Trump’s Second Term
The NYT is going all-in painting it as "far more radical, vindictive and unchecked" than the first.
Yesterday’s edition of the NYT “The Daily” podcast was twice as long as usual. Titled “Trump 2.0: What a Second Trump Presidency Would Bring,” it’s described this way:
In a special series leading up to Election Day, “The Daily” will explore what a second Trump presidency would look like, and what it could mean for American democracy.
In the first part, we will look at Tump’s plan for a second term. On the campaign trail, Trump has outlined a vision that is far more radical, vindictive and unchecked than his first one.
Jonathan Swan and Maggie Haberman, political correspondents for The Times, and Charlie Savage, who covers national security, have found that behind Trump’s rhetoric is a highly coordinated plan to make his vision a reality.
My first instinct was that this effectively made the NYT political team part of the Biden re-election effort, as so many of its staffers and liberal commentators have been demanding. As I listened though, I decided that this is simply deep reporting, staying on just this side of commentary. While it’s rather clear that neither the show host nor the reporters are Trump fans—or, indeed, likely Republican voters even in more normal times—they were, as Swan rightly noted, not engaged in “fan fiction.” They are merely taking the words that Trump says over and over again in his campaign rallies both seriously and literally.
There’s not yet a transcript available (given them another day or so) but the Charle Homans Magazine feature “Donald Trump Has Never Sounded Like This” that I dissected Saturday and the December 4 essay “Why a Second Trump Presidency May Be More Radical Than His First” by Savage, Swan, and Haberman are presented as background reading.
UPDATE: The first comment, by @Scott, reminds me that a key takeaway of the piece is that Trump has decided that the chief problem of the first administration was that he surrounded himself with too many people who were more loyal to the system than to him. He won’t make that mistake again.
While I was quite displeased with the performance of “Trump’s Generals” as well as figures like Jeff Sessions and Bill Barr, they nonetheless at least cared somewhat about norms and the rule of law. Second term appointees won’t be so encumbered.
Indeed, one of the panelists noted that as much as liberals hate the Federalist Society, it was precisely lawyers brought up under that system that was the chief restraint on Trump. Yes, they have a different view of the law than those in the Democratic establishment. But, fundamentally, they believe that the law—and the Constitution—matters.
The other point that I recall striking me is that, unlike Establishment—or, indeed, even Tea Party—Republicans, the people who would serve in key posts under Trump next go-round do not want a smaller, less powerful government. They think those guys are “suckers.” No, they want to use every bit of power that a Unitary Executive can muster to get wins for people like them and to crush everyone else.
Trump is not going to do anything by himself. So the focus should be on his appointees for White House staff, his nominations for cabinet position, the estimated 1200 positions that require Senate approval, and the budgets (even the White House requires congressionally approved budgets). The opposition will require a wartime consigliere (a Nancy Pelosi, not a Chuck Schumer).
If I was a run of the mill civil servant, there are ways to engage in what is called malevolent obedience. First, insist on written directions. Nothing verbal. There has to be a paper trail. Second, make sure there are consequences to any directions and those consequences are attached to the appointed help.
Congressional committees are going to be very busy ensuring that all those appointees are going to be very busy testifying.
If anything, it appears the NYT wants a horse race. Trump is bad, it tells us, but Biden is old and refuses to do a sit down with the Times, so let’s look at yet another poll that says Trump is ahead.
@Scott: Yes. See my Update.
@Charley in Cleveland: I think this oversells what’s happening. Sure, horse race coverage sells. But they’re not manipulating their reporting to make a close race out of a landslide; the race is actually close. They’re simply constrained by longstanding rules of how political reporting is supposed to be done and struggling to adjust them for a candidate this far outside the norm.
there are ways to engage in what is called malevolent obedience.
Do people ever stop and think about this stuff? Endorsing unelected bureaucrats deliberately subverting the will of the ELECTED REPRESENTATIVE OF THE PEOPLE?
They’re simply constrained by longstanding rules of how political reporting is supposed to be done and struggling to adjust them for a candidate this far outside the norm.
There’s a very easy way to cover a candidate like Trump. It’s called “telling the truth.” The problem is that occasionally the truth is on Trump’s side and that reality is apparently too painful for many people to tolerate.
@TheRyGuy: So, in your mind, executing the direct, visible, documented orders of their superiors is considered subverting the will of the elected representative. It is called accountability.
If democracy in America is to be saved, the major media outlets need to get over their irrational fear of appearing partisan when confronted with obvious threats.
The reality is that the Republicans have coalesced around the idea of overturning democracy so as to install minority rule.
This is just a fact, like “It rained today” but the media insist on reporting it as some sort of opinion upon which reasonable people can disagree.
For comparison, imagine if any of the events like Jan 6 happened in some Third World country. The media would have no hesitation about calling Trump a “strongman” or even “dictator”. But they are firmly entranced by the “It Can’t Happen Here” mindset.
First, the “elected representative of the people”–if that is Trump–will likely have won based on the electoral college, not the popular vote. It’s extremely unlikely that someone who lost the popular vote in 2016 and 2020 would somehow manage to win it in 2024. So, not *really* an elected representative of the people. An electoral college win is a win. But don’t dare trot out the “will of the people” when it’s not.
Second, those “unelected bureaucrats” know their jobs, and they understand the role of institutions. Trump is interested only in protecting his own behind and siphoning as much money as he can to his (failing) businesses.
The NYT is reporting what has been coming out of Trump’s mouth. He’s SAID he’ll be more unhinged and vindictive. This isn’t them putting the thumb on the scale for Biden. They’re literally reporting on what Trump and many of those surrounding him have explicitly said they will do.
We need to take Trump and his coterie of clowns at their word.
@Scott:
What makes you think this Adolph wannabe won’t execute a Fujimori-style self coup and take over as St. Vlad’s vicar in the US?
The problem here, TheRyGuy, is that we don’t have a single unified representative of the people (and I agree with what Jen says about how even a president is elected). The thing about U.S. democracy is that Congress, not the President decides in large terms what the law should be. A president of either party has some latitude in the interpretation of those laws and normal presidents do that by appointing political allies to run the agencies (or to form a majority of the commissioners running and agency). But the agencies may not do 180s every 4 to 8 years in order to call white black or to flatly nullify law. That’s where all those “unelected bureaucrats” come in to actually impose the will of the people as expressed by Congress and precedent to limit what any president of any party can do with the federal government. Because no president is:
I’ve been pondering this for an hour now, and I’m coming up blank on when Trump was ever “right” or truthful about anything.
@James Joyner:
Yes, the longstanding rule where political reporting is supposed to cater to conservative complaints about the liberal media — while liberal complaints are supposed to be nonexistent, or else scoffed at and dismissed.
Thus, you get the New York Slimes carrying water for Bush’s Iraq War propaganda or for Steve Bannon’s “Clinton Cash” propaganda or for the notion Hillary’s email server was a more important story than Treason Trump publicly telling Russia to interfere in our election while his campaign chair Paul Manafort openly colluded with the Kremlin.
This does not quite explain why some NYT analysis infamously minimized the German NSDAP threat a century ago. Perhaps that was not in avoidance of making the Times a political ally of the future führer’s opponents. But history does rhyme anyway.
@TheRyGuy:
I much more skeptical than most of my readership over the degree to which we’re governed by administrative regulations rather than laws. But the fact of the matter is that Executive agencies, while ostensibly under the auspices of the President, are creations of Congress tasked with interpreting broadly based laws using specialized expertise. So, while the bureaucrats are unelected, they’re acting under the auspices of the people’s representatives in Congress.
While I didn’t vote for Trump in 2016 or 2020 and won’t in 2024, I’m also sympathetic to the idea that, as the duly elected President, he had the right to govern within the confines of the law without bureaucratic shirking and resistance. Mostly, though, it was because Trump and his mostly amateur appointees circumvented the Adminsitrative Procedures Act and other requirements.
@TheRyGuy:
Your chosen candidate and his supporters can’t tolerate the reality that he lost the last election because voters rejected him, not because of mass voter fraud. You reject the truth that Trump is exposed criminally because of his own criminal choices. You will not admit that Trump is a confirmed patholgical liar, a superpredator, and an admitted pervert who killed a bipartisan immigration bill — negotiated by a conservative Oklahoma senator and endorsed by Border Patrol — because Trump does not care about the border except as a campaign issue.
Truth and reality? Lol sit this one out, boo.
@TheRyGuy: serious question-what sources help form your views? Who do you trust to report the truth?
@James Joyner:
FWIW, while I’m not in favor of Congress having ceded so much authority to the Executive, but the reality is that’s what they have done. Republican Legislators no longer see legislation as part of their job description and have paralyzed the whole branch. But we should never forget that at any point if Congress feels the Executive has overstepped they could negotiate amongst themselves and pass clarifying legislation. Instead, they do nothing but complain and then look passively to the courts to settle it.
@James Joyner:
Exactly this. I see two big flaws in this “get rid of all the bureaucrats” thinking (beyond the reality that it makes no sense from the perspective of keeping the government functioning).
First, and most importantly, it seems to inherently be an argument for an imperial presidency–essentially electing a king every four years. Political appointees typically don’t know the laws and other structures they are operating withing (which are almost always the things doing the constraining). So this feels very much like “let the person we vote for once every four years in a single election have near total control over the government.”
Second, and this is in particular with regards to Trump’s more excessive promises, the restricting factor that his supporters cite is “well if he asked to do something illegal, people would never follow that command.” Said people who are supposed to not follow that order are the bureaucrats. Replacing them with political appointees–even if was possible–would lessen the chances of those controls being in place (which gets us back to the first point).
@TheRyGuy:
Gaffe? Freudian slip?
YOU decide.
@Matt Bernius:
roughly equals
@TheRyGuy:
For all the reasons you explain, Matt, this is not how it is designed and would be a catastrophe if we headed that way.
@Jax: Early in his campaign, he said a couple of things (about economics, oddly enough) that surprised me with the sensibility, but they didn’t show up as policy with Republicans in charge, so I can’t say whether he believed them or they were just campaign riffing.
@Kurtz:
What about neither? I think TheRyGuy is acknowledging that Trump’s tenuous relationship with the truth is well-documented. At best, the “ocasionally” might have been intended as sarcastic–i.e. that it happens more than people want to acknowledge.
But I think this is another example of how clear-eyed many of the former President’s supporters are of (at least) some of his problems.
Of course, we probably will never know for sure because TheRyGuy rarely engages in any type of comment-to-comment conversation.
@Matt Bernius: After reading a couple of his missives I’ve been ignoring them. Does he add anything more to intelligent conversation than the other couple of trumpers we have here? Is he worth reading?
@Joe: You know what this is, right. I mean, that is the ‘leadership principle’ right there. Say it with me in German, ‘fuhrerprinzip’.
Just so we all know what the f’ing troll is saying.
“I think TheRyGuy is acknowledging that Trump’s tenuous relationship with the truth is well-documented.”
Heh. Try not to guffaw too loudly as I list those presidents, in my lifetime, who were Honest Abes: Pres Kennedy. Pres Johnson. Dick Nixon. GWB. Barack Obama. Trump. Joe Biden (try not to throw up). Bill Clinton (try not to throw up, soil yourself, and do a spit take all at once)
@Matt Bernius:
The aspect of ‘unelected bureaucrats’ that gets overlooked is what James points out above. Congress passes laws. If Congress does not like the way a law is currently implemented by the administrative agencies, they can amend it, repeal it, or otherwise pass a different, more specific law.
That phrase is marketing rather than fair description. But accurate description of reality fails the marketing test.
@Jack: You left out Reagan, GHW Bush, and Trump. You’re finally acknowledging that you prefer dishonest politicians to honest ones?
@TheRyGuy:
Please enjoy the Washington State Republican Party
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/the-wa-gop-put-it-in-writing-that-theyre-not-into-democracy/
Trump has achieved one of his lifetime dreams: an interview in Time and his photo on the front cover of the mag. I don’t know how thrilled he’ll be with either.
http://www.time.com/6972021/donald-trump-2024-election intervie
@Gustopher: This business of repealing the 17th Amendment has been going on, largely out of sight, for some time. I’ve been aware of it going back at least to 2008 and the early Tea Party. I can see why the Koch types want it, they can gerrymander state legislatures but not statewide senate elections. And there’s the old tradition of buying senate seats. But how did they sell it to the supposedly populist Tea Partiers? How is it supposed to help them?
@CSK:
Is it too early to nominate him for Convict of the Year?
@Kathy:
He has to be convicted first.
@CSK:
I’m confident he can do whatever he sets what passes for his mind into. And, really, no one accumulates over 80 criminal charges if they don’t put in the work, the dedication, the passion, into it. Conviction is the least he deserves.
@gVOR10: “But how did they sell it to the supposedly populist Tea Partiers? How is it supposed to help them?”
‘Supposedly’ populist.