Transcript of Where Will Trump 2.0 Take the GOP?

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From the Free Press, this is Honestly. I'm Michael Moynihan. In the weeks leading up to the 2024 election, polls were razor win between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris. Esteemed poll analyst, Nate Silver, crunched all the available numbers and read 80,000 simulations, and the odds were pretty much 50/50. It was going to be a very close election, we were told. We might not know the results for weeks. But on November fifth, it became pretty clear, pretty quickly, that the election results would be known that night. Trump would end up winning all seven battleground states and the popular vote, and he even made significant inroads in deep blue states like New York and New Jersey. Trump's gains among working class voters of all races.

While a majority of Latinos voted for Kamala Harris, Trump was backed by a record 46% of Latino voters, even gaining support in democratic strongholds.

Represent the ongoing realignment of the Republican Party. What was once Reagan's Party of free Trade, low taxes, and limited government, seems to be shifting towards a multiracial working class party that celebrates economic protectionism incredibly courts unions. But what will this shift mean for the future of the party and for American politics? Trump's cabinet appointments so far don't paint a clear picture. His nominee for Secretary of State, Florida Senator Marco Rubio, has some clear neoconservative instincts.

But Trump also tapped former Democratic Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard as Director of National Intelligence, who is thundered against the neocon influence in her new party, while Democratic Representative Debbie Wasserman-Schultz recently said, She's considered to be, essentially, by most assessments, a Russian asset and would be the most dangerous- Is that how you consider her?

Is that what you consider her?

Oh, yes.

There's no question. I consider her. Gabbard is not, in fact, considered to be a Russian asset by most assessments. So what is this new Republican Party? Is it still the party of Reagan? Is it still even a party of conservatism? Here to discuss it all today is Sarah Isker, Matthew Continetti, and Josh Hammer. Sarah is a columnist for the dispatch. She clerked for the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals and served as the Justice Department Spokesman during the Trump administration. Matt is a columnist of commentary, founding editor of the Free Beacon, and author of the new book, The Right: The Hundred Year War for American Conservatism. And Josh is Senior Editor at Large at Newsweek and host of the Josh Hammer Show. Today, we discuss why the Trump campaign was successful, the significance of JD Vance, the roots of MAGA, and where the movement fits into the history of the Republican Party, and the uncertain future of the American Right. We'll be right back. The Credit Card Competition Act would help small business owners like Raymond. We asked Raymond why the Credit Card Competition Act matters to him.

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Com. Matt Continetti, Sarah Issaker, Josh Hammer. Welcome to Honestly.

Thank you. Thanks for having us.

Matt, let me start with you. You You are somebody who I think has been standing a thwart, the modern Republican Party, Yelling Stop, since 2016. Give me a sense of what the Republican Party is to you and where it should be going and where it's failing at the moment.

For me, the Republican Party has been the historical vessel of the American conservative Movement, Michael. And for me, American conservatism is first and foremost about the promotion and extension of freedom and the Constitution. There are many parts of the Republican coalition of Donald Trump's platform that continue to advance that agenda. There are some divergences from the historical pattern of American conservatism, mainly on the issue of foreign and defense policy, where the Trump Republican Party has moved in the direction of restraint, and in some quarters of the Trump Republican Party, a suspicion of the very idea of American exceptionalism that to the MAGA movement often leads to overreach. So that's where I see the main divergence. There are some other divergences in parts of the Trump coalition about size of government questions, about the role of the government in the economy. As someone who is an American conservative, I want a limited government. I want less government intervention in the economy because I don't think government planners can manage economies well. And I think the Biden administration proved that immensely. So when I look at the broad sweep of the movement, I see areas of commonality, but I also see some primary areas of divergence.

That is, I think, the result of Donald Trump's transformation of the GOP. Into a more populist, more anti-establishment, more America first party than it was before.

Sarah Isker, what do you make of the modern Republican Party? I mean, Matt says there's a Taftian tradition that it's getting back to when it comes to foreign policy. I'm trying to figure out the economic vision of American conservatism these days. What is your overall vision of where the Republican Party is in 2024?

In some ways, I mean, all of us on this podcast were born and came of age in an era where the Republican Party was really either the party of Reagan or the legacy of Ronald Reagan. And so that brand of conservatism and the American conservative Movement, as Matt was describing, overlapped so well with the Republican Party, yes, but politically being able to reach 51 % in enough elections. And that's where I think Things are really diverging right now internationally. There's a populist movement worldwide. The party in power lost in every election in Western democracies this year. So in some ways, I think you can really overread Donald Trump's win. I think Republicans will actually overread Donald Trump's win. Donald Trump is not a uniquely American phenomenon. Republicans winning was not a uniquely American phenomenon. And there's this sense that the winning campaign did everything right, the losing campaign did everything wrong that Donald Trump won because 51 % of Americans agreed with everything that was in Donald Trump's platform and who he is and everything else. I would be far more interested in that theory if Donald Trump had improved improved with the very groups and demographics he was targeting with his campaign strategies.

But that's not what we saw. Instead, he improved with every demographic group. That's not the sign of a winning campaign message or strategy. That's the sign of tectonic plates that are outside either party's control that made this election, I think, a far more structural election, if you will. So what does that mean for the conservative movement? I don't really know, because I I think it is divorced from the Republican Party, and the sooner Conservatives accept that and get over their morning period, the better. Conservatives have smirced at libertarians for the last 40 years as they were out in the wilderness. Welcome to the club, Conservatives. Now you don't have a set political party, and you're going to have to work with both to get your policies moving. Will the Republican Party come back to be the party of Conservatives at some point? I think it's probably a coin flip of whether that ends up being the Republican Party or the Democratic Party, if we're having this podcast 20 years from now and saying, Oh, right, of course. Because as that political realignment around the diploma divide happens, I just don't know that we have a great sense of where that ends.

If the Democratic Party really sluffs off its extreme base, the extreme left wing, and the Republican Party keeps moving into more tariffs, unions, government-based economic planning, you could see the full shift where the conservative party actually aligns with a totally different political party.

Josh Hammer, you're, I would say, the most MAGA person here. Is this a permanent shift or at least a generational shift in the sense that... I talked to a Republican the other day who knows a lot about this stuff, and he said, Look, If you're looking for it to go back to a neoconservative foreign policy or more libertarian economics, you're out of luck because this is the party that delivered Hispanics, that it delivered Black male voters. It really shifted the demographics of the party. What do you make of that? Do you suspect that this is Trump's party even long after Donald Trump?

Yeah, there's so much to unpack here. I'm trying to think where to start. Look, I think after the 2016 election, there was a legitimate debate over whether Trumpism, so to speak, was about an individual personality, someone who has been a global icon for three to four decades, going back to the New York tabloid covers of the 1980s, someone who has the gilded Trump Tower. There was this whole debate as to whether the so-called Trumpism phenomenon was a personality-centric or actually was a substantive shift rooted in some ideological movements when it comes to three issues, namely immigration, trade, and foreign policy. There was this whole debate as to whether Hillary Clinton in was a uniquely and historically unpopular candidate or whether or not Trump actually punctured the blue wall, the Rust Belt states, by talking about those three issues that I just mentioned. And I think as Sarah just alluded to, now that we have multiple data points with both Hillary Clinton and Kamala Harris going down in both the Blue Wall, and as the case may be now elsewhere, I think we're starting to get some more evidence that there's something more to this, perhaps, than just Donald Trump as a unique particular phenomenon.

Now, don't get me wrong, I think that Hillary Clinton and both Kamala Harris were bad candidates, but I also suspect there was something more going on than Donald Trump just essentially catching lightning in a bottle multiple times now. Now, another thing that I think is worth pointing out here, a lot of these debates over what is conservatism, what should conservatives believe? I mean, this is as old as the modern American conservative movement itself. There have been these internecide disputes, these bitter disputes going all the way back to the 1950s and the founding of National Review and founding of ISI, Inherit Foundation, and various other legacy conservative institutions. So I happen to think that a lot of these debates actually are quite healthy. I guess in closing, what I will simply say is that a lot of what Donald Trump is tapping into here when it comes to this renewed support for tariffs and a more protectionist trade policy, when it comes to a more sober, clear-minded foreign policy. I wouldn't say that Donald Trump's foreign policy is isolationist. I saw very little evidence of that in his first term. He certainly has some isolationist-minded people around him in his orbit, people like Tucker Carlson, but his actual policies I don't think were quite isolationist.

But a lot of what he's getting at really is a return to how a prior generation or two of capital or Republicans and/or Conservatives might have thought. I mean, there has been a strand of pro-industrial policy manufacturing thought on the broader right. I would argue, going back at least as far as Alexander Hamilton's 1791 opinion on the report of manufacturers. For instance, Henry Clay, Abraham Lincoln. I mean, the Republican Party was the party of tariffs, really, until the middle of the 20th century. That would just be one example there. The foreign policy, in my mind, is very much a throwback to John Quincy Adams, back when he was Secretary of State in 1821, when he gave his very famous speech about how America does not go abroad in search of monsters to destroy. It's very much in that line of thought there. So I do see a lot of these trends as salutary. I do worry about throwing out the baby with the bathwater, so to speak, when it comes to certain things like economic policy. I'm very much an Irving Crystal, two cheers for capitalism guy myself, not one cheer, not three cheers either.

So there's a lot of fine-tuning that has to happen here. But overall, I do find myself fairly optimistic about the future of the party in the movement.

We have the perfect person here to respond to you, Josh. I mean, the George Nash of his generation, Matthew Continetti, who wrote a fantastic book called The Right. Matt, how do we see this in the historical context of the Republican Party? I mean, you see Buckley expelling the cooops in the John Birch Society, et cetera. And you see all these schisms over the years. But there seems to be something, from my perspective, a little unique about, let's purge the party of these people. You see with these cabinet selections of the, I would say isolationist libertarian-ish wing, communicating with Elon Musk and with Donald Trump Jr. Saying, Don't pick this person. No place for these people in the cabinet. I mean, is that a unique thing in the Republican Party or is, as Josh is saying, this is just a cycle that we've been through in the past.

Well, we didn't have X or Elon Musk in previous transitions when the Republican Party was more protectionist or more non-interventionist. I largely agree with Josh's view of the history of the right. There have always been different camps, and the war for American conservatism is a war between different groups for influence in partisan politics and then also in policy. And I also agree that when we look at the last century, the Republican Party, we see that today's Republican Party resembles pretty closely the pre-World War II Republican Party on the issue of non-intervention and foreign policy restraint, on the issue of trade and protection, on the issue of immigration. Of course, the major immigration restriction legislation was passed at a time of Republican power in Washington, DC. I would also say that you can look at the history of the right, and you can see that there are moments that are more populist. Of course, one of Buckley's most famous quotes is that he'd rather be governed by the first 500 names in the Boston telephone directory than by the faculty of Harvard University. I mean, that same sentiment clearly informs the Republican Party today, and I think, informed the election.

And then finally, what you point out, Michael, about conspiracists and the guardrails. So Buckley was very famous for saying that in his conservative movement, when he created the National Review in 1955, that there would be certain lines, and that if you did believe that Dwight Eisenhower was a Communist agent, which the leader of the John Birch Society believed, you would not be able to be a part of William F. Buckley Jr.'s conservative movement. If you were a Nazi sympathizer, if you were someone who was an anti-Semite, you would not be permitted to write for Buckley's magazine. That came at a time when American culture, government, media was consolidated. Big institutions, big universities, big media, big government, big labor, all working together. You had four maximum television stations, and that's after LVJ created the public broadcasting system. You had one major national newspaper, The New York Times. And so it was important for Buckley and for his intellectual circle to create a conservatism that would be able to operate in that type of environment. And so you had to have a intellectual credibility and authority force your arguments to take hold in this type of consolidated top-down, everyone basically operating off the same page time.

That's not the time we live in anymore. We live in a time of demassification. I think one of the big losers in the election was the legacy media. I think we can see the power of podcasts. We can see the power of newsletters. We can see the power of social media. And so the quest for respectability that informed the conservative movement of mid 20th century no longer applies.

About the guardrails, I had a conversation with somebody last night who is a conservative and who is Jewish, and he was deeply concerned about the conspiracist mentality and how it's been able to run wild. I mean, you talk about Buckley and the Birchers. I mean, that was an instinct that Buckley had for a long time, and he wrote Pat Buchana in a lesser known person, Joe Soebrand, who wrote for his magazine, Out of the Movement for Flirting with Anti-Semitism. You have the President-elect having dinner with, and people say nick Fuentes, and he didn't know that nick Fuentes was coming to Mar-a-Lago, but he nevertheless was having dinner with Kanye West, who likes to praise Hitler and things like this. Tucker Carlson, a person I think we all know who has flirt with some pretty odious figures. Do we have no guardrails anymore? Is there no William F. Buckley to keep some of these more sinister people out of the conservative movement?

Well, there's certainly no one figure. To the degree that there is a figure who dominates American politics and dominates much of the political right, it's Trump himself. And so people want to make sure that Trump is on their side. And Trump is very good at rewarding people who he deems are on his side. Just a note on conspiracy theories and anti-Semitism. One reason for American Jews to be leery of conspiracy theories is that the ultimate conspiracy theory is anti-Semitism. And once you adopt a conspirativist mentality, there aren't many steps more you need to take before you begin blaming world jury for all the world's problems. That's dangerous, and that ought to be opposed. I do think when you look at Trump, the man, and Trump, the President, you also have to see what he has done for for the state of Israel and for combating anti-Semitism worldwide. And there, I think many Jews are very excited about what's in store for the next four years. When you look at some of the shifts in the Jewish vote, especially religiously observant Jews, pro-Israel Jews, you can see that whatever associations Trump may have had or people in his circle may have had are over weighted by the actual thrust of his presidency.

In the first four years, and almost certainly in the second.

Sarah, I would go to you, but I have to go to Josh because he's wearing a kippah. And I mean, how could I exclude him from this conversation? Josh, I mean, Matt's right here, obviously. I mean, you have the Abraham Accords. I mean, you have a Jewish son in law, a Jewish convert daughter. But there is this muddied, these anti-Semites and these weirdos that come into the movement often pointed out by Trump's enemies. Like, is it a conspiratorial party now? I mean, Tulsi Gabbard just got the nod for- D&I. D&i. Yeah. It's so funny. I just thought myself because I was going to say DEI. That's how- Just for listeners, Director of National Intelligence.

All of it.

It has nothing to do with Ivermectin. I'm sorry, my brain is battered by this stuff. But, Josh, what do you make of those complaints that the modern Republican Party has embraced conspiracism while at the same time being good on Israel and good on certain issues?

Look, a few specific Most of it data points have been mentioned here. The Fuentes Kanye West dinner at Mar-a-Lago in the fall of 2022. I was vociferously over-the-top critical of that. I did at least one in multiple podcast episodes on it. It was disgusting, and there was no world to which it should have happened. Candice Owens is an absolute train wreck. She is a Nazi-esque anti-Semite. I have enormously critical words for her in my forthcoming book in March. Tucker Carlson, I had been extraordinarily critical of, too, including when he had the Holocaust revisionist Darryl Cooper on his show in September. I actually was on a baby moon, so to speak, with my wife in Hawaii, and I literally stopped what I was doing because I was so disturbed at this and ran to record an episode. So I am very attuned to this, I think, is the point that I'm trying to make here. I was very disturbed when I saw Dr. Carlson sitting next to Byron Donalds and Donald Trump on, I think it was night one of the RNC in Milwaukee. On the other hand, on the other hand here, I do think it is most important to look at what Donald Trump and his movement actually does, as opposed to some of the irks and figures who are working there in the shadows and don't seem to actually have any influence.

And look, I could do the whole, like, here's all the things that Donald Trump did for Israel, for the Jews thing. I think the listeners of the show probably have a firm grasp of that, so I don't feel a need to rehash all those details. But I guess what I will briefly say is even looking at a personnel perspective, just over the past week, week and a half since Trump won the election here, the Tucker Carlson wing has gotten basically nothing other than you might be able to argue Tulsi Gabbard for DNI. But other than that, Marco Rubio is Secretary of State, Pete Hegset for Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegset who has literally said that Americanism and Zionism are the two front lines for Western civilization. Mike Huckabee for US Ambassador to Israel. Are you kidding me? I don't think I could possibly name a more overtly philo-Semitic, pro-Israel, pro-Judean Samaria ambassador to Israel there. And you mentioned that I'm here wearing a kippah. I guess what I can tell you is, at least in my bubble here in South Florida, where I live, at the last Shabbat, I went to my synagogue before the election, you saw multiple Keep America, Great Again, red synagons.

Someone who actually went to the Torah for his Aliya to actually read the Torah, he put in a Misha Barak, which is actually the prayer that we do to wish someone's success. He put in a Misha Barak for Donald Trump. I would I made in my community down here, probably 90 to 95 % of people have voted for Donald Trump. Because, again, we are attuned to a lot of the bad actors here, but we're also focused first and foremost on policies, I think.

Sarah, let's talk a little bit about immigration. I mean, This is something that when the autopsies are coming from people on the left, a lot of people talking about immigration. I mean, as recline talking about this in ways that I was wondering why he didn't speak like this prior to the election. The thing that surprised me least about the election was the sharp red shift in these big cities.

Because if you just talk to anybody who lives in them, they are furious.

This idea that, Oh, no, the economy is actually good or crime is actually down.

This is all just Fox News.

Shut the fuck help with that. Talk to some people who live near you. The rage I just hear from people in New York, this is partially Greg Abbott bussing huge amounts of migrants here.

But that does mean, by the way, there were enough migrants that Greg Abbott could bus actual human bodies to New York City.

And it was a big enough problem that New York City was not able to effectively deal with it.

It does show that what was going on on the border was much worse.

I think the Democrats were letting themselves accept.

When you have issues like, immigration. Look, I mean, as Matt and Josh and we all know, there was the Jeb Bush vision of immigration. There was the Reagan amnesty. Is this the future of the Republican Party is just essentially a restrictionist party. And what do you make of all of these ideas that we're going to deport five million people, which, of course, people in the MSNBC universe say it's going to be camps and it's going to be this horrible thing. What do you make of the immigration debate after the election and how that works in modern Republican politics?

So again, I go back to this idea that the winning campaign didn't do everything right. I think there were, I would say, three main themes to Trump's campaign, the economy, obviously. Immigration, I think, is a stand-alone. But also with immigration, I'll just put government competency, this idea that you all just couldn't do anything. You couldn't even have a functioning immigration system, let alone closing the border. But the immigration system you even envisioned was not a functional one. And then the third category I would put in is the identity politics, what I thought was Donald Trump's most effective ad, he's for you, she's for they/them, which the left, of course, thought was transphobic, but I think was actually far more about language and cancel culture in the sense that if you don't have pronouns in your signature block on your email, you're going to get fired. That policing was the third category. Here's my point in using those three buckets. Take away one of them and then ask yourself whether you think Donald Trump would have won. If inflation hadn't happened, would immigration and the they/them ad have been enough for Donald Trump to win. I don't have the answer to that, but it's a good thought experiment when you're then focusing on the other two buckets.

And this is what happened to Democrats in 2020. That was a narrow win, a very, very narrow win. And they're like, We have a mandate for everything we ran on. No, you don't. You have a mandate for normalcy and competency. That's it. And I think Republicans have a mandate for normalcy and competency. And that's probably about it. There are a lot of people in this country who want a functioning immigration system. That means different things, perhaps to different people. But I think if Republicans try to have some huge overhaul to what the overall plan is here, that could end up not working very well. Normalcy and competency first, then you get to go your Christmas list. Okay, so then to your question about the mass deportation issue, my first question is always, how? Our current immigration laws mandate asylum. This, by the way, comes from post-World War II, turning away Jews and the international embarrassment that we all should feel about what our country did. My ancestors, by the way, were turned away at New York. They'd reach their Jew limit. So you have to either change the law and stop having asylum laws, or you will need to still have individual hearings for the vast majority of people who are here illegally.

So this idea that you just put people on planes and send them back to where they came from just isn't legally an option. And so I'm curious what the Republican plan is at this point for something that even looks like mass deportation. I'm not saying they can't get it done, but I think the first thing Republicans should do is the normalcy and competency that is certainly an 80 % issue for most Americans. And that includes issues like immigration. It includes issues like crime, like that things should be crimes again, like shoplifting and assault. So start with the basics. Get those down, get them right, and get them functioning, then go to your wishlist.

Can I interject here on the immigration question? I agree competence matters, but I think that addressing illegal immigration is part of that restoration of competence and normalcy. Something that happened in the four years between the Trump terms, it's very significant, is that public opinion at large has shifted toward a more restrictionist view. That is not the case during Trump's first term. In Trump's first term, there was opposition to the Southern border wall. There was opposition to deportations. You now look at public polling and you see majority support for the completion of the wall. You see support for mass deportations. They use that language, and people support it, independents support it. So I think what this does is give the incoming Trump administration a way to approach this issue with public support that was lacking in the first term. What does that mean? Well, I think it means, first of all, stopping the policies that have given us the 2 million entries over the course of Biden's term, and that's not including the God aways who were not accounted for.

I just want to clarify. When I say competency. I mean, yes, the competency of having a border. So yes, you should start with competency and immigration.

I'm saying there's a mandate for that. Yes. Sorry. We're agreeing. So you can go too far. I think, Sarah, that some people have gone too far in saying, Donald Trump just won this ridiculous comeback. We haven't seen anything like it since Nixon's comeback in '68, and even that pales in comparison. But he has no mandate to do anything that he ran on. I think, obviously, people misread mandates, and if you go too far, you're going to get a thermostatic reaction.

Yeah, I'm saying the mandate is to enforce criminal laws, enforce our immigration laws, stop illegal immigration.

And I think it goes beyond that. And I think that what you're going to see with this new immigration team that's been appointed in the White House and at DHS is a return to the Trump policies that also cut down on legal avenues to immigration in the first term as well. And I think that they'll have public support for that, too.

Matt, there was a joke that when Kamal Harris became the nominee, that we were living through a vibes-election. There's no policies, vibes. And I think that was ultimately true, but in a way that people didn't really understand. Josh Barrow, centrist writer, wrote something really interesting in The Atlantic about how Democrats should look at their loss. And I'll tell you what, what he wrote about I had yesterday. I live in New York City. I was getting on the subway. No one paid except for me. Everyone jumped the turnstile. I went into CVS when I got off. Everything was behind glass. It took me 20 minutes to find people to get a thing of deodorant. And then also, I was a couple of blocks away from the Pennsylvania Hotel, and they're just migrants just hanging around outside. This is the vibe. So when people say to you, the numbers are going down. It's drying up at the border. Inflation is on the decrease. Crime isn't what you think it is, right? Americans have a conservative disposition in the sense that the number of people that I talk to say, well, it's illegal to walk across the border.

They should just be sent home. There's just a big disconnect. I mean, Republicans seem to have exploited that in the way that Joe Scarborough says the day after the election, yeah, we shouldn't have biological males competing in female sports. Like, 85% of Americans believe this. It's like, you didn't say that before, but they're coming to this idea that dispositionally, Americans tend to be more on the right on a lot of these issues. The Republican Party almost doesn't even to do anything. It's just the Democratic Party has to go too far in another direction.

I think that's right. My colleague at AEI, Rui Tashira, someone who writes as a Democrat, coined the phrase the Fox News Fallacy to describe the mentality among many on the left that if something appears or is stated on Fox News, it cannot be true in any way. That fallacy is what led, I think, much of the democratic establishment, much of the legacy media to say, Oh, no, no, the economy is doing much better than people say, or, No, no, no, the migration, look, it's coming under control now. And really, it was Republican opposition that prevented Biden from doing anything to address the Southern border. That's clearly not what people felt. And I think that the most important figure in this election is the number of Americans who felt dissatisfied with the direction of the country in these exit polls, always to be taken with a grain of salt. It is in the stratosphere. And the number of people who felt that Donald Trump would be an effective agent of change. Again, high, high margins for Trump. That is why he won. Widespread dissatisfaction with four years of Biden-Harris and the belief that Donald Trump is a change agent.

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Yeah. So let me just first come back to what we're just talking about, and then I'll answer your very astute question as well. I think part of what is currently holding the Republican Party coalition together is that the Democrats are frankly just in a very, very, very dark place. And yeah, it's nice that Joe Scarborough, the day after the election, is saying, oh, yeah, of course, 85 % of people think that biological males should not compete against biological women. But you guys were not saying that for the past few years. And for every Joe Scarborough, there's a sunny host on The View who today days after the election was saying the reason that Kamala Harris lost was sexism and misogyny. And the audience there is clapping like a bunch of seals. I mean, have you guys actually learned any lessons or not? And I think that very much remains to be seen. I thought As far as I've seen very little evidence that anyone in the Democratic Party establishment, anyone in the left leading media has actually learned any of the relevant lessons. And one proxy for that that I'm going to be closely watching is, is Barack Obama himself going to continue to be a larger than life superstar on the American left?

Barack Obama put his legacy, put his coalition. He just put a lot on the line with this speaking gig at the DNC in Chicago. He was probably Kamala Harris's number one surrogate trying to capture the old 2008 Let's fundamentally transform America, change hope, all that. And he came up drastically short. So that, I think, is one good proxy issue to see whether Democrats have actually learned anything. And unless and until they indicate that they have learned anything and they stop being the party of what I refer to as the Party of civilizational arson, trying to basically burn it down when it comes to crime, when it comes to the border, when it comes to basic quality of life concerns, unless and until they learn some very basic lessons that the American people care first and foremost about living a decent quality of life. I don't think Republicans necessarily even need to have a particularly substantive, forward-facing agenda. They should, but I'm not saying they probably even need to because they will probably be the majority party in our election simply by default. But I will answer your question as well about the political economy piece of the puzzle here.

So I think during the Trump administration, the first time we saw the Trump administration, there was this schizophrenic disconnect to an extent, where Trump did run a lot of similar blue collar working class themes back in 2016. He ran on even more of those themes this time around. But the policy didn't always match the first time around. Yes, the tariffs on China were probably part and parcel of that. But his first major piece of legislation that he got passing to law, the tax cut of 2017, essentially that could have been written by Stephen Moore in the Wall Street Journal Editorial Board. And I thought it was a perfectly fine bill. I would have voted for it myself. But the point is that was not exactly a MAGA proposal or anything like that. So we're going to have to see. I mean, who's he going to tap as his Treasury Secretary? Who's going to be the Fed chairman? Is he going to be a hard money guy, a soft money guy when it comes to interest rates? These These are very real questions. It's very nice that Sean O'Brien, the team for this guy, speaks of the union, but is that going to translate into any policy there?

Again, these are very, very open questions, and I just don't really exactly know what the answer is. Again, I hope that we can find some sweet spot between throwing out the entire baby with the bathwater and going to a full status party, which certainly I would not be happy with. On the other hand, I do like this realignment, as I said earlier, towards a more sober-minded, clear-minded, two cheers for capitalism mentality.

Sarah, appointments. A lot of stuff that's coming across the transom now, horrifying some people, delighting others. Let's stop on Matt Gates.

Matt's a colleague, and he's someone who's worked really hard against the weaponization of government the law fair that's happened at DOJ.

He'd be an instant reformer if given a position and understand the pick. I don't think is a single Republican senator who actually thinks that this is the right choice and a qualified choice and somebody of the moral character to be attorney general. What do you think of these appointments? Does it worry you? And what does it say to you about what this version of Trump's Republican Party is, Trump 2.0?

So one, I think you will be shocked, but I'm actually quite bullish on Matt Gates. I hope the Senate confirms him. There's a few reasons for that. One, could have been a lot worse. Matt Gates, you may think he's a buffoon or reckless. He's obviously been accused of doing illegal drugs with underage prostitutes. Boots, which makes for a lot of punch lines.

That's not a good thing, by the way. Not what I expected from the Republican Party maybe 20 years ago, but okay.

Fair enough.

Yes, we can dismiss those.

But the other names that were in the mix were far more concerning to me. And I would be concerned that if the Senate turned away Matt Gates, that they would get something worse. So be careful when you think things can't get worse because they absolutely can. And some of those names in the mix are truly corrupt adopt people who would use the power of the Justice Department for really bad stuff. I mean, self-enrichment being the least of the bad things. Second, the Department of Justice is very specific in how it works. There's an attorney general. That person is usually the your head, right? They set broad brush policy. And then the Deputy Attorney General, the DAG, is the COO of the Department and actually moves to get stuff done. As of our taping this podcast, the word is that that will be Todd Blanch. I think if Matt Gates is attorney general, it makes Todd Blanch a very powerful deputy attorney general, since Matt Gates doesn't actually know how the building works, where the levers of power are. Todd Blanch does. He has a lot of experience as a prosecutor in the Southern district of New York.

Obviously, most recently was defending Donald Trump in several of his cases. Bill Barr was an exception to that general way that DOJ works. He really was doing a lot of the day to day work of the Department of Justice out of the AG's office. That's the exception, though, and it's because Bill Barr has an odd background for that. He'd been attorney general before. He's an in the weeds guy. So he was doing some of both of that in a lot of ways. Matt Gates won't. The last reason that I'm bullish on Matt Gates is that I actually think It is a problem from the first Trump term that Trump didn't have his own people in a lot of these positions. And I think it both hampered Donald Trump from doing a lot of the things he wanted to. A lot of people slow rolled stuff, kept stuff off his desk, kept trying to convince him not to do things, and then patted themselves on the back as the guardrails for democracy. And what that did was, I think, deeply frustrated Donald Trump. And so he acted out in other ways. But far more important than that, it didn't show the American people what they actually voted for.

Now, maybe they actually wanted all the things that Donald Trump said, but maybe they didn't. We'll never know, because instead, they got a weird amalgamation. I'm someone who thinks that generally compromise is the worst outcome in a lot of conversations because you end up losing what actually makes the idea work. Compromising the legislature is good. Compromising the executive can be quite bad. And so people look back at the Trump term, and they'll name all these things that they liked from the first Trump term. Three quarters of them were the things that Donald Trump didn't want to have happen. So the people elected Donald Trump, give the man the tools he wants, let him have the term he wants, and then let the American people make their decision based on that. So yes, I'm for Matt Gates at this point because that's who Donald Trump wants. It wouldn't be the attorney general I'd pick because I'd want someone to actually be able to put in place my vision for the Department of Justice, which I don't think he'll be able to do. But there's this fallacy that four years is somehow 40 years that what is now will always be.

Executive branch employees who think that they write a guidance letter and that that will be policy forever are stunned when four years later, the next administration flips it. The now fallacy is just running going wild around our politics, and it is dead wrong.

Sarah's right. I am shocked that she's bullish on Matt Gates.

Hold on. Can we all just process our shock that Sarah Isker is a Matt Gates fan girl? Matthew Cognetti, go ahead.

Sorry. I'm taking it all in. I think Sarah makes some good points. I do think that there will be concerns about the Gates nomination. The Republicans will have 53 seats in the Senate, and that means that Gates really can lose three people and still win on JD Vance's tie-breaking vote.

And you're not even including a recess appointment.

Well, that's a whole separate issue, right? Yeah. A couple of things about Gates. I think what we saw in the leadership election in the Senate, one factor that matters a lot in these nominations and selections is likability. I think that Gates is going to have to do some charm offensive with some of these Republican senators, some of whom serve with him in the House and may not have liked him, and others who have heard a lot about him. And the likability factor didn't help Rick Scott, who was Magga's pick for Senate leader, and it might not help Matt Gates. I do agree, though, with Sarah, that Gates is underestimated. He clearly has a very polarizing public persona. And if you're not on his side on a given issue, you're going to come in for a lot of abuse. I mean, he's going to fight to win. There's only one person of whom it can be said that he orchestrated the downfall of a sitting speaker of the House of Representatives of the United States, and that is Matt Gates. And the fact also that he has created a relationship with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, they actually get along.

That, to me, suggests there's this whole other dimension to his personality that we haven't really been exposed to, those of us who just watch the stage play of our politics take place. So while I think that It's not a done deal. I do think that he has some potential for being underestimated.

I spoke to somebody last night at dinner who's very, very clued into this stuff and knows Matt Gates, and he's not a Republican. He's not a conservative. And he said the exact same thing that Matt Continetti said, do not in any way underestimate Matt Gates. Josh, we're talking about the future of the Republican Party. Donald Trump says a lot. Watch what Donald Trump does, not what he says. And obviously, these appointments are filling out a lot of what Donald Trump's vision for his next administration will be. You wrote a piece defending Pete Hegsith and his appointment as Secretary of Defense. And as Matt points out, the megotypes, the Tucker Carlsons of the world wanted Rick Scott. Didn't happen. What do you make of this? What does this say about who Donald Trump is going to be in his second term? And in that sense, what the Republican Party is going to be for the next four years?

I mean, I'm not sure that anyone benefits more from the Matt Gates nomination of Pete Hegsa.

I mean, literally on Tuesday evening, after Donald Trump announces Pete Hegsa as the Secretary of Defense, people are like, Oh, my God.

They named the Fox & Friends co-host. This is an assaults the military. And then the very next day, less than 24 hours later, Donald Trump says, Hold my beer, and nominates Matt Gates to the attorney general of the United States. And now everyone has completely forgotten about Pete Heggsett. I think Pete Hexaf is an inspired pick, actually, to lead the Pentagon. Not on my bingo card, not something I saw coming. I think it came together fairly last minute, but I very much like it. The United States military has had double-digit percentage declines in recruitment. They are falling very, very short of meeting their recruitment goals over the for years that goes across all the branches of government, from, if I'm not mistaken, Army, Navy, Air Force, you name it there. I think you need someone at the top. And let's be very clear, the Secretary of Defense is just as much a forward-facing, public-facing symbol than he is actually the command of the bureaucracy. If you want to encourage people to recruit, to join the military, you need someone who I think is more in touch from a generational perspective with those young recruits. Pete Hexet is someone who has served in both of our recent wars overseas in Iraq and Afghanistan.

He won multiple Bronze stars there. He has been very outspoken about reform of the military when it comes to things like the noxious dissemination of wokeism, the whole Mark Milley white rage thing. Pete Hexet has been on top of that. I think if you actually want to get more young men and women inspired to join the United States military, I think that he is basically a perfect figure there. More generally speaking, looking at a lot of these nominees so far, you're looking at a lot of very young people. I mean, that very much is the number one thing that stands out to me. I get the impression looking at that, especially combined with the fact that JD Vans just turned 40 years old a few months ago. And it looks to me like Donald Trump is making a generational play. I think that he is trying to lock in his view, not merely for this generation, but for the generations that will follow. That, to me, is what I'm implicitly reading in the tea leaves as to what I'm seeing out there from a lot of these appointments. He's trying to fundamentally change the American rights.

And I think that he broadly is already succeeded, and likely is going to continue to succeed in that. Again, the question is exactly what Specifically, nuts and bolts that entails beyond the broader outlines of a more Nationalist populist approach to immigration, trade, foreign policy, et cetera. But I am quite bullish on the Pete Heggset take. It's actually one of my absolute favorite pics he's made thus far. By the way, I I broadly agree with what Sarah and Matt have said about Matt Gates. The only thing that I will add is that I just don't think the votes are literally there. I literally do not see him getting 50 votes. So one of the two things is going to have to happen. Is going to have to be a tremendous assertion of political capital to try to get this nomination across the finish line in a traditional Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearing thing. That's going to require a lot of airing of dirty laundry when it comes to a lot of the skeletons in Matt Gates' closet that may or may not exist. I make no claim as the veracity of Or the alternative, which a lot of people are chatting about, is this recess appointments issue there, which would be another road to go down there, but certainly would make a lot of people upset, that's for sure.

Let's talk about this. I mean, at the end of this campaign, obviously, a panicked democratic establishment tried to get into the American people that we were trundling down the path towards fascism, right? As somebody told me on the live stream that we did on election night that Matt Continetti participated in, the Madison Square Garden Rally, if that was a fascist rally, it was the most Jewish fascist rally I've ever seen in my life. So it wasn't really... People weren't really accepting this as an argument. But look, there's a lot of people in our universe, people that we know, people that we respect that worry about this and say, not democracy is on the line, but there's a chipping away at democratic norms, and we worry that this will happen again. Ed Whalen, a conservative over at National Review, wrote a long piece about recess appointments, saying not that they're unconstitutional, but they're anticonstitutional in a lot of ways. So what do you make of this argument that Look, Donald Trump is better than the alternative in Kamala Harris, but we really have to worry about some of these democratic norms being subverted by the MAGA movement.

This issue of recess appointments that has surfaced, and it was tied to the election of the new Senate majority leader. Most people don't know that the Senate hasn't gone into recess for years as a consequence of a Supreme Court decision stemming out of the Obama administration, which limited the President's ability to make recess appointments. That reality, I think, caused Donald Trump a lot of frustration in his first term, when instead of being able to make recess appointments, he made temporary appointments to run cabinet agencies. As you remember, toward the end, Trump would often say that he loves temporary because he's able to move people around much more quickly and get around the confirmation machinery. There are some 1,200 Senate-approved positions. And so the Trump administration, which wants to hit the ground running, in which I think understands what Sarah has called the now fallacy, that things can change and may well change just two years from now, are looking at this recess appointment play as a way to fully staff the administration pretty early on in the next year. However, I think that there's going to be great resistance amongst the senators to it. And I think that the election of John Thune, a Mitch McDonald protégé to lead the Senate Republican Conference means that the recess appointment strategy will be resisted.

What does this mean for democratic norms? I think that many of the people who are talking about the importance of norms in our politics are, again, in a very different position today than they were at the outset of the first Trump presidency in 2017. Two reasons. One, Donald Trump is a known quantity to the American public now. It's not just the cultural figure that Josh talked about earlier. He was also known as the President. And one of the things that we can see reading the exit polls is that the voters felt that they were better off under Donald Trump than they were under four years of Joe Biden and Kamal Harris. And what that does is give Trump quite a bit of leeway, I think, in the eyes of the American public in order to restore the conditions that prevailed at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. The second reason things are a little bit different in the norms debate Is that it's very hard, I think, for people who are affiliated or associated with the Biden administration to portray themselves as the champions of norms after four years where things were not normal. When you think about, well, prosecuting a former President for the first time in American history, when you think about the ways in which free speech was treated by the Biden administration, when you think about the vaccine mandate that Biden tried to impose on employers, and when you think about some of the cultural topics that we've already discussed.

So I think there's been a shift on what constitutes norms, and this shift benefits Trump at the outset of his term.

In Let me add one thing to this question of democratic norms. I was on a TV show where someone said to me, Donald Trump is going to run a freight train through Washington. He controls both houses of Congress. He has broad immunity to do whatever he wants to do. So add that to the mix. I mean, is this something that you worry about? And this idea of the Republican Party, the modern Republican Party, being a party that is authoritarian or undemocratic in its general disposition?

Oh, you triggered me.

Oh, my goodness. I was trying.

Next hour of the podcast. Okay. So again, this now fallacy, right? I just saw this so much in the first administration, executive branch officials patting themselves on the back for getting all this stuff done by executive order, by guidance letter, by administrative action. And it was all gone within six months of the Biden administration. So if you actually want to make change, and again, my point is the Republican mandate right now is for normalcy and competency. Actually arrest criminals, then charge them with the crimes, actually prevent people from coming into the country here illegally before you do other stuff. So all of that, the way you do that is legislation. You have both houses of Congress. If you want to actually make real change in the country, lasting change, you must do it legislatively. And I am curious to see how much a Trump second term and these cabinet officials understand that, or if they just go gitty with executive power that's like a sugar high that doesn't do anything. And Congress continues to be a group of 535 cable news pundits It's with really no power, even though they are supposed to be the first branch of government, the place where these things start and are supposed to happen, where that compromise and longevity is built.

It is the progressive movement that wanted to build the large administrative state and executive power because they thought the legislative branch was too slow and too moderating an influence. And that was frustrating because you couldn't fix all the problems right away. Well, here we are living in their world in both Republican and Democratic administrations, And it's not working. So make Congress great again before you do anything else on the immunity issue. That's not what the Supreme Court said. And it's like, someone is wrong on the Internet, and I must correct them. So after the Supreme Court's decision, Jack Smith refiled his charges against Trump in the January sixth case. It had the same number of charges, and it had the same statutory charges. What the Supreme Court said was that you need to distinguish between official conduct and unofficial conduct. And Jack Smith waited too long to bring the charges, and they were a hot mess of charges, which I said from the beginning. So then he filed narrow charges that actually framed the charges against Trump as unofficial conduct when he was a candidate for President. Not official conduct as President. I think they would have gone forward, no problem.

So beware executive branch employees, because if you buy into the headlines of what that Supreme Court decision supposedly said, you will find yourself on the wrong end of a federal prosecutor at some point. So no, I'm not concerned about that. I do have lots of concerns, but they fall far more into misunderstanding the mandate overreading the mandate, and these lower-level officials being gitty with the power like the nerds who weren't invited to sit at the popular kids table in seventh grade, acting out their revenge fantasies on the cheerleading squad. That's not Donald Trump, but I think it is very possible that it could be some of these lower-level officials, not cabinet-level, where, yeah, they could do some pretty scary stuff. And there's a whole bunch of Republicans in town who seem more keen on keeping their power than on using it for good. Welcome to the United States Congress.

Is there anything better than an animated and irritated Sarah Isker? I don't think so. John Josh, do you want to add something to this question about democratic norms and the fear of Donald Trump riding roughshot over the Constitution?

Sure. There were so many different ways that this was just always a completely silly and banal campaign talking point. The most obvious reason is because Donald Trump was literally President of the United States. Look, like many others, I was actually quite skeptical of Donald Trump back at that time. And one of the many reasons was that he did not have a track record. And And at that time, he was talking about openly nominating his sister to the US Supreme Court and doing a lot of very kooky things. But after his four years in office, a four years in office that was marked by, as Sarah alluded to when she was discussing Matt Gates earlier, that was marked by an internal deep state coup within certain malfactors within the DOJ and other facets of the government. A four years in office that was marked by, at times, I would argue, actually an over deference to various courts, from the lowest federal courts all the way up to the US Supreme Court. That's a conversation, perhaps for another day. But the point is that he was actually very deferential in many ways as President, even including to his cabinet members.

So for instance, to give a very concrete example, back in 2017, one of the first international crises that Donald Trump faced was when the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and I think Bahrain, decided to institute an embargo on Qatar for Al Jazeera and all the Islamism that they were disseminating. Donald Trump's instincts were to stand with the Saudis and Emiratis. He had just got him back from Riyadh. There was that very funny image with him with MBS the orb. And then, Rex Tillerson, the Secretary of State, actually talked him out of it. So there's a lot of examples like this, but Trump was actually very deferential. So that was one of the most obvious reasons. I've been just talking to one that he was just going to rule with an iron fist and be an authoritarian was just totally out to launch. But the other obvious reason, as you guys have alluded to, is who can possibly take this modern incarnation, this current version of the Democratic Party, seriously when it comes to the notion of a running roughshot over norms? They're literally talking openly about senators like Ron White and Sheldon Whitehouse. They're talking about still packing the US Supreme Court from 9:00 to 15:00 justice.

They're trying to put in an unconstitutional recusal requirement that would get some consortium of lower court judges to demand that a Supreme Court justice must recuse from a case. What could possibly go wrong? By the way, that's probably also unconstitutional because it undermines the judicial power of which Article 3 Vesting Clause actually speaks there. It's the same party, as you guys have said, that took upon itself to, for the very first time, prosecute a former President of the United States. Once upon a time in America, I think we viewed trying to put your political opposition in jail as the thing that a sub-Saharan Africa tin pod dictatorship would do. But no, it's actually the very norms-preserving Democratic Party that made that dystopian reality very much part of our 21st century American way of life as well there. Look, I could go on, but those, to me, are really the main reasons why this talking point failed and why no one, frankly, just ended up lying.

Here's my word of warning, though. Whichever side you're listening to this podcast, and that's what I love about this podcast, is that I I can't guess what your political beliefs are, dear listener. Whatever side you find yourself on when you are cheering for shortcuts, whether they're, we don't need legislation, we'll do it through executive order, whether they're, we don't need Senate confirmation, we'll do it through recess appointments, or various ways to not have to acknowledge the other side, not have to work with them, not have to engage with them. They're evil. They're not just wrong, they're evil. So we can do this some other way. In four years, it will be them that has that power. So be very careful what you're cheering for right now and what you're booing for right now. Because, again, the fallacy of now, this idea that you will only be the ones in power forever and ever, is simply not going to be true.

Is the Republican Party of Ronald Reagan, of Cold War foreign policy, not to say interventionist foreign policy, but a more active American foreign policy, one of tax cuts and free markets. Is that party dead?

Yes, I think it is. And I think for some good reasons and some bad reasons. The Cold War ended a long time ago, and we're no longer in the post-Cold War era. I mean, the post-Cold War era ran from the demise of the Soviet Union in 1991 to Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Now we're in a new era. I don't know. It hasn't gotten a name yet. Maybe it's Cold War II, maybe it's the Age of Nations. What is it? So things have to change. What are some of the bad reasons? Well, I think that the deterioration of American society and culture and the collapse and trust of our institutions has made a lot of Americans, and Americans on the right as well, skeptical of American ideals of freedom. I want to see those ideals reasserted and strengthened. I think you can see some of that in today's Republican Party, but I would like a stronger emphasis and also recognition that economic freedom is part of political freedom and religious freedom as well. At the same time, I just say, I think that there are some broad similarities. The idea of peace through strength, that was a Reagan line.

Law and order, that was a Reagan line. Make America great again, Reagan line. So even though it's not the same party, you can still see a general belief in American strength, in American freedom, American patriotism informs the Trump Party as well as the old Reagan Party.

And Matt, to put back to you, neoconcerning Neoconservatism, which is used as a slur all the time, these no more neocons, please don't nominate neocons. I mean, in the original sense, in the domestic sense of neoconservatism, it seems to me that neoconservatism is again ascendant. That's right. In the public interest way.

Well, if you just read it as a Hawk, which is how many people use the phrase now, neocon means a Hawk. You're for American assistance to Ukraine or you're for American intervention abroad. That, I I think, has become a term of derision. However, in the original sense, as you say, Mike, the neocons were Democrats who left their party because it had gone too radical and joined what would become the Reagan coalition. And so the new neocon Neocons are people like RFK Jr, Tulsi Gabbard, Elon Musk. They're the new neocons. Are they the same as the old ones? I mean, they're not pointy-headed intellectuals like myself who like to write for little magazines and talk about Marxism and debates, but they're Neocons.

And Josh, the same question to you. I want to add one thing to make clear that it is also true that the Trump administration and Donald Trump and the people around him do want more deregulation. They are a tax-cutting party still. Obviously, the focus has changed towards more working-class economic policies. But is that Reagan vision of the Republican Party? Is that gone?

I think it's been more of an incremental shift than I think many realize. I mean, it's not like the old party is dead and the new party is here. There has been a shift, no doubt about it, whatsoever on a lot of these issues. But I think that we oftentimes overstate that shift. So I'll give this one very concrete example. When it comes to tariffs and industrial policy, a lot of people forget this, but Ronald Reagan actually instituted very high tariffs on the Japanese auto industry in a bid to preserve the big three auto manufacturers in Detroit. A bid, by the way, which which, best as I could tell, was actually highly successful. It was one of his more successful ventures into getting a little more hands-on in economics. But Ronald Reagan, I mean, Henry Olson wrote a whole book on this. Ronald Reagan actually was in many ways a working-class Republican at his core. I mean, he We have that one line where he said that the heart and core of conservatism is libertarianism. I'm paraphrasing, that's not exactly what he said. But in many ways, his policies actually were a little more pragmatic oftentimes.

And look, the tax cutting imperative is not going anywhere. I mean, Donald Trump is nothing, if not a populace in the Jacksonian mold. A populace is oftentimes going to deliver to the people what the people say they want, and the people don't particularly like high taxes, which maybe is one of the reasons that you got the 2017 Tax Cut Act. I would expect something somewhat similar to that this time around as well. Again, I think the political economy piece of the puzzle really remains to be seen. This is actually one of the reasons why I'm somewhat more bullish as well on the Matt Gates nomination. Matt Gates actually has been very outspoken when it comes to big tech antitrust, a lot of these more Trump era populist issues that I myself have also been outspoken on as well there. So we'll see just how much that continues. But I think for sure, when it comes to foreign policy and immigration, maybe even more so than domestic political economy, I think that we've seen a notable shift on those issues there. But again, I don't want to overstate that either, because Marco Rubio is still Secretary of State.

The shift has happened, but we're not just totally getting rid of the past 40, 50 years of Republican Party history.

George W Bush implemented steal tariffs in 2002. I mean, they lasted about a year and a half because they failed, but everyone tries it in some way. Sarah, same question to you. Is that old coalition of the Reagan Republicans, is that gone and dead?

Yes, but I do not think that the Trump coalition is repeatable without Donald Trump. And so in 2028, you will have a different Republican Party because this is another relatively modern phenomenon, but it is solidified at this point. The political parties stand for whatever their standard bearer says they stand for. Donald Trump can't run again. He's a lame duck. The fight begins today over what that Republican Party is and means moving forward. It will be decided by the person that wins that, not the movement that wins it. And because I don't think that the Trump coalition can be put back together by any other person on the horizon that I see right now, I think you'll have a very different Republican Party. I think if they to mimic the Trump coalition with someone who is not Donald Trump, Democrats will win the White House in 2028.

With a lame duck President like Donald Trump, does that loosen the grip that he has on people in the House and the Senate who slavishly follow the Donald Trump mandates because they're afraid of being primaried? Is it more likely to fracture because he has less time in office?

I don't think it does. I think Donald Trump is the most powerful force in American politics and has been on the right now for about a decade. And yes, he's term limited, but I think he's going to have a pretty strong hand on who succeeds him. And I think that informed his decision to put JD Vance as his vice President. And So yes, the time horizons differ, and you might have more slack, say, to oppose some of these appointments if the senator is not up until long after Donald Trump is out of office. But I think while recognizing the unique the nature of Donald Trump, the man, have to also remember that he's part of a movement. We've talked somewhat about the global aspects of this movement, but the MAGA movement, you can see its roots in the post-financial crisis moment in the Tea Party, and the anti-establishment mentality that carried on over to Trump. He still has many cards to play. He's a different lame duck because I think of his role in this much broader, much more longer lasting popular movement.

Just real quick, if I can, actually, because I'll just add one thing as well. I agree with Matt that I don't think Trump's power is diminished. One of those reasons is his vice President, JD Vance, who just turned 40 years old, is already the front runner for the 2028 Republican nomination. So for that very, very simple reason, I don't think you're going to see a lot of congressmen and senators that want to go necessarily at loggerheads with the Trump-Vance administration, so to speak.

All right. Thank you, guys. And I think you're right, Matt. I mean, this is obviously a movement in Europe that predates Donald Trump and has been quite successful in Europe with economic populism and ideas about immigration. Matthew Continetti, Josh Hammer, Sarah Isker. Thanks for joining us on Honestly.

Thanks. Thanks for having me. Thank you.

Thanks for listening. And thanks so much to Sarah Isker, Matthew Continetti, and Josh Hammer for coming on the show today. If you like this conversation, please share this episode with your friends and family and use it to have a conversation of your own. And if you want to support the work we do here, go to thefp. Com and become a free press subscriber today. See you next time.