggs. Eggs have gotten really pretty expensive because.
- [43:47]
Charlie Sykes
Of, he was asked about that by Brett Baer of the super bowl interview. Did you catch that? And he changed about the lowering the cost of living and he changed the subject immediately.
- [43:54]
Tom Nichols
Immediately. So, yeah, but, but that's because, and this is where, you know, I think when you were talking about messaging earlier, it doesn't matter. His, his voters have, have decided that he has to be in office and that they can't climb down. This is something I've been saying for eight years. They are like kittens at the top of that tree. They can't climb back down. They don't know how to get out of it. And so when he says I'm going to end the war and slash price of eggs and then it doesn't happen, they say, well, you know, he just says stuff. He's busy, he's doing the right things. He's making the right people mad. Interestingly, we talked about Gaza. I'll end the war in Ukraine and get us out of all these crazy foreign entanglements. Except for occupying one of the most controversial hotspots on the planet right now.
- [44:45]
Charlie Sykes
You know, which we've just ethnically cleansed, which. And the Palestinians couldn't come back. Right.
- [44:52]
Tom Nichols
Saying yesterday, I mean, an American president saying yesterday, let's have America take over Gaza, ethnically cleanse its residents so that they can't come back. And you know, and again, he's gotten everyone so used to this that the collective response around the country has been, well, you know, what are you going to do? He's. Well, the collective response says a lot of things.
- [45:16]
Charlie Sykes
Yeah, I mean, the collective response of the American people the day after the president United States called for ethnically cleansing a people and taking it over is, hey, wasn't it cool that he tweeted that thing about Taylor Swift being booed at super bowl, which I guess, once again is an indication of something you have written in the past. We've talked about the bottom of this. We are a deeply unserious nation at this particularly very serious moment, aren't we? I mean, it's. On the one hand we are faced with these incredibly serious problems, and yet the American people are unserious. And Donald Trump, though, and I don't want to give him too much credit because it's that reptilian instinct, he gets it, which is why some of so much of the shit that he throws out is unserious, because that's what unserious people just eat up.
- [46:10]
Tom Nichols
You know, I, I've said this so many times. It's. It's what they want.
- [46:15]
Charlie Sykes
Yeah.
- [46:17]
Tom Nichols
And when I say they, I don't just mean Trump's voters. I mean, I was thinking back. I, I used to teach this course on nuclear weapons, and I, I would show my students the, the Reagan TV address where he, where he did Star wars, right? Where he said, yeah, free people could live safe in the knowledge. You know, remember, that is March 83. But I, I said, more to the point, imagine an American president scheduling 30 minutes of TV time on all the major networks with charts and graphs and pictures and, you know, bar graphs and numbers. You wouldn't be able to. I mean, it's just people would just turn it off. I mean, you know, the idea that the president could speak to the American people whether, whether you like Ronald Reagan or not, he goes out and he says, I'm going to take 30 minutes of prime time on the national networks to explain what's going on with strategic nuclear weapons. And people watched it. You cannot, you cannot get that level of seriousness. And I think when you bring up the Roman, the late Roman phase, there's another word. We are not just an unserious people. There's a kind of decadence that has set in that comes from affluence and leisure. And, you know, I mean, look, Neil Postman. I'd like to think I wrote a couple of good books. Neil Postman said it 40 years ago. We are amusing ourselves to death. We just killed. We can't have serious conversations like adults.
- [47:49]
Charlie Sykes
And, you know, when people say, well, we know. How do we turn this around? Well, we are a culture, as you say, with your. Not serious. When you go from not reading books, not reading articles, getting all your information from TikTok and YouTube, we go on YouTube and from, you know, 280 character social media posts. I think it has an effect on the way that people process information and where they reason, which is, you know, what a topic for another day, Mr. Nichols, because I know you have to go and write some amazing things. And so I really enjoy your stuff, your stuff in the Atlantic. Keep, keep it up. It is good to see at least one outlet that continues to have enough confidence in the, in the, in the American mind that it writes lucid, literate intelligent things, as opposed to, you know, I think, what has been flooding the zone. So thank you for joining me, Tom. I appreciate it very, very much.
- [48:48]
Tom Nichols
My pleasure, Charlie. It's good to see you again.
- [48:50]
Charlie Sykes
And thank you all for listening to the to the Contrary podcast. I'm Charlie Sykes. We will be back later this week and do this all over again.