How to Prepare for Trump 2.0
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I have one little thing that we could talk about first, which I'm sorry, Evan, it's dog related. I am sorry, but we now have another member of the cabinet with Pam Bondi who has a dog issue. Okay, we've already got Kristi Noem who shot her puppy. Pam Bondi is accused of having kidnapped somebody else's dog and not giving it back. She claimed it was a rescue. Finally, she was forced to give this St. Bernard back.

to the couple that owned it. The rule of law prevailed, Jane. So do you think in the end... So it's secret ballot. So how many dog owners are in the Republican conference? I'm just saying, you know, we should have taken out when Trump's always talking, you know, he went down like a dog. He hates dogs. He's got the most anti-dog administration in the cabinet that I've ever seen. Just saying. You know, there are a lot of ways in which this administration may break the norms of American history. But I do think

the most anti-dog administration in American history is really outside of the frame of the mainstream of America. It tells you a lot. Yeah. I think I'm still fighting the fight on this one. Nothing but love for you, Evan. That's what we need this year. We need love. Unconditional love. We need love.

Welcome to The Political Scene, a weekly discussion about the big questions in American politics. I'm Susan Glasser and I'm joined by my colleagues Jane Mayer and Evan Osnos. Hey, Jane. Hi, Susan. Hey, Evan. Great to be with you. Great to see you guys. We promise not to lobby you to get a dog for your children. Think of the children. But...

It is an important subject right now. What do we all need to get through these next four years? It's a question, I have to say, that's come up again and again and again just in the last couple of weeks. We've all spent this time trying to figure out, of course, what exactly Trump's return to power says about our country and what life will look like under his new administration.

We all know Trump has already promised to enact revenge against his political enemies, to conduct mass deportations, even to put the world's richest man in charge of government cost-cutting while being one of the government's large contractors.

We haven't even had a chance really, though, to take a breath and think about what these weeks leading up to Trump's re-inauguration are really going to mean for us in the country. It's not been the quiet before the storm, not at all. It's been as hectic a time as I can remember. Donald Trump's initial cabinet appointments have already provoked firestorm after firestorm. But it feels important today for the three of us, I think, to

to sit back and let's take stock. What are we doing to prepare for the next four years of Donald Trump? You know, this isn't two weeks into the Trump era. We're eight years and two weeks into the Trump era. And honestly, Evan, what I'm hearing from so many people is fatigue. It's exhaustion. It's I can't listen to the sound of that man's voice anymore. It's, you know, I'm going to take up gardening. I'm going to

unplug, I'm going to tune out. Lots of morbid jokes here in Washington. We've all heard them. What country are you thinking of taking up residence in? What is a principled approach to this moment in your view? Well, at the moment, I think before we get to principle, we have to just think about emotional survival, how people are actually just processing it. I mean, there is a group, we'll call them the engagers, who are saying, you know, it's a little bit like

They've got the everything is fine dog meme kind of on their mind, meaning like just let's engage this moment as if it was a normal transition of administration. And part of that is a kind of willful desire to say, if I treat it normally, meaning my job is to go out and meet whoever the deputy secretary of the treasury is, well, then maybe we can somehow kind of will that into being.

There is also, of course, a group of people who are saying, you know what? No, like I'm just not going to continue on X Twitter anymore. A lot of people have moved over to other platforms like Blue Sky, for instance, to say to carry on as business as usual is a fantasy.

I was at a dinner not long ago with a bunch of immigration lawyers who work inside the government. And they were saying, you know, they're facing that moment. Do you stay or do you go? If you stay, are you preventing a worse person from going in or are you ultimately collaborating on a project you don't want anything to do with? But, you know, Jane, you're out and about. What are you hearing? No, I mean, that's very much the issue on the minds of some people. I

who have gone into the Justice Department, for instance, I feel bad for them. They're just starting out in their careers. They were idealistic. They were hoping to, you know, change the world. And they're stuck with this dilemma. What are, you know, do you try to make it better or do you flee? Is this going to hurt your resume to be part of this? Honestly, people are thinking about things like that.

Those are people who work in the government. And then there are the people who have been the firebrands opposing Trump who are really nervous. I mean, honestly, the thing to me that's striking is I'm seeing a level of fear among people who have been bold that I haven't seen before in Washington. Lawyers, writers, politicians.

Yeah. Advocates who are afraid they're going to be prosecuted. Lots of gallows humor, packing their go bags, talking about, you know, New Zealand or that kind of thing. But honestly, actual worry. Yeah. Although...

The interesting thing, right, Jane, is we heard some of this eight years ago as well. And, you know, some of that will fade away. In part, it will depend on Trump's actions. But, you know, we've all been here a long time. Washington is a city that accommodates to power.

That's its job, right? And, you know, over time, there have been many waves of crude or crass outsiders who came in, the Reagan revolutionaries, actually the Clintons and the Arkansas crowd, not very welcome here initially in Washington, all eventually incorporated into it and then later reviled as the establishment. Donald Trump and his team, they never became the establishment in Washington in four years. But nonetheless, I've been amazed today

to watch the quick flip-flops from even certain non-MAGA Republicans who immediately want to get a line in. They rationalize that it's important to influence the shape of the administration, that personnel matters. There's some argument from the first term that that was in fact the case. You look at Mike Pence on January 6th and you think, OK, well, might not be my life choice, but would you have rather have had him in that position than Trump?

J.D. Vance. The accommodators. Yeah, exactly. But not only that, but, you know, that in the end, right, it's the accommodators who actually facilitate potentially radical shifts, right? If they really go along with the Trump administration. And I have to say, that's my fear right now, having lived in Russia through the beginning, the foundational period of Putin's. It was the people who I never thought would accommodate themselves to, you

the Kremlin and who ultimately did, those were the things that actually consistently shocked me and that, of course, enabled the foundation of this long run. But, you know, we had the first moment, the sort of first test of particularly Republicans' appetite for accommodation. And perhaps surprisingly, I think, we saw that Republicans in the Senate made it clear that Matt Gaetz was not going to get through confirmation. They chucked him out. I mean, Susan, what did you make of that? That seems like actually the first sign that

There are limits to how much Republicans are willing to... I'm trying to think of a respectful verb. Look, Evan, I mean, you'd like to think so, but if this is what counts as a check, color me still very wary and skeptical.

But does it encourage them to think they could stand up to a Pete Hegseth, Tulsi Gabbard, or do they now think, OK, we've done it? Honestly, there are people who think that it was throwing chum in the water so that they could get the rest of them in that they really prefer anyway and that this was just a kind of favor to Matt Gaetz to get him out of Congress before that report was released. I take some comfort from this because the structure is built with checks and balances.

It requires some spine in each of these other branches of government. And there has obviously not been enough of it, but it shows you that structure is there. And in the case of Gates, it did work. Yeah, I've got to say that I feel like

We've defined deviancy down in a pretty extraordinary way where we're like, oh, it's a check and balance when four senators out of the Republican conference, the Republican majority say behind the scenes and close doors. No, we don't want the guy who's accused of sexual offence.

offenses. If that's our line that we've drawn, I'm not sure that it's the line around democracy that we need. And I think that that's one of the political skills in Trump's playbook is to shift the parameters of the debate. He often will frame things up in such an extraordinarily disruptive way. And yet his victory is

That now we're like, oh, well, maybe, you know, it'll be OK to have the Florida attorney general who was at his side for the entire attack on the 2020 election, who literally defended him in the impeachment trial. I mean, OK, just it's not a victory for him. He lost. He picked someone for what may be the most important cabinet post for his revenge theme administration. And he got stopped.

Okay. Even if someone perhaps worse is standing right behind. And it's amazing. It's like whack-a-mole. I mean, there's so many of these people ready to take these jobs who are equally shocking. Look, I think you have to recognize here that we may be right.

reminding ourselves of the power of the key person in the process. There is, look, as much as we were disparaging a moment ago, the idea that, you know, Mike Pence went in there and so on. Look, in the end, it does take individuals in the system to resist these things. And we can say these four, you know, unnamed Republicans who stood up against Matt Gaetz are, have already made their

accommodations to Trump. But the reality is they did stop this thing from happening. I mean, this is just a bit of a message that goes out across the land. It does. That you can matter and you can stop the worst of the worst. I mean, and it makes me think there is a great quote from Hannah Arendt

the late great of the New Yorker fame, where she says, you know, you don't need everyone to do the right thing. It's enough to have a few individuals who will, and they then give courage to everybody else. Yeah, wow. Well, and that is such an important...

point here about what are the levers of resistance. That's a term that's now fallen out of favor, Jane. You know, in 2016, I feel like there was an immediate kind of sense of mobilization, you know, not just marching on Washington, but, you know, you can tick off on your hand a number of very concrete ways in which almost immediately people began to organize. I think it was responsible for a flood of

women candidates and other candidates signing up to run for office and partially fueled the Democrats' midterm victory in 2018. You could say that the

rage at Trump's first election fueled what became the Me Too movement. And yet, a lot of what we've heard in the immediate aftermath of this election has been more around sort of fatigue and the resistance paradigm doesn't work. You know, we'll talk more about that with our guest today. But I'm just curious, Jane, as we start out this conversation, how do you see the difference from eight years ago? I mean, I think the biggest difference is I think

a majority of Americans voted for Trump and they don't question the outcome of the election. They don't look at it as a fluke. They don't say Russia interfered. It's like, okay, this is what an awful lot of people in this country want. And so it creates a different dynamic politically. I think people are despairing that this is what their fellow countrymen want and they're trying to figure out how do we change their minds.

So, Evan, I think Jane makes a really important point here. As you think about going forward, you know, what should be or is different than eight years ago, are there any concrete things that come to your mind? Yes, actually. Pete Buttigieg this week had a really interesting comment. He said, don't be mesmerized by the Trump thing. What he meant was don't allow yourself to be fully absorbed in the shock and awe of it.

He said, you have to figure out how to move your online conversation to offline conversation. In a way, it's like reminding ourselves what tools work. And one of the things the ACLU has said this week is basically they've got three things that they know have proven to work. Litigation, legislation, and mobilization. Those are three things to keep top of mind. Yeah, Jane, you called our attention to a great piece in the New York Review of Books by David Cole, who had been the former legal director of the ACLU.

Really fleshing out this idea of what can work. What drew you to that piece? Well, and I recommend everybody to try to read this piece. What I liked is a lot of us were feeling like we're in the twilight zone. And what David Cole basically writes is, no, we're in America. And there is actually – there's a system of checks and balances and many, many ways that engaged citizens can protect their own rights and push back against.

And he lays a lot of them out. It's just a very practical piece and very hopeful in its own way. We're going to take a quick break, but when we come back, the former legal director of the ACLU, David Cole, joins us to talk about that and more. Hey, podcast listeners. I'm Chris Morocco, food director of Bon Appetit and Epicurious and host of the Dinner SOS podcast.

Every week on Dinner SOS, we help listeners tackle cooking challenges. I cannot manage pork in like any fashion. And with all the big cooking holidays coming up, there's a lot of home cooks who need our help. We're doing a Thanksgiving with 15 friends, and the friend with the biggest house is hosting. But unfortunately, that house also has the teeny-tiniest kitchen. Yeah.

Christmas morning. I flipped them over, walked away, and one loaf collapsed onto the floor. Luckily, I come prepared with over 50,000 recipes in the Bon Appetit and Epicurious archives, plus my incredible co-hosts from the Test Kitchen and beyond. I was almost overexcited about the options that we had. There were so many. I have so many options, too. Okay, great. Nelson, you're in a great place. I love it.

Listen to and follow Dinner SOS wherever you get your podcasts. Happy cooking. Joining us now is David Cole, former legal director of the ACLU, now a professor of law and public policy at Georgetown Law. David, thank you so much for joining us. Thanks for having me.

David, you wrote a terrific piece. We've already been singing its praises in the New York Review of Books this week entitled What Could Stop Him? It really struck me as almost a love letter to the idea that de Tocquevillian America is still alive, that the country's strength is not here in Washington, but, you know, in its people and that resistance is not futile even if we don't call it resistance anymore. What, you know, what were the questions you were asking when you wrote this piece?

So, yeah, I mean, I don't know if I'd call it a love letter as much as a plea for engagement. But I've been concerned by talk in the press and elsewhere about how the resistance didn't work. Presumably because Trump was reelected, everything we did last time around was not sufficient.

And so what's the point? What's the point? And he's got both houses of Congress. He's got a six to three Supreme Court. He's appointed a lot of federal judges. You know, there's just no hope in pushing back. And I just think that's wrong. And it's it's also dangerous because if people believe that and sit back and don't

pushback, that will prove to be true and will build on itself and will make it harder and harder. And when you actually look at what, you know, the various checks and balances that exist, the

They are significant. And a president who came to power with a bare majority, who has bare majorities in both houses, who faces a federal judiciary in which, yes, he appointed a lot of judges, but Biden and Obama have appointed about 65% of the federal judiciary. It's not going to be easy for him to do many of the things that he suggested he will do if we oppose him.

In the first Trump administration, David, you and your colleagues led hundreds of lawsuits really to curtail and contain what the administration could do. What are some of the conceivable legal avenues now that you think people could be utilizing rather than just giving up at the outset? So I don't think people are necessarily giving up at the outset. I think we're in a period of

you know, shock and mourning. But, you know, it's not until January that he actually takes office and can do anything. You can't challenge what he's doing until he does something. I mean, there's been pushback to some of his appointments. Already, Matt Gaetz has had to step back. You know, I mean, take mass deportations, for example. That's the thing that he has emphasized. I

That's a lot easier to say than it is to do. The Constitution requires that before you deport a person from the United States, you have to give them due process, which means you have to give them a hearing at which they have a meaningful opportunity to defend themselves, appeals to the federal courts, etc.

That takes time. It also takes resources. Judges have to be available to hear those cases. Right now, we have such a shortage of immigration judges that there's a tremendous backlog in deportation cases, you know, some instances, five, six year backlogs. So you can't just

erase that backlog. Those judges already have hundreds of cases on their docket. So you'd have to hire a whole bunch of new judges. You'd have to train up all of those judges. There also aren't beds to detain. I think he would like to detain as many people as he can to try to coerce them into leaving. We don't have a lot of beds available. So you'd have to build

facilities to put them in. And there's a due process challenge to detaining people in order to coerce them to leave. You can detain them if there's evidence that there's a risk of flight or they would pose a danger to people in the community, but you can't just detain people to try to coerce them to leave. So I think there'll be substantial constitutional challenges to any effort to kind of short circuit that due process.

David, you know, there are a lot of people who fear that Trump might use military troops for domestic purposes in the country now. What are the limits to the Posse Comitatus Act? I mean, can he just deploy them for domestic purposes? So the Posse Comitatus Act was designed to restrict the ability of

uh, presidents to use the military domestically. It doesn't prohibit it altogether. And it hasn't been, uh, tested, uh, that much in the courts, largely because there's such a strong political and cultural opposition to using the military domestically that, um, presidents have rarely done so with the exception of, uh,

relief efforts where nobody objects if they're helping out in a FEMA situation. So that will be a test. Our history and our tradition is against it. There's a law on the books against it. It will not go down easily. And again, even if he uses military people, they're also bound by due process if what they're seeking to do is to remove people from this country.

You know, it's interesting, this conversation that Jane brings up about the military. One of the initial ways we have seen talk about active, you know, standing against Trump is from some of the Democratic governors talking about making it so that their National Guards, you know, couldn't be used by Trump. One of the questions that I feel like the Trump era has raised for all of us is,

perhaps a new appreciation for federalism on the part of Democratic legal advocates, but also, I guess, maybe a wariness that it was this how the sorting and the separating of America, you know, really accelerates that we have one legal basis in the red states and one legal basis in the blue states. I'm wondering, you know, how you see this playing out in the Trump Act, too.

So great question. I mean, our federalism was something that when I was in law school, it was all about the South resisting desegregation efforts and the like and using states' rights arguments to resist progressive change. But

The nature of federalism is simply decentralized authority, decentralized power. And that is a check on the federal government. And when the federal government is controlled by conservative forces, federalism is our friend.

President Trump has talked about trying to change school curricula. Very hard for him to do that because schools are a state and local matter governed by state and local boards, not by the federal government. And state attorneys general have been a thorn in the side of

Biden, for every progressive thing he has sought to do, they have challenged it in court. And state attorneys general from the blue states were last time around an important part of the legal fight against Trump and will continue to be. They are already preparing.

to challenge many of the things that he has proposed to do. And they have broader authority to challenge than, say, groups like the ACLU, because they represent the people of their state. And if a practice affects their people, they can go into court and challenge it. So states also can refuse to participate in the enforcement of immigration laws if they think they're being

pursued in an unfair way. That is, the federal government has no authority to compel local and state police to do the federal government's bidding. They can ask them, they can bribe them, they can, you know, make it a condition of federal funding, but they can't require them. And many states and local governments have already refused

offers to help out in immigration enforcement. It's not good for their own ability to police the streets if every immigrant is afraid to go to the police. And so I think there's a lot that states can do to push back. And education policy is another one you identified, that a lot of the decisions about curriculum and what can't be taught or can be taught, that's made at the state and local level, not at the federal level.

Exactly. One of the things that I hear from listeners and readers, and I know all of us do, is the question of, well, what do I as an ordinary citizen, how do I participate in the process of shoring up the Constitution or making sure that the full avenues of federalism are utilized in this case? What if you're not a lawyer? What if you're not somebody who's out filing lawsuits? Yeah.

So I think there's a lot of things like showing up for marches in the streets when they exist. And we saw a lot of that during the last Trump administration, from the Women's March to March for Our Lives to Black Lives Matter. There are organizations that help organize people who care about engaging to engage

engage at a local level in pursuit of progressive ends, groups like Indivisible. The ACLU has a people power arm, which is a grassroots arm that helps organize at the local level to fight for civil rights and civil liberties. You know, contacting your congressman, that's the one thing you hear all the time. You think, oh my God, contacting my congressman. But

But in fact, it makes a huge difference. If they hear from their constituents, they will respond because they often, a lot of times they don't hear that much from their constituents. And think about Trump's effort to repeal Obamacare. That was one of his signature initiatives last time around. He had control of both houses of Congress and he tried

I don't know, a dozen, more than a dozen times to overturn Obamacare. But what happened? People went out to their congresspeople. They demanded town meetings. They objected to taking away this protection. And it failed.

Time and time again. So, you know, I think joining the groups that are, you know, supporting the groups that are doing the work that you care about, whether it's environmental work or civil rights work or civil liberties work or immigrants rights work.

That's the engine of constitutional protections. It's civil society. It's institutions that people, citizens, come together in and work in association with to defend the values that they believe in. That's the press. That's the nonprofit sector. That's the academy. That's religious communities. To me, that is where the strength of our constitutional checks and balances are.

ultimately lie. And that depends on people engaging. But there are many opportunities to engage. You just have to take them.

It's ironic, isn't it, that some of the things that Democrats have complained about that could cause dysfunction on the Hill, things like the filibuster, and maybe even to some extent you write the immunity decision from the Supreme Court in a weird way now might protect Biden from being prosecuted. It's flipped on its head. Do you see these sort of mechanisms as things that will throw sort of sand in the gears?

- Yeah, I mean, what's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander and separation of powers makes it hard for whoever's in power to get their way without some considerable consensus. And that was the purpose, that was the purpose. And sometimes it's very, very frustrating,

But when the other side has the upper hand, those are very, very important tools. Now, the Senate could get rid of the filibuster. They may well get rid of the filibuster. That would be for legislation. They've gotten rid of it already for judges, as you know, but they haven't yet gotten rid of it for legislation. If they do, then you're really...

depending on the least conservative members of the party. But some of the least conservative members of the party may be against getting rid of the filibuster. That was true for the Democrats, and it may well be true for the Republicans. On the immunity decision, yeah, I mean, it means it's going to be very hard for him to prosecute Biden. But, you know, on the flip side, it'll make it very easy for him to engage in criminal activity. And that's...

It's hard to see the silver, the positive. David, you have been, I think, really stirring in your passion for, you know, reminding people that if you don't use the tools, you give away the power. As journalists, I would say, will you be available to take our call when they do come after us?

Absolutely, absolutely. Defending your branch is critical to this entire enterprise. I think we have a very strong tradition of protecting First Amendment rights in this country, and it is one that is supported by conservatives as well as Democrats. I mean, last term on this Supreme Court, I think there were five First Amendment cases in the court, in all of them, the ACLU

was involved and in each case, the court ruled on the side that the ACLU supported. So even this very conservative court is a very strong First Amendment court. To me, again, that's the most important bulwark

against autocracy, against government abuse and the like. And the press is sort of the critical front in that action. I mean, I think it's the New York Times publication of the Matt Gaetz Venmo records that brought Matt Gaetz down. There's a lot that the press can do.

Do you think it's possible that this court, which you know very well because you argue in front of it, might overturn Times v. Sullivan and change the libel laws? I think that's pretty unlikely. Gorsuch and Thomas have already said that they are ready to do so, but I haven't seen...

Any others really line up with them. Maybe they'd get Alito. You still need two more. And I don't think that's really on their agenda in terms of the things that they're troubled by.

about existing Supreme Court precedent. Well, David, you are a bulwark yourself, not only for the First Amendment, but I think for the troubled spirits of, you know, the part of America that worries about what's coming in the next four years. So we're all grateful to you for that. And thank you for joining us. Thank you so much. The political scene from The New Yorker will be right back.

I'm Nomi Frye. I'm Vincent Cunningham. I'm Alex Schwartz. And we are Critics At Large, a podcast from The New Yorker. Guys, what do we do on the show every week? We look into the startling maw of our culture and try to figure something out. That's right. We take something that's going on in the culture now. Maybe it's a movie. Maybe it's a book. Maybe it's just kind of a trend that we see floating in the ether. And we expand it across culture as kind of a pattern or a template.

We talked about the midlife crisis, starting with a new book by Miranda July, but then we kind of ended up talking about Dante's Inferno. You know, we talked about Kate Middleton, her so-called disappearance. And from that, we moved into right-wing conspiracy theories. Alex basically promised to explain to me why everybody likes the Beatles. You know, we've also noticed that advice is everywhere. Advice columns, advice giving. And we kind of want to look at why.

Join us on Critics at Large from The New Yorker. New episodes drop every Thursday. Follow wherever you get your podcasts. OK, so do we feel fortified, Jane, for the struggle ahead? Yeah, I mean, I think the thing that is really good to hear is that there are things that concerned citizens can do, you know, and that in fact, what he basically said was,

that you really should do. Don't unplug. I mean, I have plenty of friends who've sent, you know, emails around saying, I'm, you know, now learning how to start drinking tea because, you know, I'm just, and I'm not going to read the papers anymore and I'm not going to watch the news and all that kind of thing. I think it was a passionate call to not unplug, but to engage. And, you know,

I was struck by the fact that as we've been living through a period when Democrats rediscovered patriotism as a political asset, in a way, what he was saying was, remember, you know, all this reverence for the Constitution is not a monopoly on the right, that actually, in this case, the Constitution is of great value in a moment like this, because, you know, the founders anticipated some of these things. So things like

Federalism is our friend, as he said, meaning that there are powers that exist on the state and the local level that are generally beyond the reach of the federal government without significant potential for pushback. There are a huge number of judges that were not –

appointed by Donald Trump. I think he appointed something like... It's a big number. It's something like 25 or 28% of the federal judiciary, of course, also on the Supreme Court. But that means there are a lot of judges out there whose identity, whose dignity, whose self-respect comes from the willingness to stand up to overreach, whether it's coming from one party or another. And I think it's useful to remind ourselves of that. Yeah. I am struck that...

There's a pretty kind of legal framework for this conversation. Now, of course, you know, that is the role that David has played as a very important one. But I do want to ask both of you about that. And as we think about, you know, what kind of...

What kinds of opposition will Trump face? You could make an argument that 2024 represents a failure of both the Democrats' political strategy and actually their legal strategy. They sought to

kind of a framework of accountability around Trump's excesses from his first time in office using the legal system. That's completely collapsed, essentially. Not only that, but it's led to a very sweeping Supreme Court decision in the exact opposite direction of what those who sought to hold

the former president to account wanted. That's the worry that I have is that, you know, we're once again like, OK, you know, the lawyers are going to fire up and do what the lawyers do. But Democrats came up dry in both the legal front and the political front this time. No, I mean, I think that's a very good point. I mean, I think the legal process is

is a defense. It can protect your rights and it can stand up as something of a bulwark against Trump, but it's not an offense. I mean, the other part has to be there, which is that people who oppose what Trump is doing, they need to create a narrative. They need to win the arguments politically. The law can only... It's a defensive mechanism.

You know, I think, you know, yes, winning is what matters, as James Carville would say. You have to win the election in order to be able to run the show. But I think, Susan, I would push back a little bit on the idea that it was a total loss to use the courts to try to check Trump in the years that he was out of office. I think, look, in the end, this was a marathon in which

Trump came out a couple of strides ahead. But as we know, close to 50 percent of the country didn't vote for him. They are pretty fiercely opposed to the things he believes in. He was, after all, convicted of 34 felonies. He will be known for that. You can say that that means that it was all fake.

a waste and the wrong strategy. But, you know, we've talked about it on the show that you've argued that actually what they should have done is started earlier, that the process of trying to prosecute and hold them to account was delayed and therefore that was the flaw. So we have to decide, is it that the legal strategy is bunk or is that that it was the legal strategy was not pursued aggressively enough?

Well, it could be that both things are true. The point is that for whatever the reasons, the legal strategy did in fact fail to hold Donald Trump to account. And in fact, he is almost certainly never going to face legal proceedings.

That will have sworn testimony in a court of law about what occurred in the aftermath of the 2020 election. So I think just, you know, whatever the complicated reasons and, you know, I'm sure we would all like to have Merrick Garland on this show. Give him a true serum. If you're listening, Merrick, join us. I actually hear he's making the rounds.

Actually, at least on background to police. Maybe he's trying to tell his story. Well, I would be very interested in speaking to the things that Evan just brought up. But look, Donald Trump is not going to be held to account in a legal sense for the events that followed the 2020 election. And not only that, but has taken his victory, narrow as it was, as evidence essentially to wipe away, wipe the slate clean. And the result is that

Half the country has accepted what we would have considered to be an unthinkable premise, which is the idea that you could literally incite a violent mob of your supporters to attack our own U.S. Capitol. I'm laughing only because it's still, to me, such an extraordinary thing. And yet it has been absorbed and in some ways,

remarkable way and moved on from in our political culture. I mean, wait, and also the ruling on immunity, we have not even begun to grapple with what the implications are of that. And it flows from those legal cases. Remember that if those cases had not been filed...

then that decision would not exist. But just the same, I mean, we have no choice. The rule of law is the absolute basis on which this country is built and exists. You have to depend on it. You have to strengthen it. You have to use it. I mean, you can't abandon it, obviously. Yeah, and I also think it's important to remember that the people who are going to be most hurt by this, we've talked about this before, but are the people who are least capable of involving themselves directly in the process. It's vulnerable immigrants who really don't have anybody involved.

you know, they're not able, it's not safe enough for them to come forward and appear on camera and make a case for themselves. So, look, I think the fact that something didn't work the first time doesn't mean that it is impossible to work. And I think you have to have some faith in the constitutional arrangement. It's been pretty durable. All right. Well, this is a good moment for kind of a last thought as far as

what we should be paying attention to the next few weeks? Should we maybe just tune out because it's going to be really crazy from January 20th on? Obviously, these cabinet appointments have, you know, could be a full-time occupation just to watch the dumpster fire unfold. But I am curious, you know, for both of you, Jane, what are you going to be actually paying attention to the next few weeks or

Are you just investigating citizenship options in the EU? Okay. I will admit I have gone online and I have Googled real estate in other countries, just checking. Okay. But basically, no, this is the kinds of times that reporters exist for. We have to double down. And that's what I'm trying to do right now.

I'm looking to see what happens with some of these other nominees. I think that the rejection of Matt Gaetz is actually interesting and a little bit surprising. I think the fact that he was forced to withdraw even before there was a public moment is already the first piercing of the bubble, as it was described this morning somewhere. I think that's something to watch.

I also think, look, this is a marathon. It's not a sprint. You know, you've got you're about to have a holiday. People get together with their families and there is something restorative and essential. Actually, it's not it's not optional. So I love it. It's weird to hear a journalist to get together with your family. Well, I mean, let the record reflect. Half of America is dreading Thanksgiving with the other half of America. But

I love that. And by the way, I'm also looking forward to getting together and spending all next week cooking and hopefully not contemplating Pete Hegseth's misadventures. Believe me, I'm hoping. That's a polite word for them. Well, onward, onward. Stay tuned for more on that. Happy Thanksgiving to everybody. Happy Thanksgiving. Dry brine.

By the way, totally opposed to that. Brining unnecessary. Keep this civil. Let's keep this civil. Evan, Jane, great to be with you. Dear listeners, feel free to send us your turkey tips. Thank you so much to everyone.

This has been the political scene from The New Yorker. I'm Susan Glasser. We had research assistants today from Alex D'Elia. Our producer is Julia Nutter and our editor is Gianna Palmer. Special thanks this week to Rhiannon Corby, mixing by Pran Bandy. Stephen Valentino is our executive producer and Chris Bannon is Conde Nast's head of global audio. Our theme music is by Alison Leighton Brown. Thank you so much for listening.

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