David Graham on Trump’s 'Strategy Behind the Chaos'
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From KQED in San Francisco, I'm Nina Kim. Coming up on Forum, as President Trump makes provocative foreign policy statements that get walked back, or issues brazen executive orders, some that are quickly challenged in court, and as Elon Musk creates upheaval in federal agencies, we look at the tactics the Trump administration is using to consolidate power. Atlantic staff writer David Graham says there is strategy behind the chaos and joins us to talk about what he sees as deserving sustained attention.

What have you noticed about Trump's tactics this term as compared to last? Join us. Welcome to Forum. I'm Mina Kim. Today is the deadline for federal employees to decide if they'll take the buyout that was offered to more than 2 million workers in an email from the Office of Management and Budget with the same wording, fork in the road, that Elon Musk sent to Twitter employees when he took over the platform.

The email, the agency incursions to scale back the bureaucracy are just some of the ways that Trump administration, including Musk, have tried to expand their power in the last two and a half weeks. Others include overwhelm and overreach. The Atlantic's David Graham has been closely following Trump's actions since taking office and is with us to share his insights. And listeners, what tactics have you noticed and what questions do you have about where to put your focus and attention?

David Graham, welcome to Forum. It's great to be back. So we're only two and a half weeks in, but the administration has already given us a lot to react to and interpret. And in broad strokes, David, how are you taking in this administration and what has helped you make sense of what's gone on these first few weeks? Well,

Well, I mean, I think the basic flow of information is very hard to keep track of. There's so much going on so many fronts that to keep track of that is difficult. And you see this not just in, you know, the general public and in news reporters. You see this in the sort of advocates trying to push back against it. They're trying to coordinate lawsuits and things to block these. And even they can't keep track of everything that's going on. This is their their full time role. So I think it's understandable if people are a little bit overwhelmed.

I also think it's helpful to think about the ways in which there is sort of an underlying plan beneath this so that as we try to figure out what specifically is going on in particular areas, we know that this is not kind of ad hoc. And, you know, there's various schemes behind this. I mean, I think Project 2025 is a very useful one for understanding what's going on.

going on. And I think Elon's takeover of Twitter is also useful for understanding the way he's approaching this. And when we see those comparisons, I think it helps to make a little bit more sense of what we're seeing.

Well, yes, and I definitely want to be able to dig into the things that are not ad hoc, the kinds of things that may on the surface have appeared chaotic, but could very well be part of an effective strategy. But I will say that there was a piece that particularly grabbed me from the regular dispatches you've been making since Trump took office.

And this was one from last week that was called Donald Trump is just watching this crisis unfold with the subhead, but he's not taking charge. And it was talking about how Trump responded to the plane crash. It grabbed me, I guess, because it was a helpful reminder of how passive Trump is.

Could you remind us of some of your observations from this piece? Yeah. I mean, I think writing it was a helpful reminder for me, too. You know, when I was watching the aftermath of the plane crash in Washington, it was striking how much Trump seems to treat this not as an occasion to lead, whether that's, you know, finding facts, whether that is sort of providing moral uplift, but more as an opportunity to comment.

He's watching TV. He's posting about it on Truth Social. He, you know, he's saying making observations that are kind of common sense, either common sense in his vision or maybe truly common sense. But he's not doing what we expect from a president. And in fact, I think this is a way we've seen Trump behave in a lot of crises.

He's such a creature maybe of television and of social media that he sees himself as a commentator. This was true during the pandemic often when he seemed more interested in sort of talking about what was going on than providing solutions. And I think we even see that in the last week where he said, well, Elon is doing things and if we don't like them, we'll pull back. And he's sort of acknowledging there he's not really driving this train. He's just kind of watching it all unfold and reacting as he sees fit.

Yeah, which makes you wonder, like, who's really running the government? You write something interesting. You say,

So, yeah, Dave, talk more about those ideological aides. And we can start with Elon Musk and what you have described as his blitzkrieg. Talk about the things that he's doing that have potentially real and long-lasting damage. Well, I just say to your point about who's really in charge. It seems like it was just a few months ago that we were in a presidential campaign where critics of Joe Biden were telling us that he wasn't really in charge and somebody else was running the government. And that seems to be...

an accurate description of a lot of what we're seeing in these first two weeks. So it's really a little bit whiplash-inducing.

I think the ideological commitments are really important and they're important in a couple of different ways. You have on the one hand a group of people who have a really strong and considered view of the government, who want to reshape the way government works and reshape who works in government. They're concerned about things like bureaucratic power.

They're concerned about federal spending. They're concerned about the relationship between the presidency and Congress. And then you also have somebody like Elon Musk, who has a different sort of ideology. He doesn't have a particularly foreign view of government, it appears, but he has strong ideas about how he thinks organizations should work.

And these two groups have some areas of overlap. I think they have a shared antipathy to DEI programs, for example. But they also have very different approaches to how they want to do those things. And the way they clash and where they run into conflicts, I think, is going to be an important part of how the next few weeks of this administration shake out. Yeah. Some political analysts are calling what's happening, you know, things like Musk's attempts to shutter USAID or Trump's

you know, consolidate what will largely wind up to likely be illegal control over the federal bureaucracy across a range of agencies and to shrink it. Today is the deadline for federal workers to take buyouts. And I should correct myself, that email came from the Office of Personnel Management, and reportedly some 40,000 or so will take up on it. So these analysts are calling what's happening a prime example of state capture. What is that? And do you agree?

Yeah. So state capture is basically when you have private interests, you know, big industrial moguls or companies that have such influence over the government that they're effectively making the decisions. And that does seem to be a good description of what we're seeing right now through Elon's power. And it's, you know, it's fascinating because this is somebody who is not, wasn't elected by anybody. He wasn't confirmed by the Senate. He's filling a role that sort of

kind of exists. You know, the Doge has taken over the old U.S. Digital Service. So it's not totally made up out of whole cloth, but it's not really a position with with any clear mandate. And it certainly isn't a position that has the mandate he has taken it to have. This is somebody who's a major government contractor who makes a lot of his money from the government and who stands to profit from these things. And given that Trump seems to be sort of letting him go for as long as Trump is willing to tolerate, you know, there are ways in which he is running the government.

And I think the other thing that is important here is Trump has a really narrow view of what

he's interested in. He's really interested in immigration. For example, he's really interested in trade policy. But there's a lot of things the government does that he just doesn't care about. And so those things are really susceptible to some sort of outside interest or some sort of bureaucrat inside the administration sort of taking over and running those in the direction they want. Yeah. He's also really interested in retribution. Yes. Really interested. Listeners,

So what have you noticed about Trump and his administration tactics this term as compared to last? What do you think deserves sustained attention? How have you decided what to pay attention to? And what questions do you have about how to react to this administration? You can email forum at kqed.org. You can find us on our social channels, Blue Sky, Facebook, Instagram, and threads at KQED Forum. You can call us at 866-733-6786, 866-733-6786.

David Graham is Atlantic staff writer and lead writer of the Atlantic Daily, the magazine's flagship daily newsletter. His most recent piece is Two Truths of Trump's Second Term.

Noel on Discord writes,

What is the status actually of Elon's ability to get into the payment system? Because I understand that attorneys for the DOJ just agreed to temporarily restrict his staffers from accessing the Treasury Department's payment system. That's right. There was an agreement this morning that they will not do that. It's hard to know what happens.

How that will hold. It's hard to know who is overseeing that. You have a federal judge who is over who's agreed to this arrangement. But also that seems like Musk is sort of doing things and waiting to see if anybody tells him not to do them. And often nobody is doing that or he's steamrolling the people who are.

Also, I mean, I think it's worth noting that what we know about this has been really opaque. We've got conflicting reports for several days before it became clear or became apparent that he, in fact, did have access into these payment systems, even over the objections of people in those departments. So there's not a whole lot of transparency going on. And I think that makes it a lot harder for the public to understand what's going on and also for advocates or for Congress to react to it. Yeah. I mean, the hope is that

lawsuits are reigning that activity in. I think the question also is what makes President Trump reign someone in and people have drawn a lot of attention to the fact that he likes a lot of attention. So when they're drawing too much political attention or stealing the spotlight from him, or maybe even creating too much political conflict, he reigns things in David, is that what you've noticed?

Yeah, I think that's probably fair to say. You know, you saw somebody like Steve Bannon, who was really useful to Trump as a strategist early in his first administration. But at some point, Trump sort of soured on him. And a lot of people think that the turning point was when Bannon appeared on the cover of Time magazine, which is one of Trump's favorite forums, you know, being lauded as the genius behind Trump. Trump doesn't like that.

With Musk, I think it's an interesting situation. Trump does appear to bridle it a little bit at some of the things that Musk does. But I think that there's maybe a part of Trump, too, that really enjoys having the world's richest man as his sidekick and that may buy Musk a little bit of forbearance from Trump.

I'm just getting word that a federal judge in Massachusetts has ordered a block on the fork deferred resignation program, fork in the road, until additional litigation can take place. So again, we are starting to see the courts can be slow, but we are starting to see some reining in by them.

That's right. And I mean, there's a question here. What happens to the 40,000 reported people who have taken the buyouts? Do they stand? We've seen people, there's a report earlier from a federal news service saying that employees of the IRS said that who've taken the buyout have now been asked to stay on until May 15th.

I don't know what governs that, whether they can do that or not. Nobody really seems to know because it's being made up as they go along. Yeah. And I think what you're underscoring here is just how much control and power this executive branch says it has is actually being quite exposed as being not as much as they think. We're talking with David Graham about Trump's tactics and how to interpret them. We'll have more after the break. I'm Mina Kim.

You're listening to Forum. I'm Mina Kim. We're taking a step back this hour and looking at the past two and a half weeks, what has happened and what it reveals about the tactics the Trump administration is using to consolidate power and remake the federal government.

And we're talking with David Graham, Atlantic staff writer, whose recent piece is Two Truths of Trump's Second Term. He is writing regular reports as part of the Atlantic's newsletter, including the newsletter The Return, about the Trump administration and closely following the administration's actions as well as Trump's. Listeners, what have you noticed about Trump and his administration's tactics this term as compared to last that are standing out to you?

What issues do you think deserve sustained attention and how are you deciding what to pay attention to that's coming from the administration? And what questions do you have about how to react to it? The email address is forum at kqed.org. Find us on our social channels at KQED Forum. Call us at 866-733-6786, 866-733-6786. And let me go to Dave in Mountain View. Hi, Dave. You're on.

Yeah, good morning. Yeah, I'm calling to point out the relationship between the god Thor, you know, the god of the hammer, the hammer of Thor, the Vikings, and what the idea is behind the hammer. First, you break everything up.

Then you put it back the way you want it. And one of the sub strategies that might be noted is that the earliest writings of the communists, and you can see this on a YouTube channel called New Discourses. The initial writings of the Communist Party were part of their major strategy was to destroy the innocence of childhood.

And it looks like what's going on is they're trying to play that one against the middle and play both ends against the middle. Well, Dave, let me put your thesis to David Graham. Break everything up, put it back the way you want it.

I think that does seem to be part of the strategy. And this is where I see a little bit of a break within the administration. You have on one hand the sort of Musk crew. Musk doesn't have a whole lot of experience in government. What he does have is a lot of experience in private industry, and he will just tear things down and redo them from scratch. He doesn't have a whole lot of interest in the way the structures of the government make that difficult to do or make it hard to rebuild.

On the other hand, you have a crew, and I think you can sort of roughly call this the Project 2025 bunch, who have a lot of experience in government and have thought really deeply about it and have a sort of longstanding

laid out a methodical method, a methodical plan for taking over the government from within. And so there's a little bit of a competition between these two sides. Musk just wants to break it all and the other ones think that they have a longer term plan that might work better. You can imagine the Musk approach sabotaging some of those things and that creating tensions inside the executive branch as well. Let me go to caller Ellie in Lafayette. Hi, Ellie, you're on.

Hi, good morning. Thank you for having me. First, I just wanted to say that I'm glad to hear that someone else is using the term blitzkrieg to describe what's going on right now. That was the first term that came to my mind when I saw that just litany of executive orders on day one. But then talking about how we react and what we're listening to and how we're discussing what's happening. As you just mentioned, Trump seems to really enjoy talking about what's going on.

Thanks, Ellie. Are you?

doing that in some way or thinking about that? Or is that a topic of conversation at The Atlantic, David? You know, we've thought a lot about the question of attention to Trump. And, you know, at the end of the day, he is the president. And I think it's hard to not to downplay that. You know, there may have been a time in 2015 where the media should not have given Trump the attention that we did. And

now he is the president. But I think there's a value to being specific about what we're seeing. So when Trump is being passive or when Trump is letting people do things or when the drivers of these changes are not, in fact, Trump himself, I think it's really valuable to point out who they are and where those ideas come from. Because if you understand where those ideas are coming from and what the ideology is, you're going to be in a better position to grasp what's happening. Yeah. And, you know, you're making me think about how much he does value

it is important for him to have the optics of and how important it is for him to project an image of something. But then when you're reporting on him and the actions that he's taking, understanding that aspect of him kind of helps you understand and really analyze how much substance there is behind some of the seemingly strong positions or actions he takes. Like, for example, with tariffs, right?

He gave pretty quick, right? After announcing them over the weekend after conversations with Mexico and Canada that don't sound like he got a tremendous amount. And of course, he keeps things deliberately vague so that

So that, you know, he can claim some kind of victory from some of the promises that are made on the border. But it feels like it underscores a couple of things about him, as I was saying, how much he wants optics to be viewed as him being strong and having victories, but also that he's not really interested in long, difficult fights with other nations. Yeah.

Yeah. You know, it's funny. He's strangely conflict averse, as it turns out. He likes to sort of stir things up, but then he backs down from them quickly. We saw that in various fights in the first administration when I think a lot of foreign leaders and not only Vladimir Putin registered that Trump was kind of a pushover and that you could give him a little bit of a symbolic victory. But he wasn't going to, you know, one push came to shove. He was going to try to find a way out of

that. And we saw that in the tariffs. I think, you know, the Canadian government in particular seems to have played this fairly effectively. They didn't back down. They offered retaliatory tariffs of their own. And then they managed to, you know, give him something that he could go to, which was the appointment of a fentanyl czar, this very sort of

hazy, symbolic thing. And he immediately lets go of it. The Mexican government seems to have done this as well. And I think we're going to see more of that. He just doesn't want to get into these battles. He wouldn't even fire people who he disliked in his first term. And people come to understand that. Yeah. I just want to highlight one more example of him, you know, claiming sort of an empty victory, because I think it's important for Californians. The move that

He did on California of ordering the Army Corps of Engineers to open two Tulare County dams and release over a billion gallons of water and claiming that, you know...

He brought the water to farmers and to help with the L.A. fires, neither of which was true. They were not asking for that. That water is really valuable for later in the year. And so just that, you know, being just another example of what he uses to try to appear like he is, you know, being strong and having victories, but not amounting to very much substance at all.

So Christine on Blue Sky writes, there is no strategy. There is no 3D chess. It's Connect Four with three pieces missing. You wrote that there are two truths, though, right, to this administration and that, you know,

There is a connection between the chaos and strategy. And I'm wondering if you could just talk about a few examples that were chaotic. Maybe the funding freeze is a good one where you do think, though, there is a strategy behind this that we need to pay sustained attention to. Yeah, I mean, I think Christine's reaction is understandable, especially given what we saw in the first four years of Trump's presidency, where I think there really wasn't any sort of multidimensional chess. It was really ad hoc.

What we've seen in the meantime is people who were in his administration, and I think Russell Vogt, who may be confirmed as head of OMB today, as early today, is a really important one, major intellectual architect of Project 2025.

They spend four years out of the White House thinking about what went wrong for them. And what they think is not that Trump was the problem, but they think that they were sabotaged by the bureaucracy and by bad political appointees and by bad planning. And they come up with a plan for these things. And it doesn't mean that what they do is unbeatable or that it's invincible. But I think there is a plan behind it. And the federal funding freeze is an example of this.

So they believe that the federal government, the president should be able to impound money to hold money back.

They want to create a test case where they can go to court and they're hopeful that the Supreme Court might rule with them. And so they're looking for ways to test that. And so I see the federal funding freeze as more of a trial balloon than a question of chaos. The fact that other parts of the administration were not read into it and didn't agree, and the fact that Republican opposition to it seems to have been a major part of it getting pulled back, doesn't obviate that there is a plan behind this.

The flurry of executive orders, which we're really still exploring from the first week, is another example. Many of these executive orders are flawed, but they're part of a broader effort that put together, and they were much, much readier on day one than we saw yesterday.

I mean, I think the signature moment of the very beginning of the first Trump presidency was the Muslim travel ban. And when you saw people streaming to airports to protest that and to try to help travelers through. But that took seven days into the administration. We saw these things happening on January 20th, on January 21st. It all moved a lot faster and they're much more coordinated than they were.

You know, chaos, I think, is not a problem for Trump. He doesn't mind that because he likes to see conflict within his team because it keeps anyone from being too powerful. I think there's a recognition that conflict or chaos rather does make it hard for people to grasp what's going on. But I do think there's something going on underneath it. It might not be multidimensional chess, but it is not simply it's very vivid. Connect four with three pieces missing. I think there's something there. You also said that.

He has an uncanny way of desensitizing us to the outrageous. What do you mean by that?

Well, he does this thing where he starts off by saying something that's outlandish and people react to that. And you get a lot of coverage and people are sort of slack-jawed. Then he says it again and then people say, well, Trump is saying that thing again. And he can do this a few times. Then by the time he actually implements the policy, it's something people have heard many times. They've been conditioned to expect he's going to do it and he's done it. And I think it's a good way of sapping the outrage because people can only pay attention to so much.

And when something is no longer new, it no longer has the same kind of shock value. So how do you determine what is something new?

not to emotionally or intellectually drain yourself trying to sort out. Like, for example, when he made that statement about Gaza, right, in the US taking over Gaza, my first thought was, oh, my God, this is so outlandish. I'm just going to give this 24 hours before I even react to this, right? I'm just going to see how this plays out and whether it becomes something real that I do have to pay a lot of attention to, right? But I'm wondering, like, how do we know, you know,

How do you know? How do you try to determine that as things are coming at you and you're in the role at The Atlantic of covering what is happening in this administration? I think this is where it's useful to think really hard about what he has said in the past. We haven't seen any suggestion in his campaign from any of his advisors about anything like a takeover of Gaza. So he may really want to do it, but that means there's probably not an infrastructure for that. There hasn't been a lot of planning. It's a little bit off the cuff.

When you look at something like impounding federal funds, that's something that his aides and him on the presidential campaign had been talking about for months or years. And so that's something I think that is more important to think about as something they're really going to try to do and that is going to happen imminently. That was hard to do with Trump in his first term because he was so vague on a lot of policy things and because the people around him often did not know as much about policy and they didn't have plans in place.

But I think that is something that it's a lot easier to do now is to see what the infrastructure is below it. Yeah, what the infrastructure is below it, what has had sustained attention, maybe what is contained within Project 2025. Those kinds of things all exist for us to know what will probably get their sustained attention as well.

Let me go to caller Donovan in Hayward. Hi, Donovan, you're on. Hey, yeah. So my question is, where is the leadership in the Democratic Party right now? Like, where is Nancy? Where is Chuck? Like, Elon isn't no one voted for Elon. And it seems like he's getting carte blanche to run like hog wild all over the federal government, undoing the standards of our civilization. Where is the leadership? Where is the leadership in the resistance right now?

Donovan, thanks. A lot of people are wondering about that, David. Chuck Schumer is on Twitter saying that Elon Musk is an unelected bureaucrat and saying that someone in Congress ought to stop him. If only Chuck Schumer knew somebody in Congress who could do something.

Yeah, a lot of people are asking this question, and I think there's a few things going on. One is that Democrats clearly made a calculation before Trump was inaugurated that they were going to sort of sit back a little bit and see if Trump would self-destruct. And I wonder if they underestimated the speed at which these things happened.

would unfold and thought that they'd be able to sit back more like they did in the first term and watch chaos. I think they're also struggling to react to these things. They're struggling with being in the minority in both houses. And they are a little bit shaken, it seems, about what their political messaging is. So what I mean is...

After the 2024 election, there's not a lot of confidence from a lot of Democrats that they know how to speak to voters. And so you see a lot of different party leaders speaking in different ways and trying different tactics. But I don't think there's any organized thrust. I think that reflects the disorganization in the party. And I'm hearing from a lot of people like that who want to know what the party is doing. Really? That is really unfortunate to hear you say that.

I guess because I have been seeing headlines that have been suggesting that maybe they are starting to figure out a way to resist. They have been saying a lot about Musk. I know that you're saying that, you know, Chuck Schumer has been on Twitter, but it does feel like they are trying to make him a focus or seeing him as potentially a weak point or a place to attack in the Trump administration. Yeah.

I think that's right. And we're starting to just in the last couple of days starting to see that, you know, you can you can see why that might be true. Musk is not elected. He's doing all of these things. He's very unpopular. And unlike Trump, he's not somebody that people are so desensitized to.

I also think it's something Democrats like because they are concerned about being seen as the party of the elites in the establishment. And so it's nice to be able to attack a billionaire and seem like they're on the side of the little guy.

I'm curious to see how well this works. And, you know, how well that works means a couple of things. One is, how does the public respond to these sorts of things? Do they get outraged about it? Is Musk somebody who pushes a button for them? And also, how does Trump respond to it? Is this something that he gets? Does he get upset about losing the attention? Does he get upset about Trump bringing or about Musk bringing him negative attention? Or does he enjoy seeing that? And does it sort of bind him to Musk a little bit more?

Hasn't Hakeem Jeffries also been suggesting the federal funding bill is where they can really take a stand?

He has. And I think that's a you know, that's a good idea for Democrats. It's clear that Republicans don't know what to do with funding. There's remarkable infighting in Congress. And I think there's been so much going on at the White House level that there's been less attention to how disorganized Congress is and how little progress on legislative things the Republican Party really is making for a party with the kind of unified control of Washington that it does. There's a lot of bulldozing, but not a lot of construction.

And so Democrats have potentially a lot of power there. And that's one of the rare places where they do have a lot of power. A Wisconsin House Democrat has introduced legislation that would basically say if you're a special government employee, which is the designation of Elon Musk, then you're banned from taking federal contracts. And it's actually named after Elon. I think it's eliminate looting of our nation by mitigating unethical state kleptocracy is the name of it.

Do you see that going anywhere or do you see that being useful in raising people's attention? I think these backronym bill names are a plague on the nation. You know, I think it's fine as messaging. I think Democrats want to bring attention to this. I don't think it's going to go anywhere in Congress because Republicans will see it as a messaging bill and they, you know, they're unwilling to to.

to block even Trump appointees who seem fairly unqualified, I don't think they'll probably stick their neck out on this. Chris Murphy has said that, you know, Democrats should deny expedited processing of nominees. Do you think that is an effective way of playing defense?

I mean, I think it is a lever the Democrats have and it's probably worth doing. And it's interesting if you think about the two different, about the, you know, so the Musk faction and the Project 2025 faction. The Project 2025 faction is very much about getting the right people into positions and getting, who know how government works and sort of attacking it from within. And so if Musk is endangering that, I think that is probably bad for the long-term project of MAGA and it may drive up some resistance. I think it's a good thing.

I think anything that slows them down is probably a good move for Democrats and they haven't been able to find anything else. So. So, sure. Why not?

We're talking about the tactics the Trump administration is using to consolidate power and remake the federal government and how Democrats and others are trying to find a way to respond and resist. And we're asking you, our listeners, to share with us what you've noticed in terms of tactics. What questions do you have about them? How to react to this administration and what you think deserves sustained attention. Stay with us. With more with David Graham. I'm Mina Kim.

Welcome back to Forum. I'm Mina Kim. We're talking with David Graham, Atlantic staff writer who's been closely following the Trump administration, providing regular reports and analysis. And we're talking with you, our listeners. You can join us at our email address, forum at kqed.org, at our phone number, 866-733-6786, 866-733-6786, and on our social channels on Blue Sky, Facebook, Instagram, Threads, and others. And we're talking with David Graham, Atlantic staff writer who's been closely following the Trump administration, providing regular reports and analysis.

And let me go to calls. Carrie in San Jose. Hi, Carrie, you're on. Good morning. It seems to me that they're doing what Steve Bannon called flooding the zone to try to just overwhelm people. And Project 2025 is a very scary thing. I think that the business community in general needs to stand up to Elon Musk and the oligarchs and workers.

In a consumer-based, 70% consumer-based economy, it doesn't work very well if you destroy your employees and you destroy your customer base. And it's not a very good long-term strategy for business. And I think the business community has a lot of power and they need to band together and look at what's happening and stand up to it. Carrie, thanks. David, how effective would that be and would they?

You know, we saw the business community being fairly aligned against Trump in his first term. I think, you know, fairly effectively, he he did not win reelection.

when we've seen them really shift in the last few years, and part of that was antipathy to Joe Biden and to Biden's economy. Part of that, I think, was making a calculation that one, Trump was not going away, and two, they might be able to get good things out of Trump, whether that's a more favorable tax code or more favorable regulation, or simply getting him to stop attacking them. So certainly at the highest levels of industry,

You know, Silicon Valley is a very clear one, but even in places like banking and finance and in, you know, heavy industry, you've seen people sort of aligning themselves with Trump. I think they could help stop these things if they wanted to. It doesn't seem to be what they're interested in doing right now. Let me go next to caller John in Concord. Hi, John. You're on.

Yeah, my only comment was I think the item that deserves sustained attention is how are constituents in Republican districts responding to this? Because the way I see it, the Democrats are in the minority, and the way that Congress can respond and to protect America is through our Republican leaders. So it's not so much what are the Democrats doing right now, but how

How are the people in Republican districts experiencing this? And I think there needs to be sustained reporting on how that's affecting them, because that community feeling the impacts of this is the way that we can get Republican leaders to actually respond and do the job of Congress. Until then, I think it's kind of unfair for us to expect much from Democrats.

John, thanks. TJ on Discord along those lines writes, at some point, the House Republicans will wake up to the serious upset in their districts. For example, Valadeo and Fong. If five House Republicans flip to independent or Democratic, Trump loses the House. What are you hearing, David? Do you have any insights into how Republican districts are responding to the chaos? I mean, I think this is a very good point and it's something that we do need to watch. It's a little bit early maybe to tell.

When we saw the federal funding freeze, the grant freeze, there was a lot of pushback from Republican officials at all levels who were suddenly grappling with what it would mean to lose that money. And they may support spending cuts in the abstract, but they actually do need that money for things and they like having that money for things and they were able to push back.

Whether by design or by luck, Musk, I think, has stumbled into a clever strategy in attacking the U.S. Agency for International Development because foreign aid is just not that popular. People think we spend 20%, 25% of the budget on foreign aid. It's actually more like 1% or 2%. And people want to bring that money home. And so you can attack that without a whole lot of penalty, political penalty maybe in the short term, at least from people who voted for Trump.

But as you get on the list, you're going to start affecting constituent services. And I think that's where people probably do get upset. The one caveat I'd say is there's a really interesting study that came out about a year ago of Trump's tariffs. And it found that the impact of those tariffs was mostly felt in negative ways in states that then also voted strongly for Trump. So sometimes their relationship is not as direct as we imagine it might be. That is something you are hearing from Democrats with regard to what they believe.

are focusing on. At least I was seeing, you know, statements that were made by Senator Adam Schiff, where he was basically saying, you know, we have to pick our fights, not chase every crazy squirrel. And what he really is thinking about are things that affect, you know, pocketbooks, right? The pocketbook issues as being a major focus, things like, you know, raising food prices that are causing suffering, maybe because,

the trade wars do happen or the mass deportations that could result in the kinds of economic shifts that people are not realizing in terms of a long-term ripple effect and those kinds of things. I've been hearing also sort of a desire to walk away from what they call cultural issues or identity-related issues. And I'm wondering what you think about that.

Yeah, there's I mean, there's a group of prominent Democratic strategists who are saying, you know, basically let USAID go. Foreign countries don't matter. Let DEI things go. Yeah, they're really unpopular. You know,

I think there's an understandable impulse to focus on these pocketbook issues because people do vote on them and they affect people directly. But I also think that there's a risk in standing back while the federal government gets hollowed out, while Musk appears to be sort of running past all of the laws and rules that govern how he can act.

If you let those things go too far, you end up with an executive branch that doesn't work and dysfunction, and it's going to be really hard to put back. So I think Democrats really do need to be able to walk and chew gum and able to do this. They can pick and choose some. There are some issues they can maybe deprioritize, but they can't do all of them. The other thing is Democrats support DEI issues, for example.

for a variety of reasons, but one of them is that they believe that racial equality is really important and that gender equality is really important, that protections for trans people are important. And, you know, at some point you can't walk away from your moral convictions and remain an effective force in politics. It does feel like, sort of,

sort of a victory for the right if that is the way that Democrats decide to go in a really sustained way. And in terms of effects, people are worried about the kinds of things that, you know, are in jeopardy. Danielle writes, I can't believe when I hear people still say, well, it's only four years as if we will be holding normal elections in four months.

or maybe even midterms. I feel like voting is very much in question with our democracy. How can we trust elections with Elon inside the system? How can we trust Trump has any intention to transfer power when he wouldn't last time? Lorraine writes, I'm concerned most about actions related to climate change. I also feel bad for federal employees who are about to be thrown into unemployment without warning, preparation, or conviction of due cause. These are human beings, no doubt most with families to support, and you can't discount the massive loss of expertise in all spheres."

of government operations. Angie writes, Trump is not driven by any kind of political ideology, but rather by marketing principles, promotion, packaging, and digital marketing. The more outrageous and nonsensical his ideas and proclamations, the more buzz he generates. And of course, social media and the tech bros are helping him maximize his influence. We know exactly what his strategy is, and yet we fall right into his trap. Let me go to caller Ronnie in Fairfax. Hi, Ronnie, you're on.

Thank you so much for the conversation. Yeah, I mean, even just the three comments that you just read are all terrifying, right? And I think, Mina, you know, I hear the anxiety in your voice, even as a journalist. And of course, anybody with a brain and a heart right now feels that anxiety. And I want to put out there that, you know,

I think I really resonate with what Ezra Klein recently wrote and said, which is that one of the most important things we can do right now is to not believe that we have a new emperor, to not believe that there won't be free and fair elections. Because if we believe that, then it will happen because we've accepted our fate.

And I also resonate a lot with what Adam Schiff said is not chasing every squirrel and just really focused on targeted fights. And right now it might be that there are really no fights that we can win. And I think that the main game right now, in my mind, is the inner game of staying calm, of knowing that the gravity of what's out there is atrocious and massive and they will destroy everything.

in some ways and it's going to be terrible in some ways and can we just be with that and then from that place of not

not calm, but maybe resilient, act in a way that actually makes sense to act and also accept that Nancy and Chuck are not going to save us. No way. Mom and dad are not going to save us. And how do we accept that? I don't know the answers, right? But I do believe that if we allow ourselves to get too anxious and act from that place, it won't be effective. And also that we have to work on our minds to not accept that we have a new emperor. And David, I'm curious for your thoughts on this as well.

Thanks, Ronnie. David, did you see that piece from Ezra Klein? I know it got passed around a lot in some circles with regard to, yeah, recognizing that this administration is trying to take power, power that it doesn't yet have. But the more that we act like it already has it, the more that we set the stage for it potentially being true.

Yeah, I did see that piece and I thought it was a smart piece and a useful corrective as far as it goes. I mean, you know, one thing I would say is it is not enough to recognize that the rules seem to prevent Trump from doing certain things. What I think we've learned from him is that the law is whatever you can get away with.

And he is testing the bounds of that. Musk is testing the bounds of that. So we should not accept it. And we should continue to treat him as being limited. But those limits are not as solid as we realize, and they will only work if people are working to enforce them.

And Ronnie is saying Chuck and Nancy won't save us. TJ on Discord writes, where's Kamala? I'd love to hear the prosecutor clarify the case. Do you have any insights into that, David? I think she's raising money to pay off her campaign debts. She's working on a book. You know, it's unclear. I mean, I think Democrats don't know who the lead messaging person is. And there's a split between Democrats.

People in the party and voters, I mean, not so much leaders who want to hear her out there and ones who are who think she lost. Let's move on. We need somebody else. And that's, I think, going to be a work in progress for the party. Let me remind listeners you are listening to Forum. I'm Mina Kim. The other point that that piece made was just about how the president does like does not like to feel political pain.

Ronnie is suggesting we keep calm and, you know, figure out a focused resistance, which is

Of course, absolutely true. And sorry if I was coming off as anxious. I was more just reading and trying to channel what the listeners' comments were to try to reflect what they were saying accurately. But I guess the main question I have is, do you think protests work? Do you think they will work with Trump? Or will they walk right into the hands of the right, essentially? Well, I think protests serve a couple different functions. If the idea of the protests is

to cow Trump and to make him back down, I would not expect that to happen. But protests are also important as a unifying force for an opposition, for bringing people together, for creating energy, for sending a message. And so I think that if people want to protest, that's what they should be thinking about, not whether Trump is going to see those protests and change his mind about anything immediately. It's a process. Yeah. This user on Discord, again, talking about

while we're still hashing out some of the things that the administration is trying to do, whether they're legal or constitutional, there is real impact, right? Real fear, real pain. This user writes, personally, I'm most scared of the attacks on queer rights because once that crumbles, I need to flee the country. If I lose access to my hormones, I can't survive here anymore. I feel like I just don't have any options besides making plans to get the hell out of here. And I'm scared.

Another listener, Ray, writes, if we were speaking of a family member or co-worker, these behaviors would be reviewed differently. Trump is attracted to shiny things, easily distracted, has difficulty holding a lucid thought, less than two weeks in this term, and chaos. Musk is breaking things and the entire world order is confused about U.S.'s goals. Please discuss Trump's inability to lead as a sign of cognitive decline. Hmm. That was... Democrats tried to raise that in the campaign, but I think rather unsuccessfully. But...

Got any reactions to Ray's assessment? Yeah, I'm not sure if it's how effective it is politically. You know, to me, Trump has proven over the course of his first four years that he does not have the temperament to be an effective leader. He's you know, he's impulsive. He has very little attention. He's driven by weird incentives. But voters have decided that he should be the president. And and so that is the case for now.

That said, when they saw him in office last time around, they didn't like it. They got sick of it fairly quickly. And I'll be curious to see what that happens. You know, if we have – earlier a commenter was concerned about whether we might have normal midterms. But assuming we do, I'm interested to see how voters respond and what they do to Republican representatives and senators who have backed Trump.

Let me go next to caller Rick in Redwood City. Hi, Rick. You're on. Hi. Thank you for taking my call. So I just want to ask kind of a little bit of a different question. You know, I am I am no fan of this president. And I was I was pretty shocked to see how how the election happened and.

And I guess I thought, you know, it was kind of like after 9-11, you know, I felt that the U.S. had this amazing opportunity to build so many bridges to parts of the world that had resented us. And we had just had a lot of bad karma. And instead, we went off on this excursion in Iraq. And it seems that after this election, it seems like, you know, rigorous changes

sort of journalism has an opportunity to step back from the focus on

villainous personalities and the latest plot points and do you know what he's doing now and do you know what he said and really deal with like Bacha Sargon when she's talking about the 80% of people who are not part of this system that sort of produces the news and produces the discourse and I'm just wondering if journalism has any self-reflection or if

just at two weeks in, we're going to go back to the same process of who are the villains, who are the righteous, instead of actually talking about, like, well, what are these issues? Do we need to have a conversation, for example, about budget spending? I mean, maybe after a few generations in a bureaucracy, there's something to ask. Like, are these the right people to ask it? Almost certainly not. But...

There's so many examples that we could say, all right, do we want to keep talking? I mean, it's very dramatic, and there's lots of plot points, and it's super sexy to talk about the villain, the bad man, and all the victims. But I'm just...

Are we going to do something different here? Or is it still going to be just kind of tribal sort of narratives and cleverness and tactics and strategies? Yeah, Rick, let me get David's reaction to this. So Rick is characterizing media coverage as having been very much about sort of a villain and victims. And he's wondering about reflections in the journalism community along the lines of how to handle it and how.

I guess I go back to you, David, as somebody who does have to cover this administration day in and day out, right? What are your reflections along those lines and along the lines that Rick is talking about? I think there's a great deal of reflection. Every journalist covering politics I know thinks a great deal about what we should be doing better and where we have fallen down in the last four and eight years.

I also don't think that it's, you know, I think that's a false binary. I think we do need to cover what's happening daily. The things that are going on in the government are about budgeting. They're about who's in control. They're about these really fundamental issues. And we need to know what they are and cover them really closely if we're going to have those bigger conversations as well.

Well, Carolyn writes,

David, any final thoughts that you want to? I don't know. I often ask when it's related to issues like what you're watching for. But if you want to attempt that, go right ahead. I think I would say, you know, to that last comment, you know, people should look back at Project 2025. They should look at what other Trump advisers are saying, because these are people who are really important and do have plans for the government. So there may be chaotic things like the Gaza announcement.

But there's important policies going on, and they're worth understanding. Atlantic staff writer David Graham, thank you so much. Thank you. My thanks as well to Susie Britton for producing today's segment, and also to our listeners. You've been listening to Forum. I'm Nina Kim. Funds for the production of Forum are provided by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, the Generosity Foundation, and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.