The following is a lightly edited transcript of the July 14 episode of the Daily Blast podcast. Listen to it here.
Greg Sargent: This is The Daily Blast from The New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR network. I’m your host, Greg Sargent.
We’re in the middle of a split screen moment right now on one screen, Trump’s bullying, threats of retribution and use of law enforcement against immigrants are ramping up in every way. This is supposed to make Trump look fearsome and strong; and indeed, his top allies are going full North Korea with the obsequious praise of him right now. But on the other screen, Trump’s poll numbers are as bad as they’ve ever been. A new Gallup poll shows Trump in shockingly terrible shape on immigration, which is a sign of serious underlying weakness. And in the polling averages, Trump’s general approval rating is at a low point. We think these things are related. All the authoritarian moves, all the fawning treatment of him as a North Korean dictator—it’s all meant to psych us out, to trick us into thinking he’s more formidable than he is. Yet, the reality is that the authoritarianism itself is sparking political backlash and weakening his public standing. We’re trying to make sense of all this with David Kurtz, editor-at-large at Talking Points Memo, who’s been writing great stuff about Trump’s lawless use of state power against enemies of all stripes. David, it’s great to have you back on, man.
David Kurtz: Thanks, Greg. Good to be with you.
Sargent: We learned a few days ago that former CIA Director John Brennan and former FBI Director James Comey are now targets of federal criminal investigations related to their work on the Russia investigation during Trump’s first term. David, as you pointed out in your very good piece on all this, the White House press secretary lauded these new investigations, and Trump himself suggested that he thought the investigations are good. It seems to me that by itself is highly corrupt. Can you talk about all of this?
Kurtz: Yeah. Look, the Trump Justice Department is clearly being run out of the Trump White House—and there is, at this point, no wall between the Justice Department and the White House any longer. That’s a 50–70 year tradition in custom emerging from Watergate but going back before that to try to provide some insulation from the overpoliticization of execution of law enforcement. And that’s gone now. It’s just gone. Period. Full stop.
Sargent: Well, David, you’re a lawyer, if memory serves. What do you make of the investigations themselves? Or to put this another way, how corrupted can this process actually get? What is the worst-case scenario at the end of the line there?
Kurtz: Yeah, I guess I would say two things to that. One is that I think the investigations themselves are very bad and themselves corrupt because it’s an intimidation factor. It is a threat. It is a warning to others not to cross Trump. It is a notice to officials in the government now and former officials of what can happen to you if you don’t toe the line. And that is all in and of itself bad, toxic, undemocratic, and runs against the grain of the rule of law.
It can get worse, right, if there are actual charges brought that are bogus as I expect they would be, if there are cases brought that just don’t meet the normal standards—and I don’t know how they would meet the normal standards these days. It’s all broken down at Justice. And so anything that comes out of these investigations needs to be looked at with a high degree of skepticism, and it almost needs to be proven to be legit. And I don’t even know how they would do that, right? All the mechanisms that you would have in place, all the checks and balances, all the professionalism and soberness and careful application of prosecutorial discretion—all of that’s just out the window, Greg. So I think we’re left with this festering, toxic mess that’s going to persist for another three and a half years.
Sargent: So you’ve got this split screen I’m talking about here, David. You’ve got this type of thing, which is really meant to make Trump look formidable and terrifying. Don’t cross him. He’s at the peak of his power right now. On the other screen, he’s in really rough shape in the polls. A new Gallup poll finds that his approval rating on immigration is down to 35 percent, while 62 percent disapprove. And there’s been a surge in support for immigration generally: A record high 79 percent say it’s a good thing. David, given that this is supposed to be his strongest issue, I take it as a sign of serious underlying political weakness. And overall his approval is down, and the polling average is down to 44 percent or 52 percent disapproving. That’s a low point for him. What do you make of these numbers? He’s actually in pretty weak shape, isn’t he?
Kurtz: Yeah. I think the rubber’s starting to hit the road on some of these things, and it makes it harder for the public to suspend its disbelief about what he’s intending and what he’s promising, right?
Sargent: Yeah.
Kurtz: I think it’s easy to make pariahs of immigrants and undocumented people and people of color. And in the abstract, the mass communication authoritarian mode that he’s in, people respond to that. And in their own minds, it’s like, Well, he’s just talking about the worst of the worst. He’s just talking about criminals. He’s just talking about people that we wouldn’t want in our country in the first place. But then as they get into trying to hit their numbers for mass deportations, as they get into the nitty-gritty of actually implementing that plan, suddenly it’s people that don’t seem bad at all. It’s people that you know, it’s people that you work with, or it’s people that you know from church or what have you. And we’ve seen anecdotally … but maybe the polling reflects more than just individual anecdotes—that I think people are starting to see what this really means and the full extent of it. And so maybe there’s some pullback there and maybe some retrenchment about what the consequences of all this will really be.
Sargent: Yeah, and I think also this is really not what Trump and Stephen Miller expected to happen. When they started going into Los Angeles with their power paramilitary forces and so forth, they really thought the public was going to be on their side on that stuff. And it’s clear that that really is one of the things that started the downward spiral for Trump on this issue. Same with Kilmar Abrego Garcia—and that’s not what happened. We’ve actually seen the Abrego Garcia thing play a major role in turning the polls around on this issue against Trump. To the degree that this is about the authoritarianism, the abuses of power, I think we can actually conclude that that’s what’s alienating people at this point. These displays of authoritarianism—whether it’s threatening Harvard, threatening Comey and Brennan, or renditioning migrants off to gulags in El Salvador—what do you make of it all?
Kurtz: So there’s a dynamic here that’s concerning to me, which I think we’ve seen over and over and over again: They have to keep elevating the authoritarianism in order to overcome the backlash to the previous authoritarianism. So it’s this escalating pattern of finding a new boogeyman, finding new enemies, finding new foes to hold up. I’m worried that we’re just on this continuing escalating scale over time and each time they go up, more lawlessness occurs, more norms are eroded, and we just keep going down this very dangerous path.
Sargent: It’s such a fascinating dynamic you point to there, and we’re actually seeing a really good example of it right now. As I mentioned, he’s spiraling in the polls on immigration, and yet their response is to ramp up the paramilitary displays in Los Angeles right now. They’re absolutely off the charts. You’ve seen the imagery of all sorts of paramilitary equipment on the ground. Trump forces attired in every type of paramilitary garb you can imagine. Stephen Miller just went out on on Fox News and said some really sick things. In one case, he said, “Los Angeles and California are in the middle of an insurrection against the government.” That’s meant to shock us—right—to scare us into thinking Trump was on the verge of invoking the Insurrection Act. The anti-immigrant propaganda just keeps ratcheting up and up and up as his poll numbers go down, down, down. That’s the dynamic you’re talking about, right?
Kurtz: It is. And Greg, I think we’re seeing just the tip of the iceberg on this. It’s like a taste of what’s to come—
Sargent: Yeah.
Kurtz: —because the new mega bill, the centerpiece of his legislative agenda, passed as my colleague Josh Kovensky reported a few days ago with the biggest increase in funding for ICE or for any federal law enforcement that’s ever been budgeted before. It’s more than some countries spend on their military. We look back to the war on terror, the war on drugs—these are things that have huge long-term societal consequences. They morph and deform the law and deform our priorities politically, socially, economically in ways that take decades and generations to reverse. So I think we’re on the cusp of a new era here that is deeply disturbing.
Sargent: Yes, I think we’re on the cusp of a level of transformation that rivals what happened after September 11 with the ramping up of the war on terror, which people may not remember this but had immensely destabilizing effects domestically as well.
Kurtz: Unlike the war on terror, which had 9/11 as a predicate, or the war on drugs, which actually had a bit of a drug epidemic happening that we overreacted and responded to, this is largely an invention of a worldview that sees people of color and migrants as below human and is worth holding up as targets for everyone else. [This is] an “us versus them” psychology that they have largely invented and that makes the whole thing more troubling.
Sargent: I agree. David. It strikes me that there’s a level of unreality to this transformation that’s about to happen that’s even greater than the one after 9/11. Old-timers like us who lived through the Bush era know how bad that was. I try to explain this to people. People who didn’t live through it while being politically conscious are not really aware of how deeply in the grip of war fever and Islamophobia this country was after 9/11. I want to say one optimistic thing though: What we are not seeing right now is a retake of the mania that gripped the public during the Bush years. And I think that’s a positive. Like I said, the Islamophobia, the war on terror stuff—September 11 was an immensely traumatic event as everybody knows. But what Stephen Miller and Trump are trying to do now is recreate that trauma by talking about the migrant invasion, and the public’s not going for it. I have not seen anything as encouraging lately as the sudden shift against them on these issues. They thought they could do anything with their propaganda. The public could just be manipulated with great ease, they thought, and it’s not happening. I think that’s a positive.
Kurtz: I hadn’t thought about it that way, to be honest, but you’re right in that the political pressure that opponents of Bush felt during that period to fall in line was so great that many of them did, right? There was a real capitulation on the Democratic side. I know many people see what’s happening now is a similar capitulation, and maybe in the early days in February that was more of, I think, a live concern, but I do think that there.… We talked about split screen earlier, but I really do think there are two separate audiences for what he’s doing—I’m not an original commentator on this point—and the appeal that he has to his base and the people that voted for him and that continue to support him is energized by a lot of what he’s doing. But it is not capturing what we might think of in the old days as across the aisle in the way that it has before.
Sargent: On Friday, Trump visited Texas amid the horrific flooding there. Obviously that’s a profound tragedy. It’s awful what’s happening with all the children dying there. His top allies, though, gushed over him during this visit in the most absurd ways and imaginable. First, listen to Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem.
Kristi Noem (audio voiceover): Your heart is evident for the people of Texas by you coming here and spending the day and taking the time to spend so much time with the families. I’ve spoken with many of them over the last several days, and they’re so grateful for you, that not only are you here to come and walk alongside of them but to spend time with them.
Sargent: And now, listen to Texas Governor Greg Abbott.
Greg Abbott (audio voiceover): Your commitment to Texas.… I know you love Texas.
Donald Trump (audio voiceover): I do.
Abbott (audio voiceover): And Texas loves you. We appreciate you showing up. And because of your swift and effective response, we’re better positioned to deliver on all those commitments than ever before.
Trump (audio voiceover): Thank you, governor. That’s really, really nice. Thank you.
Sargent: Yeah, David, that’s not at all normal at times of natural disaster, particularly when it’s this horrific. So many lives lost, children’s lives lost. Presidents don’t typically expect such worshipful propaganda, do they? What’s going on here? Isn’t it a continuation of this combination of the slide into authoritarianism and the simultaneous continual weakening of Trump’s political standing?
Kurtz: Yeah. Look. it’s not normal at all, as you point out. It’s horrifying to see it in such a difficult time for the people in Texas. We’re seeing the tools of authoritarianism coming into play: the misinformation, the denial of reality. I think we’re going to continue to see that pinging back and forth between, on the one hand, being super, super aggressive in their authoritarianism and then trying to paper over the consequences that come with that.
Sargent: I think that ties it together very nicely. David Kurtz, it’s really great to talk to you as always, man. Thanks for coming on.
Kurtz: Thank you, Greg.
Sargent: You’ve been listening to The Daily Blast with me, your host, Greg Sargent. The Daily Blast is a New Republic podcast and is produced by Riley Fessler and the DSR Network.
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