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Donald Trump is very frustrated over his mounting failures on multiple domestic fronts. Having fired his attorney general and homeland security chief, he's now looking at purging more top officials, as one report puts it he's very angry. Meanwhile, Trump's advisors are reportedly very worried about the war's deep unpopularity.
One senior aide fears he's being given a rosy picture of how the war is being received
and that he's deeply misled as a result. The throughline to all this is that Trump is bumping up against the limits of his magical thinking. Yet there's no sign of any willingness to adjust. New republic staff writer Kate Arnaugh has been writing really well about the reality check his policies have received, so we're talking to her about this weird tension between this and his refusal to course correct
and the real damage it's all doing. Kate, really nice to have you on. Nice to be back. So time magazine reports that top White House advisors Susie Wiles fears that Trump is being fed
a bill of goods about the popularity of the war.
She fears it's really hurting GOP chances in the midterms. Trump's pollster Tony Fabrizio has conducted studies showing it's unpopularity and a small group of aides delivered this bad news to Trump.
“Kate, I think it's hard for some pundits to accept that Trump's war has made him even more unpopular.”
That's not how things are supposed to work. Yeah, this is, I don't want to be too kind about the history of American wars, particularly in the Middle East, but this is an exceptionally unpopular one and they didn't even go through. They didn't even have the dignity to haul out a Colin Powell type figure to hold the little dial-up before a panel and tell us a lie about weapons of mass destruction.
They just kind of went in and there was no lead-up. There was no sort of attempt even to cultivate some sort of popular support or even a real sense that Iran posed a threat. They said that was a Tom Cotton said that an imminent threat for 47 years from Iran. So yeah, I mean, it sort of boggles the mind that anyone would imagine that this would make Trump popular
and do anything other than crater already pretty shaky public support. But, you know, I hope that that means this work can end as soon as possible.
“Well, I think that's actually a reasonable supposition in some sense, because if Trump's pollster”
as conducting surveys showing the wars very unpopular and Suzy Wiles as telling Donald Trump, you know, sir, whoever's telling you that this is going well is lying to you, and this is going to kill us in the mid-terms, then I think there actually is something of a chance that Trump looks for a quicker way out. One would think that that would be the most likely alchum, is that, you know, this thing would be wrapped up soon
because it's sort of dragging on multiple fronts, whether it's gas prices in United States or just the fact that, you know, American soldiers are starting to die. Trump knows things are going very badly on many fronts. He just fired his attorney general, Pam Bondi, and Politico now reports that he's weighing firing commerce, secretary Howard Lutnic,
and labor secretary Lori Chavez de Remer. One administration official tells Politico, quote, "He's very angry and he's going to be moving people." Kate, I thought that's interesting, because obviously Lutnic has a big economic role in a big role with the tariffs, so clearly Trump's ticked about his economic approval being in the toilet,
and he's looking to make it appear like he's acting fixed things. But Kate, would firing Lutnic do much? Well, it wouldn't open the street of Remus for one.
“And that, you know, is ultimately what he's trying to deal with, right?”
Is that he started a war of choice alongside Israel to provoke a country that can control the street of Remus. And somehow the defense department, whoever, did not think about that possibility that you could close down 20% of the flow of crude oil for the entire world,
Along with a host of other very important commodities by starting a very stup...
There's an interesting dimension to this that I think we should try to draw out a bit.
“Trump is in a rage over the Supreme Court striking down his tariffs,”
and in some sense he's probably taking that out on Lutnic. But the thing is, the tariffs were struck down because they were illegal. And Trump is incapable of grasping that. He's incapable of understanding that his power is not absolute. So someone has to be at fault, right? Other than him, somebody.
So we're in this weird place where Trump is tanking in the polls in part because his belief in his own omnipotence was so delusional.
Kate, that seems less than ideal, right? Well, it's all less than ideal at this point. But yeah, it's exactly right. I mean, these tariffs are illegal. It isn't unprecedented use of executive power to enact tariffs, which historically, right, have been acts of Congress have required, you know, more democratic input to make these sort of huge impactful decisions about trade flows.
And so, you know, he does think of himself as a king in many ways.
And so, you know, he is sort of coming up against the limits of that belief. Right now, whether it's a Supreme Court or just the fact that people don't seem to like this. And you know, if he does still think he's a king, he's not a very popular one. Just as a quick aside, Trump's rage at the Supreme Court was stoked earlier this week when there were oral arguments over his effort to end birthright. Citizenship and it became clear very quickly that even the conservative justices were really, really skeptical of the arguments that the administration is offering.
In fact, a lot of legal experts are now saying, look, this thing's probably going to lose for Trump and some form. And what's interesting there is Trump actually showed up at the Supreme Court, because yet again, he kind of had delusions about his own omnipotence. He seemed to think that showing his face would just be such a formidable and fearful sight to the justices that they would fold.
“And I think what you're looking at there is that this is a guy who's incapable of seeing things from the point of view of other people.”
So he doesn't understand the incentives that might be operating on the conservative justices. Now, they've clearly rolled over too much for Trump. But here's a case where if Trump is actually in the courtroom in the chambers during this whole thing, it's going to be much harder for them to side with him. And he just doesn't seem to be able to think his way into other people's minds. It's it's a very puzzling problem, but there we are. Yeah, I mean, besides the lack of empathy, he does seem to treat a lot of problems as if he is running a casino. And so, you know, if you can show up to whatever restaurant and intimidate
whatever power broker might happen to be there, like that is kind of a logic of how, you know, from South Jersey, some familiarity with how casino industry works. That is kind of our works, and that is not thank God how the country works. So, yeah, he can't he can't just throw his way around and expect to get his way. That has happened a lot, unfortunately, but in this case, hopefully, you know, that will not be. That will not be that will not be the case. I know South Jersey, and that is certainly the type of territory that Trump thinks he can master. That's for sure.
Wow, you know, all his casinos went bankrupt there, so he didn't master it for too long here to sell him. Right, it really is like he shows up at the Supreme Court in the sort of same spirit as like if there's a gambler in one of his casinos, he's kind of cleaning up and really bankrupting the house. He shows up with a bunch of thugs that will intimidate the gambler into leaving or something. That really is the spirit of him going to the Supreme Court. Yeah, in an amazingly unreconstructed way.
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You're a master by the player, also the school of the school, just like the r...
No, no, no. I'm not like the player is like my safe space.
“Hmm, you're like the one who's always sitting there?”
Yeah, exactly. Like the player is like the player who's just standing there. The game of the studio, the job or the music. Stim-crass, I don't really feel like I'm standing there. [Music] Now, if you're a good player and you're still a player, then you're really a good player.
Because this podcast is for all of you. I'm Kevin and I talk about the real challenge of the boss, the role of the player.
The first one is from Spannengess, from the practice, to the team, to the game of the digital transformation,
or the question of the role of the boss, to the creative life. There's a clear and fascinating tip for me. Do you think that's interesting? Then there are podcasts, English. So you had this very good piece about the straight-of-war moves closing down, due to Trump's war and Trump's apparent belief that he can just order the price of oil to come down.
It was a good line in there, I thought about how the straight-of-war moves, which is around 20 miles wide, and it's narrowest.
Point is like the central and most important geographic fact about our global energy situation.
Can you get into all that a little bit? So I wrote this piece the other week after, as you may have seen, as listeners may have seen. Markets were expected to open really down. The price of oil was supposed to be very high. And the four markets opened around 7 a.m. Trump tweets that were going to put off bombing Iranian energy infrastructure
for another five days, aka until markets close again on Friday. They ended up extending that, but there is this sort of amazing thing that Trump has managed for a while to almost unilaterally control the paper price of oil. And we don't have to dwell too long in sort of the intricacies of global energy markets, but there is this distinction between the paper price, which is the thing that's affected by things that Trump says,
“by news in the world that is operates a little bit more like the stock market, right?”
That it's a little touchier, a little more reactive to things that are happening in the world. And the actual price of oil, what it is that people are actually paying, the buyers and countries are paying in order to get oil and other commodities into, in order to get oil into their countries. And there is this real era of unreality, and something along the lines of what we've been talking about so far, where he thinks he can, in terms of job owning, job owned the price of oil, and just ignore the fact that there are real shortages,
and part of what is driving up the cost of oil is the fact that this very important passageway is closed. That only a handful of tankers are getting through that, you know, countries are sort of negotiating deals on the side, the try to get some supply there, some their way, but for the US, they're not getting things through, and many US allies are not getting supplies through, and that's causing a real crisis in Asia, which we can talk about, but is having knock on effects for us here in the US that are much less severe,
but $4 gas is nothing to sneeze at, obviously. Well, just to tie this to the broader themes here, this really kind of indicates this very crude and really skin deep understanding of power, which is odd, he's president, he's been elected president twice, so you'd think he'd have a more complicated sense of how power works, and yet here he is just sort of assuming that if he can kind of bluff the price a little bit here and there of oil up, you know, down a little bit,
that it will somehow solve the larger problem, there's a seat of the pants quality to it all, this kind of constant sense that he's always bluffing his way through the day,
we'll just deal with the problems that come tomorrow, when they come, and it's just, I just find it a little hard to understand how someone in a position like this, who already spent four years in the presidency, who's now spent another year in the presidency in the second term,
“would have such a flimsy understanding of how power works, how do you account for this?”
I think there is a real tendency among wealthy people not to acknowledge the consequences of their actions often because they don't seal them, right? Trump is not paid for gas and I don't know how flop, right? He is not getting out and you know, putting his card in the machine and you know, putting the nozzle up to his gas tank, right?
This is not the world that he lives and he doesn't live in a material world, ...
or whatever it might be and saying, "Are you proud of me, Daddy? Look at what I've done."
That is this totally sick of fantic really constrained view that he's operated in for a very, very, very long time. That's not unique to Donald Trump, that is how a lot of very wealthy people live their lives.
“And you know, I think that can sort of give you a work for you, eh, for what is actually happening in the world, but also as you said, how power works, right?”
He's not actually having to go in and sort of negotiate things in a way that he might have done earlier in his career,
when he was sort of procuring between different power players, but he's just lived in this bubble of his own creation for a very long time.
And I think that makes it hard to just see anything beyond. Yeah, and I think you're really getting at a strange tension about this whole situation just to finish this up. Trump has now said the straight of hormones will magically open itself, so clearly on some level he's bumped up against the limits on his powers and that he somewhere in his head he realizes that he can't make it open. And all the machinations about him firing more people suggests that he does know the political situation is very dire for him in the GOP.
So on some level he knows that see to the pants stuff isn't going to cut it. Yet at the same time, he's unwilling to change anything because he views that as a show of weakness and that's not permissible. So we're sort of all stuck in Trump's bubble. Now, aren't we? What does that leave us?
“Yeah, I mean, I wish I knew I didn't wish I knew where any of this was going and I think that's why things feel so strange and uncertain.”
Right now, you know, in oil markets, things that have been covering for the last couple of weeks, but also more generally. I mean, we're, yeah, we are stuck in the sort of weird psychology of this very strange man. And all of the sort of characters he surrounded himself with, we don't want to put it all on Trump, right? I think this is a bigger problem in some ways than that. But, you know, it is really, really, really hard to know what is going to happen in part because, you know, we are dealing with someone who themselves does not know what is going to happen from one day to another.
You know, it seems very volatile. And look, there's really only one way out of this, which is to organize and to vote in big enough numbers that it punctures that bubble and gives us more control over the situation.
I mean, that's really the bottom line. He can bluff all the wants and he can, you know, order the price of oil to drop and he can command the straight of our moves to open itself magically.
But we don't ultimately have to remain in this bubble if we show up in large enough numbers, we can overwhelm it and take charge of the situation a little bit. And I really hope people will do that, Kate. Like we're saying as a thinking, this war is really, really, really unpopular people are fed up with higher gas prices, people are fed up with American soldiers dying, a brawler fed up with having to see dead babies on their feet.
“And so I think I hope that we really can puncture this bubble surrounding Trump that that we have been forced to live in and, and this war.”
Well, we do have that power, we just have to exercise it in big enough numbers. Folks, if you enjoyed this, make sure to check out [email protected]. She does great stuff on climate and on the politics of it. Kate, I don't know if really wonderful to talk to you. Thank you so much for coming on. Thanks for having me. For the sake of your leadership with Shopify and business, and to our support, with the checkout with the world for the best conversion, you're right. The checkout with the world for the best conversion.
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