43. The Real Power Behind The Trump Throne
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Welcome to The Rest Is Politics US. I'm Anthony Scaramucci. And I am Katty Kay. So I think we thought it was worth doing a quick update for everybody before our regular podcast on Friday, because obviously it's been a busy weekend and we're starting to get the contours of...

of what a president elect Trump's policies, preferences are, priorities are, and some of the people who are going into the administration. So we thought we would just look at where that situation is with the Republicans and how fast the administration is moving compared to 2016. This seems to be a very different operation.

with some of the domestic policy outlines. And then I think importantly, some of the foreign policy priorities too are emerging. And then we'll take a quick break and then we'll come back and look at where

the democratic wake is and how that is the long kind of period of gloom, the Democrats and recrimination that the Democrats have sunk into, which is kind of interesting to watch. So I think let's, should we go through some of the names? Because I think the names give us a sense, as we said last week, Anthony, when we get names, we'll have a sense of priorities. And we should start with Susie Wiles, who ran Donald Trump's successful reelection campaign and,

and will now be coming in as the first female chief of staff in the White House. She is known for being very disciplined. She is tough. She is not an ideologue, as far as I understand, but is there to enable Donald Trump, whichever direction he wants to take. And she will be a pretty formidable gatekeeper. The chief of staff's role in the White House...

As everyone who has seen the West Wing, at the risk of dating myself knows, although I realize it's had a comeback, so maybe it doesn't date me too much. The chief of staff role is really to be the kind of gatekeeper to the president, make sure that his time is well prioritized, that he is getting the advice he needs and access to the people he needs. And I think that she will be a very successful, just as she was a very successful campaign chair, she'll be a very successful chief of staff to him.

This makes a lot more sense than some of the chiefs of staff he had in 2016, given his personality to me. What do you think?

Well, let me ask you this question. She is, I mean, the press is reporting, I don't know if it's true or not, but that she is going to control his schedule. General Kelly tried to do that, meaning access to the Oval Office. General Kelly tried to do that without success. Do you think she'll be able to do that? I think she will have more success because Donald Trump believes that he would not have won re-election without Susie Wiles.

Now, we saw at the end of the campaign how he did not stick to the Susie Wiles, Chris Lasavita agenda of talking about the economy and immigration and policy priorities all the time. He did kind of wander off that, but she got him reelected. And I think he knows that he wouldn't have got reelected without her. So I think the fact that she ran his campaign and that he already has worked with her. Remember, he had never really worked with John Kelly before.

So there was no prior relationship there. He has a relationship with Susie Wiles, and I'm assuming he would not have made her chief of staff unless he was willing to have her run things to some extent. What do you think? You sound skeptical. Well, I agree with you that they've worked together. And so I like that he trusts her. So I like that she is disciplined. Yeah.

So I like that. But there's a feeding frenzy that takes place at the White House. And unfortunately, the president loves attention. And so there'll be lobbyists, ambassadors, Russian ambassadors, all sorts of people that are going to try to squirm their way in.

into the Oval Office to flatter and to manipulate Donald Trump. And so I don't know, is she going to be the hockey goalie or to use a British football expression? Is she a great goaltender? She's going to block all those shots that come on net, maybe.

But I'm skeptical of that. What I'm not skeptical about is his relationship with her. I think that's good. But let me ask you another question. Stephen Miller, we both know Stephen. I worked with Stephen on the last campaign. He is an ideologue. He's more MAGA than MAGA.

It's just been announced that he's the deputy chief of staff. How do you think he's going to interact with Susie? So that's a very interesting appointment because Stephen is described as the kind of, particularly when it comes to immigration, he is the way, you know, the deporter in chief. He is the one who has been laser focused all through the first administration on this question of illegal immigration. And he's going to be there again. Now they have worked together because Stephen

Miller has been around Donald Trump nonstop for the last four years. He never really left his orbit. He stayed there. He pushed the immigration discussion this time around. He is the one that is coming up with this plan to deport millions, potentially, of the mass deportation plan of illegal immigrants. Now, Susie Wiles knows Stephen Miller. They will have worked together during the course of this campaign because it's becoming increasingly clear that Donald Trump's

Entourage is much better prepared to move fast on these appointments than they were in 2016, which means that there must have been these discussions. All of this, I'm assuming these key positions like chief of staff and deputy chief of staff have been discussed over the last few weeks, even though I know Donald Trump is superstitious and didn't want to put names on it.

but they will have had a relationship. And I think Susie Wiles being a non-ideologue is happy to have ideologues around her. What she wants to do is facilitate Donald Trump's agenda. If Donald Trump's agenda is mass deportations, then she is prepared to facilitate that. If Donald Trump's agenda is something we don't expect, you know, um,

less isolationist, less tariffs, more focused on the American economy and not on illegal immigrants. She will facilitate that. She's going to facilitate whatever he wants. So I don't think Stephen Miller would have been put in under her if she didn't actually...

you know, if she wasn't prepared to facilitate that mass deportation agenda. Okay. Let me ask you this question. Do you think campaigns are run differently than administrations? Absolutely. Campaigns are run differently and they are very different skill sets, of course, because of what you just alluded to that in the White House, it's a question of who has access to the Oval Office. I mean, I remember going into the White House early on. I'm not quite sure if you were still there, Anthony, but I think it might've been just after you left

early on in the Trump administration. And it was kind of like a sieve, right? If you happen to have a meeting with Jared Kushner, you could also bump into Hope Hicks. And if you were wandering past the Oval Office and Donald Trump was in there, she would take you in to see Donald Trump. I mean, there was no...

There was no schedule. There was no diary. There was no keeping of the diary. It was whoever he happened to want to see and whoever was in the room influenced how he was feeling about policy. My sense from looking at this transition, which seems to be a very different transition from 2016, is that this is going to be, in a way, a more conventional White House in that respect. And maybe we should talk a little bit about what happens in this transition period. So why don't you describe from...

your knowledge of 2016, but generally what happens in a transition period and what's happening at the moment.

So, I think that they are way more organized and I think that they are going to screen people. And I'll just provide some context here. When I was on the transition, there was a war that got started on November the 9th between the RNC, that's traditional Republicans, and what I would call MAGA, which are Trump loyalists. So, the Republican National Committee was

legacy of Jeb and George Bush, legacy of Mitt Romney, Reince Priebus. They hated Trump. They tried to stop Trump from getting the nomination. He won the nomination. Now they're forced to work with him. And then you have the MAGA, Steve Bannon, sort of Stephen Miller loyalists. So it was like a really bad M&A transaction. It was a really bad cultural thing. It would be like a corporation buying a renegade entrepreneurial outfit.

But guess what? The entrepreneurial outfit is actually running the very staid corporation. And that's what happened last time. All that stuff's been cleaned out. These are MAGA people. They're passing litmus tests of MAGA loyalty. Don Trump Jr. is sitting there to screen out anybody that could potentially be a non-MAGA person. There's a reason why over the weekend that Pompeo and Governor Haley or Ambassador Haley were knocked off the list. They are too...

They're two original moderate Republicans, and they're going for something very, very different. So weirdly, that'll help them. They'll get along better because they won't be fighting that intellectual cultural fight. Might be very bad for the country, but they're going to weirdly get along better, but at

But let me just ask you this. I'm going to make an observation. I'd like you to react to it. So Donald Trump goes into the wilderness to quote Churchill for four years. He's ousted from the presidency. He's stewing and brewing. He relaunches an attack to go back to the presidency. And so had he lost that, then Joe Biden goes down in history as a guy that protected the world order and the United States from Donald Trump. But he wins that. And so weirdly, Donald Trump...

has been aided and abetted by Joe Biden. It's sort of like Joe helped him, and let me explain why. He screwed up on the border. He couldn't figure out a way to contain inflation or get the economic narrative out there. He waited too long to leave. They put in Vice President Harris, who's not that popular, not that well-known, and he crushes her to the point where he wins the popular vote. Joe Biden gave Trump four years of stewing and brewing,

Yeah, I think that's right. I mean, I think add to that the fact that Donald Trump still feels aggrieved about 2020 and believes he didn't actually lose. So he's not going to lose.

His ideology and his policy view of the world has also been impacted by this sense of personal grievance and anger and wanting to reestablish himself as the guy that is actually the popular guy who won everything, as he should have been 24 years ago in 2020. I think that's certainly true. Who do you think then, given all of that...

Who is the power at the moment around Donald Trump? Last time around that we was a lot of Ivanka and Jared who are clearly, I mean, Jared may come back. There's been floating the idea that he could come back as Middle East envoy, but he's not going to come back in the way that he did. Ivanka doesn't seem to be anywhere around the president at the moment. Who is it do you think?

Who is the kind of gatekeeper at the moment beyond Susie Wiles, who's the ideological person around the president who has the most power? So I'm going to say that there's a screen going on that is the Don Trump Jr. screen.

Okay, so there's an ideological purity test. You've got to pass through that screen. The other person that's assisting on that screen is J.D. Vance. He's new MAGA, right? You mean screen as in the sense of screening for loyalty? Yes, exactly. So you've got to go through the sieves of Don Trump Jr., J.D. Vance. Then you land in Susie Wiles and Steve Miller's lap.

And then they try to figure out what to do with you. Now, the person that we haven't discussed is the head of policy personnel, right? Because remember, personnel is policy. Someone says to me, well, who's the head of personnel? That's really the head of policy, right? Because he or she is picking the people that are going to execute. And if they're picking...

moderate Republicans, you're going to get a moderate Republican situation. If they're picking hardcore MAGA, you're going to go hardcore MAGA. So they haven't picked that person yet. And so when that person's picked, we need to discuss that person because I will likely know that person and I can tell you how vicious this administration is going to be or how calm it will be. But can I just address Tom for a

is a pissed off guy. Tom Homan was the director of ICE, which is the immigration enforcement body here in the States during the first Trump administration. And he is being brought in to this newly created position of border czar. And I think what we have realized, and this is what's interesting, we've been what, not even a week out from the election. And the key appointments that have been announced of Stephen Miller and Tom Homan are

Because they've been announced so early, show us where the priorities are. And the priorities are clearly around this issue of deporting illegal immigrants. And Tom Homan over the course of the weekend was doing interviews saying that this is not going to be what the left has described it as. This is going to be focused on deportation.

People who are in the United States without documentation, who came here illegally or have overstayed their visas and are now here illegally, who have committed crimes or are part of criminal gangs.

drug gangs or just gangs and particularly Latin America, Central American gangs he's thinking of. But he also said that's where we are going to start. And I think the big question for me is what does start, you know, at the risk of sounding like a politician, what does start mean? Are they going to confine themselves to people who have, you know, murdered people or committed crimes or part of gangs? Or will this eventually expand from 500,000 to a million people? I

And beyond that to a much larger group, potentially 10 million people. And I think that we don't know yet. Does that sound about right to you? It does sound right. But if I said to you on January 20th, Donald Trump is going to sign an executive order saying,

to revoke birthright citizenship. So let's explain that to our international viewers. If you're born in the United States, as a result of your birth on the soil of the United States,

you're entitled to be a US citizen. And by the way, you're also entitled to then run for the presidency because you can't run for the presidency unless you actually were born on the soil of the United States or a military base. Or if you were in, you know, you're a foreign dignitary's son or daughter, you know, that qualifies. Which is why my kids, by the way, children of British parents born in the United States had automatically had American citizenship and could eventually run for president if they wanted to.

Yeah. Okay. So, and I love the fact that you are children are citizens here and I'm hoping to come to your naturalization ceremony at some point. I'm looking forward to that. But in this topic though, you're here, you're probably, forgive me for being presumptuous, but I'm assuming you have a green card, you have a residency status that you could convert into

citizenship. So that's a legal process and you're on the right side of the legality. But let's say that you got here illegally, or let's say you overstayed your visitor's visa and you gave birth to a child, that child, even though you're here illegally, not you, Katty K, we're just using you as a second person, that person's entitled to citizenship. Now, what Tom Holman would like to do alongside of Donald Trump is

is revoke that right. And Stephen Miller. I mean, you've got a trio there in the White House now. And Stephen Miller. Yes. No, no, no question. So we're going to sign an executive order day one, sign an executive order day one. And on day one, we're going to revoke this. So if you, so now we're going to knock on doors now, right? So this is, I mean, hey, you got to call it for what it is. This

Knock, knock, caddy, are you here legally? No, you're not. Okay, all those kids are not citizens anymore. And okay, round yourselves up. We're going into this paddy wagon. We're taking you to a detention camp and we're going to make you guys deported. We're going to put you guys in a deportation line.

Okay, so that's what they want to do. Okay, and he's saying that out loud. He's saying that very harshly. Donald Trump said that very harshly during the campaign. You know, people on the right, I know people on the right, Bill Maher says, oh, yeah, the people on the right say they're never going to do that. They're never going to do that. But I believe based on my sources that

who don't like it. They're working for Donald Trump. They don't like it. Hello, Mooch. Yeah, just give me a heads up. They're going to sign this thing on January 20th after he's inaugurated before the congressional luncheon. And obviously there'll be legal challenges to this. It'll likely go to the Supreme Court. How does the Supreme Court rule on that when they've got six conservative judges? Are we going back on 250 years of American tradition

And by the way, caddy, this is a cultural thing. This turns the United States into this welcome mat for the rest of the world into a...

colder, harsher place. And you don't know rich or poor who's coming into the country that's going to make it, right? So I guess Sergey Brin, sorry guy, he can't come into the country. He goes on to create Google. Elon Musk, hey, little funky on your immigration stuff, you're out. You can't create SpaceX and Tesla here. And so remember, the poor that get to this country

They can see great aspiration in this country. And this will be a cultural roadblock for all of them. Okay, we're going to take a break. One thing I would say quickly is that before we take a break, a lot of what Donald Trump is proposing in terms of illegal immigrants who are here who have committed crimes, I actually think many Americans will be fine with that. They're happy to get rid of these people. They're happy to get rid of gang people. But if there are lots of pictures on television of crying kids and families being

torn apart and some being put in camps. I think that'll be harder for him and harder for his administration and make it harder for him to be a successful president in the early days of his administration. So I wonder if that would form some kind of check on that. I want to talk about Pompeo and Haley. You mentioned them. We'll do so after a break. Just a little bit about what we're getting as a sense for the rest of the world and what the international policy priorities are for the president-elect. We'll take a quick break.

Welcome back to The Rest Is Politics US with Anthony and me. We're going to talk about the Democrats in this half, but I just quickly wanted to talk about something you raised, which is over the weekend, Donald Trump put out what is pretty unusual, which is a tweet saying who he is not hiring. And two of those people are Nikki Haley and Mike Pompeo. And

And if you went around the world before this election, America's allies, particularly in Europe, were saying, well, let's wait and see if Donald Trump is elected, if it's going to be the J.D. Vance view of the world or the Mike Pompeo view of the world. And the Pompeo view of the world, Mike Pompeo, who was in Kiev recently, much more supportive of the effort in Ukraine, much more anti-Russian, much more in line actually with a conventional kind of view.

American leadership supporting European allies against Russia worldview. The fact that Donald Trump went out of his way to say these two people are not coming in, I think is being read as a signal that it is not going to be the kind of Pompeo view of the world. It's going to be much more the J.D. Vance view of the world. What that means for Ukraine initially is not quite clear. My understanding, talking to people

who have been close to the president-elect, is that he is pretty transactional about Ukraine. There are certain things that he is concerned about and wants on Ukrainian soil and wants independence for. For example, the nuclear facilities, he doesn't want those in Russian hands. He wants those in Ukrainian hands. But listen to Elon Musk on this because Elon Musk for the moment, and we've spoken about the possibility of a blow up there, but for the moment, Elon Musk is very close

to Donald Trump and Elon Musk is talking about this demilitarized zone idea where you have a kind of the area of Ukraine that has been fought over is basically a kind of demilitarized buffer zone between Ukraine and Russia and no real

understanding of what a security guarantee for Ukraine might be or look like, which is what I've been told by people in the military and on the security side is kind of one of the critical pieces. But I'm not hearing anything about the Ukrainians getting some kind of security guarantee. So that's I think it's it's is looking pretty bleak for Ukraine at the moment.

And Donald Trump wants peace. He wants this kind of deal. But I don't think that the Ukrainians are going to get much in terms of security guarantees. A question I have for you is Donald Trump is in the study off the Oval Office with his orange bifocals on. He's back. And the headline in his favorite paper, which he hate reads, is the New York Times. And the front page of the New York Times says, who's running this country, Trump or Elon? Who's the actual president?

How is Donald Trump going to react to that one? Just the same way as he reacted when Steve Bannon was on the front page. What was it of Time magazine as the kind of chief power broker in the White House? That went down super well with Donald Trump and Steve Bannon was quickly out of favor. So what do you think? How long is the let's go to the must let's go to the let's go to the rest of politics. You guys must go meter. OK, so is this a six month thing? Is this a two year thing?

What do you tell me? When is the falling out going to take place? I don't think it's going to last two years. So somebody I spoke to who had been a senior advisor to the Trump campaign said to me, you know, Shakespeare wrote all the good plot lines and we're just reliving all of those. And the Elon Musk, Donald Trump plot line fits into a Shakespearean play and at some point it's going to blow up.

If he carries on being this high profile, if I were him, I would not be moving my furniture to Washington, D.C. What do you think? Okay. So I've got it at six months. Okay. Six months. Because, you know, it's like the price is right. You know, I got to say two years. I got to come in a little low. Two years feels too long. Too long. It'll be between six months and a year. Who the hell do you think you are?

It's got to be nasty. And Musk doesn't listen to this podcast, but if he did, I would say, Elon,

Take a chill, go back and work at your businesses and light touch the White House here and there. Don't ever join another call again with Zelensky. So I don't know. Did a call take place with Zelensky? I don't know. I'm assuming it did. Did a call take place with Putin? I don't know. I'm assuming it did, but we'll see. But tell us your Washingtonian insight into why the

The announcement was made this weekend that Mike Pompeo and Nikki Haley will not be joining this administration. Nikki Haley is pretty clear. She was disloyal. She has not been in touch with the campaign since June, as she has said herself publicly. She has been cast out of the Trump administration.

Pompeo, I think, is more ideological. I think it's what I said earlier, that he represents a worldview which is not J.D. Vance's worldview, which is not Donald Trump's worldview at the moment. And it was a signal because Pompeo has only actually ever said one thing particularly critical of Donald Trump after January.

January the 6th at a CPAC meeting. And he hasn't been like Nikki Haley or some of the others, very vocal in his criticism of Donald Trump. So it's a little more peculiar. And therefore, I think it is an indication to the world of where Donald Trump's head is on foreign policy. Are you going to give me the Shakespearean view? No, no, no, not yet. Not yet. I want you to get in the minds of these people for a second. So is Haley thinking her career is now over? I mean, Haley could have been

the staunchest resistance fighter. She had 20% of the party locked up.

She could have created a new center-right coalition and gone after this dark MAGA-right philosophy. And she could have led the charge in a Churchillian way. She didn't do that. And so they never used her in the campaign. They put her on the outs. They iced her. Now she's iced out of the administration. Is her career over, Katty Kay? Or is she has a career ahead of her? Certainly in MAGA times, Nikki Haley doesn't have a position in

And one of the things we learned from the Democrats this time around is that, as you've always said, Anthony, being cautious doesn't do well in this political environment.

Nikki Haley is pretty cautious. She became less cautious at the end of her primary bid, but the back and forth in her relationship with Donald Trump suggests to me that she's trying to have it all. She's trying to establish herself as an independent politician with her own worldview and policies and as a not MAGA person, but she's also doing this very public outreach to Donald Trump. I don't see in this climate where there's much room for a Nikki Haley or

or in a way a Kamala Harris, because perhaps we are living in a political climate and we can get into the Democrats where being bold and having boldness

bold policy ideas and bold messaging and being authentic, which means not wavering and not flip-flopping in your allegiances. That's what voters seem to respond to. Yeah. And I would just say both those candidates make good candidates in the milquetoast 1990s, but this is the smash mouth 2020s.

By the way, one other thing I have heard from somebody who is close to Trump, who was an advisor on the campaign, but is not going into the White House, is that what you were saying about a litmus test of loyalty is very true. And there is a kind of realization that this is still going to be a White House where, and this is why Nikki Haley couldn't do it. You go into the White House, you spend all day kind of jockeying with all of the other players to get close to Donald Trump, to show your allegiance to Donald Trump, to show your loyalty. And then you also need to go on television, which is what

the Trump campaign is doing at the moment. They are going through videotapes of potential cabinet position applicants to see how good they are on television. You have to go on television and do the same thing again, express your loyalty and your allegiance. And for some people, that's just too difficult. I don't think Nikki Haley would be a particularly good candidate for that kind of 24-7 loyalty test.

So let's move on to the Democrats. So what are you hearing there? Beyond the despair, I'm hearing a mixture of things, a lot of different reasons for why they lost. Lots of people coming up with, was it just the anti-incumbent mood around the world? All of these countries where there have been elections this year,

incumbents got thrown out of office and therefore an incumbent vice president just couldn't withstand the headwinds of inflation. People who have been critical of Kamala Harris, but not that much, not very critical of her except for some of the things that we've said during the course of the last few months that she is cautious and didn't have a very clear economic message, exactly what you said. And

And then you hear the kind of very public fighting between Bernie Sanders and Nancy Pelosi, for example. Bernie Sanders being very critical of the campaign, saying that Democrats have abandoned the working class, and Nancy Pelosi pushing back, really not suggesting anything that needs to be done terribly differently, but rejecting the idea that

the working class didn't feature enough in this campaign. So you're getting kind of some public fighting, a surprising amount, perhaps from some of the high profile figures. We haven't heard very much from Joe Biden or from Jill Biden, who presumably is sitting in the White House, either stewing or saying, I told you so. But what are you hearing? Well, I mean, you know, the hand wringing is tremendous. The sadness is tremendous. The

I guess the thing that has everybody concerned, and I was pretty close to a couple of people, is that they feel like they were bullshitted, Cady. There were two or three senior meetings with top fundraisers 10 or so days prior to the election, and they made it like they had more things under control than they actually did.

And they also were not letting people on to how much money they were overspending. So there's a lot of hand-wringing. In 1980, Ronald Reagan wiped out Jimmy Carter. He won a 49-state landslide in 84. And obviously his successor, his vice president, won in 88.

The Democrats were in the wilderness for 12 years. Is that going to happen? Or are they going to pick somebody to rise here that can capture the moment of what it means to be a Democrat and what it means to restate

What their alliances, you know, somebody said to me over the weekend, Trump hijacked populism, the Republicans or for populism, the Democrats or for pronouns, Kattegay, they're for pronouns. So you tell me, is that wrong? Or where are the Democrats going?

Maureen Dowd, the famous columnist in the New York Times, wrote a piece this weekend, which I'm sure you've read and is being talked about a lot amongst Democrats that I'm hearing from, basically making the case that this is a wake for woke is the headline, that this is the end of wokeism forever.

that slogans like defund the police were terrible. Pronouns issues were terrible. You know, the fallout from Me Too and even the Black Lives Matter movement, but particularly around trans issues, all of that was terrible for Democrats. I think there is some of that. We spoke about that last week. There are cultural elements to this. There are economic elements to this.

And there are global headwind elements to this. I don't think any one thing explains the Democrats' loss. I think it's an accumulation of things that people are realizing are important. I think the question for Democrats going forward is,

Do you counter populism from Donald Trump with populism from the Democrats? And what does that look like? And my question would be to them is, you know, do they are they at risk of fighting the last battle? Because when we look at 2028, the 2028 environment is going to be different from the 2024 environment. So they have to also think forwards. Clearly, they cannot afford to lose in perpetuity the kinds of numbers of Hispanic voters that they're losing.

They can't continue to see the drift away of young people, the drift away of young men, the drift away of black voters. They can't lose those people forever. Otherwise, they're never going to get back into the White House. But what does the message look like to those people? And is it a combination of

economic populism with more cultural conservatism. Is that what the formula is? Because that's not the Bernie Sanders model. That's not the AOC model. You know whose model that is? That is John Fetterman's model, Anthony Scaramucci, the senator from Pennsylvania.

Okay, so what are you going to say? Go ahead. I'm going to tell your husband that you're crushing on John Fetterman. Okay, I'm going to tell him. I mean, come on. I mean, this looks like Lurch from the Addams Family got married to like the local plumber and made John Fetterman. And he's the worst dressed person I've ever met. Your reaction, we were asked on our, if you listen to our bonus episode for founding members only, one of the questions was, who is the Democrats' Anthony Scaramucci? Just to let you in on this in-joke, guys. And

I said John Fetterman, who is the senator from Pennsylvania, who is very, very tall and goes around the Senate even in like a hoodie and shorts. And Anthony was actually for Anthony. You have you were a little thin skinned about that. I was a bit surprised the degree to which you took umbrage at my comparison of you and John Fetterman. Thin skinned. It was like I was filleted and salted in margarita salt. What do you mean thin skinned?

He took a machete out with that. It's okay. It's not going to be John Fetterman, but is there somebody who combines? I think the Democrats have to find somebody. And I think this is what all of these discussions are leading towards. They need somebody who is more economically in touch with working class voters, has a clearer message for working class voters, expresses democratic values,

the Democratic Party's kind of core beliefs and how they will actually help working class voters, but also rejects the cultural left of the last few years. Does that sound like where the Democratic Party is starting to find its head, do you think? Yes, but four years is a century in politics. And so we could be sitting here with mass deportations,

And the Hispanic community, the Latin community says, what? I thought he was just kidding about that. And now they're running to hide their family members and they're calling on the Democrats for help.

You could see a landslide if Trump allows for elections in 2026. You could see a landslide. If he overreaches like that. If he overreaches. So we don't know what's going to happen. So if he's overreaching, let's say he does 15% of what he's promised. Let's pick three things. He ends the Fed's independence. Him and Elon want to move the Fed into the federal government and they want the president to decide the interest rates.

That'll destroy the US stock market. Let's say he wants to raise tariffs 600%, 700% like he's promising to do. That'll destroy the lower and middle income people. They won't be able to catch up. It'll eat up all their disposable income. Let's say that he wants to handmaid's tale the immigration and deportation issue.

That'll be a massive amount of fiasco and a result of which whatever we're talking about right now in terms of the framing of a Democrat is going to change dramatically. Maybe the Democrats are going to hire a

culturally neutral, meaning a person, man or woman, I'm not going to fight the culture war. My pronoun is he or she, not fighting the culture war, but what I'm going to fight for what it's right to be American. And my vision is this is the definition of where I want, and I believe the majority of my fellow Americans want to go. And maybe it'll be that person. I don't know who that person is right now, but it could be somebody that surprises us.

I mean, that's the view where Donald Trump does. Donald Trump's second term is the most extreme version of what Donald Trump has suggested he would like to do. And some of the people around him would like to do potentially even bringing troops out, American troops out onto the streets against American protesters. If Donald Trump is that most extreme version, then...

then it's possible you have a different kind of Democrat from Donald Trump being a more measured version, which in some ways in policy he was in his first term. And the Democrats then need to do much more soul searching because they can't run against Donald Trump. So are they going to run against Donald Trump?

and Trumpism and MAGAism in 2028, or are they going to have to find a much more convincing policy to win back so many of those voters who lost them this time around? I think they have to do that thinking. They've got to do the thinking anyway. They can't just say this was international headwinds, or we can run against MAGA and Donald Trump. They've got to take this opportunity to have an analysis once they've got all the data of what happened in this election and how can they be

More appealing. Maybe Trump will claim that he can run again and maybe the Supreme Court will let him, Katty. We'll have to see what happens. It's going to be a weird situation. Maybe it's Donald Trump versus Hillary Clinton in 2028. Two 80-year-old warriors. I don't know. We'll see what happens. But whatever we're predicting right now, I can tell you, is not going to happen. I agree. That's something I'm sure of.

I agree. And the Democrats shouldn't come out of this and say, okay, we're going to set our policy and our formula and our leadership ideals right now because they don't know what the world is going to look like in 2028. I agree with you.

Okay, we're going to wrap it up and we will be back on Friday with our regular episode of The Rest Is Politics US. And of course, on Saturday with our special edition for our founding members. Keep those questions coming. We love getting them, even if Anthony's a little thin skinned about being. And I'm John Fetterman signing off for The Rest Is Politics US. And goodbye from me. I'm just Katty Kay. It's hurtful. It's hurtful.