Transcript of The Second Trump Administration, South America Shifts Right, Time For Sports

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Morning, Scott.

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And now, should we do the podcast?

Why not? Npr senior contributor Ron Elvin's New Year's resolution. Let's catch his breath before taking on another year in political news.

What will 2026 bring for the Trump administration?

I'm Scott Simon.

And I'm Daniel Estrin, and this is Up First from NPR News.

In South America, socialist rule in Bolivia came to an end, and Chileans voted in an ultra-conservative president.

A political shift to the right and an increase in US actions in the region. The goal here is to bring security and stability to the hemisphere.

What a year for sports.

We'll play the highlight reel.

Also, quite a year for sports gambling scandals.

Well, my bet, Scott, is you'll say, Fear the deer one more time. Fear the...

The odds are good. Please stay with us. We've got the news you need to start your weekend.

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2026 is just days away, so it may be a good time to look both backward at the year that was and forward to the year to come.

This time last year, we were taking stock of an extraordinary election, and now we're reflecting on the first year of the second Trump administration.

And for our senior contributor Ron Elvain has been thinking about the state of US politics, both past and present. Ron, thank you for being with us.

Good to be with you, Scott.

I asked you last year what you were watching for in 2025, and you advised, Buckle up. You're some psychic.

If I were, Scott, maybe I could find my cell phone more easily. You didn't need paranormal powers to see Trump's second term would be anything but normal. Even by the standards of his first term, when he got impeached twice and indicted on both state and federal charges, Yet he came back. And despite all that, there's a little chance he's going to be cowed by threats of consequences this time around. The balance between Trump's impulses and the restraints on his power was more conventional the first time around. He was finding his way for a while, relying more on people who knew the Washington way or were well-established on their own in government or in the Republican Party. This time around, we have a cabinet and White House staff dominated by dedicated enablers willing to carry out orders the way Trump has always thought all his employees should.

But there are cracks in what had been the President's support in his own party over Ukraine, the economy, the Epstein files. Do you see those divisions widening?

The conventional wisdom says the closer we get to the midterms, the more we will see vulnerable Republicans distance themselves from Trump on health care, on food prices, or various other issues. That happens to any President who is down in the polls halfway through a term. Of course, there be events, as there were in other midterm years, such as 2002 or 1998, those reversed the usual dynamic. But the elections coming in '26 are not the only source of stress in Trump's movement. There are tremendous divisions among some of his supporters who are not office holders, especially among the cultural activists and people in the media, the podcasters and online influencers, the ones who have provided so much of the heat around Trump. They're at odds with each other over Israel, over Epstein, over Venezuela, and they're battling over who gets the mega megaphone when Trump begins to fade.

One of the defining features of the second Trump administration is how it regards or disregards the rule of law. What are your thoughts?

This term has featured serious policy shifts like the Trump tariffs and the deportation drive and the military strikes without Congressional approval. We also see a lot of personal retribution against Trump's political enemies and provocative displays of will, such as the partial demolition of the White House and the Trump rebranding of the Kennedy Cultural Arts Center and the Institute of Peace. In all of this, we see a willingness to test the boundaries, try the locks on the doors, see what's open, see what happens, and ultimately to see who will step up to enforce the law. In the year to come, we can expect these confrontations to continue and quite possibly escalate.

What will you be looking at, especially closely next year?

Once again, this year, the focus will be on Trump, not just what he does and what he says and what he spreads online. The focus will also be on how he looks and acts and behaves in highly personal ways. We've already seen a lot of this attention, especially in the visual and social media. The President turns 80 on June 14th. He's planning a lot of high-profile events around his birthday, but he would not need those events to bring attention to his age. Are people going to be asking, Is this the same Trump? Does he still have his famous mojo? When the midterms have passed, the spotlight must inevitably shift to the question of succession.

Npr Senior Contributor Ron Elfin. Thanks so much, my friend. Happy New Year.

Thank you, Scott. Happy New Year to you.

Several countries in South America elected conservative and even far-right leaders in It is a political and ideological shift, and it comes as the Trump administration has increased military power and political pressure in the region.

Here's Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, right before Christmas, defending US actions there.

The goal here is to bring security and stability to the hemisphere, to the region, the region we live in, which has not received enough attention. For more, we go now to NPR correspondent, Kari Khan in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Thanks for being here, Kari.

Hello, Daniel.

Let's start just talking about this big turn to the right in the region.

Yes, it's been in the last few years. In some ways, it's part of the natural swings, the power alternations here. The left had big gains before but started losing major elections recently, especially in Argentina and in Ecuador last year. This year, we saw decades of socialist rule in Bolivia fall, and an ultra-conservative candidate just flipped Chile last month.

What is the big issue here for voters? Is it anti-encompassy? Is it something else?

Partly it is, but overwhelmingly, voters are concerned about crime, violence, and security, and in the case of Chile, also illegal immigration. That, to me, is the significant shift in the landscape here. When the left took power, the major emphasis back then was economic inequality, social issues, the environment. Now it's safety. The left just has not come through with either effective policies to combat the organized crime, violence, or credible promises that they're going to do something better. The right has really straightforward, tough on crime plans and slogans. I'm not commenting on the quality of the right's proposals. All I'm saying is that they are resonating better with voters.

Okay, so what are some of those measures?

Get tough on crime like those made infamous in El Salvador, the mano dura iron fist policies that are just being emulated everywhere. Bring in the military to patrol the streets, build maximum security prisons, tough in sentences, and in many places, the population is more than willing to curb civil rights to combat that crime. Also, many just want to crack down on illegal immigration. Remember, nearly 8 million people have fled the authoritarian rule of Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela, and most have stayed here in this region. The right has deftly conflated and merged the high crime fears and illegal immigration, like with the recent win in Chile by the ultra-conservative there. He pledged to build fences, even dig huge ditches along the border, as well as start mass deportations of migrants.

Wow, which sounds a lot like Trump's pledges here in the US.

Yes. No surprise that Trump's policies get a very warm reception, and they're being mirrored here, too. Among conservative voters and anti-left voters, his military intervention against Venezuela and drug traffickers is very popular. Trump's also stepped in for many of his favorite candidates and his allies. There was that $20 billion bailout for Argentina's far-right libertarian President, Javier Mele, that came right before he was facing a tough midterm election. And Trump pledged his support for the new right leaders in Bolivia and in Chile. And the populist anti The populist anti-crime rhetoric is really working. Some have even coined it with a new term security populism. Will Freeman of the Council on Foreign Relations was talking to me about that, and he says it's not surprising that this is gaining so much popularity given how powerful and rich organized crime groups have become here.

The sheer corrupt force of that money is more than any country's institutions can really deal with.

We're seeing countries like Uruguay and Chile that had relatively strong institutions just falter in the face of these crime gangs.

Why are these crime groups becoming so powerful right now? I mean, hasn't organized crime been a problem for a long time in Latin America?

Sure, but they're richer than ever. They're making billions, and not just from drugs, but migrant trafficking and increasingly illegal gold trafficking. Gold prices are soaring right now, and so is demand for drugs in the US and Europe, and especially cocaine. It's on the rise, the use in the US, but cocaine use is at an all-time high in Europe, and so is coca production, and that happens mainly in Colombia. So most cocaine, smuggling, and transportation goes through Ecuador. And I just spent a lot of time there this year, and I spent time with this one banana farmer, and I just want to tell you a little bit about him. He battles extortion and kidnapping attempts by the cartels. He told me this one story that has stuck with me so much. He was visiting friends in Europe, and they were all partying, and someone pulled out cocaine. He said he was just floored. He told them, Don't you know what that has done, your consumption has done to my country? He said the people at the party just could not connect the dots with him.

Oh, wow. Are we going to see more of this shift to the right in the coming year?

We have some big elections next year here in Brazil, we're left as Luisa Nacio Lula da Silva is struggling with his own messaging problems and his age. He's 80. In Colombia, leftist President Gustavo Petro has taken on a very public fight with President Trump. Not sure how his party is going to fare there. Security is still going to dominate politics. That's a given. It doesn't look like gold prices are plunging or the drug supplier demand is dropping. So these gangs and their corruption, their power, and their violence will still be top issues for voters here.

Okay. Npr is Kerry and Rio de Janeiro in Brazil, talking about the shift to the right and far right in South America. Thank you, Kerry.

You're welcome.

And now it's time for sports.

A World Series to Cherish, an NFL dynasty deflates. Plus, what sport didn't have a gambling scandal in 2025?

Sports writer Howard Bryant joins us. Howard, thanks for being with us.

Hello, Scott.

One gambling scandal after another in sports this year from the NBA, Major League Base, College Basketball. Players suspended for gambling and having bets on certain occurrences in the game, which is how I'll describe prop bets. In the year ahead, if fans need to ask, Can I trust what I'm seeing?

This day was coming, and I think that the sports league had taken the position that I never agreed with. I never quite understood it. These players make so much money that they would not risk the adrenaline rush that comes with gambling. We've seen that not to be the case. We've seen that Major League Base with Luis Ortiz and Emmanuel Clasey are involved in a scandal. They may never play again. We've seen the Jante Porter in the NBA, now the Chauncey Billups and Terry Rozier case. Obviously, in tennis, the issue was more economic. The lower-ranked players trying to fund their careers are susceptible because the players don't make any money until you reach the top 50. You've got to be a really good player to pay for that sport traveling around the world. And the attitude has been that, well, essentially the league are going to take the money. The commercials are everywhere. I mean, media is funded by DraftKings and FanDuel and the rest of it, and then the players take the fall. The more you watch these games with your high definition televisions and the controversial calls, especially in the NFL and the NBA, the more you begin to wonder, are you watching a legitimate contest?

That is the death knell for sports. So the question is really going to be, are you going to trust what you're watching, or are we simply going to watch these athletes be the ones who individually get bounced out of the game and the game maintains its legitimacy? I think it's a very, very difficult balance, and I think 2025 really showed that.

But that was a historically great world series. Los Angeles Dodgers defeated the Toronto Blue Jays in a series that twisted turn and set records over seven games. See, I'm choked up.

You are. You're reclemmed. It's incredible, Scott. I mean, that is the thing that we love about the games. Every time there's a scandal, whether it's steroids, whether it's gambling, when the game is played at its best, people come to it and they love it, and it reminds them of all the reasons why they got hooked in the first place when their team wins. Greg Maddox once told me, the great Hall of Fame pitcher told me, It's baseball. You can't ruin it. And that Dodgers Blue Jay's World Series was one of the greatest things I've ever seen. I've been covering this for 30 years. It is that reminder of the power of what sports brings for us.

And no bigger name than Shoheya O'Neill.

Once again, we talk about all the scandal, but you also talk about the things that these athletes can do. And you're looking at an all-time great player who can do things that none of us have seen. All-star level pitcher, all-star level hitter, all-star level talent. And you feel like you've seen it all. Then in something like baseball, there's always something we haven't seen. And in the same is true in the other sports as well, Scott. I think that it's been such an interesting year in 2025 because there's this feeling of gloom all over the country and the world. And then there's also this feeling that the games, the money has gotten so big and we are all so jaded. But then you get these moments.

However, the Kansas City Chiefs haven't had a lot of great moments. They started off the air in the Super Bowl. They're now 6 and 10, not in the playoffs for the first time since 2014. Do we have to mark the end of an I don't think so yet.

I mean, obviously, Patrick Mahomes with the injury. The Patriots had down years. They thought the dynasty was over in 2009, and then they came back and went to the Super Bowl and won three more of them. So it will be interesting to see what happens to Patrick Mahomes and what happens to the Chiefs. But I wouldn't They don't want them out yet. The interesting thing for me is going to be this year, it looks like the Ravens are in trouble, the Chiefs are out. And this has got to be Josh Allen's time with Buffalo. They've got to find a way to get there. I mean, there's no It's a clearer path for him than this year. I know there's a bunch of new young guns, but they're the ones right now who have to be the favorites to get there.

All right. Sports writer Howard Bryant. We look forward to talking with you about all of it. Thanks so much.

My pleasure, Scott. Happy New Year.

And that's it first for Saturday, December 27th, 2025. I'm Scott Simon.

And I'm Daniel Esterin.

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At the end of every year, many of us resolve to make small changes in our lives. But what would it take to make a big change? And what about if you've already reached retirement age? Tomorrow on the Sunday Story, WBUR reporter Anthony Brooks shares stories about people he's met who've done just that.

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