The midterms are coming, and President Trump is already sounding the alarm. For this week’s round table, the columnists David French and Jamelle Bouie and the Opinion national politics writer Michelle Cottle try to prepare listeners — and themselves — for how each party will frame Trump’s second term and falling approval rating.
See Jamelle Bouie, Ross Douthat and Kathleen Kingsbury of Times Opinion live at the Library Foundation of Los Angeles on Jan. 20 for “Trump: The First Year of His Second Term.” Get tickets here.
Below is a transcript of an episode of “The Opinions.” We recommend listening to it in its original form for the full effect. You can do so using the player above or on the NYTimes app, Apple, Spotify, Amazon Music, YouTube, iHeartRadio or wherever you get your podcasts.
The transcript has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
Michelle Cottle: I’m Michelle Cottle. I cover national politics for New York Times Opinion. And this week we have the band back together: David French, Jamelle Bouie, my fantastic colleagues and columnists. It is so good to see you for the first time in 2026. It has been such a quiet start to the year. How are you feeling? Good?
David French: I’m tired already, Michelle.
Cottle: You’re tired already?
French: I’m tired already.
Jamelle Bouie: I am feeling as good as one can feel given the circumstances, which I’ll let people figure out what that means.
Cottle: Yeah, everybody can just Google that. But Jamelle, we missed you last week. I hear that for our Jamelle stans, of which I know there are many, you’re going to be doing an event live in Southern California.
Bouie: That’s right.
Cottle: So they have the opportunity to catch up with you. Tell me about this. Give me the details.
Bouie: Yes. Next Tuesday, Jan. 20, in Los Angeles, we’ll be having an event. It’ll be me, our boss, Katie Kingsbury, and Ross Douthat, our colleague, talking about the first year of the second Trump administration and what it means and what it portends and all those things.
Cottle: So it’s a feel-good event.
Bouie: A feel-good event. I don’t know.
Cottle: It’s at 7 p.m. at the Aratani Theater, which means nothing to me because I only go to Los Angeles sometimes. But I’m sure that means a lot to those there. We’ll put a link for people to get tickets in our show notes, because I know we’ve got some demand.
So moving right along, we spent our last episode of 2025 looking back, so now we have to look forward. As a political writer, I am already obsessed with the midterms. Both parties have red-hot primaries coming up as early as March 3 in Texas, and then the drama just keeps on rolling straight through November.
So, as political nerds, we keep close tabs on this, but for our more normal listeners — and I am so happy for y’all’s sanity — let me give a quick lay of the land in terms of what’s at stake in these midterms and what the parties need to do for success in November. I’ll briefly get the ball rolling, and then I want you guys to have at it, too. So, as far as what is at stake, the midterms are a referendum on the sitting president. So for everyone, Republicans, Democrats, all of us, what is on the line is basically the shape and power of the remainder of the Trump presidency.
If Republicans keep unified control of Congress, Trump is going to take that as a mandate to just do whatever the hell he wants for as long as he can hold on to the office. Does that seem right to you guys?
Bouie: Yeah, that sounds basically right. If Republicans hold on to both chambers, then all bets are off for the next two years after that.
Cottle: Well, at least two years.
Bouie: Yeah, at least two years.
French: I think that’s a hundred thousand percent true because he’ll take it as a validation of all of the brutality because there is a silent majority theory operating behind the scenes in the White House that essentially says: “Don’t believe all the polls. The polls have been wrong for the entirety of Trump’s two terms as president.”
There’s a silent majority. They like what we’re doing to the immigrants. They like what we’re doing to “criminals,” they love all this. They’re just not going to tell pollsters. And so if he keeps that majority in the House, if he maintains or extends that majority in the Senate, all bets are off? Absolutely. It’ll be a total validation of the administration’s strategy and approach. Not total, let me be clear, political validation.
Cottle: There you go.
French: Not moral validation.
Cottle: That’s a good distinction.
French: Political validation of the administration’s approach so far.
Cottle: All right, so nothing focuses the political mind, though, like a good butt whipping. So if voters rebuff his team, Republicans are going to need to decide if they really want to go down with that ship.
Bouie: A lot of this is about expectations. It’s always about expectations. So I think the expectation right now is that Democrats are probably going to win back the House. I’m not sure anyone has a sense of the scale of that and that’s going to shape how people react as well. If it’s a narrow win — narrowly taking back the House, I think that would be read as basically like a good performance for Republicans. If Democrats crash through the wall like the Kool-Aid man and take back the House, then that’s going to be taken as a major repudiation.
And likewise with the Senate, any scenario in which Democrats take the Senate — which is a very tough reach for them right now — is a scenario in which there really has been, I think, a decisive repudiation of what the administration’s been doing. In that world, Republicans are going to be like, OK, we have to spend the next two years distancing ourselves from Trump.
Now the trouble is that Trump does not want to be distanced from. So there will be a push, but there’s also going to be a pull.
Cottle: It’s like trying to break up with somebody who just won’t take no for an answer.
But the Democrats, if they underperform, it’s a disaster for them because they are desperate to show that they heard voters’ unhappiness in 2024 and have been working to correct some of those errors. And if the party cannot manage to beat a broadly unpopular president in a cycle, when historically whatever party is out of power in the White House does better — if they can’t manage that, then I believe it’s hit the red button, break the glass, full-blown panic mode for them.
French: There was a really interesting discussion of this online recently about this disparity between the general election voter and the primary voter. And I think that one of the problems that both parties have right now is that there is too little participation in the primary. And that is driving candidate selection in a way that is going to be ultimately harmful to parties in general.
Let’s look at Texas and let’s look at the Republican side. Republicans have a real problem right now in Texas and the latest polling that I saw on the Democratic side, James Talarico, has about an 8- or 9-point lead over Jasmine Crockett. And Ken Paxton, who might be — I mean, there’s a lot of competition for this but, one day we should do the horse race rankings — he might be the most corrupt elected politician in America this side of Donald Trump
Cottle: His wife is divorcing him on biblical grounds despite the fact that he has been a huge player in Christian politics and driving out the evangelical vote.
French: Oh yeah. In the before times I would be at conferences where he was holding forth as the model Christian politician. Now his wife is divorcing him for adultery, and he is leading in the primary. And you’re talking about John Cornyn, one of the more respected, mainstream establishment Republican senators. He’s in the fight of his life in a primary against a walking ball of corruption. And so that’s one of the issues that’s unfolding here.
And look, the Republicans in particular have that primary voter problem, but I also think the Democrats have a primary voter problem issue as well. When you have a race that concentrates your most hyper-engaged, hyper-aware political nerds, so to speak, their priorities don’t align completely with the voter that lays low and just walks into the polls every two years. They have different kinds of concerns. And it’s one of the reasons why these parties are lurching in and out of control because in many ways, these parties are built for their primary voters. They’re not as built for the general election voter.
Cottle: So let’s dig in a little bit to the Democrats. Looking at a midterm, which we all understand is different from a presidential year, what message should the party be focused on?
They’ve leaned into the anti-Trump theme for cycles; that didn’t work so well in 2024. How do they balance that message in a midterm that acknowledges some of the Trumpian chaos that we’ve been seeing but also gets into those “kitchen table” issues and other things that are top of mind for voters?
French: Part of the issue and one of the problems you’re going to have in analyzing this election is — as we said at the very top of this — these midterms are mainly verdicts on the president. And so running for things like affordability or building more housing, those are the kitchen-table issues that voters want to hear about. Also, at the same time, when you don’t have the presidency, it’s very hard to implement an agenda. It’s very hard to run on: “This is the agenda we are going to implement if you vote for us.” It’s much easier to run on: “Here’s all the crap we’re going to stop.”
So, in some ways I think what you’re going to have is — to go back to this analogy — a break glass in the case of emergency sort of election, where you’re saying we are in an emergency situation right now, there is a lot of chaos, there’s a lot of confusion, there’s a lot of rage, there’s a lot of anger, and we’re going to be able to at least provide some accountability and some restraint that doesn’t exist right now. I think that that’s going to be a very compelling top-line message.
One thing that is fascinating to me is a lot of these things that just totally consume the online world do not escape into the offline world. But I don’t think that’s true of the killing of Renee Good, for example. The polling indicates that anywhere between almost 70 to around 80 percent of Americans have seen the footage of that shooting. So there will be these things that break through.
As we’re recording this podcast, Trump has threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act. These are things that create a big online tempest. Maybe people will not know 48 hours from now that Trump threatened the Insurrection Act. But if he invokes it, they’ll definitely know.
Bouie: I think David’s right that in terms of messages to win, all you really have to do is announce your intention to hold the administration accountable in concrete ways. I do think that Democrats are going to be using the midterms to test out messages, to try to reach out to voters they know they’re going to need in 2028. And so I would expect to see some version of what Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said a couple days ago. She was walking on the steps to the Capitol and said to a reporter: They cut your health care to pay for this I.C.E. stuff. That’s both an accountability message and a kitchen table affordability message. It’s both — they cut food stamps so they could shoot a woman in the face. I mean —
Cottle: Aw, dude!
Bouie: I don’t know. I don’t know if anyone’s going to go that — like, that’s how I would do it if I were running for office.
I’m a little blunt in that regard, but I would imagine you’ll get some version of that. That the government could be doing these things to help you, but they cut all of that to pay for armed thugs harassing your friends and neighbors. I think that’s going to be the way they try to capture both ends of this. And I actually think that’s a pretty effective message. It’s both a recognition of the material stuff people really care about and a recognition of the soul of America stuff that people care about.
French: There’s also an appeal that Democrats can make to the educated Republican voters. You’ve got some messages there that I think could resonate with them.
Trump just proposed a $600 billion increase in defense spending. $600 billion for one year. He proposed a plan that the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget says would add almost $6 trillion in deficit in debt to the United States. And why is that? Well, his Donroe Doctrine is going to bankrupt America, because when you alienate all of our allies, guess what? All of our allies collectively carry more of the defense burden than we do. So if you alienate all our allies, we’re going to bankrupt ourselves trying to pick up that slack.
There are lots of ways to make a Greenland controversy or a Venezuelan intervention resonate in domestic terms, to say, in effect: Your arrogance, your pride, and your alienation of allies are bankrupting this country.
Cottle: So I think that’s exactly right. Earlier this week I was talking to Chuck Schumer, the Senate Democratic leader, and he was walking me through the party’s umbrella theme for the midterms of — we’ve got to go with the alliteration — costs, chaos and corruption. That gives them a framework for saying these are all tied together. When Trump is doing all these things abroad, it adds to the chaos.
When he is cutting questionable deals with certain companies or favoring his favorite players, that kind of quasi corruption adds to not just the chaos but the costs that you’re going to pay. Even when he does something like decide he’s going to prosecute the Fed chair, that doesn’t really resonate with people in and of itself, but if you pitch it as, “It’s going to make everything more expensive if we destroy the independence of the central bank,” then people are going to pay a lot more attention and they’re certainly going to care.
Mary Peltola, the former House member Democrat, just jumped into the race in Alaska for Senate. And you can see in her messaging already how these things all tie together.
She’s saying that big corporations, because of the corruption in Washington, are being allowed to essentially rape Alaska’s natural resources, that nobody in the lower 48 cares about Alaska, they’re basically feathering their own pockets. So you see how the costs and the corruption and the chaos all tie together. And Schumer was saying that this is absolutely something that works as a big framework.
So the last thing on the Democrats: You don’t want to overlearn the lessons of any particular election because obviously each one is different, especially depending on an off-cycle year, presidential midterm, but there was a bit of a blue wave in the 2025 off-cycle races. Are there lessons that you guys think the Democrats should be taking forward from those?
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Bouie: The big lesson to me of the 2025 wave, such that it was, is that Democratic voters want people who are going to be aggressive. They want people who are going to be fighters. But one of the results that shocked me the most was the Virginia attorney general race, where the candidate had texted about shooting an opponent’s family, and he won by six points.
That, to me, was a sign that Democratic voters in Virginia don’t care. You know? And part of that is that we’ve witnessed how the president talks about opponents for years.
Cottle: Yeah, there’s been a desensitization.
Bouie: People are desensitized to it, but I think it’s the feeling that if that guy’s willing to say that, maybe that shows he’s willing to fight. Right? I think that that desire for fighters is the lesson to take from last year. I do not think that candidates who take a very kind of cautious “Oh, we just all want to get along with their Republican friends” approach are going to do very well.
Cottle: So I have a question for you, Jamelle, related to that. So the attorney general candidate in Virginia was who he was. But Abigail Spanberger, Mikie Sherrill — premier races for governor in New Jersey and Virginia — they weren’t milquetoast, but they were very pragmatic in their approach. Do you think that there’s a way to blend those two things — I’m a fighter, I’m going to fight for you but I’ll work across you with people who are reasonable as well. How do you see that kind of reconciliation?
Bouie: I think you can think about being a fighter in any number of ways. One way to think about it is in terms of accountability politics. Not fighter in the sense of humiliating my partisan opponents, but fighter in the sense that wrongdoing happened and I want to deal with that wrongdoing.
And that is not incongruent. That’s not in tension with more moderate and pragmatic politics in other places. You can hold moderate views on any number of issues and also say, there’s no way we can fund I.C.E. in its current form, or we have to think about reorganizing D.H.S. given the abuses we’ve seen. Those two things are not in tension with each other. You could make the argument that someone who’s willing to be bold and progressive in their policy preferences might be a little more likely to be aggressive on the accountability front. But there’s a conceptual separation there.
And I had a question for David, actually. This is about post-Trump politics. Laying my cards on the table — I think any post-Trump politics that doesn’t just lead us back to where we are is going to have to rest on aggressive accountability for wrongdoing and lawbreaking, of a kind that I think Americans are actually kind of uncomfortable with.
If we’re talking about investigations of the executive branch — what Stephen Miller has been up to, what Russ Vought has been up to during these years — there has to be a willingness to say that people who broke the law need to be held criminally accountable. People who were engaged in massive corruption flowing from the White House, we need to freeze those assets. We need to refer them for criminal prosecution.
That’s going to read as very aggressive. It’s going to read as very partisan. It’s going to read as very divisive. But I think it’s necessary. Otherwise, you just come right back to where we are. And my question, David, is how do you perceive that? I don’t see that as tit-for-tat or trying to humiliate my opponents. I see it as trying to clean house. But I’m curious what you think.
French: I think that we have lost the distinction sometimes between the notion of fighting hard for a position and fighting hard for accountability, fighting hard for justice and personally attacking human beings.
These are the distinctions that have sometimes been lost in the Trump era. It turns out that many of the people who are very good at lacerating other human beings — very good at the attention economy of extremely aggressive politics, as we’re learning in MAGA Republicanism — are not all that competent at things like governance, accountability and related work. Sometimes the people who are extremely competent at the things you’re talking about, Jamelle — and which I agree with — are different people. I think there should be an accounting — accounting and reform.
Cottle: Although I think you have to be very careful calling for that because one of the things Trump is doing going into the midterms is whining that if Democrats retake either chamber of Congress or retake the House, they’re going to impeach him again. And he’s using this as: They’re out to get me. It’s another witch hunt. I mean, he is the master of victimhood.
Bouie: Yeah, we’re out to get him!
Cottle: Boohoo, poor me. But you have to be really careful with that.
French: I do agree with that. You have to fight hard and smart at the same time.
My issue is that when you’re talking about a creation of an attention economy and politics, it really puts a premium, especially in the online world, as to who has owned you or destroyed you. That is a perversion of our political culture that I think has completely consumed the right. I mean, you’ve got cabinet officials who are more concerned about angry podcasters than they are about popular opinion.
I’m just saying we — this is very dangerous. This is one of the ways in which Trump has impacted our politics in a dangerous way that could easily outlast it.
Cottle: Well, I think the Republican Party in general has gotten bitten by that lately. I mean, Marjorie Taylor Greene, she basically learned her own lesson and decided that it was time to leave the House when all of that venom got turned on her. So to that point —
French: So can I make a take that might age very poorly?
Cottle: Please do. Please do.
French: Here’s my theory: We’re going to be very soon reaching a point where you need to stop looking at Trump’s approval rating to know how popular MAGA is, and here’s what I mean. Trump, I think at this point, we’re now in the 10th year since he came down the escalator and announced his presidency.
Cottle: Oh my God. I can’t wait till that phrase is dead. I would like to burn that escalator to the ground.
Bouie: I am just imagining a calendar with — it’s like B.E. and A.E.
French: Before Escalator.
Cottle: Oh God. I mean, so does Trump, Jamelle, so does Trump. Go ahead, sorry.
French: So we’re in the year 10 A.E.
In the year 10 A.E., I think for a lot of Trump voters, that is part of their identity now. It is fixed. And from now on, Republicans are going to be running without Donald Trump on the ballot. And so I think that the Trump position is going to be an artificially high indicator of the popularity of MAGA policies. The actual indicator of MAGA policies is going to show up elsewhere. In some sense — although I think issue polling is often kind of quasi garbage — you’ll see it if overwhelming numbers start to emerge in issue polling, and ultimately in the outcomes of the midterm elections. And I think it’s starting to sink in for a lot of Republicans that the rules that apply to Trump — or don’t apply to Trump — still apply to them.
Cottle: That brings me to something I need both of you to address, which is, we’ve spent a lot of time on this podcast talking about Republican members of Congress pushing back against Trump — or rather, not. Do you already see signs of this changing? I’m thinking in particular of the opposition to Trump’s persecution of Fed Chairman Jerome Powell. But there have been a couple of other episodes of this of late.
I was talking to Thomas Massie a couple of weeks ago who — as I’m sure you know — is Trump’s least favorite House Republican. He predicted that after this cycle of primaries, some of his colleagues would start to loosen up and be more willing to defy the White House going forward. What do you think?
Bouie: I’ll believe it when I see it. Like, OK, Representative Massie. Sure. I’ll believe it when I see it.
I do think that, on things that are truly beyond the pale, you see Republicans blanch a bit. House Republicans recently joined with Democrats to put a health care — A.C.A. — subsidies extension in place. They passed it out of the House, and there’s a decent chance it passes through the Senate. But as far as anything more serious than that, again, I’ll believe it when I see it.
I want to add one comment on David’s point about the delta between a MAGA issue and Trump — the Trump issue, you might say. You can see that in the relative approval ratings of Trump and JD Vance. You know, JD Vance is not especially popular, right? In a post-Trump world, JD Vance clearly wants to be the standard-bearer for MAGA, and he’s broadly disliked in a way that is obviously about him, separate from Trump.
Cottle: Well he’s like the opposite of Trump as a cultural phenomenon, right? JD Vance is pure political aspiration and you’re kind of just straightforward political business as usual. He’s not a celebrity, he’s not charismatic. He can’t order a doughnut without looking awkward. He doesn’t know how to talk to people. He’s every senator in a suit who hears Hail to the Chief playing in his head on some level.
Bouie: Right, exactly.
French: And we consistently underestimate the extent to which Trump is a completely unique cultural figure as a politician. For those of us who have been in this for a long time, the mystique is over with Trump. The mystique is gone. But I think we underestimate the extent to which for a lot of Americans, the mystique still exists.
Cottle: So talking about him not being on the ballot, him having a position that nobody else in the G.O.P. has, what are they going to do with the midterms? What should they do going into the midterms?
At a House retreat for Republicans last week, the president told the party to campaign on his policies: border security, anti-transgender athletes, tax cuts — the road map to victory, he called it. Is that what they should be doing? What is their path forward?
Bouie: If I were a Republican running in unfavorable conditions, I would try to localize things as much as possible and actually talk about the policies in the most abstract way. Like: I brought you tax cuts for X, Y or Z. But really try to keep things local and try to erase whatever connection as much as possible you have to Trump. That would be my advice for midterms, but that never works. Every midterm cycle when it’s going to be bad for the president’s party, people are like: You have to keep things local, and it never works. Voters understand these things to be referendums on the president.
Can I just say — this can be cut if it’s too much — but depending on how much time you spend online, and Trump talks about this saying, things are going so well, maybe we don’t have to have midterms. But there’s been a lot of chatter on the internet about the president canceling elections. And since we’re talking about the midterms, I feel obligated to say that that’s not a thing. I know the response is going to be: look, he does everything else he wants. But the more accurate response is that there are a lot of ways in which he’s been stopped or blocked. And in a very practical sense, states run elections. States run federal elections — not the president.
The president has no role in federal elections. The president has no role in certifying federal elections. The president has no role in seating members of Congress. When it comes to the conduct and results of federal elections — at least for legislative elections — the president is just a guy. He’s just a guy watching on CNN like the rest of us.
And yes, he has ICE. He has his own little private army. ICE on paper has 22,000 people. Looking at Minnesota right now, in Minneapolis, they’ve committed more than 10 percent of their on-paper agents to try to pacify the 46th largest city in the country, 45th, 46th. And they can’t do it. Obstinate, middle-aged Midwesterners have essentially stopped ICE from operating in Minneapolis in a meaningful way.
I feel like it’s necessary to say that there’s a lot of fear-mongering and scaremongering about what the president can do with regards to the midterms and —
Cottle: Well, he just got shot down by the courts, right?
Bouie: Right.
Cottle: He was arguing that he needed to deprive states of federal funding if they didn’t follow his rules for how they run their elections. And the courts are like: No, bro, step back.
Bouie: He’s demanding voter rolls. And the courts are saying, no, none of this is your business. So for Trump to try to cancel an election in Virginia, for example, like Abigail Spanberger would have to be like, OK, sure.
Cottle: Yeah, that’s going to happen.
Bouie: How is Donald Trump going to stop Gavin Newsom? How is he going to stop Kathy Hochul? You have to think in practical terms. And I understand the temptation to latch on to worst-case scenarios and fantasies. It makes a lot of sense in the moment. But you have to temper that stuff with thinking, how does the practical operation of government actually work?
French: I think Jamelle is exactly right. I’m glad you brought up the numbers of ICE.
ICE cannot control America. It cannot do it. And then there’s another factor that I don’t think people have appreciated quite enough, and that is the Supreme Court’s decision in Trump v. Illinois here in the last few weeks, where it upheld an order blocking the National Guard deployment under this particular statute that Trump was trying to use. That if he was permitted to use it, at his discretion, at his will, we don’t have very many ICE officers, but we’ve got hundreds of thousands of soldiers in the Guard.
You could easily imagine a scenario where he starts deploying the Guard to “preserve the sanctity” of the election or whatever pretext that he would use, not in a way that would overtly block people from voting, but then would create an atmosphere of intimidation. That might deter people from going to the polls.
And I think that the Trump v. Illinois case was very, very important because it’s really cut off from him this ability to deploy the Guard at his whim. Now there’s still the Insurrection Act hovering out there. That’s a whole different can of worms. But I do think that there’s great hope.
To the point where I actually think it’s irresponsible to argue otherwise: The off-year elections — the midterms — are going to be regular elections, conducted under regular order and counted in the regular way. That’s how this is going to unfold, and it’s very important to get that message out there.
As for what Republicans are going to do, I think you’re going to see more of what they firmly believe works for them, which is negative polarization. And I’m going to take this in a darker direction. It’s very hard for me to watch ICE tactics without thinking there’s a purpose beyond intimidation, namely provocation. Those tactics create the impression that Trump and his administration are trying to recreate many of the conditions we saw in 2020.
Bouie: I think that’s absolutely right.
French: I think in Republican circles there’s a firm belief among many of the more radicalized Republicans that the rioting and violence in the streets in 2020: a) revealed Democrats’ true colors, and b) is why Trump didn’t lose more decisively in 2020 — the unrest prevented it.
That’s why I think this moment is so incredibly dangerous. What we’re watching looks exactly like deliberate provocation. If you saw this in another country, you would say it’s a brutal crackdown designed to trigger an angry response. Right now, I’m very worried that we may see an actual tactic aimed at fomenting urban unrest as a way of proving or demonstrating that Trump’s crackdown was necessary in the first place. That’s one of my biggest concerns going into the midterms.
Cottle: OK, on that super upbeat note ——
French: I told you it’s going to go dark.
Cottle: I know better than to let you have the last word on anything. But while I could talk about this ——
French: This can’t be the last word, please.
Cottle: All day, we have to land this plane. But that just means it’s time for recommendations, and David, last week you were fired up to defend the “Stranger Things” finale. Are you going to go down that road and confront the haters today, or are you going to give something different?
French: I have to. I have to. They landed the plane in a way that I thought was true to the story and true, more importantly, to the ethos of the entire show. And it kind of comes full circle in a way. Maybe it hit me in all the feels because Michelle and Jamelle, this might come as a surprise to you: I was a dungeon master in middle school, in high school.
Cottle: I am putting that one in my pocket for later use.
French: I was a dungeon master.
Cottle: You’ll be sorry you told me that.
French: That chapter of life was really special. And just sort of seeing the development of friendships and the bonds that you form with your childhood friends. And then the sense of loss as you grow older and you lose touch to some degree — some greater or lesser degree. I just thought it was so emotionally true and real in a way that a movie about superpowered, telekinetic people doing battle with demogorgons from another dimension in that context is one of the most emotionally real shows I’ve seen.
Cottle: You know what? I support you in this. I support you, David.
Bouie: I’ve never seen a second of “Stranger Things” in my life and I don’t intend to change that.
French: You have so much to look forward to, Jamelle.
Bouie: It’s literally never gonna happen.
Cottle: It could. Never say never.
Bouie: So my recommendation is also visual. It’s a film. I am a huge fan of the late director John Frankenheimer. Frankenheimer-directed films include “The Manchurian Candidate,” “Seven Days in May.”
His most famous one in the 1990s is “Ronin” with Robert De Niro — probably De Niro’s best performance of the ’90s. And before that, he directed a picture for HBO that I watched recently, called “Against the Wall.” It stars Kyle McLaughlin and Samuel L. Jackson, as well as a bevy of thespians. It is a dramatization of the Attica prison riot and it is terrific. I had such a good time watching it. Frankenheimer is a great director of action and kinetic action in particular. And the prison riot scene feels like you’re in the midst of it. It’s so well shot and so well directed and captures the sense of — especially from the perspective of the guards — surprise and shock. And then from the sense of the prisoners, the sense of opportunity, like oh, we are actually doing this.
This film has been kind of on my watch list for a long time. So I thought, let me just watch this as a Frankenheimer completionist, and I came away thinking that this is some of his best work. So “Against the Wall.”
Cottle: That’s so funny you brought that up. Last night my husband and I rewatched “Dog Day Afternoon,” where Al Pacino has that famous moment where he’s one of the bank robbers, and he comes outside and he gets the crowd cheering: “Attica! Attica!” Why on earth would we have that overlap?
That is not what I am recommending for the week, though. It’s lovely. Watch it. Of course, it’s a classic. But I just finished watching the trailer for the new season of “Shrinking,” which I love.
French: Oh, Michelle ——
Cottle: David, you better not say anything unfortunate about the show.
Bouie: I like how I’m completely out of touch — I have no idea what this is.
French: I love that show.
Cottle: This is a show that stars Jason Siegel as a therapist whose wife gets killed and he’s mourning. And as a kind of part of his grieving coping process, he starts meddling in his patients’ lives. It is, despite that basis, hilarious. It is one of the rare shows that I watch that just makes me feel better about the world.
The cast is spectacular. It’s like this sprawling cast of his friends and family, and three words: old Harrison Ford. So magical. So it’s going to start airing on Jan. 28.
French: I can’t recommend that show enough. Yeah, it’s so good.
Cottle: That’s it, guys. That’s all I got for the week. Thank you so much for coming to play.
Bouie: Oh, always a pleasure.
French: Bye, guys.
Cottle: Bye, David. And everybody, remember, if you’re on the West Coast or planning to be on the West Coast, get your Jamelle tickets. It’s going to be lit.
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This episode of “The Opinions” was produced by Derek Arthur. It was edited by Alison Bruzek and Kaari Pitkin. Mixing by Daniel Ramirez. Original music by Pat McCusker, Isaac Jones and Carole Sabouraud. Fact-checking by Mary Marge Locker and Kate Sinclair. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta and Kristina Samulewski. The director of Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser.
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