Talking Feds

An excellent roundtable of commentators—Heather Cox Richardson, Bill Kristol, and Mara Liasson—explains why based on the early evidence, Trump 2.0 poses grave risks to the rule of law & the national security. He has advanced a series of gonzo nominations for key administration positions that as much as dare the Senate to cross him. And he is making noises about using recess appointments to install those nominees, a maneuver that would warp the constitutional design of Senate advice and consent.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Harry sits down with Rick Wilson, co-founder of the Lincoln Project and a former Republican political strategist who did as much as anyone to warn the country of the dangers of a Trump presidency, including creating and distributing a dazzling series of ads that brought home Trump’s essential know-nothingness, hypocrisy, and wickedness. The two begin with a discussion of whether in retrospect the election was winnable for Harris-Walz, or whether the forces that propelled Trump’s victory were in retrospect insuperable. Wilson analyzes the result in terms of the media ecosystem that the extreme right has constructed and made common cause with since 2008 and especially since Covid. Penetrating that ecosystem is the chief task going forward, but it is way easier said than done. Trump’s likely stumbles as President will provide some headway and perhaps provide openings for the Democrats to take back one of the Houses of Congress in 2026. But the immediate and pressing issue is whether Trump will use his virtually unchecked power to move the country towards autocracy along the model of say, Turkey, in a way that history demonstrates is very hard to reverse. That leaves little choice of patriots, who might well have been looking forward to a resumption of normal life and normal politics, than to continue to fight day to day and month to month against the coming waves of abuses of governmental power.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

A welter of emotions—disappointment, anger, shellshock, bewilderment—jockey for attention in the wake of Donald Trump’s decisive victory. How did the American people select a constitutional villain they know so well, who has promised an even more lawless and destructive second term? A great group of thoughtful and trenchant commentators—Senator Barbara Boxer, Norm Ornstein, and Jacob Weisberg—join Harry to probe the deeper explanations for Trump’s victory and begin to consider what is to be done.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Harry unpacks Trump’s victory with Mike Podhorzer, founder of the Analyst Institute and the Defend Democracy Project and perhaps the nation’s #1 authority on polls and their foibles. Podhorzer resists the conventional wisdom that the election result is best explained by demographic shifts among certain voters such as Hispanic men or white women. If what's happened here happened in the Hungarian or Turkish elections, we wouldn't be looking at their exit polls to understand what happened. He rather analyzes the seeds of Trump’s victory in a series of developments since 2008, including Supreme Court decisions and an outpouring of money from third parties. Podhorzer avers that Trump’s policies have virtually no support in the electorate, pointing out how Trumpian candidates fared in down ballet races; however, Trump’s success traces to a persuasive embodiment of widely held attitudes, in particular anti-incumbency, which has been a potent force around the world since COVID. That suggests that when Trump begins to put policies into effect, for example the promised mass deportation, it will prompt an electoral backlash. Podhorzer’s core argument about the election is that while it was legal in the sense of not turning of quirky contingencies, it was not legitimate because it failed the fundamental test of expressing the true consent of the governed.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.