Imagine you're President Donald Trump.

Or maybe you're one of Donald Trump's

political adviserss or his kids, one of

the ones who doesn't want all those

crypto and AI trades you've been making

to start getting investigated by

congressional Democrats.

And so you're there and you're planning

out the state of the union.

What would you do? Well, you'd probably

start with a problem that you need to

solve. The issues that got you elected

in 2024 have turned into huge

vulnerabilities in 2026. Go back a year.

Go back to February 2025. Immigration is

your strongest issue. All those weeny

liberals looking at your approval

rating, you can see it right there in

Nate Silver's poll tracker. Your net

approval on immigration is around 10%.

That means 10% more of the country

approves of the job you're doing than

disapproves of it. Suck it, liberals.

Fast forward a year, your net approval

on immigration is negative 13%.

Immigration has gone from your strongest

issue to a reason the country dislikes

you. Or take the economy. In early

February of 2025, you were doing pretty

well, plus 7%. But then came the

tariffs. Now your net approval on the

economy is negative 17%. Negative 70%.

And it gets worse. On trade, it is

negative 23%. on inflation negative 30%.

Negative 30%.

So now it is State of the Union time.

You have this rare opportunity to

address the entire political system, the

entire country. So what do you do? Do

you tell the American people you're

working on it? That you know there's

disruption and tumult. It's just going

to take some time for all these policies

to pay off. Do you tell the American

people you hear them and you're going to

change course? you've got a new plan. Or

do you tell the American people that

they're wrong, that everything is

actually going great, that they should

believe you, not their lion eyes and

empty wallets and the videos of chaos in

their streets?

>> Back up.

>> At the State of the Union, Donald Trump

decisively chose door number three. At

over an hour and 45 minutes, this was

the longest State of the Union in

recorded history, he had a lot of time

to make his case. And what Trump said

again and again was that the American

people don't know what they're talking

about.

>> Today, our border is secure. Our spirit

is restored.

Inflation is plummeting. Incomes are

rising fast. The roaring economy is

roaring like never before. And our

enemies are scared. Our military and

police are stacked and America is

respected again, perhaps like never

before.

>> I'm not going to go through a fact check

of the president here. Donald Trump is

not a truthful man. People did not vote

for him believing him a truthful man.

They voted for him believing he could

solve their problems. But what I've

increasingly wondered over the past year

isn't whether Trump is being truthful

with us,

but whether he's being truthful with

himself or whether the people around him

are. What does Trump know? What doesn't

he know? He presides over these cabinet

meetings. You can watch them where one

agency head after another tells him how

great he is doing, how unbelievably well

his presidency is going.

>> Thank you for your leadership, for your

boldness, for your clarity, for common

sense. He doesn't read lengthy briefing

books. We know that he doesn't preside

over a normal policy process. He

communicates on a social media site he

owns is filled with people who like him.

He throws himself parades. He has

adopted the clichéed authoritarian habit

of forcing people to sit through these

record-length speeches. And yes, it is

an amazing show of dominance to make

Speaker Mike Johnson nod and clap and

grin for that long. But the question

here is, what if Trump believes all of

it? What if he believes everybody in

that room, or at least Republicans, like

nodding and grinning and clapping for

that long?

What usually saves authoritarians is

their control over the system, their

power, their ability to repress

elections, opposition parties, the

media. If you have enough power, you can

bend politics to fit your reality. But

Trump isn't an authoritarian. Not yet.

Not that kind. He's a wannabe

authoritarian who doesn't have the power

to engage in that kind of systematic

repression. He just lost a major tariff

case at the Supreme Court. Jimmy Kimmel

is still on the air. Americans are

thankfully unafraid to criticize their

president. And Republicans are losing

elections left and right. And in that

world, it is a big political problem for

this president and for the Republican

party that Donald Trump is lecturing the

American people rather than listening to

them. Because what Trump spent almost

two hours saying at the State of the

Union must have been music to Hakeem

Jeffrey's ears.

Trump said he has no answer to the

problems that are dragging down his

presidency. He said he doesn't need an

answer to the problems dragging down his

presidency because there are no

problems. Everything is going great. And

who around Donald Trump will dare tell

him otherwise?

Joining me now to interrogate me about

Trump's State of the Union and what, if

anything, it means for American politics

is my editor, Aaron Retica. Aaron,

welcome back to the show.

>> Hi, Ezra.

>> Where do you want to start?

>> I want to start at the very end. After

Trump spoke, before we heard from

Abigail Spanberger, I was listening to

the feed that kept going after he was

done as he moved through the house or

move through the capital and it was

absolutely incredible. Everybody was

like, "A boy, you're the best. That was

incredible. Amazing." And then there was

a truly stellar moment when someone said

that was a home run, sir. Something like

that. And then someone else or maybe the

same person was like it was a grand

slam.

Whatever else that was, it wasn't a

grand slam. In his speech, he seemed to

be living in a reality that is not the

one we're actually living in. What do

you make of that disjunction? Like he's

in one place and America is in another.

I think he believes his own

and I think that is an important

skeleton key at this point to

understanding the Trump administration.

You remember when the times times

opinion in fact published in the first

administration

the famous incognito we are the

resistance inside the Trump

administration.

>> Of course I heard that

>> piece. Yes.

>> Yeah. And it reflected like that was an

extreme version of something that was

more broadly happening inside that

administration which is that there were

a lot of people who were not bought in

in a loyalist sycopant way to Trump

himself. They were serving under him.

They understood themselves as serving

partially him partially the country.

They understood him as having some good

ideas and some bad ones. And so there

was some kind of normal structure around

him that was built to somewhat restrain

him.

>> Can I interrupt you for one second? You

know what's so interesting about that?

The guy who wrote that and of course

he's out and about talking about it now

was in DHS which I think is Department

of Home Department of Homeland Security

which I think is very significant

actually in terms of what you're talking

about right the people who were there

were in some ways the people who were

the most skeptical.

>> Yes. And if you were looking at the

first State of the Union, the State of

the Union a year into Trump's first

term, who would the speaker of the house

have been? Been Paul Ryan, another

senior Republican who did not owe his

career to Donald Trump, who has not

fully bought in on on Trump. Trump has

fully taken over the Republican party.

His administration is truly stacked with

loyalists.

There is a complete submission all

around him to the rules of winning his

favor, which is to say, you tell him

things he wants to hear. You flatter

him. I thought one of the both funny and

dark refrains of the speech was where he

kept saying that, oh, it wasn't his idea

to name the website Trump RX. It wasn't

his idea to name the savings accounts

Trump accounts. wasn't he didn't say

this in the speech, but he said

elsewhere. It wasn't his idea to put his

name on the Trump Kennedy Center. People

around him know one way that you curry

favor with him is you name things after

him and present it to him. And he's

like, "Oh, what? Me? For me? You want to

name it after me?"

And when the world around you has bought

into manipulating you that way

and you have an ego like he already has

and you don't have rigorous modes of

thought or policy process, it is

actually impossible that you will

maintain a normal connection to reality.

It's hard enough to do that just as any

president. But he is not going to be

able to do it. And sure enough, he is

not doing it.

>> Yeah. It's even true of the speech

writers, right? They can't come and say,

"Oh, do a Carter type speech where you

acknowledge the pain people are

suffering, where you talk about

problems." He loves to talk about bloody

difficulties, but we'll we'll get to

that later because it was really a

bloodfilled speech. But they can't do

that, right? they can't present him with

material that is at variance with his

conception of the world. And so it makes

actually their task very difficult. And

it was I mean if we're talking about

whether it was like boring or

interesting, it was not super

interesting, right? I I thought it was

in a way because here's what I think. I

think we do a bad job in the media,

particularly the punditry side of the

media, covering the State of the Union

because we we treat the State of the

Union as if it is a

hermetically sealed message.

>> We're isolationists about the State of

the Union. Yes. that every American

citizen or non-citizen for that matter

will live inside and form impressions

based on the number of Americans who

will sit through an entire state of the

union. To say nothing of sitting through

the longest state of the union delivered

by a president to Congress is it's not

nobody. It's going to be in the millions

of people. But what the State of the

Union ends up being, I think, is this

moment when the president sends a

single signal to the entire political

system and to more of the country than

he can normally speak to about how he

understands this moment in his

presidency and in the country and what,

if anything, he intends to do about it.

And the signal he sent last night

was that he is living in a fantasy

version of his own presidency.

That he does not recognize any of the

problems that Americans have with him.

That he has no plan to do anything about

it because he doesn't think there is any

problem to solve.

and he sent that signal to the assembled

members of I like the idea that

Republicans in Congress are cheering for

this.

They're going to lose their jobs.

There's a very very good chance and I

think it went up last night that at the

next State of the Union

>> Yeah. Mike Johnson won't be sitting.

>> Mike Johnson is not sitting behind him.

And so to me that we have this tendency

to get really caught up in the

showmanship of the State of the Union.

He had the hockey team out. He kept

bringing people out. He kept presenting

these medals. That stuff is all going to

be forgotten in 48 hours. The State of

the Union is going to be forgotten in 48

hours. What will last is the strategic

positioning the president chooses about

how to solve the country's problems and

how to solve his own problems. And the

positioning he chose was to see if lying

about them will work. But the problem

with lying about them, the problem with

treating this like a reality television

show is most Americans do not tune in to

you. And so you can't just lie to them.

>> Well, it's not just that because they

also if you tell them eggs are down

and maybe beef is coming down, but food

prices, they're up 3%. Right. People buy

the food.

>> He said rent is down.

>> I I thought that was shocking. He

actually said rent is down. Rent is not

down. Like anybody who is in the rental

market knows rent is not down. He did

cherrypick some things that are down

because there were supply chain

disruptions during the pandemic on

particular goods. But inflation it's not

crazy. It's around what it was in the

final year of Joe Biden's presidency.

And prices for Americans have not come

down. He's not done a lot to bring them

down either. But it's a hard thing for

any president to bring the price level

down. But he has neither significantly

tried nor has he succeeded. And just

telling people that you have when you

haven't

is a

dumb move. You know, Yuvuval Leven, the

conservative policy scholar, I had him

on the show month or two back. And a

point he makes that I think is very

sharp about Trump is that Trump governs

retail, not wholesale. That he governs

through these individual deals with

countries, with companies, not by doing

things that that that change policy for

the most part. all across the country.

Now, immigration is a counterexample to

this and to some degree the tariffs are

a counterex example to this, but but

something you really saw last night was

Trump bragging about a series of very

individual like usually modest policies,

some of which are not even really

policies. So, Trump RX are individual

negotiations the Trump administration

has been doing with drug manufacturers

through tariff debates and and and

negotiations. So you can get cheaper

WGOI through Trump RX because as part of

the tariff negotiations, uh, Trump is

able to extract that. It's not a crazy

move, but it's not going to allow you to

bring down prescription drug prices

across the economy. You'd actually need

to pass legislation and have Medicare do

across the board bargaining for that.

And the thing that's happening around

the Trump RX move is that he is getting

he's extracting cheaper prices on

individual drugs and then those

manufacturers are raising prices on the

other drugs to make it up. So, it's

trying to win entirely with

communication though, right? It's and

this there was a strategic point to the

speech, but also they were seeking to uh

is this a word? Memeify. I sound like

you now. Uh to create memes, to create

moments. The thing they were clearly

proudest of among all those stunts was

his little spiel about how

>> if you agree with this statement, then

stand up and show your support. The

first duty of the American government is

to protect American citizens, not

illegal aliens.

>> And then he's focused on, oh, you guys

are sitting. You guys are sitting. You

guys are sitting.

>> You should be ashamed of yourself not

standing up. You should be ashamed of

yourself.

>> Um, you don't think that will work?

>> No, I don't think anybody cares. I most

people aren't watching and most people

don't care. Um people understand why

Democrats don't like Donald Trump. They

understand why Donald Trump doesn't like

Democrats.

It one of the things you always need to

be doing in politics, particularly if

you are unpopular and the dynamics of

social media has made this harder for

both parties, is thinking about the

person who doesn't like you but could

like you. Not the person who already

likes you. not the person who already

thinks you're doing a great job,

>> right? Which was the crucial demographic

that broke for him when he beat Hillary

Clinton, right? People who didn't like

either of them ended up voting

>> and that broke for him with Joe Biden.

And the thing he's not doing right now

is giving those people anything. There's

this deep way in which Donald Trump to

me is the inverse of Joe Biden.

Joe Biden could not solve a single

problem through communication and

basically didn't try. He didn't take

credit for things. He was not really

that capable by the end of giving good

speeches. Trump is trying to solve all

of his problems through communication,

not through governing. And what you see

is that that doesn't work either. He's

doing all the things that people say,

you know, Biden should have done. He's

naming everything after himself. He's

making sure everybody knows about it.

But because most people just don't pay

that much attention to politics or to

policy, in fact, that's not doing

anything for him. People are mad about

prices. we should talk about

immigration. They're mad about

immigration and they're mad about

disorder that now Donald Trump is

causing and going piece by piece to this

deal or that deal to no tax on tips to

whatever is not going to talk him out of

it.

>> The immigration thing, there's so many

things to talk about with this. One

thing that really struck me last night

is he told many terrible stories

um about a commercial truck that badly

injured a girl who was then shown um and

he talked about the murder in Charlotte

on a light rail train of a young

Ukrainian refugee.

But he made an interesting and telling

mistake.

>> She had escaped a brutal war only to be

slain by a hardened criminal set free to

kill in America. Came in through open

borders.

>> He's saying, you know, open borders,

illegal alien did that. But that's not

true. That the guy who killed her is

from Charlotte. And what I thought was

so revealing about that is that it

showed again what's going on in his

mind, right? The default is just like

I'm gonna kick back to the thing that

got me here, right? And I this is it. I

It doesn't matter that Renee Good was

killed. It doesn't matter that Alex Prey

was killed. It doesn't matter that I had

to essentially retreat from Minneapolis

and Los Angeles actually, right? Uh all

those places because I'm just going to

go to the original thing of like these

people kill people, they're evil, etc.

>> Well, it shows two things. One is you

think about the process by which state

of the unions are normally vetted.

The amount of inter agency meeting and

making sure the president doesn't say

anything that can be untrue. The Trump

White House because it cares so little

about the fact checkers has freed itself

from that discipline and that rigor. And

so

>> that's like the understatement at this.

And so but

>> the fact that nobody stopped that from

happening,

nobody stopped him from getting

something that substantial wrong is, as

you say, telling, but it's telling about

a kind of a weakness and a vulnerability

around him, which is that they are not

doing things carefully. The the other

thing I want to note on immigration. So

immigration has gone from Donald Trump's

dominant issue. Uh if you look at his

net approval, so approval minus

disapproval at the beginning of his

term, you know, a year ago, he has a net

approval in immigration that is around

plus 10, which is very very strong for

him.

>> That's a that's a big number. Yeah. For

those of you who don't follow this

stuff,

>> it it's now flipped. It's now, you know,

it depends on the poll you look at, but

7G103.

So that's a big loss on his strongest

issue. the economy has been even worse

for him, has gone down even further. But

the thing that I think he doesn't quite

understand about immigration is weirdly

the same thing Democrats didn't

understand about crime. So late in

Biden's presidency, crime has fallen

quite a bit, violent crime in

particular. And when people talk about

the anger Americans feel about the crime

issue, there's a lot of

pointing out that, well, if you're

following the actual crime data, you

know, we've, you know, we're sort of at

a violent crime low. And it was trueish.

And and one thing that I said and that

others said at that time was that the

crime polling is picking up something

very real that is not getting that is

not getting measured in the murder rate

which is a dislike of disorder. There

was practically in in in the post.

>> It's bigger than dislike, right? It's a

recoil.

>> A recoil of disorder. But it's picking

up a reaction to disorder. There were

tent cities in, you know, major American

cities. There was fair jumping right

there. There was a lot happening

particularly post pandemic that had a a

feeling of no one is in control. And

there was very good, you know, research

on this coming out at the the end of

Biden. And immigration was part of this.

There had been a flooding. Um, partially

this was Abbott busing people around,

but there had been a flood of people

coming into the country and those people

went all around the country and you saw

it. You see it on the New York subways,

you see it around you and things feel

out of control and people don't like

what they want from their uh leaders is

just seem to be in control of events.

Donald Trump in his immigration policy

has become the bringer of disorder. When

ICE and the CBP and the National Guard

move into these cities, it brings

disorder. It leads to Americans being

shot dead in the streets by their

government. There's no more fundamental

form of disorder than that. But you go

to DC when the National Guard is there.

You go to Los Angeles when the National

Guard is there. That doesn't feel like

safety and order. It feels like being

occupied. And people don't like it and

they react against it. I mean, the the

the Minnesota reaction was incredible.

and brave and heroic. But one reason

Trump is failing is not just because

people think his immigration policy is

cruel, though they do. But at its core,

what they were asking for was things

feel out of control. We don't want them

to feel this way. And Trump made things

out of control in a different way. He

did reduce border crossing, but then he

brought this almost war into the

interior of the country. And nobody

wanted that. What they wanted was for

their life to feel calm and safe, not to

all of a sudden have masked agents

running through their streets and

picking up

>> with with military grade

>> with military grade weaponry. Picking up

the guy who you buy pizza from, right?

Picking up somebody who's, you know,

their kids go to school with your kids.

And then all of a sudden you're seeing

Americans gunned down by federal agents.

So, so Trump is up there making this

whole pitch about all the blood being

spilled by by immigrants.

I don't think he understands that what

he was in some ways channeling was an

anger disorder and now what he is the

bringer of is a kind of state sanctioned

disorder,

>> right? Which is of course incredibly

dangerous, right? I mean, and a cornered

Trump, a wild Trump, a Trump who feels

there's nothing to gain is not something

I right not looking forward to that.

It's

>> just people always say this and I'm not

saying it isn't true. I mean, he'll lie

and we saw the January 6 riots and stop

the steel. But I think something

interesting has been the degree to which

Trump when backed into a corner seems to

be backing down. He backed down out of

Minnesota. he got the negative ruling

from the Supreme Court on the tariffs.

And I thought one thing that was

interesting in the speech was he was

quite soft on the Supreme Court. He

didn't go to war with them. I thought he

might uh he doesn't

he wants to show a fight, but he doesn't

seem to actually have a lot of appetite

for them. Even the police forces right

in these cities or I shouldn't even say

even the police forces in these cities

are freaking out about the federal

presence in their own cities which is

just if if you think about that for a

second it's just amazing event uh and

it's that part of it is very scary and

this is why I do think the state of the

union was revealing about Trump's mental

state like take the whole hour 45 plus

and extract out what he said

he said, "The economy is great.

>> Really,

>> it has never been better.

>> Best economy ever.

>> Best economy ever." And he said, "The

main problem America has is

bloodthirsty, murderous,

illegal immigrants

roaming the streets causing havoc at

will

>> and Democrats who won't stand."

>> And Democrats who won't stand. And the

fact that neither of those things is

true, like it's just not true. Those are

not the problems. That is not the or the

benefit. Is not the structure of

American life at this moment. Is not

what people feel. Is not what people

reacting to. It puts him and the

Republican party in a tough place. You

know, it's interesting about the

immigration. I I think it's very much

people freaking out about the deaths and

the mayhem, but it's also um it's like

for the longest time people were saying

you can't run on democracy. Don't talk

about that. No one cares. But the thing

is people do care. And by preparing the

ground on that when authoritarianism or

a tendency toward authoritarianism and

or authoritarian violence showed itself,

people knew how to read it,

>> right? They're like, "Oh, whoa. Okay,

this is where we are now." People have

been talking about this and I've been

saying that they're, you know, The Boy

Who Cried Wolf, but they just shot this

woman for nothing. They just shot this

guy for nothing. And it it was laid down

on a bedrock of urgency that it a lot of

people thought would never be realized,

right? And I think that's part of it,

but there's another part of it, too,

which is why are they bothering all

this? And you're getting at it a lot

here.

They're solving a problem that only sort

of exists, right? And during the

campaigning, the problem was they're

eating our pets. Like, what is the

problem that's being solved there? And

I'm not saying there shouldn't be an

immigr. I mean, obviously, there has to

be a border. There has to be

immigration. No, but no one's really for

open borders. Like, that's all just a

canard, right? That's why I was talking

about that case in Charlotte in part

because an earlier Trump obsession which

was to be incredibly racist about black

criminals, right, has been superseded to

some degree, not completely, but

superseded to some degree by his

obsession with so-called, you know, with

illegal aliens. I always just find it

incredibly

weird. Not inexplicable because it comes

from, I think, racism and certain highly

ideological views he has about the

world, but why he's always worried about

murders committed only by a certain

group of people as opposed to murder.

>> Right? What I worry about is murders,

total number of murders, the chance that

I get killed or somebody I love gets

killed or that frankly anybody gets

killed by anybody. And he's right that

murders are dropping. And that's a thing

to encourage and take credit for. And

you could give police agencies more

money to solve murders that are

outstanding, right? There's a lot you

could do if you want to have like an

anti-murder policy. But to just be laser

focused on murders by illegal immigrants

is just a little bit odd because most

murders are not committed by illegal

immigrants.

I I also think there's a um

what you were just saying about

independence

I sometimes think about the Trump that I

think could have been not at 41% in the

polls right now, but at 48 or 51%.

>> Their approval ratings.

>> Approval ratings. Yeah. So the Trump who

comes in last year and the economy is

already getting better and is kind of

strong by then and does not do tariffs

just does some of his popular policies

passes a bunch of tax cuts and just

takes credit as opposed to holding the

economy back to some level and also

freaking people out with a very very

chaotic and aggressive tariff regime.

the Trump who does what he said he was

going to do or at least what he

sometimes said he was going to do which

was secure the southern border which

they've more or less done and focus on

violent criminals

>> right the worst of the worst

>> the worst of the worst

>> a Trump who did less

and then had more room to brag about

Trump RX where you can now get you know

>> focus on it

>> or to just focus on things you know you

can talk about having pushed Hamas and

the Netanyahu government to a deal in

Gaza And

he has chosen I mean we wrote a I wrote

a piece about this with you. He has

chosen to create a huge number of

problems for himself politically when he

could have done a lot less and really

benefited from it. I mean, there's a a

world in which he got to the waterline

of his popular policies and his popular

promises and then just stopped because

sprinkled throughout his speech is

something that I think is very dangerous

about Trump for Democrats, which is he

will happily take their issues away from

him. He'll negotiate down prescription

drug prices using the government's

power, a longtime Democratic priority

that Republicans foiled again and again

and again. Um, but Trump is just trying

to take that from the Democrats. He will

who more or less literally took it,

right? Isn't that Biden's program that

they've rejiggered?

>> No, what Trump is doing is a little bit

different, but but both things are

happening.

>> Okay.

>> And uh you know, immigration wise, like

close the border, right? There's a lot

of uh political viability and value in

that. There's a lot in there where Trump

could just do the more bananite populist

thing and have gained from it. But

because he actually sincerely believes

in a series of very very dumb and cruel

ideas,

he has ended up creating a lot of crises

for himself. And that is before I mean

any have been created for him. You know,

he's not facing as he was at the end of

his first term a global pandemic. He's

not facing as he might by the end of

this term a recession. And so he's

created like if things begin to go

wrong, the kind of things that any

president has trouble dealing with. He's

not working with a lot of goodwill or

frankly even a lot of policy space. He's

used a lot of money on these different

moves to respond.

>> That's part of why when we were talking

at the beginning about reality, right?

That's part of what's going on here,

too, is that they so believe what they

say or they think it's politically

effective. I I don't know whether he

thinks he actually won the 2020

election. I'm still a little dubious

about that. I think they may just think

it's effective and gets the group riled

up and it's great, whatever. Um maybe he

does. I have no idea. Obviously can't

get into his brain and I don't want to

be there. But the reality problem is an

enormous one that then leads you to

believe that as he said last night in

Congress to Congress, right, the

Democrats want to cheat.

>> They want to cheat. They have cheated

and their policy is so bad that the only

way they can get elected is to cheat.

And we're going to stop it. We have to

stop it, John.

>> They want to lie. The reason they want

open borders is to bring illegal

immigrants who are then going to vote

for them. And that's why we have to have

the Save Act. Like it's a whole world

view.

>> It's very simple. All voters must show

voter ID.

>> But it really struck me like, okay,

here's the fringe at the center, right?

Here's the lunatic, paranoid,

crazy

material that we used to keep roped off

that the right tried to keep in certain

phases tried to keep roped off from

itself. And here it is, the president of

the United States actually arguing that

Democrats want to bring illegal

immigrants in order to vote for

Democrats and that's why they won't

stand up. I mean, it's just it's pretty

mind-boggling when you actually put it

all together, right? And this is how you

get to I don't want to dwell on the pet

eating, but like that's how you get to

the pet eating and and and Vance even

admitted that well, he said, you know,

you got to tell stories.

>> I think it's been interesting to watch a

lot of people on the right. Chris Rufo,

for instance, the the right-wing

provocator who was very much part of

spreading the pet eating slanders.

He was out on X the other day, as he has

been occasionally recently, just being

like, I don't know what's happening to

our empirical standards here on the

right. All of our people are getting

radicalized and they're swimming

conspiracies and and and slop and a

successful movement cannot have this

much online brain rot.

And

there's a lot of um I'd say pointing and

laughing because uh Rufo has been part

of pushing the movement towards online

brain rot and I think he feels he

>> or or Ben Shapiro complaining about

Candace Owens who used to be on his show

>> who used to be on his on under his daily

wire umbrella. Yes.

But but there is a a a broad thing

happening here which is that the

president is deep in right-wing brain

rot and the people around him who wanted

to weaponize the bra right they wanted

to to use it to you know amp up their

base and get certain things and win

certain fights but they can't stop it.

They've set up a a a set of systems and

a momentum and a culture on the right

that they do not actually control. And

then Elon Musk took over X and took away

the moderators and let all the Nazis

back in. And it turns out if you let all

the the the Nazis and the races back in,

that has a real audience on the right

too. And so there is what is happening

with a president at one level very high

up is also happening, you know, down a

lot lower. And this is not a movement

that is going to effectively come up

with like normal solutions for political

problems. So you have always a danger

that it moves into straight repression,

right? That he uses a military and other

things to try to um win elections that

he cannot win through votes. But right

now it seems to me there is a genuine

possibility. It's not huge, but that

Republicans will lose the Senate because

Donald Trump will not endorse John

Cornin in Texas. And if he does not

endorse John Cornin in Texas, and

Cornin, one of the reasons Trump seems

to not like him is Cornin did not buy in

to the 2020 lies.

But if he doesn't endorse Cornin, which

he hasn't, and voting is sort of

beginning,

Ken Paxton, who's a much weaker nominee,

absolutely scandal,

>> diplomatic of our era in so many ways,

>> might become the Republican nominee for

Senate in Texas. And Texas is, you know,

a red state and Paxton might win anyway,

but if Democrats nominate Telerico, it

seems to me like their stronger

candidate in that race, but who knows?

you you just you could end up in a

situation where I don't think Crockett

or Telerico could beat Cornin, but I

think Paxton is beatable and in a

situation where you have a Democratic

wave year and a very very scandal

plagued Republican Senate candidate,

that could end up being the decisive

Senate race. And then people look back

and it will have been Trump like Trump

could have interceded to protect himself

and just chose not to. And and the

reason I I bring this up is that I think

it's really important to distinguish

between somebody who has a cleareyed

strategic picture of the situation in

front of them and is acting cynically,

lying and, you know, using conspiracy

theories to rile up the base. and

somebody who actually doesn't have a

cleareyed picture of the situation in

front of them and is acting impulsively

and emotionally or at least

unstrategically in ways that can harm

them. And and I think what we're seeing

right now is Trump is the second thing,

not the first. He's not a brilliant

manipulator.

He is a uh diluted manipulator. What's

interesting about the 2020 lies, whether

or not you think that Trump believes

them or whether he didn't and then he

does, what's interesting about it is

that the the loyalty test is stronger if

you know that in reality he lost the

election and you're still willing to

say, as Congress did, that actually

we're not going to certify those results

even though they know perfectly well

that they were legit. Right? That's

actually the more powerful move, right?

to get people to acknowledge a

non-reality, right? And this is why

people are always making references to

Eastern Europe, to, you know, the

history of Latin America, and even to

Hitler and Mousolini and all the rest of

it, because making someone believe

something they know is not true is a

bigger power move than getting them to

acknowledge something that's true. And I

watching last night, that was something

I was thinking about too because like

they're trying to get people to

accept a reality, obey a reality,

acknowledge a reality that doesn't

exist. And sometimes that works, but it

often doesn't, right? It decays. I think

one thing that is interesting and on

some level a little bit inexplicable to

me right now about how things are going

for Trump and Congress is that if you

actually look at what Congress is doing

quietly and this is a Republican

dominated Congress at the House and

Senate level

Trump is actually facing I would say a

fair amount of resistance. They have I

mean they have agreed to at the high

level just unfathomably unqualified and

corrupt cabinet appointees but they have

rejected

force of the withdrawal of more subc

cabinet appointees than we have seen

from any president in the modern era.

And if you look at spending Trump just

did not get a lot of what he wanted. I

mean, you know, Russ vote sent all

these, you know, Doge inspired spending

cuts and in fact, the government is

spending more this year than it did the

year before. Republicans in Congress

just rejected a lot of what Trump wanted

to eviscerate. So, there is this dynamic

that is happening between Trump and the

Republican party, which is Trump only

cares about a couple of big things. He

cares that you flatter him. He cares

that you agree with him on some of his

big lies. Cares about tariffs. He he has

some things that he really does track.

doesn't want to be impeached again.

>> Doesn't want to be impeached again. But

they are not in an aggressive way riding

herd on Republicans in Congress to

back their agenda all the way through.

And at this point, they even seem to

have a legislative agenda for 2026.

There's a lot of drift in this

presidency uh at at this point. Um more

than I think one would have expected.

There are a couple things Trump really

cares about. again tariff immigration

but beneath that I mean this is we're

only it just passed the year mark in

this term they shouldn't be this out of

ideas this out of movement but instead

Trump seems to be spending his time on

foreign policy which is not what people

wanted from him and a lot can go wrong

depending on what he decides to do

people do in their second terms right

they get sick of trying to do things

that are hard which is legislate and

they just start winging it because they

have more control over that

>> that seems to be where Trumpus.

>> Yeah. I mean, the impeachment thing

also, I think, is significant because he

went, I forget whether it was before the

Republican House, but maybe it was some

Senate thing where, you know, he's

talking to the members behind closed

doors, but everything always leaks. And

he said to them, you know, if you if you

lose, they're going to impeach me a

third time. And if we think of Trump as

a cunning political operator for a

moment, and we've been sort of talking

about him not being, but the dude got

elected president twice, completely

unqualified. Like, he shouldn't be the

president he is. So like I'm not going

to give him political advice in one

sense, right? And I think he recognizes

that the third impeachment

uh first of all just spectacular on its

face, but is very dangerous for him

because there will come a point and we

are seeing it and this is when you would

just said made me think of it. There

will come a point when they have to

start to pretend they didn't do all

this. They weren't participating in the

whole thing. They weren't gung-ho about

immigration. I mean, one thing I was

thinking about a lot as I watched was

they're making such a big deal about

what the Republican what the Democrats

are sitting for, they won't stand up.

And I was like, well, look what you're

standing for. You're jumping up at the

idea that your opponents are cheating at

the elections. You're jumping up at that

concept. You are jumping up at the

demonization of Somali in Minnesota. He

he I mean he said a million things, but

he actually called them Somali pirates,

right? Cuz again, his brain just

defaults to certain things at this

point. And they're leaping up and

cheering like it's the Roman coliseum,

not the US capital. So at some point,

they're all going to have to pretend,

oh, you know, I wasn't really doing

that, right? I was just there for the

tax cuts and I was just there for like,

oh, the border and Right. And how do you

make that point most emphatically is if

he gets to a weak enough point, you

start to see Republicans peel off. And I

know this sounds insane right now, but

it's not. And I see that he fears it.

That there could be as there should have

been certainly the second time around

enough Republicans voting to actually

convict him if he's impeached a third

time. I know I'm getting way out into

the future here, but I actually think

he's afraid of that.

>> He he might be afraid of it. I am. I

think it is very unlikely. not

completely impossible, but but what

would have to come out would it's hard

for me to imagine what at this point

would would crack their support for him.

But between Trump getting impeached and

convicted and where we are now is, I

think, the the more obvious thing that

will happen if Democrats win the House

and or the Senate, which is a huge

amount of investigations,

>> right? And one thing that was very smart

of Trump last night was to pick up the

ban insider stock training from members

of Congress. And that's uh very I mean

I've seen a lot of polling on this that

is about as popular a policy as exists

and Democrats did not implement it and

Pelosi is is sort of very identified

with this and people believe uh looking

at at the returns of her. Uh you

sometimes see these ads right now on the

New York subway for a online stock

trading platform where you can just like

hit a button and have Nancy Pelosy's

portfolio on the theory that well she's

she's knows what's going on so maybe you

should too,

>> right? He made a joke about that.

>> That's smart politics for him. The the

thing behind it is people don't like

seismic levels of political corruption

and within his administration and his

family are the most seismic levels of

political corruption I think that we

have seen in the modern era in American

politics. And once Democrats have

subpoena powers,

things are going to start coming out.

>> Yeah. And that was an under just about

the tariffs that was an undersold or

underrecognized joy of the tariffs for

him is that it makes personal

negotiations

crucial right so this Rolex has the

Swiss have to show up with you know this

Rolex gold bar to get their tariff

lowered that's given to him

>> so I I think if I were Donald Trump or

the Trump family or a lot of key members

of the administration I'd be pretty

worried about Democrats getting that

subpoena power

>> yeah I'd be pretty upset

that Trump is doing so little to stop it

from happening. So if you're Hakee Jeff

or you're Chuck Schumer and you're

sitting there in the audience last

night, I think you're pretty happy with

how that speech went because the thing

you fear is Trump and the Republican

party getting serious about pivoting

into a strategy, into policies, into

messages that could help moderate their

losses in 2026.

And you didn't see any evidence of

either Donald Trump doing that or of

Donald Trump being willing to let the

rest of the Republican party say the

things necessary for them to do that.

>> Fair enough. Uh I hate maybe to end on

Hakee Jeff and Chuck Schumer, but I

think we got to stop there. So, thank

you very much, Ezra.

>> Thank you, Aaron.

Hey,

hey, hey.