Let's Find Common Ground - "The Future Lies Ahead": The Second Trump Presidency

Episode Date: February 12, 2025

Author Sasha Issenberg joins political and media experts, Jane Coaston, Reince Priebus, Simon Rosenberg, and Chuck Todd, for a conversation on what to expect during Donald Trump's second term as president. They discuss Trump's first actions as president, his influence on politics, how the Democratic Party has changed over time, and how politics is always shifting. This discussion is part of the Warschaw Conference on Practical Politics “The Trumping of America: Why and What's Next?” in partnership with POLITICO,  PBS’ "Firing Line with Margaret Hoover," and C-SPAN. Featuring: Sasha Issenberg (Moderator): Groundbreaking Author on Modern Campaigns & Marriage Equality Jane Coaston: Journalist; CNN Contributor; Host of Crooked Media’s “What A Day" Reince Priebus: Former Chairman of the Republican National Committee Simon Rosenberg: Political Strategist; Author/Creator of Hopium Chronicles Chuck Todd: Chief Political Analyst, NBC News

Welcome to Let's Find Common Ground from the Center for the Political Future at the University of Southern California's Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences. I'm Bob Shrum, Director of the Center. And I'm Republican Mike Murphy, Co-Director of the Center. Our podcast brings together America's leading politicians, strategists, journalists, and academics from across the political spectrum for in-depth discussions where we respect each other and we respect the truth. We hope you enjoy these conversations.

Hi, I want to welcome Simon Rosenberg. Hello. Reince Priebus, Chuck Todd. Hey, how are you? It's been a while. And we have a fourth panelist, Jane Cosen, who should be with us shortly and will just land on the stage. Once Jane gets here, she and I are just going to talk college football the whole time, just

so you know. Only person who can go deeper in college football than me, I think, is Jane. If I read the calendar correctly, we are 10% of the way through the first 100 days. So I'm very big on base 10 number systems. I want to hear from each of you what we've learned in the first 10 days of Trump 2.0 about how it might be different than Trump 1.0. So I'll give you as the Trump 1.0 veteran, what have we learned? Well, I mean, we learned that Donald Trump

is going to do as much or everything that he possibly can do to fulfill the what he said he was going to do on the campaign trail, right? He said he was gonna pardon the J-6ers on day one and he did it. He said he was gonna start deportation on day one and he's doing it.

So I think the one thing about the president this time around, obviously compared to last time around are just obvious points, which is he knows his way around the White House. And the first time we went into the Oval Office, I'd never been in it. He was in it once. We got led by the Secret Service from the residence through the corridor and into the

Oval Office. And I still remember walking into that Oval Office with him. And we walked in. It was dead quiet. And I remember the president was just standing in the middle. It was dead quiet. And I remember the president was just standing in the middle. It was dark outside. And he was just standing like this. And I looked at him.

And he looked back at me. And he said, wow, can you believe it? I said, no, Mr. President, I can't believe it. My point is that he knows what he's doing doing and he knows what he wants to get done and he's got a mandate now that although I know you can argue like he won by a razor thin margin. I get it but he but he won and and and he got more votes than his opponent which people didn't expect and it wasn't even. And it didn't take very long.

So the difference is, from my standpoint, and I see it in my business. I'm a lawyer. We obviously make money by getting clients. We run a lobbying shop as well. In 2017, corporate America basically said, we don't want anything to do with this, this isn't who we are, we're going to make believe this isn't happening, and we're going to get through this. This time around, corporate America is saying,

maybe this is who we are, we better engage, we better be at the table, we better get involved. And all of that sort of feeling of, not wouldn't say unity, but I would say acceptance and affirmation is giving the president even more confidence to do all the things that he said he was going to do on the campaign trail. Last point. I would say, when I was, as you know I do Sunday morning TV quite a bit,

and President Trump, at the end of the campaign, I was expecting that he would kind of, even he did it in 2016 too, he softened up. You remember he did five rallies a day, kept going, didn't do media, but he didn't this time around. He didn't soften up at all. In fact he like tripled down on everything. And I was thinking as I was going into the Sunday morning shows, like man, he's not giving me any breathing room, and yet he won in a way that I don't think anyone really thought or saw was coming. So all of that together means faster, quicker, Trump on steroids is what you're gonna get.

Chuck, what have we learned in these 10 days? Look, I mean, I guess I, I mean, I don't, look, Reitz was there the first time time I would say the first time Donald Trump behaved like he was an accident. Okay, right. That's a good way to put it. I mean, he himself didn't know if he knew what he was doing and thought and he trusted a Reince Priebus and a Mike Pence to say, you know what, you need a guy like John Kelly at DHS, or you really ought to go with a guy like Jim Mattis at Defense.

And he took the advice because he didn't know. He came at it and almost, I mean, I go back, one of my favorite anecdotes from when he wins and he goes to the White House, Obama hosts him, and he was stunned to find out that the West Wing staff didn't come with, that he was going to have to hire even more people. Like he didn't fully, so he did, this time, right, he knows exactly what he wants.

This time, it is, you know, it's his show and he surrounded himself with people who are willing to take his ideas and turn them into action and turn them into this. So you gotta, whatever you think, they, you know, they, what Steve Bannon always dreamed of doing the first time and got in fights with him and others about it, trying to, and, and what they avoided doing the first time in some ways, or did it haphazardly, if you want to talk about the so-called Muslim ban, etc. This time they had a plan of action, right? And they have flooded the zone and

you know, 80% of it is probably going to go nowhere. But in some ways he has an idea of what he wants to do with this. So whatever you want to call it, I've sort of, there's this moment in Jurassic Park with the fence and they go, hey, they don't test the fence and they go hey they don't test the fence in the same spot they're learning right Trump he's learned and that's what you see it's a brutal efficiency if you don't like what he's doing it's impressive efficiency if you've always wanted to see what would happen if you actually tried to take your rhetoric and turn it into executive action. I tend to believe his best day as president is already behind him.

I think his first day, because suddenly having to enact things, you're just going to, I mean, look what happened with the budget issue. All of a sudden he found out, oh, wait, that's going to upset even allies, right? So I think he's welcome to sort of the brutality of expectations now to actually govern. But I'm still impressed as in, what I mean is it's an impressive efficiency that they have and I think that there's probably more to come. Simon, what have we learned? That he's a mess, you know, that I don't really agree with Chuck in the interpretation of this early time. I mean, he's obviously been strong, and he has concepts of a plan and a plan, and they're executing,

but my God, has this been reckless, messy, you know, with unintended consequences. And what the chairman said a minute ago is that we're going to see now, and I think the American people are going to get to decide whether or not their lives are better, whether or not he's betraying some of his central promises. You know, we're going to have these testing zones, you know, these testing moments. We had one today. Over the last two weeks, the president fired the head of the TSA, fired the head of the FAA, who left voluntarily, dismantled other oversight

over our aviation security. And we've already had this tragic incident happen. He's attacking the government every day, which is going to create problems for him politically, as we saw already, right, this sort of rebellion against his trying to cut government programs for people all across the country. He's dismantling health programs

here in the United States and abroad. And I did a class earlier here at USC, and the medical school here and the medical institutions here are having to stop their research, and they can't go to stop, you know, their research and they're going to, they can't go to conferences, right? So medical research in the United States is slowing down and things are happening that are going to make us less safe, less healthy, less prosperous, less secure.

And so he may be moving with great force, but he's also doing things that I think are going to ultimately, possibly, we'll see, right, this is the big question, whether or not political gravity matters and whether or not him, for example, this weekend, we could have punitive tariffs against Mexico, Canada, and China, the president has promised this on Saturday, that will raise prices for Americans on everything for everybody immediately, right? It will create chaos in the global trading system. I don't think the people that voted for Donald Trump, many of them, voted for all this chaos, voted for the attack on the government, voted to raise prices, voted to dismantle the global trading system, voted to dismantle the most successful medical and public health system

in the entire world. I don't think that's what they signed up for. And I think that part of what we're gonna learn is in this enthusiasm and this fanaticism and this intensity is are they also really screwing up and making huge mistakes that are gonna punish them and not just in the midterms but in the coming weeks. The reason why he had to rescind the budget cuts that happened, the stopping of the money, the stealing of the money,

impounding whatever you want to call it, was because Republicans got freaked out about stuff that was happening to their constituents. So yeah, I think there's two ways to look at what we've seen so far. Strong guy who knows his way around, came with a plan, is executing on it. And also this other side, which is an historically dangerous and messy figure that is already doing enormous damage to the country.

He's already betraying his core promises to the American people. And I think this tension between the strong man that we're hearing described and the actual impact of what he's doing is gonna be one of the central tensions of our politics at the coming months. Jane, welcome. Thank you.

The way I started this was saying we're 10 days in and asked everybody to tell me what they think we've learned about how Trump 2.0 will be different than Trump 1.0. Not a god dang thing. I would say that we are still very early into this. And to make any assumptions, prognostications would be a bad idea. I will say that I keep hearing two things

in general. One, that this version of Trump knows what he's doing and two, that this version of Trump is coming in with a mandate and I don't think either of those things are true. If we've learned anything about of Trump is coming in with a mandate and I don't think either of those things are true. Um if we've learned anything about Donald Trump is that Donald Trump loves the idea of authority but rejects the responsibility of

authority and you see this in how he talks about events. For instance, the plane crash that took place in DC last night when he discussed it on Truth Social, he talked about it in the way that you would if you were just some guy. He does that thing where he does like, it's like Monday morning quarterbacking, but it's Tuesday and you're the president.

Like it's baffling because I think that, you know, I've, I've made this comparison before that Trump seems to generally like the idea of becoming president, but the authority that comes with being president, he doesn't really want to do it. And so we've already seen a couple of instances in which there have been numerous stories about how his allies have gotten people into government, but they had to switch titles for some reason because they couldn't figure out how to do that part. We've already also seen that several of his nominees, for example, during their hearings, have had to go back on everything they said previous to those hearings. I think my favorite

was today that Cash Patel, who's the nominee to run the FBI, he appeared on an anti-Semitic podcast eight times. And this is a podcast in which we discuss such items as should Taylor Swift be executed? Or do Jews really enjoy the blood of Gentiles? Did the Holocaust happen? Or did it happen? But also it was good. And Cash Patel said, Oh, I can't really remember if I've ever met this person. And you've seen with RFK Jr., him saying, Oh, I'm very pro vaccine, which is a I don't really remember if I've ever met this person. And you've seen with RFK uh junior

him saying oh I'm very pro vaccine which is a huge shift from everything he's done for the last twenty years. So I think that we've seen again and again that political reality and political gravity are real. And in these hearings you've

seen a host of people who have been who have advertised themselves as being bold truth tellers who get in there and are like actually seven people who have been who have advertised themselves as being bold truth tellers who get in there and are like actually seven seven uh section 702 of FISA is awesome and I love it.

I love warrantless wiretaps. It's they're totally awesome. Vaccines are great. Like and so I think that we haven't learned anything. I don't know if Trump's learned anything. I don't know if I've learned anything in the past 10 days but I do think that one thing we are seeing is that the chaos is in some ways

purposeful but it is also I would argue not entirely intentional. I just keep thinking about like they had four years to figure this out. They had four years to come up with a plan for all of this and at one hand you you know you now have universities running scared because of this attack on DEI which appears to be less about concerns about overreaching language police and more about a black woman having a job occasionally. We saw Michigan State University canceled their Lunar New Year celebration because maybe that's DEI. And so I think that this type of overreach and the panic and the chaos, and we keep hearing that phrase that Steve Bannon used, if I might say,

to flood the zone with shit. But the problem is that like, that only works if that's the plan. I don't feel like any of this has been planned. I feel like right now we're in the midst of a lot of news all coming at once. And we have a president who talked endlessly about how he had a concept of a plan or he was going to lower grocery prices.

You were going to see how lower grocery prices were going to get almost immediately. And now he's talking about like, no, I can't do that. I don't have that power. And he's still about like no I can't do that. I don't have that power and he's still doing this Observing the presidency from his from his home couch thing that he always does But again, I don't know if we've learned anything nothing. It's I I don't know Reince We hear this a lot this the chaos is the point the chaos is purposeful. Is that how much is that the MO is like is

We think about this the precision of funding this impoundment thing which you can look at and you could say yeah they you know left their opponents days they created chaos it was successful or you could look at this as like seeming incompetence that OMB is putting out memos that lawyers haven't looked at like what is the goal? No I I think that a lot of it is purposeful. I think it is fairly organized. I agree with Chuck as far as what the Trump administration is doing.

I mean, these arguments are interesting, but they were all, you guys, we just had an election. And we heard about Donald Trump was that Donald Trump was the Democrat campaign. Donald Trump was a Donald Trump was the Democrat campaign. Donald Trump was a threat to democracy. Remember he was going to destroy America. Remember they said he was Hitler. You remember that?

And the Democrats got their ass beat. They lost the culture. The culture is not with the progressive left. They don't like it. If the Democrats would have went populist left, Federman left, Sanders left, they would have had a good shot, but they didn't. They went progressive left. People don't like it. Sometimes people just don't like what you're selling. And so, you know, when Ben Bernanke walked into the Oval Office in 2008, and he said, if I don't get a trillion dollars

by the end of the week, we're gonna lose the American economy. And if we don't get that trillion, we're gonna lose Europe. And then we're gonna lose the world. And from 2008 to 2016, $4 trillion were pumped into the American economy. $4 trillion of all of our money. And you know who got rich in the end?

The bankers, the lenders, all the people that wrote the rules that brought our country to its knees that she and Putin could never do. And you know who paid for it? The stock value in the middle, as the bankers call them. And they're the ones that send their kids into the military. They're sending their kids into the military. They're paying for all this money. And you know what? They didn't get anything. They got nothing.

So before you dismiss all of this anger as being a bunch of people that don't know what they're talking about, people have a right to be angry. And what's wild about this is I sound either like Bernie Sanders or Donald Trump. You can't tell the difference. Because you get to choose between populism of the left or populism of the right. People are pissed off and they have a right to be angry.

The Democrats only did better in three areas. They did better with non-religious people. They did better with rich people. And they did better with people with a post-graduate, with a graduate degree. Now, have you ever told me that the Democrat Party would be the party of rich, non-religious, super-smart, educated people?

That's how you don't win an election. So this was all laid out to the American people. They want to secure the border and protect the American people. They want to confront China, who they think is ripping off the world, and they want to end wars that are going on and on and on. Those are 75, oh and by the way they don't want boys competing against girls in sports. Those are 75% issues. And if you're gasping at that, then you live in the 25%. Pretty hard to win in a democracy if you're living in the 25%.

I think we need to understand something here though. So we've had three straight elections where voters have voted. They know what they don't want. They don't necessarily know what they want. Donald Trump didn't win in 16 voters didn't want Hillary Clinton. Joe Biden didn't win in 2020 voters didn't want Donald Trump. And Donald Trump didn't win in 2024 voters didn't want more of Biden Harris. It is obvious here, right? This is a voters are clear with what they don't want more of Biden-Harris. It is obvious here, right? It's as if voters are clear with

what they don't want and they don't like, they haven't liked the way things have been going. We've been frankly living in an era of constant change. Six of the, we've had six of the last seven presidential elections been decided by five points or less. The last time we had a period like that, not once in the 20th century, we only had five elections in the 20th century decided by five points or less. The last time we had a period like that, not once in the 20th century, we only had five elections in the 20th century decided by five points or less, okay? But two different periods of the 19th century, okay?

Between Jackson and Lincoln, right? We had multiple elections decided by five points or less. And then between Grant and McKinley. And both times, we're having a fight about who we are, we're having a fight about just the basic American culture, who's an American, the same fight about who's an American. So the point is, and we were going through massive economic change with a move at the time,

agrarian to an industrial economy. So, you know, I do think that this is why, why I believe Donald Trump's best day was his first day and every day is gonna get worse. Because the public does know what it doesn't want. And if you don't sort of, you know, if you don't provide, I think they want competency in government. They want to feel like that they can get ahead, that the system's fair, et cetera.

But we've had 25 years where they feel as if government institutions have let them down, whether it's weapons of mass destruction, whether it's the bankers that he brought up there or, you know, we can go through COVID, although I actually think history is going to be much kinder to us about COVID. I think the whole we actually handled it better as a society than you think. It'll just we don't realize it yet. Fifty years from now, we'll sort of look back. I mean, in fact, this pandemics are divisive.

They just that's something that you can go back through history and study any pandemic because why? Human beings and individuals all believe they can control their own way. So I do think that in some ways, I actually think COVID, while it was sort of exploited politically, isn't as part of this whole failure of institutions. I'd actually argue that COVID was a point where actually elected officials learned the right lessons from the housing crisis and from what happened with the collapse of the economy and the great recession because we didn't limit, we threw money at the problem

this time, which was the right decision to do. You had two choices, inflation or recession. And when people weren't going to work, a recession would have caused calamity. Inflation's a problem, but at least people have money in their pocket and they have a job. And it's a lot easier to manage society that way. So anyway, I just think that that we're I don't think there is a proactive reason why these last three elections went the way they did. I think it's a it's a reactive and an antagonistic. Right. And I think that it's interesting, right? So you brought up the issues that Americans care to get about. I don't know if you listed go to

war with Denmark over Greenland. No, it's going to war. No, it's going to war. Oh, I'm sure that no one's going to war. Well, I mean, I don't think that it is too much of fear mongering to be concerned about US involvement with regard to Mexico and the cartels. I don't think it's too much rethinking about how much we keep threatening Panama. As long as we're not talking about palindromes,

I don't really think about the Panama Canal very often I think that what the American people talked about grocery prices it's grocery prices are too high that's a big issue but sadly I think that this goes to an overarching issue is that we have increased the power of the executive branch and then we get really really really mad at the executive branch for not hitting the make everything better button. Like I really do wish that the

Oval Office had a make all the prices go down and make everybody shut up button but it doesn't. And so I think also you know we've seen Congress repeatedly abdicating its authority with regard to you know what their

you know writing laws and passing them but I I think that what they're you know writing laws and passing them but I think that what we're seeing now is again the American people again very clear on what they don't want kind of unclear as to what they do want and a lot of the messages get mixed understandably because voters I don't know if you know this are weird you know we so we just had an election in which states managed to support Donald Trump abortion rights and raising the minimum know if you know this, are weird. You know, we just had an election in which states managed to support Donald Trump, abortion rights,

and raising the minimum wage. Which is the kind of thing that you would, that would seem very confusing unless you actually went to a state like Missouri, where I lived for a long time and met a lot of people who were pretty conservative, but they'd worked a lot of shitty jobs, and they thought the people who worked those shitty jobs should make more money. And they also don't like being told what to do.

If I had an overarching theory of the American populace, I would say that in general people embrace a sort of personal libertarianism. Not libertarianism, big L, because otherwise the Mises caucus would be more popular. But they kind of don't tell me what to do Now many people want to tell somebody else what to do And we're right now I mean I keep harping on this because the current you know make America healthy again thing where I'm like I was alive for Michelle Michelle Obama being like why don't we eat some vegetables and the American right being like from our cold dead?

Don't you wait what about the bill that? And the American right being like, from our cold dead hands. Don't you? Wait, what about the big gulp? Don't forget the big gulp. Oh yes, Sarah Palin drinking a big gulp. I think it was at CPAC being like, freedom! And now Arson Jr.'s like, no more gummy worms for you. And they're like, I'm listening. I'm learning and listening. But I think that like, voters are complicated. I also think and I can say this that sometimes voters are wrong. And that's okay. I've been wrong before. But I think that occasionally when we look at the last 25 years or something like that and we see we have you know numerous elections in which people believe that you know

Joe Biden thought he had a mandate in 2020 2021. Oops. And I don't think he did. I think that you know Joe Biden thought he had a mandate in 2020-2021. Oops. And I don't think he did. I think that you know he had the idea someone told him that he could be the second coming of FDR and that someone was wrong and I think that you know I think that the idea of mandates are poisonous to our politics. I think, and Chuck, perhaps you can agree with this, I think that we should treat all politicians like a newly hired offensive coordinator for your college football team. They better get it right or else you're going to scream at them forever on message boards for the rest of your life.

By the way, just look at the 21st century. Every election but two, the voters have said no to something. They've punished one of them, have voted only in 04 and 12 did we reelect the trifecta as what it was. And again, politics is a pendulum. I just keep thinking about 2004 a lot because I remember, you know, I was in high school at Catholic school in Ohio and I knew many people who, members of the young Republicans who were like George W. Bush's president,

everybody loves him, the Iraq war's going great, this is gonna be the rest of our lives. And then two years later, we had a blue wave, and then two years after that, we have Barack Obama, and now George W. Bush is just somewhere in the ether painting portraits. So politics changes all the time. I think just somewhere in the ether painting portraits. So politics changes all the time. I think that that's the biggest thing that I just keep thinking about is that

mandates are poisonous, especially for the person who thinks they have one. And that politics is always shifting. People will change their minds in ways that will drive you insane, especially if you remember things beyond, you know, eight years. See, the Iraq war and the war in Afghanistan. And I think that it's important for anyone who gets elected to always be thinking of like the ticking clock to the next election, the ticking clock to the next moment, the ticking clock to when are voters going to start to hate you again?

Because the idea of any politician is great. They're the number two quarterback. Maybe they'll just be amazing and perfect and great forever. And then you get them and then they throw two picks in their first game and you want them out of there. Simon, so ticking clock to the next election. Give us a democratic perspective because it does seem like there's far less consensus now than there was in 2017 about how, when, where to challenge

Trump rhetorically, to the extent Democrats have legislative or legal tools at their disposal. Can you sort of take us into the debate among Democrats about how to engage with Trump now and who's winning that internal discussion? I think charitably we're in the early days of that conversation. Is that a problem? Yeah, I don't think we were ready. He's president already, right? No, I don't think we were ready for this.

I don't think for whatever reason, and there can be lots of Monday morning quarterbacking, I think the reality is that Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries are now our leaders and we don't have the White House anymore. And I have just a few thoughts about things that I think we need to do now and that we're not necessarily doing but that are gonna be important. And just some observations,

because I do think there's, for all the focus we have on Trump, we gotta improve our game, we gotta raise our game. It's really critical. We shouldn't have lost this election and we have a lot to learn from what happened So I have just four quick things that I'm thinking about about that we need to get on To do in the coming months

One is the generational wheel just has to turn in the Democratic Party and has begun turning but it needs to keep turning with incredible Personalities you mean needs to keep turning with incredible. I mean personalities you mean in the interest of now it is new thinking record year-old leaders and I'm saying that I think that we need to move beyond some of the old think also it's not just old people it's also old think Donald Trump represents a completely new kind of politics

for us and I think we've been very slow to adapt to the way that he plays the game and so I think it's both older people but also older thinking, right? Two is I think we've gotten on the wrong side of opportunity as a party, you know. And I think that a lot of the, you know, one of the things we have to be careful about and mindful of being here in California is that this is the first time since I've been in California in 30 years where Silicon Valley is aligned with them and not us. And I am worried that we are no longer the party of the future and the party of the modern world that we used to be.

And I know that we see Elon and these bro-logarx as oligarchs. But for a lot of young people, they see them as the people they wanna go work for and the places where they're gonna go get jobs and the kind of businesses that they wanna be part of in their own lives. And I think that we have to find a way through of getting back on the right side of opportunity, particularly for younger men, younger people

who broke from us, Hispanics, where I think we've gotten on the wrong side of opportunity. And this is a huge, and we are the party of opportunity, I think this is a doable thing. And it goes to number three, which is that the coalition that we've been riding for the last 20 years, which was built 20 years ago with Latinos and young people, then millennials, now it's Gen Z, that coalition broke apart. I mean, Chuck did a great history lesson. But the other part of the history lesson is that up until this election, we had won more

votes in seven out of eight elections. We had averaged 51% of the vote in the last four elections. It was the best showing in the Democratic Party since the 1930s and 40s. We had built a majority coalition, the first majority coalition that we had since the 1930s and 40s. We had built a majority coalition, the first majority coalition that we had since the 1930s and 40s. That evaporated in this election. We don't now know, we have to go build a new majority coalition. We have to really, there's a lot of work that has to go into that. I think the last panel did a good job at explaining the gravity of what happened with young people and Hispanic voters. And we can't look away at that. It's a serious matter.

It could be very serious for all of you in California in the general election next year, right? And that you could have a competitive election here for the first time in a long time. And then finally, I think the most important thing is that we have to, Chuck Schumer and Hakeem have to realize that there are 6 million Democrats ready to go work for them. There are all sorts of new pro-democracy media organizations that have been built and grown

up, including Pod Save America, right? There are hundreds and hundreds of grassroots organizations, many of you may work for them, Indivisible and others, who have grown up and become more mature. We have tens of thousands of Democratic elected officials, all of whom are ready to go to work to fight the Trump agenda. And they're gonna have to figure out a way to organize themselves differently,

to take advantage of all these incredible assets that we have, to turn us into a ferocious and effective opposition, which we certainly aren't right now. And I think that there's gonna have to be re-imagination and re-imagination of how we run our politics day to day to match frankly, the far more sophisticated way that Trump has been able to tell his story

over recent years. I think we have, so I think there's a lot of work we have to do to reimagine, to reinvent our politics, but I think these are doable things, and we gotta get on with doing it. Right, we're obviously in a, obviously we had this with Grover Cleveland, but first time we've had non-consecutive terms

for a president, which means he's coming in at the beginning of a new administration and does not have re-election as a thing on the horizon. How is that gonna change calculations he makes, interactions with the party, how he communicates if he's not ever thinking about himself being on the ballot again? Well, I think it makes him more apt to do what he wants to do. You know, thinking about the comments about mandates, and I hear you, and I think you're

right essentially about people who think they have a mandate, but you know, in Trump world, he's going to, he thinks he's got a mandate, he doesn't care if he does or he doesn they have a mandate. But in Trump world, he thinks he's got a mandate, he doesn't care if he does or he doesn't have a mandate. He's gonna act like he's got a mandate and he's gonna do what he wants to do. So, I mean, and then in regard to the issue of, how's it gonna affect him that he's not running again? I don't think it's gonna do anything.

I mean, it's hard to say now. I mean, you know, there's a lot of truth in, you know, in politics, you start with like this jar of marbles and you can't add more, you just lose, right? I mean, from day one to the end, that is generally true. But I do think Trump has a remarkable hold on the core of the party. If you wanna win a primary,

I mean, look at Mike Rogers, and this is all, it's such inside base, well, you probably didn't even know, there's someone running in Michigan, been named Mike Rogers, or he wants to run for governor, he lost the Senate race the last time around, a Republican but not a not a very Trumpy Republican although he's sort of morphed into that as of recently in his press release today

you saw he mentioned Donald Trump four or five times and that's because obviously that's how you can win a primary I think that's going to continue even if even if as some of the folks up here are arguing even if Trump becomes how you can win a primary. Um I is something that I don't think I've ever seen before in my life. And I don't think it's going to go away. So he's going to have an enormous sway over our party, even though he's not running, I think for years and years to come. I couldn't disagree with that more. And I say this because I just look at history.

There was a time that Obama had all this sway in the Democratic base, and there's a time that Reagan had all this way in the Democratic base, and there's, you know, a Republican base. I just think that what happens is when you're no longer, when you no longer have the power, you will watch people start to float away, feel more comfortable. And if the midterms, I mean, we're already seeing, you know, when Trump's not on the ballot, a lot of his voters don't show up. Just ask the Iowa Republicans who just lost the state Senate special election. Democrats dominate special elections now.

They overperform in special elections from anywhere from 10 to 30 points consistently ever since Donald Trump showed up. Trump has done what some people argued after 2012, which is, hey, there's a whole bunch of voters that aren't voting. And I was a little skeptical myself of that theory. And Donald Trump said, well, nope, there's truth to it. I mean, look, he got turned out in Florida in 2016. I remember I joked every county, they didn't touch saltwater.

They just kept making more Trump voters, you know, and they showed up, but they don't show up. They don't show up in the midterms, they don't show up in special elections. And what happens in this midterm if, you know, the House goes Democratic? Senate's probably not going to go Democratic, but you never know, right, if you get enough momentum, but the map's a little, it's a little difficult. Democrats have a lot more defenses again, not as bad as their map arguably the

last time, but still a difficult map. And then all of a sudden you're going to have, now granted the presidential primary, we'll see how Trumpy is that, right? Is it wide open or is it junior and vance that are sort of doing things and that could have some impact on sort of where the base of the party goes. But if he loses in his midterms, you know, and he can't run for president again, it's inevitable. History shows you'll start to see people in his own party looking for a new way to go. And it's just the slow, you know, I'm starting to think that all success, you know, that

we sit here and think it's a Democratic Party coalition. Simon outlined something. He said, this is the Democratic coalition. I think it was Obama's coalition and it belonged to Obama. Didn't belong to anybody else. Biden rented it for one election. But it, you know, he couldn't keep it. I think the same is going to be said for Trump's coalition. It's going to be really hard for somebody else to grab it. They may rent it for one election and get close or maybe narrowly win, but then all of a sudden it'll slowly dissipate.

So I think Reagan had his own unique coalition, Bill Clinton bill is only, you can hand it off for one election and get close, right? Al Gore, George H.W. Bush, but it starts to fracture once this sort of the cult of personality fades into the. Jane, let's talk about the consequence of that expanded coalition, which is more room for internal divides. I think we saw the first big indication this over that H1B visa

argument where the Silicon Valley, Broly Garx Musk, Rameswamy have a very different point of view than the you know, I guess Bannon is a sort of spokesman for the for the sort of nativist MAGA core. What are some of the fault lines we should be looking at in this new expanded Trump coalition that he's gonna have to

manage somehow or navigate as as as its leader? Well I think that there are a couple because I think one of the challenges of building any coalition and Obama learned this is that many members of your coalition hate everyone else in your coalition. And they think you're all annoying. And we see this again and I think, you know, for instance, on issues of gender, I think are going to be big ones. We've seen not as big as some people expected in 2024, but there is a gender gap in voting. And we see this in how people, you know, how kind of the language

shift among the parties has changed in terms of who's in charge and how you talk about who's in charge. And I think that that's going to be a big one to watch. I keep thinking about how, you know, I want to go back to your point a little bit talking about concerns about Silicon Valley.

I'm less concerned about that because the day I get concerned about powerful dorks is the day I wandered into the sea. But I think that there is a sense that so much of this is about Trump. So much of this is about trying to keep Trump happy. It is very little to do with a ideological core. There is such a thing as Trumpism, but it is very little to do with Donald Trump himself and so much to do with what has been projected upon him. I wrote a piece for National Review back in 2017 about how Donald Trump, you saw all these people project

on him that he's a hawk, he's a dove, he's the best friend of the LGBT community, he's the best friend of the evangelicals. He's the best friend of the evangelicals. And he basically did the, you know, there's like that acting thing where you just play yes and, and you just keep going and going. And Trump did that.

He had concepts of a plan. We're all going to get healthcare. And so I think that he's been very effective at creating that coalition, but he's largely left it to the coalition itself, to police itself. And I think that, you know, going back to some of those issues, I think gender is going to be a big one,

especially because I think that you see how women within conservatism, and I spend a lot of time talking to conservative women, are part of this group, part of what, you know, they are among the main drivers of support for Robert F. Kennedy Jr. But at the same time, they are also aware that there's been a real misogynist threat through line through a lot of kind of mega rhetoric. And I think that that's of concern. But I think moreover it's just

the fact that you can't make everybody in your coalition happy if they all have opposing views on issues and it's been interesting to see how much Trump has decided to go with the H-1B visa supporters you know he's decided to you know he loves H-1Bs even though I don't think like based on how he thought that uh he doesn't know what they are yeah waiters at Mar-a-Lago are an H1Bs, even though I don't think like based on how he thought that uh. He doesn't know what they are. Yeah, waiters at Mar-a-Lago are on H1. Oh, he does know what they are. I disagree with that.

He knows what they are because of those of those workers at Mar-a-Lago. But um. He wants them in a specific. Right. Yeah, no they're. Yeah. So I think that that's been interesting also because I think that that's, I mean, it's interesting. money. That's been interesting also because I think that that's I mean it's interesting he's gone with them on that particular issue and I think that it's

it's going to be interesting because again when we talk about bases when we talk about the base of a party I always use the the comparison of like there are people who like a band or a musician and then there are people who go to the concerts and go to a bunch of the concerts and I think like there are people who voted for Trump who are not part of the base. There are people who voted for Trump for transactional reasons which I would say is how politics is normally done. I want things to a thing to happen. I vote for the person who I think can make it happen. If it does happen, hooray. If it doesn't happen, I vote for somebody else. There are a whole host of people who do not have that relationship with Donald Trump. There are actually people, I had a conversation with my friend Matthew Iglesias about this, where he has an idea of

Deliverism, which is like you do a thing you get rewarded for it. Trump might be the only politician in my lifetime in which you don't want him to do the things that he promises. So much of the argument for Trump was that he just won't do all the things he says he wants to do. Yeah. Which is a fascinating thing that many people should look into but I think that there's there are a whole host of people who have such opposing views on issues. Um you see this with abortion. How Trump tried to stay as far away from the abortion conversation as possible during the race. Saying that you know

it should be left to the states and yet he's going to have to get involved when it comes to the use of abortion pills, when it comes to should we bring back the Comstock Act? I would prefer we didn't when it comes to like those issues that do have to do with

federal power. And I think that the challenge for Trump is that what he wants to do, he wants to do what he wants to do, and he wants to be told he's very good at whatever it is he wants to do. And so I think that those there will be some fault lines because you have inherent conflicts within the coalition that cannot be answered just by say, you know, by trying to make everybody happy. It's impossible to do.

Look, I have a simple, just a simple way, you're trying to figure out what side will Trump go on? Why did he go with H-1B visas? Trump always gives more, somebody's opinion matters more the wealthier they are. And it is, and I say this, I'm not trying to, I mean, it is true. He is deferential to those that are wealthier than he is.

I've watched it both up close in small ways and in large ways. He deals with foreign policy that way. Why are the Gulf states, why do they have such sway with him? Because the individual people he deals with are enormously wealthy. Or Putin.

I do believe that he views things very, I mean, he is the uber transactionalist, but he very much respects wealth and the opinion of those who have more money than he does. So the fact that Elon Musk said, hey we need this, and that to me is the risk he has, because I do think you have your bannin wing who thinks Elon Musk is part of the problem. And I think that actually goes very quickly just to the point about China, especially because Elon has no problem with China and neither does Mark Zuckerberg. I think my favorite Mark Zuckerberg story is that he keeps a copy of Sherman G's book,

which is like no one reads it. He has copies of it and he's given it out to people. So if you look it up on Amazon, if you look it up on Amazon, his recommendation of it is like, because I wanted to understand Chinese socialist thought. And I'm like, did you? And so I think that'll be interesting because now you have Marco Rubio, longtime China hawk. You have a host of people who have been longtime China hawks, but you also have Elon, who is not. We hear about violence all the time in the news, yet we rarely hear stories about peace.

There are so many people who are working hard to promote solutions to violence, toxic polarization and authoritarianism, often at great personal risk. We never hear about these stories, but at what cost? On Making Peace Visible, we speak with journalists, storytellers, and peace builders who are on the front lines of both peace and conflict. You can find Making Peace Visible wherever you listen to podcasts. Right. Is it Susie Wiles' job to control Elon and what does that look like day to day? Well first of all, just some of this stuff that we've been talking about here.

I don't know if I don't agree with Chuck that he's simply transactionalist to people with wealth. Certainly people with help with wealth tend to be in positions of influence and it's natural. But a lot of people of wealth don't particularly care for Donald Trump's immigration policies. And that was, I would say, between that and when wealthy people get into the room and they get his ear. And they don't necessarily like Donald Trump's idea that we're going to drill so much oil that will drive oil prices down to thirty dollars a barrel. Those

those rich people in Texas don't like that either. And I also think it's important to keep in mind that the least from a political perspective and I think you hit on it a little bit is that you know Donald Trump's rhetoric and the things he talks about and the persona he's created to me is like the persona of the middle class. It's the persona of the working class. And if the party becomes, if the Republican Party becomes the party

of the working people of this country, the Republican Party would be very hard to beat for a long time. And so as you make fun of Trump and you think he doesn't get it, he doesn't know what an H-1B visa is, as you make fun of Trump and you think he doesn't get it he doesn't know what an h1b visa is as you said and You know it and all these other sort of You know comical

statements You're really just insulting. I think the American worker in the middle class. Oh, come on Don't get it you you still think you're you're prosecuting an election that that you don't get it. Like working class black voters. And you still don't get it. You still think you're prosecuting an election that you just lost. I'm not prosecuting an election. I'm looking at the world. I think it's pretty insulting. And I think the American people are insulted

by this big media narrative that's out there that's being somewhat echoed here on the stage. And I just think it doesn't work. And that's why you've got Donald Trump in the White House who won every single county in America by a larger percentage margin than he lost by in 2020. So I think this is the reality of where we are in America and you gotta figure out how you're gonna appeal

to average working people. Yeah, Simon? Two points. One is that we did beat MAGA in 2018, 2020, 2022. and appeal to average working people. And Simon? Two points. One is that we did beat MAGA in 2018, 2020, 2022, 2023. We did win these down ballot races. We won in North Carolina. I think that this notion that there's been this sort

of tidal wave against the democratic party, I personally reject. And I think this is a far more competitive environment than is being represented. The second point is I think one of the great acid tests of your argument is going to come up in the next few weeks Because here's what the Trump economic agenda is today, right? tariffs financially is on Saturday Which will significantly raise prices for all working people on literally everything immediately.

Second is that the budget plans that are being discussed in the Republicans, because they have to find huge offsets for the big tax cuts for wealthy people, and corporations includes tax increases for middle class workers and cuts and benefit programs are going to drive up the healthcare costs and lots of other costs for middle class workers. Third is the mass deportation program, which is in play, which is already targeting millions and millions of people. It's way beyond the notion of criminals already. Is going to drive up prices immediately on food, daycare, health care, hotels, restaurants. It's going to potentially create a crisis in the restaurant industry in the United States,

where you could see huge numbers of restaurants all across the United States closing because food prices are going up, wages, they can't hire workers. This agenda that Donald Trump is actually pursuing is an anti-worker agenda. It's actually designed to hurt the middle class in order to benefit wealthy Americans. And so you may be right, but the test of this is going to be, I think, in the next few months, which if prices are going up, if inflation is going up, if we're seeing taxes, if we're seeing tax cuts pass that are going to raise, I mean, tax increases for middle class people, all to benefit the wealthiest and corporations

and the price increases of the mass deportation, this will feel to me like an incredible betrayal of those working class people that the Republicans want to bring over into their new coalition. And so I think we're gonna see a real test of this in the next couple months. Simon, can I just jump in on this? Because I think there are two things I wanna add to that. One, it'll be very going to see a real test of this in the next couple months. Simon, can I just jump in on this? Because I think there are two things I want to add to that. One, it'll be very interesting to see how much Trump does go after unions. We've already seen some efforts by the administration. It's been interesting. That's another conflict point because you've seen Vice President Vance and Senator Josh Hawley talk about efforts to protect unions and you've seen this administration attempt to go

after unions and the people represent them. But I would also like to note here that we do this thing when we talk about the working class in which we are not very clear on who we're talking about because the working class is not just folks who work tough jobs like my grandfather did in a copper pipe making plant in suburban Cincinnati. We're not just talking about people who work coal, we're talking about people who work for wages.

That's who the working class is. So that means people who work at nail salons. That means people who clean up this building and will do so after we leave. That means all of those people, generally women, a lot of those working class jobs, a lot of those pink jobs, those are worked by working class women and especially working class black women to be clear here. And so I think that it's important to remember that the working class is not just a moniker, it is not just an idea. I think that we have unfortunately we have cultured the concept of

class in which we now have people talking about, you know, we have senators who are talking, decrying elites, and I'm like, you're a senator. That's like the most elite thing you can possibly do. And you know, if you work, people who work for wages are working class. That's how this works. So if you work at a nail salon, if you cut hair, if you're the person who sweeps up

the hair after it gets cut, that's working class. And I think that to say that Donald Trump is somehow a scion or a vector on behalf of the working class really depends on who you're talking about and what you're talking about when

you're talking about working class. Now, I am hopeful that Donald Trump could do really good things for working class people in this country. I think that for far too long people have been you know working class people have been used as cudgels while wages have been cut while union power has been decreased and while unions have been derided as being you being a way to decrease economic productivity. And it's been interesting to hear people talk about tariffs because I have seen numerous people now on the right talking about how like, well, we don't really need coffee that

much anyway. We can, yeah, there's actually a Democratic representative who was talking about, well, we can grow avocados, we can grow avocados in Maine, which is a future news for me. I think you know how to grow avocados if you think you can grow avocados, we can grow avocados in Maine, which is a future news for me. I think you know how to grow avocados if you think you can grow avocados. You know, like, good luck with that. Yeah, exactly. I think that, you know, I wanna be clear here

is that my greatest dream is to be wrong about all of this. I would love it if I was like, actually everything worked out and wages went up and people benefited, and our cities were happy, and our rural areas were recognized, and those rural school districts that have often have so much trouble getting money,

which is why it's been fascinating to see how the school choice argument is flailing in rural Kentucky, for example. But it would be great if all of this worked out. I am just about as skeptical as a person is allowed to be. Simon, we've gone through a few potential divides within the Republican coalition. Are there things Democrats could wedge issues that they could or should be using to sort of exacerbate those fault lines?

I do want to say one thing, which is my daughter's a freshman here at USC, and it's been great to be out here. I had lunch with her and 10 of her friends before I came here. And so I just want to thank Bob Schwamm and the team for bringing me out here. This way dinner will be 20 of her friends. She actually asked if she could bring four people to dinner tonight, and I said no. She may be coming, but I don't know that she wants to hang out with all these little guys but I just want to thank the team here that put on this event to allow me to come hang out with my daughter for a couple days and so and to get away from Washington

during this insane week listen I I think that I do think that the three, there are four areas where I think Trump is overreaching making mistakes that we have to pounce on now. One is the savage attack on our government and the ability for it to function and the programmatic activities in the states. We've already seen a huge backlash against that. Two is I think he's overreaching in immigration.

I think he's going way beyond the ruse of, and you're going to find this out in California very quickly, the disruption that's going to come, the sort of immorality of deporting huge numbers of women and children, legal immigrants, people who are here legally, legal immigrants are being targeted, the sort of overreach. There's a reason we haven't done these kinds of immigration raids in recent times because very few of us are carrying documents on our body right now that prove that we're here legally in the United States.

Our ID system doesn't do that. So any of you, if you happen to be in a place where a raid happened, if you didn't have your passport on you, could be detained and you would be held until you could prove you were a citizen. And many of you, that may be your birth certificate is in some other city and it has to get Fed

X'd and you know, all this stuff. There's a reason that we haven't done this the way they're doing it now, the crudeness of it, the sloppiness of it and so on. The third is I do think an unexploited area is the savage attack on healthcare and medicine and science, which is, you know, Atul Gawande tweeted out this morning that the way that we build our flu shots in the fall come from information we get about flu in Asia in the spring. So we track flus in Asia in the spring, build our flu shots, which protect seniors

and young people and everything else. That whole system has been completely shut down. There's gonna be no flu shots this fall, unless something dramatic happens within the next few days. Donald Trump, according to these, what we're doing, shutting down the medical stuff here at USC and other places, people are going to start dying because of this quickly. And you know, the response to the avian flu, we can go on and on and on.

I think this is another area of enormous opportunity for us to sort of drive a wedge because I think Republicans are the pro-life party and they want people to live, right? And then finally the economy. And I think as I went through, and so I do think he's dramatically overreached. I think they've over, you know, in the very kind of crude Trumpian way, right? To your point, he feels he has a mandate,

he's not running again, he's gonna do his stuff. And we'll see. I mean, according to Reuters and their weekly polling, Donald Trump's job approval in the last week dropped nine points in the first week. Not every other poll has had that. I want to be clear about that, but it was a single poll. And so if he starts losing altitude, if there starts to be the kind of rebellion out in the real world against these, you know, in agricultural communities and all sorts of

places that you could see, I think that the Republicans are going to have to wonder about whether they can continue to pursue this agenda when they've got such a fragile majority in the House. But we'll see. Ryan's last question for you. What's the most difficult part of the White House Chief of Staff's job right now? Well, I mean, it's just, it's managing all the personalities, number one. And number two, I mean, the President used to come to me and say, you're the chief of staff. I said, hang on a second.

I'm the chief of staff. You're the chief of staff. And that's tough because the president, he is from 5.30 in the morning until midnight, going and going and going and going. And it's not this idea of executive time sitting around the White House. I mean, it's true, maybe the day doesn't start officially, you know, until 9, 30, 10 o'clock, but he's going all morning and all night.

And he takes calls from every, from everywhere. And he's accessible. And part of the trouble is when the president is more accessible than the chief of staff, that's tough to manage. So the last thing I want to say is I am also grateful to Bob Shrum for inviting me and Cammie. I've done this a few times. I love USC.

And it's a great excuse as well for me to check on my son. He's a sophomore at USC. My two- We gotta introduce our kids. My two nieces go to USC. And so of the four cousins, my daughter's in high school, but of the four cousins that are tight, always together, three of the four are USC. And the one wants to go to USC.

So Trojan dads. Yeah, yeah. Right. So there's a lot of tuition payment coming in. So I also appreciate it. So I've done a lot of this with the kids. I think it's important. I think it's important for all of us to have these debates

in front of the kids. Everyone up here is a patriot. They love our country. I get a little sparring a little bit, maybe a little bit too much sometimes. But I think it's good for the kids to see that people that don't agree with each other can have a debate and it's fun, we don't hate each other.

And I'm not the most popular guy to come on campus, but I do it and I usually say yes because I want the kids to see this, okay? So thank you. Thank you all very much. Thank you for joining us on Let's Find Common Ground. If you enjoyed what you heard, subscribe and rate the show five stars on iTunes or wherever you get your podcast. Follow us on social media at USCPOLFuture. And if you'd like to support the work of the center, please make a tax deductible contribution

so that we can keep bringing important voices together across differences in respectful conversations that seek common ground. Thank you.