The Opinion columnist Bret Stephens and the contributing Opinion writer Frank Bruni return for another edition of The Conversation. This week, they are joined by the Opinion editor Aaron Retica, who fields questions from readers about the gap between President Trump’s interests and voters’ priorities, the future of Trumpism without Mr. Trump and whether centrism can be charismatic.
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.
Aaron Retica: I’m Aaron Retica, an editor for New York Times Opinion. I’m here with one of our columnists, Bret Stephens, and one of our contributing writers, Frank Bruni. Hello to you both.
Bret Stephens: Hello, hello, hello. Hey, Frank. How are you doing?
Frank Bruni: How are you guys? Great to see you.
Stephens: Good to see you, Aaron. How was your Thanksgiving?
Retica: Mine was very nice. Turkey was well done. The politics were only slightly underdone. Let’s just say we got through it. [Laughs.]Frank, what about you?
Bruni: I think we had a head count of more than 30 Brunis, and we have learned when we reach those numbers to not go near politics. Although, since we’re Italian, the food is political — whether the hosts made enough pasta to go with the various turkeys is a quasi-political question for us because we’re Italian.
Retica: I’m also Italian, so I understand it well.
Stephens: I’m the son of an Italian Jew, so it’s the same story. We only had 15 at our table, but it was actually delightfully apolitical. I don’t know why. Maybe because we all know we agree about everything, so there was no need to talk about it.
Retica: Speaking of political — in the last column, we included a call-out for readers to ask the questions that they have for Bret and Frank, and we’re going to get to some of those in a minute. But first, let’s talk about what seems to be on the mind of many people, insofar as they pay attention to politics at all, and that’s what’s going on with Trump, who’s a bit all over the place these days, but he’s spending a lot of his time focusing on foreign policy.
For Americans, of course, foreign policy — even with wars — is never at the heart of how they’re living day-to-day and affordability is a much bigger issue, and it’s certainly a huge issue now.
Frank, let me start with you because you’re in North Carolina. What are you seeing in terms of how people are reacting to Trump, what they’re thinking about Trump, and what role he’s playing in their lives?
Bruni: I hear people expressing disappointment and concern that the cost of living is not coming down. I think they have some serious questions about whether the blame for that belongs with President Trump, and they definitely notice the contradiction between what he promised them and what he’s delivered.
But I also get the sense that the jury’s not out. I say this as someone who obviously is rooting for a successful Democratic performance in the midterms next year.
But I think there is plenty of time for Trump and his administration to try to right that ship, because I don’t get the sense that the people who were kindly inclined toward him — who wanted to give him a chance or who were fans — have closed the door on him henceforth.
Stephens: Yeah, I think that’s right. Trump is, first of all, the beneficiary of an opposition that is still broadly pathetic, a fact that was vividly illustrated to all sides by the shutdown and then the capitulation toward the shutdown.
I also think that Trump has the ability to create problems for himself and then solve them. One very good way of solving the affordability crisis, which is still very much on people’s minds, is by lifting the very tariffs, or many of the same tariffs, that he has unilaterally imposed.
So I don’t think this moment in time necessarily tells us very much about where we’ll be in, say, 11 months, at the midterms.
Bruni: I want to echo what Bret said. I think that’s completely true, and I think we all need to remember that the three of us and all of our colleagues, we think in three-minute increments. We’re taking the pulse of the situation every three days or every three hours or every three minutes.
I think voters think in longer increments of time. Some of the stuff that we’re so surprised at in Trump and that we criticize him for — the way he reverses what he says he’s going to do, doesn’t follow through, goes back on his word, et cetera, and his executive overreach — those things could be his greatest tools before the midterms in terms of finally reckoning with the fact that he’s not delivered on his economic promises, finally reckoning with the fact that he has not brought down the cost of living.
We could see him doing very sweeping and unilateral and emphatic things that reverse what he’s done before and, from a certain perspective, look ridiculous, but actually end up being very efficacious for his political purposes.
Stephens: Let’s not forget Donald Trump is a second-term president operating, in many respects, as second-term presidents do. They turn away from domestic politics quite typically, and focus on foreign policy where they feel they have more control. They’re looking for a global legacy because they’ve already secured essentially their political vindication through their re-election.
And at some level, they just don’t care. That’s just a theme in a lot of second terms: that they’re just no longer as concerned with what the daily poll numbers are telling them because they know that they’re lame ducks and they’re playing for an entirely different audience. And I think we’re seeing a little bit of that also with President Trump right now.
Retica: That is a perfect segue, actually, to the thing I wanted to get into next, which is: What do you imagine Trumpism to be after Trump? This is a very hard question because there are so many different forms of MAGA.
We’ve learned over the past 10 years that there’s the national conservative people, there’s the post-liberals, there’s the traditional Republicans who are willing to live with it — like Rubio — but they’re also connected to a whole set of ideas about making the Republican Party work as a working-class party. There’s other taxonomies I could do.
So, Bret, let me start with you. Trumpism without Trump: Is that possible? What’s it going to look like? Who’s going to lead it? What shape will it take?
Stephens: Well, first of all, don’t forget, there are a lot of Trumps. Eric and Don and Ivanka and Lara Trump and a whole line of succession there — don’t discount them. They will be politically relevant, I think, for a long time after their father is out of office.
I think Trumpism without Trump is going to move in different directions because Trumpism was always a somewhat amorphous set of half-baked ideas connected to a singularly charismatic — in my view odious, but odiously charismatic — figure.
I think one side of it is the JD Vance version: much more isolationist, truculent, illiberal in many of its core instincts.
Another side of it could be a quasi-restoration of what we used to call normie Republicanism — you mentioned Marco Rubio — combined with a slightly more populist tinge, but a return to the Republican Party that we used to know.
A third possible direction, and the one that terrifies me most, is the one that’s embodied by Tucker Carlson and the more aggressively bigoted, antisemitic, wildly illiberal streak that looks like an American version of the AfD party from Germany or other very far-right-wing parties in Europe that openly incorporate and celebrate fascistic elements in their core thinking.
So one of those three futures is possible. In fact, all three futures are possible.
Bruni: What’s interesting — because everything Bret said is wholly accurate — is we spend so much time talking about how untenable the Democratic coalition can be and left versus center and Democrats and how does that party stay together.
What Bret is describing is so many different ideological tribes of different temperatures within the Republican Party that are being held together, and have been held together for a while now, really, by Trump’s force of personality.
The question is, once he’s gone, all of these things we describe as fissures, do they become something much wider, much more jagged, much more destructive? And do you have a chaos within what was once referred to as the Republican Party and has already changed so much?
I don’t know, but I think it’s possible. I think if our democratic institutions have not been totally corrupted and enfeebled by the time that happens, it could really be a disaster for the so-called Republican Party and an extraordinary opportunity for today’s Democratic Party.
Retica: OK, so a question that is always on your mind, that you guys have brought up already, is about centrism, its power — maybe not its power. Let me just read this question from a reader to you:
“In The Conversation, Frank said, ‘Democrats need to reclaim the dead center of American politics. In some ways, that’s going to require a considerable shift to the right.’”
Stephens: I think I said that, no?
Bruni: Bret said that.
Retica: Well, this person said it was you, but the rest of the question is fabulous.
Stephens: I’m going to take that mistake as a compliment.
Retica: Exactly. “Please go deeper into this. How is it that being more conservative is going to help the Democratic Party? How does it help Americans?”
I’m still in the voice of the reader here, but it’s not untrue of me, either.
“I’d prefer to see the Democratic Party a little left of center on many issues, such as health care. Why do you think that it doesn’t work politically? Why can’t Americans have the safety net that European countries provide so well for their citizens that other countries are at the top of the happiness list?”
I want to add to the question, though, to make it a little harder. I want to divide centrisms. Because there’s an identity-politics-eschewing centrism that potentially is very electorally effective. But if it’s a centrism that doesn’t change any of the economic arrangements, I’m not sure that would work, no matter how much it pushed back against the loonier elements of the coalition.
Bret, I know this is a subject dear to your heart, so why don’t I start with you?
Stephens: Well, first of all, I just have a theory of politics, which is that politics are really still won in the middle of the electorate.
The reason Donald Trump was improbably re-elected for a nonconsecutive term is that he won a lot of voters who had shifted toward Biden four years earlier. He was able to do so because people had memories of prosperity under Trump, at least until the pandemic hit.
Look at not just the national elections, but the congressional elections: When you see Democrats who are winning in purple areas — The New York Times had a very excellent editorial on this subject — time and again, the people who are going to win, who are going to give you the governing majorities, are not the Elizabeth Warrens. They’re the Joe Manchins.
So, wherever the Democratic Party can find those Joe Manchins who are going to win difficult seats in purple states, they need to recognize their value. That’s just a political reality.
The second thing is the most successful Democratic president of my life was Bill Clinton. And Bill Clinton learned the lesson that when the Democratic Party had, according to broad perception, shifted too far to the left, it became unelectable, and it became electable again when he pushed the party way back to the center of politics in both senses.
This was a president who was pro-death penalty and acted on that as governor of Arkansas. And he was culturally much more at the center of American politics. You remember he had the famous Sister Souljah moment back in 1992. He talked about abortion being safe, legal and rare.
This was a president who understood that Americans didn’t particularly like the radical touches of the Democratic Party from the 1970s and 1980s. And Americans don’t like the radical touches from the last decade, either.
So one of the things that I think a successful Democratic nominee is going to have to do is he’s going to have to take the cultural issues off the table in order to win, by not appearing to be, as Kamala Harris was, essentially a progressive in the clothes of a centrist.
Final point: Democrats have a big problem because in too many places, at least at the municipal level, cities run by progressive Democrats are exactly what Americans do not want. And states run by progressive Democrats — I’m thinking of Governor Pritzker in Illinois, or Gavin Newsom in California — are also what Americans do not want.
The Democratic Party needs to lean into its Andy Beshears. It needs to lean into its Josh Shapiros. Maybe Wes Moore will be the guy, I don’t know, but it needs to lean into that side. Roy Cooper from North Carolina might be another figure who will speak to that middle of American politics that wants sanity, not another four years of radicalism and one side or the other.
Retica: So, Frank, before you start, let me just push back against that a little bit and show how we could do it civilly. Democrats at their greatest, though, at least to my mind — the F.D.R. coalition, the New Deal; the L.B.J. coalition and the Great Society, much of which I presume you don’t love, but some of which you probably do at least like or tolerate.
That was a much more ambitious, dreamier, liberal left coalition bringing in actual people who critiqued capitalism, all the way to the centrists and the farmers — a much broader coalition.
I’m not saying it’s not electorally viable for the House, but I worry a little bit that if the Democrats have a problem where they’re seen as equivocators, as not dreaming big, as not really thinking about people’s lives, that if they simply tack toward what political scientists call the median voter, they’ll actually end up seeming more wishy-washy than they do now.
Stephens: My memories of the L.B.J. administration are admittedly vague, Aaron, since I was -5 years old.
Retica: Yeah, but you heard about it.
Stephens: But at least from the history books, I seem to recall that the final term of the Johnson administration was not a very happy one, and that the guy who became president was someone named Richard Nixon. Is that a name familiar to you?
Bruni: Oh, I’ve heard of him. He had a rough presidency, no?
Stephens: Well, not the first term, but the second term was less glorious.
I remember Joe Biden coming to office campaigning as a centrist and then governing as a progressive and being a one-term, widely despised president — not just for his policies, but also in part for those policies.
So I’m not quite sure. I guess you have to go back to F.D.R. to find an example that confirms your theory. I just don’t see that happening.
But here’s the problem, Aaron. The problem is that when you get to the center of politics, typically speaking, charisma leaves the house, right? Charisma lives at the margins of politics.
Mamdani is a charismatic politician, to take one extant example. The trick is how do you create a charismatic center? And again, I go back to Bill Clinton. It was that unique personality of his that got personal charisma tied to centrist politics and got a broad coalition of Americans behind him.
Remember, he left office — despite all of the scandals — with a 63 percent approval rating or something equally stratospheric.
I guess my question to you, or maybe to Frank, is: What does this left liberal coalition support, and can it run more successfully than, say, Harris did last year? I don’t think so.
Retica: And Frank, I actually want you to center it a little bit on North Carolina, because North Carolina has to be part of any emerging Democratic coalition. Obama won it the first time, and he lost it the second time.
Bruni: Yeah, and Romney won it the next time.
Retica: And Romney won it the next time. So North Carolina is a really very interesting bellwether for the future of America for a million reasons. It’s got all the research universities, one of which you’re now part of. Talk to us about Bret’s question, but actually, let’s talk about North Carolina at the same time.
Bruni: Well, North Carolina was also Biden’s narrowest loss in 2020.
Retica: Oh, interesting.
Bruni: When I look at North Carolina, I do not think a Democrat who was identified primarily as a social progressive who had laid himself, herself or theirself open to the kind of ad that if you were living in North Carolina during the last election, as I was, you saw in perpetuity — the transgender inmate ad that ended with that, in terms of its political effect, brilliant line: Donald Trump is for you; Kamala Harris is for they/them.
My point is, if you’re a Democrat with a record or are emphasizing things in the fashion where you can be identified as far to the left on, for lack of a better shorthand, social cultural issues, then I think you’re in trouble.
Where I think there is space and possibility, perhaps, is a Democrat who is pretty far to the left on economic issues but does not go all the way there on social and cultural issues, at least in a state like North Carolina. I could see that combination winning.
It goes back to one of the most important things you said at the beginning of this chapter of our discussion, Aaron, which is that there are many centrisms.
I would put it a different way. When we talk about a candidate being tenable because that candidate is in the center, do we mean in the center on every issue, on every kind of spectrum that you could establish? Or do we mean when you add it all together, the way it comes out in the wash is centrist? I think that is a more realistic thing, and I agree that only a centrist candidate can prevail.
One last thing. Bret, you made a great point about how much more difficult charisma is in the center or for centrists than it is for someone else.
I think there may be an opportunity right now for that to not be true. I think Americans, those who are not spending all their lives on social media, are so tired of the temperature of our political discourse, are so tired of the melodrama of American political life, that I think a centrist who is poetic and charismatic about the desire to heal, the desire to turn down the temperature, the desire to create a space that may not match everybody’s political preferences, but that is a space in which we can actually live amicably and get some minor stuff done, find some compromises so that we have incremental progress as opposed to utter sclerosis, I think that could be a charismatic pitch.
Retica: We were talking about how presidents pivot to foreign policy in their second terms, and I want to do that, too, because it’s critical to what’s happening in the news.
Start with Venezuela. We’re recording this on Monday, and there is a meeting going on later today. So who knows what will be happening by the time this comes out, but a lot has already happened.
There has not been a ton of stirring in the American public about what’s happening in Venezuela, but there is starting to be some pushback in Congress.
Let me start with Frank. On the ground in North Carolina or in your conversations or anything like that, are you seeing any kind of tremors from what’s happening with Venezuela? Are people ignoring it completely? Are people talking about it at all?
Bruni: I hear my friends in academia talking about it, and I do not hear my neighbors — who are not in academia — talking about it. And while they are not representative — many of my neighbors are physicians and health care workers — I don’t hear them talking about it.
I think that what Pete Hegseth stands accused of, according to that Washington Post report, as we speak, is crucially and vitally important.
Retica: Let’s say what that is for people who don’t know what we’re talking about.
Bruni: Sure. I’m going to perhaps mischaracterize it, but he is accused by the story in The Washington Post of essentially giving orders, at a remove, to strike and kill any survivors of an attack on an allegedly drug-smuggling boat — I’m using really sloppy shorthand — essentially sinking that boat, taking that boat out of action, even though that was accomplished and these people were mere survivors clinging to the wreckage, he gave orders to go ahead and kill everyone anyway.
That is by many definitions a war crime, I’m hedging it just because — are we at war? There are all sorts of intricacies here. I think that accusation is profoundly important. I think figuring out what happened and responding in a forceful way is — and I don’t mean militarily forceful; I mean in terms of what happens to Pete Hegseth — incredibly important.
And yet it is one of those things, if we’re being realistic, that I don’t think you’re going to hear voters talking a ton about because it’s not something that is entering their daily lives in a way that they can feel.
Now, who knows, it’s still very early. It’s still very young. And I love that you’ve made me the voice of North Carolina and the sort of weatherman in North Carolina.
Retica: I couldn’t resist, sorry. You went to college there.
Bruni: I went to U.N.C. Chapel Hill, so I went to a public university, but I also believe in total transparency. And most of my time is spent either walking in the woods with my beloved dog, Regan, or commuting between my upper-middle-class suburban neighborhood and an elite university. So I do not have my finger on the pulse of North Carolina quite in the way I wish I did.
Retica: Bret, let me give you a chance to talk about Venezuela.
I do want you to take into this a little bit what happened to “America First,” though. You have your own thoughts about what we should be doing in Venezuela, which you should outline. But let’s start with the Hegseth situation, and then you talk more broadly about Maduro and what’s happening overall and the threats that the government is making.
Stephens: I’m in a peculiar position in that the administration seems to be pursuing a policy I broadly support, but they’re pursuing it in ways that I find not just objectionable, but in this case we’re speaking about, if indeed that report is correct, despicable.
Retica: I guess we should say that the administration has denied that that is the case.
Stephens: Yeah. So, if that is in fact the case, it is unmistakably a war crime, and it is absolutely shameful.
With respect to Venezuela, the jury is very much out. I’m old enough to remember the first Bush administration invading Panama to get rid of a drug-running dictator there, Manuel Noriega. I think even most Panamanians would agree it was a necessary act of regional hygiene that did Panama a great deal of good, and it was good for the United States.
I think that if the U.S. is able to accomplish the same with the Maduro regime, it will be remembered the same way. If it ends up being some kind of long-running quagmire for American forces in Venezuela, then it’s obviously a very different story.
I happen to believe that I think it will look much more like the U.S. invasion of Panama than it will like the U.S. invasion of Iraq. But I’ve been wrong before, and I could be wrong again.
Retica: This is all caught up in some ways with what has been a bit of a surprise in the second Trump administration, which is this McKinley-ite obsession — or Monroe Doctrine, however you want to think about it — with the Western Hemisphere and the question of what’s our space.
They weren’t talking about Venezuela on the campaign trail, obviously, and yet somehow it seems to have become very important to him.
Bruni: I think Trump is obsessed with potency, or at the very least, the appearance thereof. I think these notions of territorial expansion, these notions of bringing other lands to heel and that sort of thing, is so consistent with his psychological needs. And I’m not sure it’s about a whole lot more than that, but Bret is much smarter on this.
Stephens: I will say, I don’t think it’s just psychological.
I actually think that the Venezuela issue plays to a lot of important themes in the Trump administration. There is a massive refugee crisis that is the result of the misgovernance of the Chavez and Maduro regimes. I think the question of foreign meddling in the Western Hemisphere matters, and Venezuela is an ally of China, Russia, Cuba, and also of Iran. So that’s another issue.
It is, in fact, the case that the Maduro government essentially supports itself thanks to, at a minimum, looking the other way at the narco traffic that goes through its borders. So all of these are actually highly legitimate issues. And by the way, the Maduro government is one of the worst dictatorships in this hemisphere, and it stole an election last year.
So, for Trump, if Trump were to get rid of the Maduro government and bring back the guy who won last year’s elections and have him in office, it would put Democrats in a quandary because this would hardly be a matter of an American-led coup. It would be the restoration of democratic leadership in what was once Latin America’s richest state.
Bruni: I just have to amicably push back and note a few ironies. I don’t think Trump is usually concerned about the stealing of elections. I don’t know where I get that, but that’s just my feeling.
Stephens: Touché, touché.
Bruni: I don’t know that Trump is usually concerned about the world’s worst dictators.
He exchanged love letters with the leader of North Korea, and he seems awfully eager to please Vladimir Putin.
And if he’s so concerned about narco trafficking, why did he just extend a pardon to the former president of Honduras? My theory is he kind of likes to make a statement that presidents should be able to do whatever the hell they want with impunity.
And I think he just likes to show that he has the muscle to do these things. But that is another action that, all due respect, my friend Bret, slightly contradicts your high-minded analysis.
Stephens: It’s fair. All your points are well taken.
Retica: OK. I want to read another question that was sent that’s actually going to get us to Russia.
It’s always a dream when you work on these things that some kid in Moldova is reading it, and you’re having an effect on their lives. So, here we go.
This question comes from Kazakhstan. I hope I’m saying this right: Arystan, who is from Astana:
“Hi, I hail from Kazakhstan. I guess I’m the only teen or even individual in Kazakhstan to read your articles. Ha-ha, ha-ha.”
That’s what he says.
“With your, quote-unquote, ‘SAT words’ I attained a good score in the exam.
Besides that, I mentioned one of you in my personal statement. Let’s see what happens. I read Frank Bruni’s books. They had a huge role in changing my life. Although I sometimes have different views from Bret Stephens” — to which I have to say: Get in line — “he taught me how to have a constructive dialogue despite differences.”
Stephens: Thanks, Aaron.
Retica: Yeah. Well, you know, I’m here to serve.
And here’s this question:
“Do you think that if something goes amiss in Ukraine, it will embolden Russia to wreak havoc on a bigger scale? As I said, I’m from Kazakhstan. I’m fearful for our northern part because a preponderance of Russians live there.”
“Some Russians — even politicians — including Mr. Putin, explicitly or implicitly, have claimed this chunk of land and said it’s historically theirs, as, obviously, they did with Ukraine as well. We have an overlapping history similar to Ukraine. Under the Soviet regime, we were starved to death with millions of people dying.”
He wants to know what you think about that. How real is that fear? And what should we be saying to someone who’s asking a question like that?
Stephens: Well, first of all, what a generous and lovely note. It’s hugely flattering to know that we are being read by a young person in Astana. Thank you for paying attention to what it is that we do and for the partial compliment. I’ll absolutely take it.
Look, I’m proud that I was barred for life by the government of Russia three or so years ago. That, I think, has to do with 25 years of nonstop anti-Putin editorials, op-eds and columns.
I would be very fearful if the result of the current round of negotiations essentially vindicates Putin’s war effort.
I think we have to think of Putin and his allies in Beijing, Iran and Pyongyang as constituting a new axis of aggression that directly threatens free people everywhere in the world, but most especially free people who live at the margins of that axis — whether they’re in Taiwan or Astana or Chisinau or anywhere else.
So I think these negotiations, whatever cease-fire comes of it, will for Putin merely be a pause in which he can regroup, continue to build his impressively resilient war machine and aggress again for the sake of the restoration of the old Soviet Union.
So I am really concerned about what appears to be an American administration selling Ukraine out because the price is going to be paid all over the world, many times over.
Bruni: Having gently pushed back at Bret in regard to Venezuela, I want to wrap him in a big, sloppy bear hug of agreement for everything he just said. And I don’t have anything to add to it, really, except I want to say one thing.
It’s easy, and it’s correct most of the time, to be calling out and criticizing people in the Trump administration and people he’s put in his cabinet, most of whom are spectacularly unqualified for what they’re doing.
So, when there’s a moment to say it looks like someone is really trying to do something positive, I always want to shout it out. And Marco Rubio’s apparent role and place in what’s going on right now has reassured me somewhat because he does not seem as ready to capitulate to Putin’s demands and to let Putin have his way as others, namely the president, seem to be willing to do.
I want to thank him for that.
Retica: I want to end on something lighter, which is another reader question. This one came from Daniel Hahn in Ohio.
He says:
“I love this column. It is a driving reason why I subscribe ——”
Which is nice. Thank you, Daniel.
“I want to know what your all-time-favorite live music concert you’ve ever attended is.”
I’ll say mine, even though who could possibly care what mine is, but it’s a sort of funny story. I had to think hard about it. And then I realized it was seeing the Dead Kennedys in Connecticut in the late 1980s.
The concert itself was great. But the part of it that I remember so well was when some drunken frat guy got onstage and was yelling the lyrics to one of their songs, which were: Kill the poor, kill the poor, kill the poor. And then Jello Biafra, the lead singer of the Dead Kennedys, got on a back mic and he just said very quietly: Same to you, buddy. Same to you. Bret?
Stephens: Well, I probably should say, you know, seeing Jordi Savall play the viola da gamba at the Metropolitan Museum many years ago, but that would be a lie.
Retica: Though he is awesome, I will say.
Stephens: He’s very great. But the truth is, and I’ve already outed myself, I’m a huge Rush fan.
Rush, the Canadian progressive rock trio of Geddy Lee, Alex Lifeson and the late, great Neil Peart, whose surname I’m correctly pronouncing. They were massive influences on me, especially when I was a teenager. They meant the world to me. I went to see them in concert many times.
I’m just not going to deny how much I love these three truly great Canadians, the greatest thing that the City of Toronto ever produced. And I say that with no disrespect to the Blue Jays or any other great Torontonians.
Retica: Mr. Bruni?
Bruni: In the late 1980s there was a singer-songwriter, she was in the pop-rock space, who came out with a debut album that critics quite liked. Her name is Toni Childs, and the album was called “Union.”
And Toni Childs had — presumably still has — one of the most distinctive singing voices I’ve ever heard. I mean, big and raspy, but also it had all of these curlicues and wrinkles to it that were extraordinary.
And when she went on tour with “Union,” I guess she hadn’t hit it big enough. There was not much muscle or money behind it. A friend of mine and I bought a ticket, and we went to see her at the Bottom Line in Greenwich Village, which is tiny.
I guess there was so little money behind this, or she was still so nascent that in my memory, and I may have this slightly wrong, she stood there in her kind of weird one-piece billowing dress, barefoot, and every time she sang the walls of the place vibrated, and people say metaphorically that they got goose bumps, but I had goose bumps that entire concert.
It felt intimate, and it felt singular.
Retica: OK, we’ll get The Conversation playlist posted as soon as possible. Thank you both very much.
Stephens: Good to see you.
Bruni: Great to be with you both.
Thoughts? Email us at [email protected].
This episode of “The Opinions” was produced by Derek Arthur. It was edited by Alison Bruzek and Kaari Pitkin. Mixing and original music by 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. Special thanks to Rachel Harris and Lisa Tarchak.
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