[music]

Brian Lehrer: It's the Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone.

Susan Glasser: This is the pivotal four years we're going to understand whether something like an American strongman can arise within our system right now or not.

Brian: That was Susan Glasser near the end of the New Yorker Radio hour this weekend. Maybe you heard the whole thing. Susan Glasser will join us in just a minute to discuss that question and many others. For example, what does it mean that Donald Trump's vote total was actually about the same as in 2020? He got about the same number of votes as he did when he lost to Joe Biden. Vice President Harris got 11 million fewer votes than Biden did. Yes, some Biden voters switched to Trump this year, but the much bigger story is the much bigger number of people who apparently sat this election out.

Another question to be answered, as the Democratic Party has begun to do, why did they lose this badly? You've probably heard some of the leading theories by now. One is because every Western leader who saw pandemic inflation on their watch has gotten slaughtered in their next elections. Harris only did as well as she did because Donald Trump is so unpopular. Or Biden dropped out too late, leaving Harris too little time to introduce herself to voters. Or the Democratic Party is too identified with censorious and extreme sounding identity politics, see Maureen Dowd's New York Times Column yesterday.

Or the Democrats failed to offer a true populist economic alternative to Trump's economic populism, even though Trump's is probably going to make things worse, see Bernie Sanders yesterday on CNN. Or disinformation ran around the World Wide Web before the facts could put their shoes on. Or maybe it's a little bit of all of the above. Those questions are for the party that lost. Did you see that AOC is asking on her Instagram for Trump and AOC voters in her district to tell her how they could have voted for both. There were enough Trump and AOC voters for her to ask that question of her constituents.

For the party that won, will Trump really start dismantling democracy itself institution by institution? That's the question Susan Glasser was asking there. He's already said since the election that he wants more recess appointments, meaning the Senate would not exercise its customary checks and balances on many of his nominees. The leading candidates for Senate majority leader say they'll go along with that request. How will his election affect the wars the US is involved in?

Various reports say he has already asked Putin not to escalate in Ukraine and that he has already spoken with Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas. Meanwhile, Qatar announced this weekend that it's suspending its role as a ceasefire mediator because neither Israel nor Hamas is serious about agreeing to one. Can Trump affect any of that? Of course, what kind of mass deportation program will break up how many families and with what standard for who to detain and how? Will it really do anything about crime? Trump last night named his former immigration official Tom Homan to be what Trump now calls his border czar. That position doesn't need Senate confirmation. Here's Homan on 60 Minutes last month promising workplace raids.

Cecilia Vega: Stephen Miller said that this will involve large scale raids.

Tom Homan: I don't use the term raids, but you probably talk about work site enforcement operations, which this administration pretty much stopped.

Cecilia: Workplace enforcement, that's a roundup.

Tom: That's going to be necessary.

Brian: That was Cecilia Vega from 60 Minutes questioning Tom Homan, the once and future borders czar are on CBS 60 Minutes. With us now is Susan Glasser, staff writer at the New Yorker, who writes their weekly Washington Column and hosts their Political Scene Podcast. Susan has previously been editor-in-chief of Foreign Policy magazine and co Moscow bureau chief for the Washington Post. We will definitely talk about the election's global implications. Her post election New Yorker article is called Donald Trump's Revenge. Susan, thanks for coming on. As always, welcome back to WNYC.

Susan: Thank you so much, Brian. It's really great to be with you.

Brian: It's hard to know where to even begin, even with all that I laid out, but also other things. How about with Tom Homan coming back into government is what Trump is now calling border czar? You heard him forecast workplace raids there. He also says the effort will be humane and will not involve the military. Do you have any sense yet of how this begins?

Susan: Thank you, Brian. I have to say your introduction was overwhelming. I think that's probably how a lot of people feel trying to process this event, which is a pretty seismic event in the life of the country. I think it's important to start with immigration in many ways because that was both at the core of Donald Trump's campaign and I think it's one of the visceral issues that has motivated him from the beginning of entering into politics.

Unlike a lot of the things Donald Trump says that you're not really sure, is he going to do anything about it? I think we can be quite sure that he is going to pursue a pretty radical shift in immigration policy and how that is carried out in this country because that's something that Trump feels very strongly about. What has he said consistently on the campaign trail that essentially starting at noon on January 20th, you're going to see a different approach.

I think we should expect them to move very quickly. I think you'll see an array of executive orders probably within that first day or days of the new administration. Homan's appointment is one of the very first specific personnel appointments that we've heard from Trump in addition to his new chief of staff. I think it's quite significant that this is the first substance appointment that he is personally announcing of the new administration.

Brian: I'll tell you a story, I'll tell everybody a story. A friend of mine who's a legal immigrant from a Latin American country, I won't name the country, currently going through the naturalization process told me they're concerned about a relative who's been here undocumented for 18 years and has two US citizen children. The relative is now afraid of family separation and beginning to look over their shoulder. Now, maybe it won't go that far as to round up people here a long time with no criminal record and parenting American born kids. This family is already scared enough that even under those circumstances, my friend asked me the question, any way to know a good answer to give families like that?

Susan: It's interesting, Brian. I was speaking last night with someone who was very involved in immigration on the legal side of things, and they had already convened a major call of immigration organizations groups that handle legal cases at the policy level. Not only is it emergency, all hands on deck for those lawyers who are going to be the front lines of opposing any Trump excesses, but they made the point that it's very likely that the first wave will involve immigrants or illegal immigrants who are here either who have documented criminal records, that's something you heard Trump talk a lot about on the campaign trail. There's a much clearer case there.

Again, I personally expect there to be absolutely the issue of family separation, whether or not it's an explicit policy as there was in the first Trump administration, or it's simply a consequence of going after people who've been in this country for a long time who have families here, who have lives here in the United States. That's going to affect not only families, but communities in every part of the country. Again, I do expect them to follow through. Even if they follow through with only a tenth of what they've talked about, it will be a major disruption in this country.

Brian: When people talk about family separation, they usually have in mind what the Trump people were apparently doing at the border during his first term, literally sorting out children from parents as they entered. Mass deportation is family separation potentially for so many families like my friends relative who, what if there is-- I don't know what my friend's relative does for a living, but what if there is a workplace raid and they get caught working without legalization even though they've been here for 18 years and they have American born kids, does that person get swept up in that? That's family separation. I think you make a great point that we need to think of family separation and mass deportation as related in different ways than we might have thought about it in, say, 2018.

Susan: I think it's really important. I haven't seen that come into the conversation as much as it probably needs to as people start to take Trump both seriously and literally. The two other things, of course, that Stephen Miller has spoken about that would represent radical shifts in policy and I don't know how much they will pursue it, are number one, denaturalization and number two, an end to birthright citizenship. There's no question that the more hawkish advisors around Trump favor these policies. Those are also where you would see more extensive litigation, possibly even years worth of litigation.

I don't know if they could be accomplished in one Trump term. I think that it suggests again the sweeping nature of the plans. Remember that Trump on the campaign trail, mass deportation now was consistently, consistently one of the biggest applause lines that I saw when I attended Trump rallies, when I attended the Republican National Convention. This is what he believes he has promised his electorate. I believe some version of that is what he and his advisors will attempt to follow through on very quickly, potentially creating facts on the ground before his opponents have time to really organize to stop it.

Brian: Listeners, post election processing and questions, welcome here. 212-433-WNYC. Your take or questions on the Democrats losses or the Republican rule to come, 212-433-9692. Any AOC Trump voters from the Congresswoman's district? She's acknowledging, as I mentioned in the intro, there are a decent number of them out there right now. I've seen some of the responses people have been posting on her Instagram. They tend to run along the lines of, you're both for the working class, the establishment isn't.

Anyone in that part of Queens or the Bronx. Vote for both AOC and Trump. Want to call in, tell us why, 212-433-WNYC, but on any of the other issues that we've been talking about or will talk about, reasons the Democrats did as badly as they will, potential threats to democracy from Trump, you tell me. Immigration, Foreign Policy, 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. Call or text for Susan Glasser from the New Yorker. Susan, another Trump nominee, this is breaking news this morning, at least it's being reported. Upstate New York Congresswoman Elise Stefanik for UN Ambassador.

Stefanik is the congresswoman who was a staunch defender of Trump during his impeachment hearings and then became famous for asking the three Ivy League university presidents in a congressional hearing, does calling for the genocide of Jews violate your school's rules on bullying and harassment? For you, as a foreign policy wonk, any analysis of what Stefanik for UN Ambassador suggests, if anything?

Susan: A couple things pop to mind. Number one, as you said, she has immersion as a staunch public defender of Israel. I think that she's shown real effectiveness in her role as one of the House GOP leadership team in tweaking the left, tweaking them in particular on perceived hypocrisy. That is a very consistent role for Republicans at the UN. I'm thinking of when George W. Bush sent John Bolton, a noted opponent of the United Nations, to be the UN Ambassador. I think at least Stefanik will fit squarely in that tradition of being the kind of UN Ambassador who is essentially challenging the UN Itself.

I think we're going to see a lot of that. It also burnishes her credentials. She's very young and very ambitious. Will she seek to use this as a springboard to a more senior position in the Trump administration or in elective office? I think she's just someone to keep an eye on in Republican politics, in part because she got on the MAGA train pretty quickly in the first Trump term. She really transformed herself from establishment Republican. Remember that she not only went to Harvard, I believe she was a classmate of Pete Buttigieg at Harvard and then worked in the Bush White House as a junior staffer, worked for Paul Ryan, who, of course then became the Republican speaker of the House, but really was an opponent of Donald Trump that she and Ryan took Very different pass in response to the Trump takeover of their party.

Ryan essentially left a very promising career in Republican politics and just opted out, rather than keep going along with Trump, Stefanik went the other way. It was during Trump's first impeachment over his attempt to blackmail Ukraine that she essentially switched camps and became one of his loudest MAGA promoters inside Congress. I think it's about loyalty for Donald Trump, especially in some of these national security positions. Remember, over the weekend, he also rejected Nikki Haley and Mike Pompeo pretty categorically for any senior administration roles in terms of national security.

That's about personal loyalty. Nikki Haley ran against him. Mike Pompeo privately was totally against the rigged election stuff, even if he didn't speak out publicly. It's personal loyalty, but it's also on policy. Both Pompeo and Haley, for example, have been pretty strong supporters of Ukraine. I think we're seeing pretty quickly from Trump out of the gate some indications about his foreign policy.

Brian: Nikki Haley reacted characteristically when Trump posted that he would not be offering her a position in his administration. Her response was like, "I support you. Good luck."

Susan: I know. She really is going to become the poster example of how fatal half measures don't work. You can't be in on Trump, out, in, you can't. She called him unhinged into the presidential primary and then endorsed him a few months later nonetheless. He clearly has held a grudge against her that isn't going to be lifting anytime soon. It's fascinating that she still can't break with him even though it's pretty clear that her path forward in MAGA world is closed.

Brian: Before we get too far from the immigration stretch of the conversation we were having the mass deportation plan, let's take a call on that from Raoul in East Elmhurst. You're on WNYC, Raoul. Thank you for calling in.

Raoul: Brian, Good morning. Good morning to you guys. Thanks so much for this topic. I'm from Columbia. I volunteer for Harris. I went to Pennsylvania. I see the immigration issue here in Queens, in Roosevelt Avenue, it's become very dangerous. A good friend of mine has a big business, cleaning business. He says people work. He doesn't hire obviously undocumented anymore, but the restaurant next to him hires people, Venezuelans. They quit after three, four months and they go to court to, not disability, but, "I didn't get paid overtime, this, this and that." I was talking to someone yesterday and he's like, "You have to be careful now, when you're driving they can cause an accident so they can get some money, some compensation, being used--"

Brian: That's quite an accusation. You're saying some undocumented immigrants are causing traffic accidents so they can try to collect something.

Raoul: That's what he was telling me. Look, I'm from Colombia. The woman who has taken care of my mother today, she's in Venezuela, she's very nice. I think some criminals got through and it's just the Democrats were very soft on immigration, and that's what America saw. Cops being beat up, hotels being used. I think that's why people just realized Biden really doesn't do anything here in Queens and in New York.

Brian: Raoul, thank you very much. Susan, I don't know if you have any reaction. He sounds like an earnest guy, but it's so hard to believe that people who are undocumented would put themselves in some of the situations that he was describing where they would have to have contact with law enforcement.

Susan: It's hard to know and hard to generalize from his specific statements. I will say that one thing we've seen is the political success from some of these red state governors in basically turning illegal immigration into a blue state, blue city problem. That's one thing that you saw governor of Texas, the governor of Florida doing during the Biden administration, which was by moving people just from the border states into places like New York City, they put the problem right in front of voters in places like New York in ways that perhaps they hadn't before. I think that politically that's part of the explanation for some of the shifts that we saw in this election.

Brian: Busayo in Brownsville, you're on WNYC on the immigration issue. Hi, Busayo.

Busayo: Hi, Brian, how are you?

Brian: I'm okay, thank you.

Busayo: I'm going to try to be concise, but I think that last caller, let's not dismiss what he said so quickly. I think this point that the guest made about the exportation of the problem from the southern border to New York is actually brilliant. From the Trump perspective, I think Abbott the victory is partially Abbott's because frankly, New York City, I live in Brownsville, very Black neighborhood as you know. Some of my neighbors were talking about work at hospitals, we're talking about the fact that they can no longer do overtime at their hospital. What was the reason given? Because there's no budget for them.

There's no budget because Eric Adams said the migrants have taken all the money, or the issue of the hotels of people seeing free housing, the fact that we have-- The subways are literally packed with homeless people. I live on the three, in the morning now you see people sleeping in subway cars, and it's like what about the shelters? It wasn't like that before. It's like, oh, the migrants. Whether it's true or not, these were huge issues that people were experiencing in their lives. When you brought it up, it was the accusation of being racist or somehow you're uncaring.

When they asked Kamala Harris on the View, what would she change about the Biden presidency? She goes to the border and she says absolutely nothing, then people are like, "What are these people doing?" I say this as Berkeley grad, super liberal, but this is just the reality of what people are experiencing. You're asking them to engage in a cognitive dissonance that is literally not possible. The fact that Democrats could not articulate how they were going to change this policy, and especially people at the lower, I'm talking about Black people here, at the lower end of the economic spectrum are seeing their lives being affected, then you really like--

The most liberal of us is saying, "Hey, I don't know about that. When did liberalism mean no common sense?" I just never understood that. I thought that that's where we really went wrong. Trump came in and said some things that spoke to some people. 20% of Black men voted for him. Why is that? Again, not Black men's fault. The white women numbers is really where I think we should pay attention. I just want to say that.I think that's a whole show right there, Brian.

Brian: Right. Definitely.

Busayo: Anyway, I'm done [unintelligible 00:22:17]

Brian: This seemed real to a lot of people. I hear you. Susan?

Susan: I totally agree. That's a very cogent expression, I think, of the political dilemma for Democrats. Remember that Democrats have also portrayed themselves as the party of responsible governance. Part of what's happened is that in these cities, which are governed by Democrats, then since they're the party of governance, Republicans have essentially been antigovernment for several decades. If government doesn't deliver in an effective way, Trump had an opening to play on feelings of insecurity, failure and hypocrisy. Now, what I would say is that it's also part of the broader challenge that Democrats failed to successfully define Trump as simply unacceptable.

That's the part that's remarkable to me. It's still true. Both things can be true that I think the caller just really, really cogently expressed the disillusion and the problems that people were voting on. What's remarkable is that they still found it acceptable to vote for a party and a candidate that embraced what surely will go down as the most racist and misogynistic and xenophobic campaign I've ever seen run in American politics. These complicated realities coexist at this point.

It's not that one is true and the other is not. What's remarkable is that both things are true right now. I think a lot of people fear that people did not take Donald Trump enough at his word, because I think many people, maybe even many people who voted for Donald Trump are going to be very, very surprised when he starts doing the things that he and his advisors said he was going to do all along.

Brian: Relevant to Busayo's call, listeners will be talking to the business and economics reporter Greg David later in the hour about the potential impact of mass deportation on New York City's economy and of other Trump policies on New York city's economy. That's coming up later in the hour. We'll continue with Susan Glasser from the New Yorker and your calls and texts right after this.

[music]

Brian Lehrer on WNYC as we continue with Susan Glasser, who writes her weekly column from Washington for the New Yorker, used to be editor-in-chief of Foreign Policy magazine. Let's get back to foreign policy, Susan. The Washington Post is reporting that Trump advised Vladimir Putin in a phone call after the election not to escalate the war in Ukraine and reminded Putin of Washington's sizable military presence in Europe. That's according to an annamed source the Post said was familiar with the call. Putin denies it. With your Russia reporting background, and you also used to be Washington Post Moscow [unintelligible 00:25:26] chief. Do your Russia sources or do you have anything on that or do you have a take?

Susan: Yes. Look, first of all, remember that Donald Trump on the campaign trail said that he was going to solve the war in Ukraine in 24 hours and he's repeated that. He's also repeated since the very beginning of Russia's full scale invasion of Ukraine two and half years ago, essentially he's often repeated Kremlin talking points. He initially praised Putin's move as genius. He opposed the billions of dollars in US Military aid that went to Ukraine. It strikes me that he is moving very quickly. Remember that he already had a phone call with Zelenskyy as well last week, and that has been confirmed.

In addition to the extraordinary reporting that also listening in on that phone call was Elon Musk, the Trump backer and world's richest man, that suggests some significant pressure being brought to bear on Ukraine. I imagine that these post reports, which I have no reason to doubt, are also in the nature of trying to find the leverage and the space to follow through on his push to end the war. The problem is that there's no way that anyone really sees for Trump to advocate a peace plan that doesn't, in effect, pressure Ukraine to cede territory that it's lost to the Russians in exchange for peace.

I don't think there's many Ukrainians, or many Europeans for that matter, who believe that there's any kind of a peace deal possible with Vladimir Putin that can be taken at its word that would actually provide security for Ukraine as opposed to simply a brief respite for Russia before it comes after the rest of Ukraine. It's a terrible dilemma for Zelenskyy. He was on one of the US Sunday shows this weekend. He essentially said, "Wait, why should we give up our freedom for Donald Trump to Vladimir Putin?"

Brian: You're suggesting that if they make a deal that involves, let's say, some areas of Ukraine that have a lot of ethnic Russian people in them, Crimea, which Russia already took that, that portioning off of a bit of Ukraine as a peace deal, if the world grudgingly, and even Ukraine, Zelensky grudgingly lives with that, that you don't think that would be the end. You think Russia or Putin would come back after the rest of Ukraine after a time? Is that what I'm hearing you say?

Susan: I think that Vladimir Putin has not been true to his word in any situation regarding Ukraine. Remember that the war in Ukraine did not begin just two and a half years ago. It began, as you pointed out, with the Russian illegal annexation and takeover of Crimea and the launching of a civil war in Ukraine's east back in 2014. The, "peace deals, the ceasefires that took effect that was known collectively as the Minsk Process, Vladimir Putin did not abide by the terms." It's hard to see when he has framed his illegal invasion of Ukraine as essentially an existential one. He has said that Ukraine does not have the right to exist as an independent country.

In that situation, if you were the leader of independent Ukraine, what possible guarantee do you have for Putin that he would not come after the rest of the country again? Again, he's not said I believe that I'm entitled to this particular province of Ukraine. He said, you do not have a right to exist. He has pursued an exterminationist policy, a Russianization policy in the territory that he has taken over.

It's very hard to imagine that even if Donald Trump exerts the full force and pressure of the United States and withdraws our US Military assistance, that Ukraine will accede to a Donald Trump brokered peace on Vladimir Putin's term. I believe that they would continue to fight on and that they would look to their partners and allies in Eastern Europe, such as Poland and the Baltic states and others who are deeply concerned about what a prospect of an unchecked Vladimir Putin means, not just for Ukraine's future, but for the future of Europe.

Brian: Cory in West Orange, I think, wants to reply to one of our previous callers about the undocumented immigration issue. Cory, you're on WNYC. Thank you for calling in.

Cory: Hi, Brian. Thanks for taking my call. I just wanted to push back a little bit on a couple of other callers. I'm a daughter of immigrants who are both naturalized who've been in the US for several decades. I worked in healthcare for over 20 years. To hear her say that these workers are being told that they can't get overtime because of migrants, it's very frustrating. The healthcare system has been in crisis for decades now. It's one of the most expensive in the world. It's not migrants who are giving a CEO millions of dollars or causing the price of healthcare to go up.

Universal healthcare is something that people have been talking about for years. New York City housing has been in shambles for years. I have friends who were in the shelter system 15, 16 years ago. It was a mess then. It's really frustrating to hear people using migrants as a convenient scapegoat. It just reminds me of that LBJ quote that if you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you picking his pockets.

It's just very convenient that politicians and the ruling class are using migrants to blame every single social issue that poor and working class people are facing. I want people to just wake up and then pay attention. I'm not suggesting that the migrant crisis is not an issue, but the fact that they're being blamed for everything is ridiculous.

Brian: I think one of the callers said this is a big success for Greg Abbott. I think they meant the governor of Texas sending so many migrants all at the same time to New York rather than working. If so many were coming into Texas because that's where the border is working on helping them disperse around the country and be able to integrate where they go as they seek asylum. Instead, he flooded the zone in New York with all those buses with migrants. You know that story. If it was really like 200,000 people coming here all at once, more or less all at once, then the story that one of the callers was telling about their friend who's experiencing this in the hospital system, 200,000 people, maybe that does put pressure on an already short of housing supply and rent situation. Maybe it does. If the healthcare system was already in crisis in the way you described, put additional pressure on available beds and things like that. I think that's the argument that we hear. Any other thing you want to say about that?

Cory: I don't disagree. I think the key is that these systems were already broken and it's still broken. It's the federal government's responsibility to have the infrastructure to handle this. I'm not saying that the influx of migrants has not put a strain on the social net. What I'm saying is that to blame them and to criminalize them and to turn them into the problem is not the solution. The solution is that the government needs to create infrastructure because we have the money and we just don't have the political will. It's more convenient to just say these immigrants are taking your jobs and taking your housing than for government officials, mayors, to actually solve these issues.

Brian: I hear you. Cory, thank you very much.

Cory: Thank you.

Brian: Keep calling us. Susan, we can easily agree that, as you were saying before, it was an unbelievably racist campaign the way Trump ran it, with all the ways that he was vilifying the immigrants rather than anything more structural. Maybe it's worth saying that it also is a failure of the Biden administration to have responded to the Greg Abbott bus caravans in the way that he did. How many times did Mayor Eric Adams ask for what he called a decompression strategy, which really meant helping asylum seekers to relocate in various places so there isn't such a concentration in just a few where Greg Abbott was sending people, New York, Chicago, Denver. The Biden administration never did it.

Susan: Look, defeat has many causes. We can probably all agree that this is one of them. It is not the only one. I think the point that I would make right now is that for eight long years, Donald Trump has been really a unifying factor for Democrats. He has held together a sometimes otherwise unsustainable coalition and that, united in opposition to Trump, failed to deliver the election for Democrats right now. I think they're going through an enormous amount of wrenching soul searching and blame game about that, especially because Donald Trump has said that he will not run again.

Obviously, the Constitution bars him from seeking more than two terms in office. That means that Democrats are going to need a post Trump politics either way. My concern right now is that he's about to take office and would be authoritarians around the world succeed in part because their opponents spend their time fighting with each other while structural changes in the democracy, while facts on the ground are created. Donald Trump and his advisors are about to create very serious facts on the ground. What I hear is that Democrats are going to have a pretty hard time picking themselves back up the floor after this defeat and stopping their fighting with each other long enough to focus on how they're going to stand up for values and institutions that mean a lot to them and to the country.

Brian: Your article in the New Yorker includes the concerns about Trump governing as a fascist, as three of his top national security officials from his first term labeled him, or dismantling institutions of American democracy such as he might fire non political civil servants and replace them with political appointees. He wrote about that. I played the clip of you wondering on the New Yorker Radio hour this weekend whether these four years will be the period when an American strongman could arise or not. That was so chilling when I listened to it on Saturday morning. What will you be looking for early on to see if he's actually trying to go there?

Susan: I think that is the key question from my perspective, and again, I'm not partisan, not thinking about particular policy issues that I'm trying to litigate, but in terms of the value of American democracy. I think it's really important to look at, does Trump follow through on some of his more anti-Democratic strongman threats? That would be, I think, the tip off that we're not just looking at one of those regular oscillations in American politics, a pendulum swing between Democrats and Republicans.

The familiar way that we all have in our system, I think the rupture would be, does Trump, first of all, does he pursue his threats to go after what he calls the enemies within political, enemies within, to weaponize the instruments of government and the Justice Department and the intelligence apparatus to the military to go after enemies within? That's number one.

Number two, are there structural changes to American democracy, perhaps aided by an all Republican Congress and a heavily tilted Trump appointed Supreme Court majority? Do they make structural changes? Do they go after the independent media? That's been part of the playbook in almost all of the modern rollbacks of democracy that we saw. Putin created this template, it's been used in Turkey, in Hungary and other countries around the world. Does he do that? He's already threatened to do that in many cases.

Looking at that checklist for the kinds of follow through on some of those anti-Democratic threats that Trump has made, I think that will start to tell us whether they're able to make structural changes in the country that change the nature of our democracy or whether it's just going to be a highly partisan far right administration but within the normal boundaries of American politics.

Brian: How could he go after the independent media? Could he do something that would chill speech at the New Yorker, your institution, for example?

Susan: Look, again, there's a playbook for doing this. It's not that on day one they necessarily need to knock on doors and shut down publications. First of all, these are businesses. In a more oligarchic system of democratic capitalism, you could see pressure on owners of these publications, many of which are already struggling with the disruptions of the internet era.

Look at Jeff Bezos, who's already in some important ways moved to trim the sales by refusing to endorse Harris and overruling his own editorial board congratulating Donald Trump. Does he move even farther in the effort to stay in the good graces? That's one area is economic pressure. They can make a demonstration of certain outspoken critics of Trump. They can use tools like IRS investigations or other ways to go after opponents. Those are the kinds of things I think we should be watching for as a possibility.

Brian: Do you see his early call for the Senate to allow Trump to have many recess appointments as an example of breaking an institution of democracy, checks and balances, that's Cabinet appointments with no confirmation by the Senate.

Susan: That's something that Donald Trump specifically has already asked them in a social media posting over the weekend. This was a hallmark, an underappreciated hallmark of Trump's first term in office, was essentially to bypass the constitution's guarantee that the Senate should have a role in advice and consent of senior executive branch positions. This is a key part of our checks and balances. What Trump did is he basically bypassed. He said, "The actings work better for me." What he means is that he would rather have people who are personally loyal to him rather than subject to the checks and balances.

For example, the Department of Homeland Security, a key agency for his agenda in immigration, after he fired Kirstjen Nielsen, his second Homeland Security secretary, what did he do? He never, and there were two years left essentially, in the Trump administration, he never even bothered to send up a formal nominee for Department of Homeland Security secretary to the Senate. He simply governed through a series of actings.

Brian: Susan, I know you got to go. Let me end with this real quick. Text message from a listener. It says, Susan, are you sure Trump will leave at the end of his second term? Do you know if anyone's asked him that? That's in the Constitution. We all know that. Two term limits for president.

Susan: Absolutely. Look, he's already the oldest president who has ever been elected. We will see what happens, four years from now is a very, very long time. I would say whatever our conventional wisdom is right now, very likely to be wrong in a large measure. He did say on the campaign trail that this would be his last campaign for office. Big asterisk, whether we should take him literally at his word. That combined with the constitution suggests we have every expectation that this will be his last term in office.

Brian: He also said after he's reelected people won't need to vote anymore. Maybe he thinks there won't be a campaign. Tell your Washington reporter who go to his news conferences' friends, somebody should ask him the question explicitly. Do you promise to leave at the end of your second term as the Constitution requires? I would love to hear him have to answer that question. I don't think anybody asked it during the campaign.

Susan: Me too, Brian. I'm all with you. I will consult with my co working colleague here who does go to Trump press conferences from time to time.

Brian: Susan Glasser, staff writer at the New Yorker, who writes their weekly Washington Column and hosts their Political Scene Podcast. Thank you so much, Susan.

Susan: Thank you, Brian. Great to be with you.

 

 

Copyright © 2024 New York Public Radio. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use at www.wnyc.org for further information.

New York Public Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline, often by contractors. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of New York Public Radio’s programming is the audio record.