0:05

Hello and welcome to the Rathman Review. I'm

0:08

Gideon Rathman, Chief Foreign Affairs Commentator of

0:10

the Financial Times. This

0:13

week's edition comes from Washington, DC. My

0:16

guests are the FT's Chief Commentator here in

0:18

the US, Edward Luce, and Susan

0:20

Glasser of the New Yorker. It's

0:23

less than a year now until the next

0:25

US presidential election. Donald

0:28

Trump's the clear favourite for the Republican

0:30

nomination and narrowly ahead of

0:32

Joe Biden for the general election next

0:34

November. So are

0:37

we looking at a second Trump presidency?

0:45

The whole thing is crazy, but you

0:47

know what? The people get it. And that's

0:49

why our poll numbers are high. I'm the

0:51

only person in history that got indicted that

0:54

saw about a 30% rise in my

0:56

poll numbers. Usually,

0:58

you know,

1:00

we were doing fine before. That

1:04

was Donald Trump back on the campaign trail. The

1:07

former president has to combine

1:09

electioneering with defending himself. He's

1:12

facing four criminal cases, as

1:14

well as a civil suit that threatens his business

1:16

empire in New York. But

1:19

President Biden also has his troubles. Opinion

1:22

polls show increasing voter concern about

1:24

his age. If

1:26

both candidates are unpopular with the wider electorate,

1:29

is it really inevitable that America will once

1:32

again be faced with a choice between Biden

1:34

and Trump? That was

1:36

the question I put to Susan Glasser. Well,

1:40

Gideon, everyone in Washington also says, surely

1:43

it can't be Trump and Biden again.

1:45

And yet we've been having

1:47

the same circular conversation essentially for

1:49

much of the entirety of Joe

1:51

Biden's presidency. And we are where

1:53

we are. There is

1:55

a chance that it won't be

1:57

a repeat, but the overwhelming odds.

2:00

at this point suggests that it will be. So

2:02

let's look at the Biden bit first of all. I

2:04

mean, we can see Trump has a primary process. If

2:06

he wins the primaries, there'll be the candidate. But

2:08

with Biden polling so badly, is

2:11

there not a pressure and

2:13

a mechanism to get another Democratic party

2:15

candidate? Too late. It's

2:17

just too late. The filing deadlines for

2:19

2024, especially in the key early states,

2:23

have already passed. People who've looked at

2:25

this, because of course this has been

2:27

a subject of much conversation and analysis

2:29

here in Washington, the bottom line is

2:31

that those who've looked at it and

2:33

looked at the calendar and everything say

2:35

by the end of the year, i.e.

2:37

over the next couple of weeks would

2:39

be really the last possible moment for

2:41

Biden to step aside and for there

2:44

to be a robust Democratic party primary

2:46

process. Now, of course, we're not talking

2:48

about a kind of a health event or

2:50

some other thing that causes Biden to be unable

2:52

to be the candidate next year. And there the

2:54

key question I think you have to look at

2:56

is it before the Democratic

2:59

convention next summer or after? In

3:01

other words, is it before the

3:03

Democratic party has officially sanctified

3:05

Biden as a nominee, in which

3:07

case there still could be a

3:09

chance for some kind of modified

3:11

primary type election? Or is

3:13

it afterwards, in which case Democrats are really

3:16

screwed, especially the closer that it would come

3:18

to the actual election. But he's

3:20

running. We have to get over that. And

3:22

it feels like a lot of these poll results are

3:25

just a kind of a collective

3:27

creve occur, you know, like we don't

3:29

accept that he's doing the thing that

3:31

he's doing. And Ed, why do you think

3:33

he's doing it? I mean, you know, lots of

3:36

people in the administration, is anybody like tapping him

3:38

on the shoulder and saying you've done a great

3:40

job, but you'll be 82 when you're inaugurated next

3:42

time the polls don't like it or

3:44

is nobody prepared to have that conversation? I

3:47

don't think tapping him on the shoulder and saying that

3:49

would be news to him. And I don't think it

3:51

would be good for your career. I

3:53

mean, if your president wants to

3:55

run and, you know, he's not

3:58

being opposed and you work for him, there's no way. point

4:00

in telling him not to run. I mean in his head,

4:02

and Susan I'm sure you'll agree with this, he's

4:04

the guy who beat Trump. Hillary

4:06

didn't beat Trump. Bernie

4:08

Sanders might probably not have beaten Trump,

4:11

Elizabeth Warren probably wouldn't have beaten Trump.

4:13

So Biden's pretty convinced that he's the

4:15

person who can beat Trump. He has

4:18

a good case, regardless of the age

4:20

issue, of saying this

4:22

has been an effective presidency. And

4:25

I can argue that a second term

4:27

would consolidate the gains of the first

4:29

etc. It's very hard to tell somebody

4:32

who's won an election and is

4:34

an incumbent to bow out. So

4:37

I don't think that that kind of conversation has

4:39

got any upside for anybody who might

4:42

think of tiptoeing into the Oval

4:44

Office and speaking some home truth to

4:46

him. And what about Kamala Harris?

4:48

Because people obviously think, well she could be

4:50

president. If Biden were reelected, he's 82. Any

4:53

chance of her being replaced on the ticket? Not

4:55

while Biden's the nominee. I mean if Susan

4:58

says we get into some medical event before

5:01

the convention, before the crowning, we

5:03

get into an attenuated primary or even

5:05

some kind of old-fashioned broke convention, then

5:08

anything could happen. I don't think Kamala

5:10

Harris has much of a base. I

5:13

don't think Biden would feel he owes her

5:15

the presidency. And I'm just sort of shooting

5:17

the breeze here. But I think he

5:20

would want it to be contested if that

5:22

was a scenario. So I

5:24

don't see Kamala Harris as staying the

5:26

heir apparent in that scenario. And

5:28

she is very, very unpopular. So it would be

5:31

a drag on his ticket if his age weren't

5:33

drag enough. Okay, let's

5:35

switch to the Republican side for now.

5:38

Trump, he's way ahead in

5:40

the polls. Ed, you're writing about

5:42

Nikki Haley this week. She seems to be the

5:44

only candidate who might knock him off. But can

5:46

you have a plausible scenario when he's 30 points

5:48

ahead? You can have a plausible scenario, I don't

5:51

think it's likely, but you can have a plausible

5:53

scenario that she comes a strong second in New

5:55

Hampshire. Chris Christie's voters

5:57

evaporate and go towards her only

6:00

viable non-Trumpian. And

6:02

then she goes on to win South

6:04

Carolina. And just remember Super Tuesday happens

6:06

the day after the beginning of his

6:09

Washington trial, March 4, and

6:11

says respectively, I mean, Susan should comment on

6:13

this. And if there were going

6:15

to be a sort of America

6:17

season nine moment, that

6:20

might be it. Okay,

6:22

well, first of all, for a little bit

6:24

of context here, we should start any conversation

6:26

about the Republican primary by noting

6:28

that no candidate with as big of

6:30

a lead as Donald Trump has

6:33

right now, has ever lost

6:35

in the Republican primaries, as

6:37

long as they've been having sort of this

6:39

modern process. So let's stipulate to that. Trump's

6:42

lead in terms of history would

6:44

appear to be essentially insurmountable in that

6:46

no one else has ever done it.

6:49

But of course, this whole era has

6:51

smashed the historical playbook again and again,

6:53

I just put that out there because

6:55

it's almost a little bit wishful thinking

6:57

when we talk about Nikki Haley and

6:59

Ron DeSantis and the other candidates in

7:02

the sense that they are so far

7:04

behind Trump. Normally, we wouldn't be talking

7:06

about someone in that position as a

7:08

serious candidate. For example, a year

7:11

out or a little bit less than a

7:13

year out in previous primaries, it's true that

7:16

the front runner was not necessarily winning at

7:18

that point in time. But he was within

7:20

one or two points of winning. So when

7:22

people talk about in 2016, well,

7:25

Donald Trump wasn't leading at this exact

7:27

historical moment, it was Dr. Ben Carson,

7:29

but Trump was within one point, not

7:32

having a challenger who was double

7:34

digits ahead of him. So I think that's

7:36

really important for people. Again, we're still in

7:39

the like, woe is

7:41

us, tell us it ain't so, give

7:43

us an alternative. And this is the

7:45

tragedy of American politics really in recent

7:47

years is that we're trapped

7:49

in this cycle of extremes

7:52

and outcomes that a large swath of

7:54

Americans in the center of both parties

7:56

say they don't want and yet again

7:59

and again. And again, they make

8:01

partisan choices that lead to

8:03

these outcomes. I agree with Ed's

8:05

scenario here. So people should be

8:07

looking at January and

8:10

February, the early races as

8:12

do they put Nikki

8:14

Haley or someone else in

8:16

a position to be able to

8:18

pull off an extraordinary upset? And

8:21

I don't rule that scenario

8:23

out. I've always felt that she

8:25

was the most logical, viable person

8:27

because she has the

8:29

ability to capture the attention of

8:31

the remaining traditional as the establishment

8:34

left maybe 20, 25%

8:36

of the Republican party that is sort of never

8:38

Trump or at least no more

8:40

Trump and then peel

8:42

off some of the other voters who

8:44

might be Trumpy or remember though, that

8:47

Nikki Haley along with everybody

8:49

else on the first debate stage, except for

8:52

Chris Christie, raised her hand

8:54

and said that she would accept

8:56

Donald Trump despite his lies about the 2020

8:59

election if he wins. And so she's tried

9:01

to have it both ways. And I think

9:03

she also promised to pardon him if she came

9:05

present. She did. And a lot of

9:07

people I've spoken with, and I'm curious Ed,

9:09

whether this has started to come up in

9:12

your conversations. A lot of people I've spoken

9:14

with think that that in effect might be

9:16

the tradeoff, you know, that we're Haley to

9:18

put together a credible enough performance early on

9:21

that she actually would have some leverage that

9:23

she and the other party leaders could actually

9:25

say to Donald Trump, okay, if you bow

9:27

out and don't destroy our chances in

9:30

November, we could pardon you.

9:32

Well, we'll get in a second to the

9:34

whole criminal indictments hovering over Trump

9:36

and what that might do to the election. But

9:39

just before we go there, I mean, I think

9:41

one of the things that people

9:43

in this country and overseas find incredible

9:45

is we saw Trump

9:47

essentially tried to stage a

9:49

coup in my mind on January the 6th.

9:53

And yet the American public, at

9:55

least half of them, if it's Trump, be Biden, are going to

9:57

overlook that. Why is that not

9:59

disqualifying? Well, I mean,

10:01

it is disqualifying for any reasonable

10:03

measure. I think that he's managed

10:05

to become the symbol of victimhood.

10:09

Everybody has a grievance nowadays. The MAGA base

10:11

has got a particularly toxic, particularly

10:14

deep-seated grievance politics. He's

10:17

able to personify himself as the victim

10:19

in chief, as the person who

10:21

feels not their pain so much, this isn't

10:24

Bill Clinton, but their anger, their

10:27

retribution. He says, I am your revenge.

10:29

I am your revenge. I will be

10:31

your retribution, et cetera. And

10:34

therefore, in sort of counterintuitive season

10:37

nine, since in which this is going,

10:39

the more trials he gets subjected to,

10:42

the more criminal indictments that come

10:44

flooding in, the more plausible he

10:46

is as their lightning rod for

10:48

victimology. I don't think we should

10:50

underestimate the degree to which we sitting here

10:53

might not think the Hunter Biden stuff

10:55

and the Biden crime family stuff has

10:57

any real basis. But

11:00

there is a whole world out there

11:02

that responds to a very different media

11:04

that is absolutely convinced that

11:06

Biden is head of the Biden crime

11:09

family. Yeah. When she looked

11:11

at those polls, Susan, I mean, they

11:13

throw incredible things. And wasn't that poll saying

11:15

that like 25% of Americans believe that pedophile

11:17

ring was running the United States? I mean,

11:20

maybe I'm getting that one wrong, but the

11:22

whole Hillary Clinton conspiracy theory that

11:24

a pedophile ring was being run out of a piece

11:27

of power, a lot of people believe that. Well,

11:29

in fact, that conspiracy theory then grew

11:31

and morphed into the even bigger QAnon

11:33

conspiracy theory in the 2020 election,

11:36

which Donald Trump openly flirted with. You

11:38

know, there's nothing when you have an

11:41

unprincipled kind of soulless

11:44

transactional person like Donald Trump campaigning,

11:47

there's nothing that he considers off limits,

11:50

right? That's what we've seen, that there

11:52

are really no guardrails that he abides

11:54

by. So the question is, are there

11:56

guardrails that others will somehow not let

11:59

down for Donald Trump, because Donald Trump,

12:01

if the numbers suggest that, you know, he

12:03

should say that Barack Obama wasn't born in

12:05

the United States and isn't a real president,

12:08

he'll say he has no such thing as

12:10

remorse or caring about whether it's true or

12:12

false. If people think and

12:14

are crazy enough to believe that there's a

12:17

pedophile ring out of a pizza parlor that

12:19

Hillary Clinton is implicated in, sure, Donald Trump

12:21

will blow the whistle to those people as

12:23

well. And so you should expect that that

12:25

conspiracy theory will morph into something

12:28

else by the time next fall's

12:30

election rolls around involving Joe Biden.

12:32

So the problem is not

12:34

that there are individual,

12:36

even large percentages of Americans who

12:39

believe crazy things, because my guess is there

12:41

are large percentages of Britons who believe crazy

12:43

things as well. The issue is when you

12:45

have a leader of one of our two

12:49

formerly great political parties that not

12:51

only encourages those things, but is

12:53

so cynical and so successful as

12:55

a demagogue and as a communicator

12:57

as to use and manipulate that.

12:59

We have had demagogues like

13:02

Donald Trump before. What we haven't had

13:04

is that person as the head of

13:06

one of our two political parties and

13:08

as a former president and president

13:10

when he was in office. So I think

13:12

it's a uniquely dangerous moment in the sense

13:14

that this is not 2016. Trump

13:18

has experienced what it is like

13:20

to blow past the guardrails. There's

13:22

almost no constraints upon him now

13:24

and were he to be reelected,

13:26

especially on the other side of

13:28

four criminal indictments, the world really

13:30

should worry about that. Yeah. Well,

13:33

let's look at those criminal indictments, Ed, because

13:36

what's the timetable? I had assumed

13:38

that they wouldn't move fast

13:40

enough to stop him essentially because he

13:43

can always delay and so on. But you

13:45

suggested to me earlier that you think it's

13:48

possible, maybe even likely, that he'll be convicted in

13:50

at least one of those cases and maybe even

13:52

sent to prison during the

13:54

course of the election campaign. I'm not sure

13:56

whether he'd be present during the campaign, but

13:58

I think conviction... in the Washington

14:00

trial, the one about January the 6th that begins

14:03

in early March, is a

14:05

reasonable possibility. There is

14:07

the trial in New York over Stormy

14:09

Daniels, the hush money for the porn

14:11

star that is later

14:13

that month. Again, you could

14:15

get a result in that pretty quickly. So those

14:18

two, for sure. The one

14:20

in Florida, well, there's a judge there who

14:22

Trump appointed who's clearly angling to be appointed

14:24

to the Supreme Court if he's reelected. She's

14:26

going to, I suspect, continue

14:29

to drag her feet on the

14:31

date of that and allow all kinds

14:33

of stays and delays that the Trump legal

14:36

team is asking for. And then finally, you've

14:38

got, I think, probably the most powerful, dangerous

14:41

case for Trump, which is Georgia trying

14:43

to throw the election in Georgia. And

14:45

lots of former Trump people

14:47

have flicked, which means

14:49

they're turning evidence against him. They've pre-bargained.

14:52

That's a very dangerous one, Sam,

14:54

but that's an eminently delayable one.

14:56

So in terms of Trump being

14:58

convicted for something during the campaign

15:01

and possibly receiving a jail sentence

15:03

that he would appeal, the Washington

15:05

trial. Because Dax Smith,

15:07

the prosecutor, has stripped it down to make it

15:10

something that goes quite quickly. So

15:12

the Washington trial. So let's say he's convicted.

15:15

And my guess is, given the

15:17

weight of the evidence and probably the fact that it's taking

15:19

place in Washington, he will

15:21

be. But you don't think he'll necessarily

15:23

go to prison. He could delay that.

15:26

It's conceivable. Well, of course you can appeal

15:28

a sentence. So I think that

15:30

it's fair to say nothing will be

15:32

finally resolved. That's where maybe Ed and

15:34

I disagree a little bit. But because

15:37

of the ability to appeal these cases,

15:39

and remember, you can have motions before

15:41

the trial ever happens that then require

15:43

extensive litigation that can also end up

15:45

going to the appeals courts. And then

15:47

even to the Supreme Court, we don't

15:50

know over what issues will arise, but

15:52

Trump will be seeking to delay this

15:54

as long as possible. And it seems

15:56

highly unlikely to me that a final,

15:58

final resolution if there is

16:01

a conviction on paper. A conviction could definitely

16:03

affect the general election. What it's not going

16:05

to do is affect in

16:08

a definitive way the outcome of the

16:10

Republican primaries. And this is, of course,

16:12

one of the great tragedies of this

16:14

moment, this unprecedented intersection of courtroom and

16:16

campaign, which is to say if the

16:19

federal government was always going to indict

16:21

Donald Trump on January 6th, the failure

16:23

to do so in a more timely

16:26

fashion made it inevitable that millions and

16:28

millions of Republican voters would go to

16:30

the polls without these cases being resolved.

16:33

Why did it take so long? I mean, if

16:35

I was a Trump conspiracy theorist, I would say,

16:37

hang on, it's a bit suspicious. You come to

16:39

an election year and somebody is facing four cases.

16:41

What happened? To me, it's less

16:43

a suspicious conspiracy than a screw

16:46

up. What happened was the Attorney

16:48

General Merrick Garland, a very cautious

16:50

and careful man by all accounts, perhaps

16:52

better suited to the judgeship that Republicans

16:55

denied him on the Supreme Court than

16:57

he is to such a thrusting role

16:59

as Attorney General, didn't seem to be

17:01

pursuing with much deal building a case

17:03

against Trump or those who were the

17:05

reason for this catastrophe on January 6th.

17:08

They were going from the bottom

17:10

up. They were prosecuting and arresting

17:12

thousands of those who stormed the

17:14

Capitol, but not the, in effect,

17:16

organizers of the event. And it

17:18

was only after the House

17:21

of Representatives, controlled then by

17:24

Democrats, launched their January 6th

17:26

investigation that pressure grew upon

17:28

Garland. And he then very

17:31

belatedly appointed this special counsel,

17:33

Jack Smith. And then Smith actually moved

17:36

with great alacrity, it seems to me,

17:38

to build these two cases against Donald

17:40

Trump, the classified documents case and the

17:42

January 6th, or really the 2020 election

17:44

case. So

17:47

then the scenario is that the

17:49

legal process is still running. Trump

17:51

is not in jail, he's got a lot of time when he's

17:53

got to be in court, but he can run. And he

17:56

then, according to the opinion polls, I mean, he's

18:00

to well ahead of Biden at the moment. I

18:02

don't think opinion polls are year out are

18:04

necessarily that informative. We don't really know a

18:07

lot depends on how people feel about the

18:09

economy. I mean, remember, there are people out

18:11

there who aren't obsessing about any of this.

18:14

I am- Lucky them.

18:16

Lucky them. My view is

18:18

something Chris Sanunu, the governor

18:20

of New Hampshire said, I was listening to an interview

18:23

with him, he's probably gonna endorse Nikki

18:25

Haley for what it's worth, but something he said

18:27

was he feels that the first party

18:29

to come there in company, whether it's

18:31

Trump or Biden will win. That

18:34

doesn't mean to say either party will, but I

18:36

think there is something to that. And

18:38

I think unlikely though a Haley nomination

18:40

is, if

18:43

the Republicans had her as a nominee, then

18:45

I would be going to Biden and I

18:47

would be knocking on that door and I

18:49

wouldn't be tiptoeing. I would be

18:51

telling him in no uncertain terms, get

18:53

out. Well, I

18:55

think you're right that she is

18:57

a strong potential general election candidate

18:59

because part of the conversation

19:02

in the US is misleading because of

19:04

where we are in the calendar. And

19:06

so we're focused on Trump's strengths with

19:08

this passionate minority of Republican voters who

19:10

are his kind of super fans. And

19:12

that has caused us to not focus

19:14

as much on his weaknesses in a

19:16

general election. And of course he has

19:18

significant weaknesses in a general election. There

19:20

are millions and millions of people who

19:23

they didn't vote for him in 2016, they didn't vote

19:25

for him in 2020. And now after

19:27

January 6th, after everything, now they're going

19:29

to be like, oh, I really like

19:31

Donald Trump. So there's a

19:34

presumed ceiling for Donald Trump. And

19:36

that's one factor that I think

19:38

in the end might propel Haley's

19:40

candidacy. As far as Biden goes

19:43

in these polls, my take is that

19:45

a lot of what's powering it,

19:47

of course, is actually disillusioned by

19:49

Democrats and Democratic meaning independents. And

19:51

I think they were still in

19:53

the message sending mode of like,

19:55

we don't want an 81-year-old incumbent

19:57

running. Remember that Joe Biden would

19:59

be. 86 years old at

20:02

the end of his second term, putting

20:04

aside Donald Trump. That's an incredible risk

20:06

factor for our country. Arguably

20:08

is an incredible risk factor for the world,

20:10

given the importance of the role of president.

20:13

So up until the last

20:15

couple months felt like a lot of

20:17

those numbers were about signaling and sending

20:19

a message. We don't want you to

20:22

run again. Now that it's clear we've

20:24

run out of time and he's running

20:26

again, I think the message is getting

20:28

louder and more worrisome for Democrats in

20:30

an actual electoral sense. Yeah. I mean, and

20:33

one of the things that's clearly going to complicate

20:35

the race is that you're going to have third-party

20:37

candidates. I think Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has said

20:40

he's already running. Is that correct? And

20:42

there's also this constant murmuring

20:44

about a no-label centrist candidate,

20:46

possibly former Senator Joe Manchin

20:48

and then others on the left. It's

20:50

called an L West. An L West,

20:52

a green candidate. Jill Stein. Jill Stein.

20:54

You can thank her for Donald Trump.

20:57

Evergreen. The Evergreen. Evergreen. Booker

21:01

White, Booker's in 2016. She took enough of her. Yeah, took

21:03

enough of it. Yeah, and that's what, and

21:06

again, remember, I think it is a little misleading,

21:08

right? Because we often talk about polls and the

21:10

national polls. But in reality, American

21:12

elections are no longer national

21:15

elections. In effect, they are battleground

21:17

state elections in a very small

21:19

number of truly contested states. So,

21:21

you know, whether you say that

21:24

number is three, six, it's under

21:26

10 of our states that are

21:28

really genuinely competitive. Everything else is

21:31

essentially either pretty fixed as a

21:33

Democratic state or a Republican state.

21:35

And given that, it's even

21:38

more warped the influence that one particular campaign

21:40

can have, a Jill Stein, a RFK Jr.

21:42

They don't need to campaign in 50 states.

21:45

They need to screw it up in one

21:47

or two battleground states for it to really

21:49

make a difference. Yeah, Cornel West

21:51

takes 30,000 votes in Michigan, could tip

21:54

the president. And you mentioned Michigan because

21:57

it's got a lot of Arab Americans in it and they

21:59

are very, very upset. Biden over Gaza. Yeah.

22:01

I mean, I think there's been a lot of

22:03

slightly sort of false argument that Arab Americans would

22:05

vote for Trump. It's not that they'd vote for

22:07

Trump, it's that they wouldn't vote for Biden to

22:10

punish him over his perceived whatever it is crimes

22:12

over Gaza, that they would either

22:14

not vote or they would vote for a

22:16

protest candidate like R.S.K. Jr. or

22:18

Cornel Westman. Susan says, we took him

22:21

to Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, have an

22:23

estate in Michigan, you

22:26

could get a few thousand votes being

22:28

absolutely critical in a couple of these

22:30

days. So who is the next president

22:33

of the United States and the future of the

22:35

world? Yeah, astonishing. And it

22:37

is also a risk of

22:39

political violence. I was on a

22:41

discussion with Larry Sappater, a well-known political scientist,

22:43

who said in a phrase that slightly told

22:45

me anybody who writes that off is an

22:47

idiot. He said, you know,

22:50

the level of political polarization, anger,

22:52

and frankly, people with guns, it's

22:54

possible. What do you think? And I mean, I

22:57

guess this seems to me more likely if Biden

22:59

wins, that there would be some kind of revolt

23:01

than if Trump won. But I don't know.

23:03

What do you think, Susan? You know, it's

23:05

so sad in a way, right, that we it's

23:08

almost like we can't process the

23:10

events that have already occurred. We've already

23:13

had political violence, we have already

23:15

really blown past that taboo in

23:17

our society. The events

23:19

after the 2020 election were as

23:22

close to an armed rebellion

23:24

as you can have in the modern

23:26

context. I mean, let's be real, the

23:29

takeover for hours and hours of

23:31

the US Capitol in a way that

23:33

actually did stop the counting of the

23:36

US electoral votes in January of 2021

23:39

was the first time that the US

23:41

Capitol has been occupied by hostile

23:43

force for any period of

23:45

time since the War of

23:47

1812. You've been very polite. You mean

23:50

since the British? Since 1814.

23:52

Yes, exactly. I think that notes are

23:54

prying up of your voice. No, no,

23:56

genuinely not. Yeah, it didn't work out

23:58

that well. The

24:00

bullet holes are still visible. Yes, exactly

24:02

the bullet holes in american

24:04

society What I would say

24:06

is that throughout this biden

24:08

presidency rather than a restoration

24:11

Of the status quo ante rather

24:14

than a return to normalcy, which

24:16

was one of the implicit and

24:18

at times explicit promises Of biden's

24:20

campaign in 2020 biden was

24:22

a candidate of I want america to be

24:25

america again And I think that was a

24:27

big part of his appeal american In

24:29

the context of the pandemic and the

24:32

trump craziness in 2020 enough enough, right?

24:34

And biden seemed like a sort of

24:36

a reassuring figure But we can now

24:38

say pretty conclusively that we can never

24:40

go back to the status quo anti-trump

24:42

And that the old normal is

24:44

just gone And so

24:47

then the question becomes what

24:49

scenarios can we contemplate? And

24:51

I think a renewed call it

24:53

a cold Civil war, uh,

24:55

you know a division a thundering of

24:57

the country that's already happening with different

24:59

sets of laws Depending on where you

25:01

live in the country. I mean if

25:03

you consider for example And

25:05

i'll stop but if you consider women's reproductive

25:08

freedom and their ability to control their own

25:10

health care choices to be akin

25:12

to a fundamental right why should

25:14

it matter whether you live in

25:16

austin texas or Ann arbor

25:19

michigan whether you have that right or not. We already

25:21

have In a practical sense

25:23

a division in the country and different sets

25:25

of laws for different people depending on where

25:27

you live Well, I

25:29

mean I guess maybe that's In

25:32

a less than satisfactory way a world keeping the

25:34

country together if there are such big divisions that

25:36

you allow Very extreme

25:38

federalism, but just to look

25:41

a last thought you can please contradict me on

25:43

that It might run the up question, but some

25:45

people might say look We've had

25:47

a trump presidency the world didn't end there

25:50

is a counter argument However, the a second

25:52

trump presidency would be much more radical than

25:55

the first trump presidency So let me just

25:57

finish by asking you both. Give

25:59

me a sense of Okay, Trump wins.

26:02

What happens then? Ed, what do you think?

26:04

I mean, serious plans are being drawn up for

26:06

what Trump would do if he did win in

26:08

a way that just wasn't true in 2016. The

26:12

Harrisage think tag, there's a whole sort of

26:14

project 2025 working for Trump, evolving

26:16

hundreds and hundreds of people, lawyers,

26:18

think tag people, supporters with money

26:20

as to what he would do.

26:23

And there's a couple of things

26:25

here. One is invoking the Insurrection

26:27

Act on day one. There's

26:29

very little legal limit on what a

26:31

president can do. It's not reviewable by

26:34

the court. So basically giving himself a

26:36

state of emergency. They keep concerned troops

26:38

basically into sanctuary cities like Chicago, whatever,

26:41

in California, to the border. You

26:44

can use them to go after all kinds

26:46

of people. So that's one thing. Another

26:48

is a schedule F plan,

26:50

which is to fire the deep state

26:52

in their eyes. So we

26:55

are looking at Trump himself,

26:57

maybe no more competent. I mean, that was always

26:59

the great saving grace of Trump in the first

27:02

term was that his incompetence outran

27:04

even his malevolent, but

27:06

that the team around him will be the

27:09

team he wants from day one with a

27:11

plan. So that's quite different.

27:14

I think, Susan, I'd like to hear your views

27:16

on this, but I think you probably agree. Quite

27:18

different to Trump coming in January

27:20

2017. Trump coming

27:22

in January 2025 would be

27:24

a different scale of problem.

27:27

Well, it's interesting, and I do agree

27:29

in a big picture sense. And I

27:31

think it's the answer getting into your

27:33

question of is it a recipe for

27:35

keeping the country together or ripping it

27:37

apart? A Donald Trump presidency. A second

27:39

one is a recipe for ripping the

27:41

country apart. When you demonize your opponents

27:43

as vermin, as Trump has recently done,

27:45

there is no accommodation between a different

27:47

set of laws and just let everyone

27:49

live according to their own thing. When

27:51

you dehumanize the other and you are

27:53

willing to use what they might call

27:55

in Russia the power ministries on

27:58

your own behalf, then you are talking

28:00

about. a country that moves from a

28:02

rhetorical state of division and civil war

28:04

into a much more actual one. As

28:06

to the specifics Ed is talking about,

28:08

I think it's important for people to

28:11

understand these are not new ideas from

28:13

Donald Trump. If you want to know

28:15

what a second term would be like,

28:17

look at the things he wanted to

28:19

do but couldn't accomplish in his first

28:21

term. Donald Trump wanted to invoke the

28:23

Insurrection Act in his first term and

28:25

to use the American military industries against

28:27

his own people. He was constrained by

28:30

advisors who will no longer be

28:32

present. Give me a little bit more detail. What

28:34

is the Insurrection Act? Well, this goes all

28:36

the way back actually to the early

28:38

years of the US founding. Essentially, it

28:40

gives the US president the right to

28:43

decree that there's such a state of

28:45

in effect emergency that he must mobilize

28:47

the US military domestically inside our

28:49

own border. It's

28:52

a very, very powerful thing. Donald Trump wanted

28:54

to invoke it in 2020 during the

28:56

Black Lives Matters protest. As we documented

28:59

in our book, The Divider and others

29:01

did as well, there was an absolute

29:03

lay down fight that went on for

29:05

days inside the White

29:07

House in the Oval Office between

29:09

Donald Trump and his most extreme

29:11

advisors, people like the anti-immigration hawk

29:14

Stephen Miller who wanted to invoke

29:16

the Insurrection Act. And so far,

29:19

the attorney general who is no liberal,

29:21

let's just say, who basically laid his

29:23

job on the line in order to

29:25

stop it, the chairman of the Joint

29:27

Chiefs who laid his job on the

29:30

line in order to stop it, the

29:32

then defense secretary, they all basically locked

29:35

arms and opposed Donald Trump.

29:38

So when Ed says the second term will

29:40

be different than the first, it's not because

29:42

Donald Trump isn't unhinged

29:44

enough to want to use American soldiers

29:46

to fight American people. What it is

29:48

is that who's going to be around

29:50

him when that moment of decision comes.

29:57

That was Susan Glasser of the New Yorker ending this edition.

30:00

of the Raffman Review, you also heard from my colleague

30:02

Edward Loose. That's it for now,

30:04

please join me again next week.