Donald Trump's Quest for Eternal Life

0:00Do you hear that? That's sound right? That means that summer is officially here. It means that grown adults just sprint into the street for a frozen dessert shaped like a cartoon. But this summer, Mint Mobile has a better tree. Every plan including unlimited is $15 a month. And unlike Ice Cream, it won't drip down your wrist or look nothing like the picture. Does anyone have any cash? Give it a try at minemobile.com slash switch. A front payment of $45 for three months, $90 for six months or $180 for 12 month plan required. $15 per month equivalent to taxes and fees extra. New customer offer for initial plan term only greater than 50 gigabytes. MeSlow and Network is busy. See terms Spotify advertising connects you with an audience that's engaged and ready to discover your brand. Launch a campaign with Spotify ads manager. Welcome to Talking Feds, a roundtable that brings together former federal officials and special guests for dynamic discussion of the most important political and legal top. Topics of the day. I'm Harry Littman. Midterm male ballots are already on their way to voters, but President Trump is still trying to overhaul.

1:07Mellon voting as we know it and give his administration sweeping powers to determine which votes are counted. In the Pentagon, Pete Hegseth is purging more top talent and doing his best to blot out transparency. He's also finding time the Iran War notwithstanding to contemplate some lofty new political ambitions and Republicans are gathering in Dallas for a blockbuster midterm convention. Candidates are reportedly holding their breath about it afraid that the big Trump show will do more harm than good to the party's November fortunes. To discuss Trump's male and ballot assault, Hegseth's craze power plays and the Republicans high stakes Texas convention. We turn to three of the top journalists in the country and they are Emily Bazelon, a staff writer at the New York Times magazine Emily co-hosts

2:12Slates excellent political gab fest podcast and teaches at Yale Law School pleasure to see you as always. Thanks for joining Emily. Sure thing. Glad to be here. Aaron Burnett, the anchor of Aaron Burnett out front, which airs week nights on CNN and which in my view is consistently one of the most incisive shows on cable TV. Aaron also previously hosted two flagship shows for C NBC welcome back to talking feds Aaron Burnett great to be here. And Susan Glasser, a staff writer at the New Yorker where she writes a column on life in Washington and also co-hosts the magazine's Washington roundtable. Thanks so much for joining thanks Eric. Great to be with you. Let's go right to the mail land maneuvers here. Maryland ballots are already going out in some states and yet Trump is trying to turn everything upside down.

3:13What is the administration's plan just to sort of set the table in broad strokes? What are they trying to accomplish? I mean, the order which Trump issued in March injects the postal service into deciding who gets a mail and ballot for the first time in history. Right, so the postal service has never done this before. It always just let state and local election officials decide which voters were eligible to receive ballots. But now the states have to submit lists to the postal service and then the postal service decides if the records match up with the ones that the postal service already has. And then there are all these technical details. The state's emissions have to have a name and address for an eligible voter. Okay, that makes sense. But also a unique barcode. And I think part of the problem here is that a lot of election offices around the country are just not set up for this. So there was a whistleblower who came forward earlier this month and said from inside the postal service that the rules the postal services plan to use means that if one barcode doesn't scan properly.

4:17And like we all know how often that can happen, then an entire bulk mailing from an election office could get rejected and be sent back. Yes, exactly. And so at the Supreme Court, they're up there saying we've got the power to do this and asking the justices to actually green light it. Can you just flesh out a bit what the legal issue before the justice is is going to be? Yeah, sure. I mean, the president, it's not his job to administer elections or decide how elections are going to be run. The constitution very clearly gives that power to the states and to Congress. And so that's the argument that Trump's order is illegal and unconstitutional. In addition to the fact that it's just completely impractical for the states to implement this with less than two months to go before the election. Let me go back to that point and bring in Aaron Susan because the whistleblowers term for what was going on here is a shit show. And there seems to be really bad limb within the services they're scrambling to try to implement if they get to implement.

5:25There's a sense here that there's going to be chaos in whatever happens, even if they don't let it go forward, that things are just completely a Kimbo in the USPS. Is this is kind of a win-win for the administration either way, either they get their actual order or things are just messed up and chaotic. And that kind of plays into Trump's hands. I mean, look, you know, this is Donald Trump's playbook, which is to say that chaos benefits him either way in many of the areas in which he sought to disrupt American government and even just sort of basic functions of the executive branch over the last 10 years. But I think you made the point here, which is a really important one, battle to already going out in North Carolina, literally starting the ball rolling so far this year. And I do think one of the trademark Trump approaches to things is to undermine confidence that government works, undermine confidence in outcomes or that the very idea that there might be a level playing field and that, you know, he seems to believe that he's always the beneficiary of that kind of uncertainty and lack of faith in the system.

6:35By the way, we should point out in this conversation that Donald Trump himself is a regular mail-in voter, in fact, already this year, even after he's already been going after the concept of mail-in voting for the 2026 elections. He himself used that to vote earlier this year in Florida, but uncertainty, confusion, Trump has a very simple way of looking at it as though he benefits from it. But I think if you talk to a lot of Republican elected officials or nonpartisan officials at the state level, they'll tell you that if that is the assumption the president has, it is not a correct assumption. There are rural counties all across this country, which are overwhelming Trump counties, where it's simply not practical for people to drive long distances to cast their ballots. Those are the election officials that I've read quoted, you know, freaking out about this. There are a lot of areas in which Donald Trump is going to essentially shoot Republicans in the foot with this campaign against mail-in balloting, and it's just such a reminder about why it is that we have a decentralized system in this vast country in the first place.

7:46It's written in the Constitution, but also it actually makes sense. Just to add to this point, Susan, when you're talking about Trump himself and how often he avails himself of mail-in voting, when you look, it's actually a bipartisan thing in terms of how Americans vote. A third of Democrats and a quarter of Republicans vote by mail, right? And in some states, it's almost exclusively vote by mail, right? If you look at states like Arizona, but Susan, you said something else when you talk to local election officials about whether this will disrupt things. One of them that's familiar to all of us, of course, into many Americans because he had stood up to Trump on voter fraud allegations is Al Schmitt, the Republican Secretary of State from Pennsylvania. And he has been adamant that the mail-in voting, even if it were to go through, would not disrupt the output of Pennsylvania elections, right? Now, of course, he wants to put out the people should have faith in the system, right? But he's very much doing that. And I think to that point, you got to layer in the simultaneous thing happening here if the goal is chaos, Susan, as you're saying, which is that DHS is now doing a voter fraud investigation surge in nine states, right?

8:50One of them is Pennsylvania, where they're saying Mark Wayne-Mollon of DHS is saying there's 14,500 non-citizens on the roles in Pennsylvania. Now, Al Schmitt says, all they've done is give me threats and a letter, I've asked for data, I've asked for information, I get absolutely nothing. If there's anything to see here, we would have seen it, right? We're open to it. But if the goal is chaos, there's so many layers to the onion, where you can create chaos and uncertainty and confusion, that it seems to be overwhelming if that's the goal. I always think of Trump's statement in early January 2021, just say there's fraud and my Republicans in Congress will take care of the rest. Some extra constitutional unprecedented kind of process and somewhere in the hubbub and bedroom, the R's emerged, even though they would legitimately have lost the vote. There's a separate fight now about whether the states can have access to the DHS verification database, but it's playing out in the Supreme Court.

9:50Overall, what are the sort of biggest stakes issues coming down the pike? I mean, I think it's just whether the election is going to be for your fair and not in November, right? There's nothing more important than that to American democracy, to where the country is right now. And so what you see Trump and his administration doing is throwing up as many potential obstacles for the election running smoothly as they can think of. And it's a real shame because actually we have an election administration system that has worked well, really is state and local based. There are questions you can raise about whether that kind of federalist approach is the right one and whether there should be more national uniformity. But right now it seems like an incredible favor to the country that the federal government actually doesn't have these powers. So really this is in the hands of the Supreme Court and I'm sure the justices most of them are not excited about being in a position where it's really essential for them to stand up to the president.

10:56Right? I mean, they've done that a few times in some noteworthy cases in the last year on some of Trump's tariffs and birthright citizenship and independence of the federal reserve. But they've also gone along with him lots and lots of times and so you know there they are. Their new term hasn't even started yet and now they're really on the hook for protecting the election in November. Yeah, well, if they're surprised by that, then they weren't following the plot. Donald Trump, he didn't hide this. And in fact, what's really interesting to me is how focused he's been since the second he returned to office in 2024 on doing everything he could to. You know, change the playing field for the 2026 elections to rewrite the rules to take as much federal power as possible to undermine confidence like he actually started this 2026 midterm campaign and essentially saying that the vote was going to be rigged unless he won from the second he returned to office. That's a difference in magnitude and volume from Trump from before right now is we all know he's any election.

12:02He's ever been connected with in any remote way. He said in advance that would be rigged in order I guess to preempt against the idea that he could lose fair and square anything. But he didn't do this in his first term acting so early and in such a structural way. You know, they tried this unprecedented redistricting Trump went after redistricting and pressured Republican governors and state legislatures to rewrite the districts in a way that has never happened. Before to tilt the playing field people who understand this better than me now think that that probably you know maybe somewhere between a 10 to 15 seed advantage for Republicans that they would not have otherwise had. Although there's some question about that because if it's really an anti Republican year. You know, they may have been overconfident and overreached in some of those districts in South Texas, for example. So one redistricting to the mail and ballots and he's you know focused on that for a long time despite please from many Republicans not to do that.

13:05Three, just general, I would say undermining of confidence and now you raise this question of the Department of Homeland Security right and the question of immigration agents. That's the other front here and it suggests right that there's a kind of pre-election strategy of changing the rules suppressing the vote. There's an election day strategy which I think people are really worried about you know are they going to scare people in heavily democratic urban areas into thinking that armed you know ice thugs are going to come the way we see some of these shock videos in airports with you know people literally being dragged away from their spouses or their children in the middle of airports is that the kind of scene that Donald Trump is going to stage for us. In November or is it just that he's going to scare us that he might do that in order to spread the vote so there's an election day scenario and then of course there's a post election day scenario and frankly that's in Washington where I hear the most concern from people and that is hairy that if it's close enough and again we don't know that it would be but let's just say that enough races are not called or not overwhelmingly clear what the results are you know what could Donald Trump do as he did after the 2020 election.

14:23Including asserting crazy as shit right like I think we just need to underscore for people that it's not like there needs to be a legitimate legal theory of the gays here because what Trump did after losing the election quite clearly I mean wasn't even the closest election like we live through the 2000 election that was a close election 2020 was not a historically close election. Crazy crazy legal scenarios used by Donald Trump to challenge it nonetheless and millions of people today still prefer Donald Trump's lies about 2020 even though they're completely far fetched and based on nothing to you know a pretty straightforward truth so there's then that after the election scenario and the you know there is some precedent in Congress unfortunately for a majority refusing to seat members of Congress of the other party. After close elections and so that would be the fear if it's close enough to have a scenario like that. Shichou is seeming too weak award let me lob in a few just legal points first on this last one I've done some of that post election work it is incredibly compressed in time and he can just blow

15:33and blow V8 something that just people believe enough and the legal system is not nimble enough to actually take care of it that comes from you know Bush v Gore and all these all these fast play out on the thing that's before the Supreme Court they have tried to say now it's push comes to shove what's your legal basis here and the administration said oh we're not regulating the election this is just like envelope design and the like like as you do with cremated remains but there's no way around it and the solicitor general has had to come forward with the Trump canard of terrible fraud in the land etc and what will the Supreme Court do because it seems to me the cleanest way to invalidate this all is to say there's no fraud in the land your whole premise doesn't make sense but you have some awfully strong pro executive power jox who don't want a second guess what the president says and I think this one could be down the middle okay you mentioned this troops at the polls your network Aaron has has given some mixed messaging we have on the one hand a supposed reassurance from a pretty high person at DHS no we won't we won't do it but then they seem to be leaving room for you know sending in troops and

17:00sending in troops at the last minute if that happens what what's the whole impact on just Americans confidence in what's going on and you know what does that mean for democracy. It's incredible you know when you think about if you take a step back to say that if one of the greatest harms you could do to America would be to hurt the integrity of its elections right and that that harm has come actually from the president of the United States is one of those you know simple statements that is true and powerful in that regard. The mixed messaging point I think is a fair one Harry and well you know let's just lock in right the senator has been sending notes to the headset and general can of the joint chiefs to say well will you commit to not sending troops military troops national guard troops of any sort to the polls now I accept has refused thus far to respond to senator slock and general can though did respond. And his response you know it's interesting here if you want to look at this is opening the door closing the door he said the joint force has no plans to send any uniform troops and as a guard or otherwise to polls and then went on to say that there are no plans for the military to seize ballots voting machines or any other election material.

18:07So it's definitive but of course it's no plants right so what happens when you receive an order right so then you get that secondary question and sort of someone like general can saying I will defy the president of the United States. If such an order comes which is not going to say ahead of time people are going to be satisfied and we're going to be left with this question mark of what's really going to happen and then of course as you point out your appointed leadership at the Pentagon hexeth doesn't even acknowledge at least at this point that that request to clarify this came in well Harry I would be interested in both you and Aaron on this question. I actually found can statement to be very weak rather than reassuring because I think that there is law and he has legal advisors as the chairman of the joint chiefs and had he meant to be really reassuring in that statement strikes me that he would have had a sentence or two in there that says like you know there is neither any precedent for this nor is there you know any constitutional role envisioned for the United States.

19:16The United States military and domestic affairs or something like that look I really agree 18 USC 392 it says you can't do it and I also that I plan there's no plans to do it is like item plan at the moment to run for president. Right. No, I actually found that that statement I felt like it was misconstrued to be honest and I found it to be a deeply upsetting statement but you know that's just me. I mean it seems like this should be such an obvious red line and yet as you're pointing out maybe it will erode like so many others and just having to contemplate that is deeply frustrating and sad right. I think again you know what what I learned from the 2020 election experience unfortunately was that a lot of critics of Donald Trump nonpartisan as well as you know within both parties have been way too sanguine about the strength of our institutions and you know what I learned is that not that the institutions help but that we were extremely close calling that we were one vice president and one chairman of the joint chiefs and we were in the same position as the president.

20:24I think that the president of the joint chiefs and one acting attorney general away from something so bad that even now six years later you know the prospect of those things happening that almost happened in 2020 we can't really wrap our arms around and I think that Trump's opponents and definitely Democrats and Congress have failed to take this seriously they have gone on you know Aaron show night after night and like scared the shit out of people without actually following up with meaningful actions you know during the buyout. You know during the Biden presidency when they had control of Congress they only did one thing they literally all they did was amend the electoral count act right and even there you know there were some concerns about you know they'd still left some kind of lupal they have the opportunity and did not act on other things that would have had bipartisan support and that brief window of time after the 2020 election Demacle with Trump where they could have you know tightened up other things they could have clarified other Uncleared parts of federal law they could have done a lot of things that would have made us less concerned about what Trump is doing right now they chose not to do that Democrats for six years at least have had very apocalyptic rhetoric yeah about

21:38The threats to our elections in the threats to democracy and they have not followed that up with actions now of course they you know it's they don't control either how so I'm not seeing they could have done anything in the last two years but Dan Kane is a good example of where it's it's the people as much as the institutions and you know my reporting from inside the Pentagon strongly suggests that this is not a man with the same kind of moral core or clarity or Willingness to speak truth to power I think the debacle in the Middle East is a good example of that he clearly people close to him leaked self serving accounts suggesting that no he's not such an idiot that he didn't know you know about the straight Of form moves but at the same time the actions of the military strongly suggest that they made some important miscalculations that can't be purely blamed just on to hold Trump so I don't know I'm just very concerned about that aspect of it no no no make sense Okay if you don't know more thoughts about the mail and stuff we have mentioned the name of the secretary of war as he likes to be called pete oxide we've had a series of pretty out there you know wigged out policies he gives poly grass to talk commanders once everyone to take testosterone test he's purging general in the middle of war right and left

23:04You know Pete Hague says what the hell discuss I mean you know it just seems like Hague says vision of the military is this like macho persona right this very shallow Instagram version of his job and then undermining everybody who he thinks isn't personally loyal to him and lots of black people and lots of women And it doesn't seem to matter how much that undermines the preparedness of the military for the huge challenges the administration is throwing at it he just seems to be pursuing this agenda which at least from the outside and maybe you have some inside reporting Susan it just seems totally destructive and kind of bewildering and the fact that there are so many leaks from within the military and the Pentagon is itself like a huge cry for alarm right I mean that is like the opposite of normal You know the non concur leak that came which was of you know top generals and admirals who basically you know classified document do not concur with the war continuing that they say it is having dramatic effects on U.S. readiness both overseas and at home right the fact that that leaked is really stunning and it didn't just leak that it happened it leaked who they were right so we now know that you've got the head of the European command the Indo Pacific command the southern command the chief of naval operations all saying that the war should not be a threat to the war

24:27continue rights a leak that has in and of itself negative national security implications for the United States right but obviously there are people within the Pentagon to your point Emily who now believe that it is important for this to get out there and you are seeing so much that I like to say when we look at this every day if you put your shoe on the other foot and you said if we were reporting this about Vladimir Putin's military in Moscow and he loses his army secretary his army chief of staff he loses his air force chief of staff you you have all of this going on you have a purge of leadership we would be talking about well gosh it's all falling apart Putin's falling apart is he leaving is there going to be a coup that would be the conversation except we're talking about the United States of America so sometimes I try to remind myself if we were talking about this about one of America's chief adversaries what would we be saying and it does give you some perspective about what a front moment it is it's very destabilizing for an institution that by definition the US military is extremely not just hierarchical but very focused on stability regular order right you have your assignment for a number of years one of the things that hexeth has been doing

25:41with regularity and was just reported that he's done another version of it but he did this earlier as well as dipping into the promotion list and taking off names of kernels who were selected to become the next core of generals he just did that but he's done that previously what is he doing he's trying to have long term affects of reshaping who is a general officer in the US military and changing those criteria so that long after he and Donald Trump are gone they would have reshaped the leadership core of the military so I don't just dismiss it as the sort of public objects of you know he is the poster child for toxic masculinity and he is a family pointed out you know with his stupid push up videos and you know pull up videos I did speak with a general who said you know absolutely he does not have the correct form to be doing those pull ups

26:42but you know so he's got the optics of this kind of toxic masculinity but I think like what Trump in general it's too easy to dismiss that and not look at the structural damage that's being done and I think what they're doing in terms of eliminating and eliminating an entire generational cadre of leaders in the services is something that hasn't gotten enough attention number one because we are also focused on the short term debacle of the war in the Middle East that has no clear exit and you know that does take us right back to the midterm elections as we're having this conversation oil once again hitting $100 barrel and that affects prices for just about everything in the US not just prices for energy or how much you know it takes to fill a bar our cars and you know there's pretty much nothing that Trump can do to dig out of that particular opportunity crisis between now and the election so that's where you see him and his party leaning hard on the essentially the like don't believe your own lying eyes you know that didn't work so well for Joe Biden they don't have a message problem they have a problem problem here right so I think the fear then is that it just all leads to Trump being more likely to escalate not less and you know that's that's the worry when I'm talking about that

28:08that's the worry when it comes to the elections you know the bigger the whole is in and he doesn't have conventional tools to dig out of it and remember that he's is completely personally dependent on Trump he has no support within his building he has very little you know thin support among Republican senators who you know confirmed him while knowing full well that it was a disastrous mistake and I just I think that we should keep that in mind because it strikes me of all the cabinet members he's the most willing to go where others would not read and that he has unfortunately at the Pentagon more ability to do that than than any other cabinet secretary can I follow up on just that because it feels like his support even among Republicans is starting to a road he's done spectacular blue bishy responsible things but is his job nevertheless secure just because the maximum leader likes him like even his transgressive side or in fact you know I think about when the Republican started murmuring about Christy Nome say do you think he is in some sense on the chopping block maybe wishful thinking by Republicans but you know you hear more of them I don't know Susan if this is the case with you but more of them now than ever before saying that they think sort of the midterms is a line that Trump will hold the line until then and then ex-eth will be gone by the end of the air now

29:35you hear that more than you ever heard that before but again I think it's important to say well I don't know that that's informed but it is chatter right and chatter sometimes builds into a self fulfilling prophecy of its own so whether it becomes that or not there's definitely more wishful thinking among people who wouldn't have gone there before on hexet then you've ever heard before that he would be gone by the end of the year. Let me just follow up the stars and stripes issue you been following quite closely so we have congress that has provided for the editorial independence of stars and strides members one of the three of them who are fire says I don't work for the pen and gone I work for the newspaper but at least so far they you know hexeth has been able to barrel in and and kick them out essentially for exercising independent editorial judgment tell us about the case a little and where it's going and whether it's had a significant impact on the culture of the military which was used at getting the real scoop.

30:36I mean stars and stripes is an important right journalistic organization that any of us who are involved in covering national security or or going on location would you stars and stripes is essential you know I spoke to Eric Slavin who is the editor on the day he was fired and I think his job was sort of on the floor right and it had come as a result at least initially of a CBS interview which which had aired but you know he's absolutely talked about reporting they done on a whole variety of issues things like troops sleeping in cars with their air conditioning on because barracks didn't have air conditioning that was that that was at a base in the United States but I mean to give you an example that this isn't just related to the Iran war where they have done important crucial reporting and they see their mandate as to stand up for the men and women in America's armed forces to write to make sure that their leaders are held to account and obviously right now the judges ruling against Eric and saying that well there's no evidence that that you're losing your job and this this happening is going to affect others who work there and chill their ability to speak out freely even though of course they've also fired them at least correspond and you know there've been at least three people.

31:50I find that hard to believe because it seems to me to be sort of a statement of the obvious that people who work there have now been put on notice and are afraid I speak as journalists that I don't understand that obviously you all have the legal expertise on where this likely goes from there but just on its face where it stands as if it's most latest doesn't add up journalistically. plainly I'll say and just you know as a as another legal nerd point is what he's done so far and he emphasized that the Trump appointed judge is not grant a preliminary injunction but they're still going to go to trial but look a point that's just not seems to have been missing in this so far is it's Congress that created stars and strison created its political independence so it's just one other instance of the administration you know bull in a china shop just ignoring this empowering what Congress has done the last decade again and again made yesterday's joke into today's news from the trip down the escalator so maybe we end with hexath with these murmurs that he's considering running for president in 2020 eight he's see any kind of traction for a hexath for 48th president movement.

33:06I went to Iowa for me I'm the guy who lost the war in around. I'm not here I'm not here in a big acclaim okay I wanted to end with a little discussion of a straight forward political story. I'm the Republicans have never had a midterm convention the dames last had one in like the 70s they started to do it in 86 and the DNC chair said no no no look it's an expensive distraction and could just become a quote place for mischief. What are the Republicans hoping to accomplish what's the hope. I mean the hope is that you present an attractive pictures to voters and you rise in the polls that seems like the reason to do it the sort of underlying reality here those seems like trump wants to do it because he loves nothing more than a spectacle and attention and then even though he is dragging everybody down in the general election a lot of republican candidates are either so indebted to him.

34:14Or obligated or scared of him because of his power in the primary endorsements that they're going along with it and showing up he also has huge sums of money that he controls right for election spending and so that also must be making them a lot of them feel like they don't have a choice and so I think they're going to hope that despite the president's like real popularity problems right now that somehow this is going to go well and reassure voters and Trump is going to pull out some of the better political instincts that he has had at least before he won reelection and that somehow it will help them win in November that's got to be what they're hoping. Interesting that you've got several GOP reps not even going right I mean saying Brian Fitzbackrick others and now not all of them are saying oh I'm not going because I can't stand for Trump and no I mean they're scheduling issues and other sorts of reasons to say they're not going but you can see that it is it's not necessarily the place you want to be and be seen.

35:19What a funky relationship he currently has with the party some have grumbled kind of a record that it feels like he almost wants them to lose what he has this hammer and I think we've seen before how you know he continues to exercise some power from people who don't want to be outcast even though after their life in politics is over. What about his weird relationship with the party as of now I mean the party is Donald Trump I mean this is one where I think it's the sort of the fantasy that has persisted over 10 years that somehow you know there's the point at which you know there's that elusive jailbreak and then Republicans just go back to being Republicans again as opposed to you know Trump begins or whatever I don't buy it I think that the party is Donald Trump and vice versa. You've seen his response earlier this year as various internal fights have erupted within the sort of maga base over things like foreign policy and you know the party of no new wars starting war things like that and yet Trump has sort of come out in the middle of those fights and said hey maga is whatever I say it is and more or less I think that is actually where we're at for example you know we were talking about Hegseth and the you know the Republicans are more critical of him you know I had just had.

36:39Great conversation the other day with the Republican strategist former very senior official not a Trumpist who said you know people talk about Donald Trump and Taco Trump always chickens out you know it's Tom Tillis always chickens out he's the taco you know these guys want to get mileage off of you know being critical or concerned you know about Hegseth concerned about RFK junior who had any idea that this guy was going to be anti vaccine you know I wouldn't have voted for him if I don't know if I'm going to be a little bit more. Well maybe I still would have you know I mean so number one is to say it the convention reinforces that it's Donald Trump's party number two Donald Trump has one political playbook that he's run for 10 years now and it's gotten him into the White House twice you know much to our collective amazement right and that playbook is to not give a shit about people like us and to inspire a passionate following around a third party.

37:39So that's a part of the country and you know in this country a passionate minority has been able to put a guy like Donald Trump into the White House twice and so I think he has a rational theory of the case actually about this midterms which is that there's not much else that might excite Republicans to come out to the polls except Donald Trump because he's he's hollowed out their identity and they aren't anything except for a whole lot of things Harry but it does strike me that you know that's the one play that Trump has in politics is to make it all about him and that that has worked for him in presidential elections it's a much much harder sell for a whole variety of reasons in a midterm election when he's more unpopular than any official except for Nixon within days of his resignation so you know look it's not complicated Donald Trump wants to camera on him at all times.

38:39He doesn't even give a shit you know it makes you want to cry you read these playbook you know exclusive item you know like the message for the Republicans in the midterm is this thing if only Donald Trump will stay on message they say well guess what you know I spoiler alert right of course he's our message for him the message the medium it's all the same thing it's it's himself and there are a lot of Democrats who are like great if Republicans and Donald Trump wants to make this election right. I'm not sure if he's a referendum on him it's only good news for us. How much do you guys think he really cares about winning the midterms I mean right like he's it's not like he's completely oblivious to it because all the threats to the election on the back end wouldn't be happening if he was just really blase about it but he's doing none of the political moves that are just so obvious right I mean it's like political malpractice every day and there's this other path was just like tone it down talk about it.

39:39Talk about you know the popular aspects of immigration enforcement don't do tariffs just quiet down on the Iran war or maybe you know don't start it at all to begin with and there's like this path this presidency that I realize is completely counter to reality but that presidency exists and I think many more Americans would have been supportive of it and we would be seeing a totally different picture for the midterms. It's amazing you think about things that he's doing and he spends time I mean the name changes just being an obvious example you know Lake Ontario and and how that has stuck with people and somehow broken through in a way that the Gulf of America did not the other day I was talking to the mayor of as we go New York which is right on Lake Ontario. He's a Trump voter and I mean he just said this hits at our heart this is who we are this is our identity three or 400 years old we have a Ontario Convention Center in Ontario this Ontario it is it is our identity it is who we are and then you went on to talk about the drastic drop in tourism from Canada right this is Trump territory and what is breaking through to people is something just deeply personal that's I mean I don't even think I'm forced air is the work right I mean this is out of the world.

40:52Let's compare enjoy even though the era of Black trump or black theta hope but at the end of the end of the day everything is close or hit by you in wonder say weeks or not but for their life let's say decide what the strength of people that is right not just people on that they are ahead of trade follow hold opening close when they are trading or do you ever think in like this naturally up Mark Carney on the hockey on the hockey rink, then that's good, right? As long as my name spelled right, it's good. Just talk about me. I think he thinks he can do both, Aaron. I love, I was so glad you brought up the, you know, Lake Ontario thing. It's just such a classic example of where Trump is out right now. But I think it's also though, I actually believe that he does care about the elections or he wouldn't have spent the last two years of his presidency trying to change an outcome where he worried that he was due to lose these. I don't think he liked being impeached

41:55twice by Congress even though there's a strong argument to be made that the effect of that was essentially to break the back of impeachment as a meaningful constraint on the American presidency. I think that he was, he understood that that was a sort of a historical black mark, even if he overcame it in terms of the Senate vote. And there's no reasonable prospect even if Democrats win both houses that he would be actually convicted in the Senate, the idea of two thirds of the Senate, you know, it's just not practical in this very polarized country and moment that we're in. So I think he doesn't like the idea of being impeached. I think he doesn't like the idea of all these subpoenas, although I definitely think he would be very aggressive about flouting them and not cooperating in any way with any congressional investigations. But my, my Trumpology, you know, informed guests, you know, and it's only a guess, obviously, is that Trump thinks he can have it both ways, that he could

42:57have engaged in the conduct that he engaged in after the 2020 election and on January 6th and have been reelected president of the United States and convinced millions of people, many of whom he views as chumps and idiots for the mere fact that he convinced them of something that was so manifestly untrue. I think he thinks that there are a lot of freaking idiots in this country who he can convince of almost anything at this point because the record shows that to be the case. And the playbook that he ran in 2024 against Kamaharis was very effective and he's actually doing a version of that right now, right? He's actually still talking about immigration, transgender, this and that and the other thing and, you know, your kids are, you know, going to go to school and come back at different gender. And then you know, the idea that Democrats are crazy, wackadoodle, leftist, communist, socialist. That's basically what he's still saying and, you know, he was reelected as president.

43:58And then the big question that we'll all find out the answer to in November is whether that has just worn thin, right? Now you're the president, prices are still up. You started this war that nobody understands the purpose of, like, et cetera. Totally. And that should go to the heart of Maga's previous support of him. All right. It is now time for a spirited debate brought to you by our sponsor Total Line and more. Each episode you'll be hearing an expert talk about the pros and cons of a particular issue in the world of wine, spirited and beverages. Thank you, Harry. In today's spirited debate, the question bubbles up around the difference between champagne and sparkling wine. And we're more than happy to explain. First things first, champagne is a type of sparkling wine, but not all sparkling wine is champagne. We could leave it at that, but that's not our style. So here we go.

44:59A sparkling wine can only be called champagne if it comes from the region of champagne in France. Any other bubbly produced outside of champagne is called sparkling wine. In this exclusive region of northern France, three types of grapes, chardonnay, pino noir and pino manier, come together to produce what will become the champagne you know and love. Champagne production is controlled by strict laws. So all of those grapes we just mentioned must be hand picked. It's a labor of love, right? The other difference comes from the fermentation process, specifically the second fermentation process that produces champagne signature bubbles. This time-consuming fermentation takes place in the bottle and is known as the traditional method, whereas some sparkling wines are fermented in a tank. Now take a wine like Kava, which is made in the champagne method, but because it's produced outside the region of champagne, it's classified as, yep, you guessed it, sparkling wine. So if it's sparkling wine you want, total wine and more has a huge selection, including

46:02Prosecco, which comes from the Veneto region of Italy, Sekt from Austria and Germany, and Cremont, which comes from France just outside of the champagne region. But all these sparkling wines have something in common. They're amazing bottles that are available with total wine and more for you to take home, pop open and compare, not only to each other, but to champagne as well. Happy shopping and happy popping. Cheers! Thanks to our friends at Total Wine and more for today's a spirited debate. An overall question that all three of your comments serve up is one way that things are possibly different, Susan, from the last 10 years, is we're now looking at the end stages of a presidency when a president would normally turn to burnishing legacy, but based on how things continue after him. And there is a way of making the case that the only thing he cares about, even to the extent it goes against the fortunes of the Republican Party is himself and

47:07the monuments and the power plays and all that stuff. So, you know, legacy for him is more personal and Trumpian than it would be for any normal sane president. And that's what's playing out exactly now. And that's what's gotten him crosswise with so many in the party. Like, please don't come and you're killing us. And as Aaron says, I'm not going to go to this convention. So, I wonder if you see him as having distinctly Trumpian notion of his own legacy and what he's aiming for. And if that's really just separate from the fortunes of the party after him. Well, he wants, you know, his own version of eternal life, right? It's why he wants things named after himself. It's why he puts these memes out, right? It's ultimately about a desire to leave his mark, right? The monuments that he's putting up around Washington, whether it be the arch or the refusal to take the tarp off the outside of the Kennedy Center when his name came off so that he wouldn't have to possibly be

48:10confronted with what it looked like in its absence, right? That there is such a deep-seated desire, which, you know, to circle back here as Susan brought up Kim Jong-un, that we would associate with other sorts of leaders in history. He has a deep need for that. And perhaps somehow, and you know, now we're in psychological territory, right? But believes that that is how he will endure. He has said himself that if he doesn't put the monuments up, no one else will, which is fascinating, perhaps moment of self-awareness, that he believes that no one else will do it, that they will try to obliterate his memory, and that he must be the one to make it so solid. So, you know, who's going to take down an arch build of marble, right? That he does endure forever. At its heart, it's a deep psychology that we're talking about, it feels like. Hey, Aaron, I got to ask you, we've been debating this week in my household here and among my friends. Do you guys think that

49:10Democrats would knock down the arch? It's very unlikely that they'll knock down the ballroom because I think once you've built the bunker and all that, you know, so put the ballroom aside. If he actually manages to build the arch, do you think Democrats will knock it down? Gosh, I don't know. That's a really, it's hard to imagine such a thing, just the image of it, right? The sort of like, you know, eye for an eye of it, and yet, as you point out, the conversation out there, you know, you hear it from a former Romney advisor saying Democrats, if they win, need to see themselves as activists and dissidents, and that would be exactly the sort of thing that they would need to do. It's going to be a fight for the soul of the party. And right now, in a sense, as you point out, because they're unix, because they don't have power, they can say whatever they want to say, there's not actually any accountability for it. So, I guess the answer is I don't know, but I know the image of it would be, you know, would be challenging. I mean, it's all symbolism, right? I mean, in some ways, it just seems so dramatic to tear down

50:12a monument. It's like pulling down a statue of Saddam Hussein and the spectacle that makes the country seem authoritarian. And so in a post-Trump universe, there are going to be a lot of people who say, like, let's not go there. It's too dramatic. On the other hand, it's the heart of Washington, right? Which is like, as a city controlled by Democrats, huge majority, or people really going to want to have to feel like there's, and it depends maybe just on whether it turns out to be the monstrosity in terms of architecture and placement that it seems like it could be. I mean, placement wise, it is a monstrosity. Putting aside aesthetic preference, something of that size in that place is guaranteed to loom over the consciousness of the city. And that's exactly the reason that he chose it. I don't know if you guys have been here recently or gone across Memorial Bridge, where he's already gilded these gigantic statues at the base of the bridge. And I had the

51:14experience of going across the bridge a few weeks ago, or maybe a month or so ago. And I hadn't realized that that was there. And I was like, looking down at my phone, and then I looked up in the Uber at the exact moment that this gigantic gilded thing was like right in my face. And I actually and then you are blinded. I actually screamed out loud. And the Uber drivers like, wait, are we in an accident? And I was just talking with a friend yesterday who had had the exact same experience. She hadn't been across Memorial Bridge, you know, while it happened to look up at the exact wrong moment, same things screamed out loud. And you know, the Uber drivers like, what's happening? I cannot overstate the extent to which, you know, these are these gigantic, unsightly, golden things already in a very disruptive place. And what they're marring, right? I mean, ugly as shit, but also this is completely a facing the view of Arlington Cemetery. That's right. The White House, the ballroom even worse, the serene neoclassical people's house, just completely. I just got to say on your views, and I want to make two points. I mean,

52:18there's some precedent, right? And Soviet Russia or the Confederate battles or whatever. But it's a bigger point that when he leaves, it's not going to be like, you know, eight, nineteen, eighty nine or Nuremberg trials. They'll still be airports named after them and roads in a real, it will be if they take it on a really big fight. We'll see, but they're going twenty four hours a day. All right. We're just about out of time. Really interesting discussion. We just have time for our five words or a few or feature when we take a question and we often answer five words or fewer. So the question is, and as well as this whole renaming frenzy that you've mentioned on tarot. So what's the next thing that Donald Trump will rename five words or a fewer? He's got an airport, but it's not in the state that he thinks is the greatest state. Things that's in New York, that's his home. He wants something there. He'd

53:21love the Kennedy airport. If you come to Trump airport, if not, he'll go with the George Washington Bridge as the Donald Day Trump bridge. There you go. It's going after Penn Station too. Anyone? Why not Niagara Falls? You're Chinatown. Yeah. At the town. That's pretty good. Okay, no, I just have one word. Everything. Everything. You know, nothing that he wouldn't consider. It's what pops into his head. It's not like he woke up two weeks ago on Tuesday and was like, I'm going to rename Lake Ontario, the Lake of America. This is literally the amount of time from brain fart to like, you know, tweet is very, very short here. So it could be anything and everything. And I'm going to think that it isn't hand the most and that he, it'll finally occur to him. The double Mick Trump with cheese. Thank you so much, Emily, Aaron, and Susan. And thank you very much listeners for tuning in

54:24to Talking Fins. For those who celebrate, Shana Tova. If you like what you've heard, please tell a friend to subscribe to us on Apple podcasts or wherever they get their podcasts. Word of mouth is the best way to support the show. You can watch this episode and all other forth coming round tables on YouTube. But if you prefer your Talking Feds audio only no worries. This feed still carries a fine tune version made just for listeners. You can check us out on Substack at harrylitman.substack.com where I post essays every week about Trump's attacks on the rule of law and where paid subscribers can get episodes completely ad free. You can also subscribe to us on YouTube where we are posting my daily takes on top legal stories. Talking Feds is produced by Luke Kriegen and Katie Abshah, associate producers, Becca Havien

55:28and Akshah's Turbailu, sound engineering by Matt McCartle, Rosie Don Griffin, David Lieberman, Hansa Mahadrenathan, Emma Maynard and Halle Nekker are our contributing writers. Our music, as ever, is by the amazing Philip Glass. Talking Feds is a production of Delito LLC, I'm Harry Litman. Talk to you later. Starting a business can seem like a daunting task unless you have a partner like Shopify. They have the tools you need to start and grow your business. From designing a website, to marketing, to selling and beyond, Shopify can help with everything you need.

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