{"id":147410,"date":"2026-02-27T15:37:14","date_gmt":"2026-02-27T15:37:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/147410\/"},"modified":"2026-02-27T15:37:14","modified_gmt":"2026-02-27T15:37:14","slug":"opinion-trumps-fantasy-state-of-the-union","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/147410\/","title":{"rendered":"Opinion | Trump\u2019s Fantasy State of the Union"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"css-8hvvyd\">Imagine you\u2019re President Donald Trump \u2014 or maybe you\u2019re one of Donald Trump\u2019s political advisers or his kids, one of the ones who doesn\u2019t want all those crypto and A.I. trades you\u2019ve been making to start getting investigated by congressional Democrats. So you\u2019re there and you\u2019re planning out the State of the Union. What would you do? Well, you\u2019d probably start with a problem that you need to solve: The issues that got you elected in 2024 have turned into huge vulnerabilities in 2026. Go back a year. Go back to February 2025. Immigration is your strongest issue. All those whiny liberals looking at your approval rating can see it right there in Nate Silver\u2019s poll tracker. Your net approval on immigration is around 10 percent. That means 10 percent more of the country approves of the job you\u2019re doing than disapproves of it. Suck it, liberals. Fast forward a year. Your net approval on immigration is negative 13 percent. Immigration has gone from your strongest issue to a reason the country dislikes you. Or take the economy. In early February of 2025, you were doing pretty well. Plus 7 percent. But then came the tariffs. Now your net approval on the economy is negative 17 percent. And it gets worse. On trade it is negative 23 percent. On inflation negative 30 percent. Negative 30 percent! So now it is State of the Union time. You have this rare opportunity to address the entire political system, the entire country. So what do you do? Do you tell the American people you\u2019re working on it \u2014 that you know there\u2019s disruption and tumult, but it is just going to take some time for all these policies to pay off? Do you tell the American people you hear them, and you\u2019re going to change course \u2014 you\u2019ve got a new plan? Or do you tell the American people that they\u2019re wrong \u2014 that everything is actually going great, that they should believe you, not their lying eyes and empty wallets and the videos of chaos in their streets? At the State of the Union, Donald Trump decisively chose door number three. At over an hour and 45 minutes, this was the longest State of the Union in recorded history. He had a lot of time to make his case. And what Trump said again and again was that the American people don\u2019t know what they\u2019re talking about. \u201cToday, our border is secure. Our spirit is restored. Inflation is plummeting. Incomes are rising fast. The roaring economy is roaring like never before. And our enemies are scared. Our military and police are stacked. And America is respected again \u2014 perhaps like never before.\u201d I\u2019m not going to go through a fact check of the president here. Donald Trump is not a truthful man. People did not vote for him believing him a truthful man. They voted for him believing he could solve their problems. But what I\u2019ve increasingly wondered over the past year isn\u2019t whether Trump is being truthful with us, but whether he\u2019s being truthful with himself \u2014 or if the people around him are. What does Trump know? What doesn\u2019t he know? He presides over these cabinet meetings \u2014 you can watch them \u2014\u00a0where one agency head after another tells him how great he is doing, how unbelievably well his presidency is going. \u201cThank you for your leadership, for your boldness, for your clarity, for common sense.\u201d He doesn\u2019t read lengthy briefing books. We know that. He doesn\u2019t preside over normal policy process. He communicates on a social media site he owns that is filled with people who like him. He throws himself parades. He has adopted the clich\u00e9d authoritarian habit of forcing people to sit through these record-length speeches. And yes, it is an amazing show of dominance to make Speaker Mike Johnson nod and clap and grin for that long. But the question here is: What if Trump believes all of it? What if he believes everybody in that room \u2014 or at least Republicans \u2014 like nodding and grinning and clapping for that long? What usually saves authoritarians is their control over the system \u2014 their power, their ability to repress elections, opposition parties, the media. If you have enough power, you can bend politics to fit your reality. But Trump isn\u2019t an authoritarian. Not yet. Not that kind. He\u2019s a wannabe authoritarian who doesn\u2019t have the power to engage in that kind of systematic repression. He just lost a major tariff case at the Supreme Court Jimmy Kimmel is still on the air. Americans are thankfully unafraid to criticize their president, and Republicans are losing elections left and right. And in that world, it is a big political problem for this president and for the Republican Party that Donald Trump is lecturing the American people, rather than listening to them, because what Trump spent almost two hours saying at the State of the Union must have been music to Hakeem Jeffries\u2019s ears. Trump said he has no answer to the problems that are dragging down his presidency. He said he doesn\u2019t need an answer to the problems dragging down his presidency \u2014 because there are no problems. Everything is going great. And who around Donald Trump will dare tell him otherwise? Joining me now to interrogate me about Trump\u2019s State of the Union and what, if anything, it means for American politics, is my editor, Aaron Retica. Aaron, welcome back to the show. Hi, Ezra. Where do you want to start? I want to start at the very end after Trump spoke before we heard from Abigail Spanberger, I was listening to the feed that kept going after he was done, as he moved through the House or moved through the Capitol, and it was absolutely incredible. Everybody was like, attaboy, you\u2019re the best. That was incredible. Amazing and then there was a truly stellar moment when someone said, that was a home run, sir. Something like that. And then someone else, or maybe the same person was like it was a grand slam. Whatever else that it wasn\u2019t a grand slam. In his speech, he seemed to be living in a reality that is not the one we\u2019re actually living in. What do you make of that disjunction. Like he\u2019s in one place in America is in another. I think he believes his own bullshit. And I think that is an important skeleton key at this point to understanding the Trump administration. Do you remember when the times Opinion in fact published in the first administration, the famous incognito. We are the resistance inside the Trump administration. Of course I remember. Yes yeah. And it reflected like that was an extreme version of something that was more broadly happening inside that administration, which is that there were a lot of people who were not bought in a loyalist sycophant way to Trump himself. They were serving under him. They understood themselves as serving partially him, partially the country. They understood him as having some good ideas and some bad ones. And so there was some kind of normal structure around him that was built to somewhat restrain him. Can I interrupt you for one second. What\u2019s so interesting about that. The guy who wrote that, and of course, he\u2019s out and about talking about it now was in DHS, which I think is the Department of Homeland Security, which I think is very significant, actually, in terms of what you\u2019re talking about. The people who there were, in some ways, the people who were the most skeptical. And if you were looking at the first State of the Union, the State of the Union, a year into Trump\u2019s first term, who would the Speaker of the House have been. Been Paul Ryan, another senior Republican who did not owe his career to Donald Trump, who was not fully bought in on Trump. Trump is fully taken over the Republican Party. His administration is truly stacked with loyalists. There is a complete submission all around him to the rules of winning his favor, which is to say tell him things he wants to hear. You flatter him. I thought one of both funny and dark refrains of the speech was where he kept saying that, oh, it wasn\u2019t his idea to name the website Trump. It wasn\u2019t his idea to name the Trump savings accounts. Trump accounts. It wasn\u2019t. He didn\u2019t say this in the speech, but he said elsewhere it wasn\u2019t his idea to put his name on the Trump Kennedy Center. People around him know one way that you Curry favor with him is you name things after him and present it to him. And he said, oh, what a me for me. You want to name it after me. And when the world around you has bought into manipulating you that way, and you have an ego like he already has, and you don\u2019t have rigorous modes of thought or policy process, it is actually impossible that you will maintain a normal connection to reality. It\u2019s hard enough to do that just as any president, but he is not going to be able to do it. And sure enough, he is not doing it Yeah, it\u2019s even true of the speechwriters. They can\u2019t come and say, oh, do a Carter type speech where you acknowledge the pain people are suffering, where you talk about problems he loves to talk about bloody difficulties, but we\u2019ll get to that later because it was really a blood filled speech. But they can\u2019t do that. They can\u2019t present him with material that is at variance with his conception of the world. And so it makes actually their task very difficult. And it was I mean, if we\u2019re talking about whether it was like boring or interesting, it was not super interesting. I thought it was in a way, because here\u2019s what I think. I think we do a bad job in the media, particularly the punditry side of the media, covering the State of the Union, because we treat the State of the Union as if it is a hermetically sealed message. Yes, we\u2019re isolationists about the State of the Union that every American citizen or non-citizen for that matter, will live inside and form impressions based on the number of Americans who will sit through an entire state of the Union to say nothing of sitting through the longest state of the Union delivered by a president to Congress, is it\u2019s not nobody. It\u2019s going to be in the millions of people. But what the State of the Union ends up being, I think, is this moment when the president sends a single signal to the entire political system and to more of the country than he can normally speak to about how he understands this moment in his presidency and in the country. And what, if anything, he intends to do about it. And this signal he sent last night was that he is living in a fantasy version of his own presidency, that he does not recognize any of the problems that Americans have with him, that he has no plan to do anything about it because he doesn\u2019t think there is any problem to solve. And he sent that signal to the assembled members of like the idea that Republicans in Congress are cheering for this, they\u2019re going to lose their jobs. There\u2019s a very, very good chance. And I think it went up last night, that at the next state of the Union, Mike Johnson won\u2019t be sitting. Mike Johnson is not sitting behind him. And so to me that we have this tendency to get really caught up in the showmanship of the State of the Union. He had the hockey team out. He kept bringing people out. He kept presenting these medals. That stuff is all going to be forgotten in 48 hours. The State of the Union is going to be forgotten in 48 hours. What will last is the strategic positioning the president chooses about how to solve the country\u2019s problems and how to solve his own problems. And the positioning he chose was to see if lying about them will work. But the problem with lying about them, the problem with treating this a reality television show is most Americans do not tune in to you. And so you can\u2019t just lie to them. Well, it\u2019s not just that because they also, if you tell them eggs are down and maybe beef is coming down, but food prices are up 3 percent right. People buy the food. You said rent is down. I thought that was shocking. He actually said rent is down. Rent is not down. Like anybody who is in the rental market knows rent is not down. He did cherry pick some things that are down because there were supply chain disruptions during the pandemic on particular goods. But inflation, it\u2019s not crazy. It\u2019s around what it was in the final year of Joe Biden\u2019s presidency. And prices for Americans have not come down. He\u2019s not done a lot to bring them down either. But it\u2019s a hard thing for any president to bring the price level down. But he is neither significantly tried nor has he succeeded. And just telling people that you have when you haven\u2019t is a dumb move. Yuval Levin, the conservative policy scholar. I had him on the show a month or two back, and a point he makes that I think is very sharp about Trump is that Trump governs retail, not wholesale, that he governs through these individual deals with countries, with companies, not by doing things that change policy, for the most part, all across the country. Now, immigration is a counterexample to this. And to some degree the tariffs are a counterexample to this. But something you really saw last night was Trump bragging about a series of very individual like, usually modest policies, some of which are not even really policy. So Trump are individual negotiations the Trump administration has been doing with drug manufacturers through tariff debates and negotiations. So you can get cheaper through Trump, because as part of the tariff negotiations, Trump was able to extract that. It\u2019s not a crazy move, but it\u2019s not going to allow you to bring down prescription drug prices across the economy, you\u2019d actually need to pass legislation and have Medicare do across the board bargaining for that. And the thing that\u2019s happening around the Trump WRT move is that he is getting he\u2019s extracting cheaper prices on individual drugs, and then those manufacturers are raising prices on the other drugs to make it up. So it\u2019s trying to win entirely with communication though, right. And there was a strategic point to the speech but also they were seeking to. Is this a word meme I sound like you now to create memes to create moments. The thing they were clearly proudest of among all those stunts was his little spiel about how if you agree with this statement, then stand up and show your support. The first duty of the American government is to protect American citizens, not illegal aliens. And then he\u2019s focused on. Oh, you guys are sitting. You guys are sitting. You guys are sitting. You should be ashamed of yourself, not standing up. You should be ashamed of yourself. You don\u2019t think that will work. No, I don\u2019t think anybody cares. Most people aren\u2019t watching and most people don\u2019t care. People understand why Democrats don\u2019t like Donald Trump. They understand why Donald Trump doesn\u2019t like Democrats. One of the things you always need to be doing in politics, particularly if you are unpopular, and the dynamics of social media have made this harder for both parties, is thinking about the person who doesn\u2019t like you but could you, not the person who already likes you, not the person who already thinks you\u2019re doing a great job. Which was the crucial demographic that broke for him when he beat Hillary Clinton, right. People who didn\u2019t like either of them ended up voting, and they broke for him with Joe Biden. And the thing he\u2019s not doing right now is giving those people anything. There\u2019s this deep way in which Donald Trump, to me, is the inverse of Joe Biden. Joe Biden could not solve a single problem through communication and basically didn\u2019t try. He didn\u2019t take credit for things. He was not really that capable. By the end of giving good speeches, Trump is trying to solve all of his problems through communication, not through governing. And what you see is that doesn\u2019t work either. He\u2019s doing all the things that people say Biden should have done. He\u2019s naming everything after himself. He\u2019s making sure everybody knows about it. But because most people just don\u2019t pay that much attention to politics or to policy, in fact, that\u2019s not doing anything for him. People are mad about prices. We should talk about immigration. They\u2019re mad about immigration, and they\u2019re mad about disorder. That now Donald Trump is causing and going piece by piece to this deal or that deal to no tax on tips to whatever is not going to talk them out of it. The immigration thing. There\u2019s so many things to talk about with this. One thing that really struck me last night is he told many terrible stories about a commercial truck that badly injured a girl who was then shown. And he talked about the murder in Charlotte on a light rail train of a young Ukrainian refugee. But he made it an interesting and telling mistake. She had escaped a brutal war, only to be slain by a hardened criminal set free to kill in America, came in through open borders. He\u2019s saying, open borders. Illegal alien did that. But that\u2019s not true. The guy who killed her is from Charlotte. And what I thought was so revealing about that is that it showed again, what\u2019s going on in his mind. The default is just like, I\u2019m going to kick back to the thing that got me here, right. And this is it. It doesn\u2019t matter that Renee good was killed. It doesn\u2019t matter that Alex peretti was killed. It doesn\u2019t matter that I had to essentially retreat from Minneapolis and Angeles, actually. All those places. Because I\u2019m just going to go to the original thing of these people kill people, they\u2019re evil. Et cetera. Et cetera well, those two things. One is you think about the process by which state of the unions are normally vetted, the amount of interagency meeting and making sure the president doesn\u2019t say anything that can be untrue. The Trump White House, because it cares so little about the fact checkers, has freed itself from that discipline and that rigor. And so that\u2019s like the understatement. And so the century, but the fact that nobody stopped that from happening, nobody stopped him from getting something that substantial wrong is as you say, but it\u2019s telling about a weakness and a vulnerability around him, which is that they are not doing things carefully. The other thing I want to note on immigration. So immigration has gone from Donald Trump\u2019s dominant issue. If you look at his net approval. So approval minus disapproval at the beginning of his term, a year ago he has a net approval on immigration that is around plus 10, which is very, very strong for him. That\u2019s a big number Yeah for those of you who don\u2019t follow this stuff, it\u2019s now flipped. It\u2019s now, it depends on the poll you look at. But negative 7. Negative 10. Negative 13 so that\u2019s a big loss on his strongest issue. The economy has been even worse for him has gone down even further. But the thing that I think he doesn\u2019t quite understand about immigration is weirdly the same thing Democrats didn\u2019t understand about crime so late in Biden\u2019s presidency. Crime has fallen quite a bit. Violent crime in particular. And when people talk about the anger Americans feel about the crime issue, there\u2019s a lot of pointing out that, well, if you\u2019re following the actual crime data, we\u2019re at a violent crime low. And it was true ish. And one thing that I said and that others said at that time, was that the crime polling is picking up something very real. That is not getting measured in the murder rate, which is a dislike of disorder. There was practically in the post-pandemic period. It\u2019s bigger than dislike. It\u2019s a recoil, a recoil of disorder. But it was picking up a reaction to disorder. There were tent cities in Major American cities. There was fare jumping. There was a lot happening, particularly post pandemic, that had a feeling of no one is in control. And there was very good research on this coming out at the end of Biden. And immigration was part of this. There had been a flooding. Partially this was Abbott busing people around, but there had been a flood of people coming into the country. And those people went all around the country. And you saw it. You see it on the New York subways, you see it around you and things feel out of control. And people don\u2019t like what they want from their leaders is to seem to be in control of events. Donald Trump, in his immigration policy, has become the bringer of disorder. When ice and the CBP and the National Guard move into these cities, it brings disorder. It leads to Americans being shot dead in the streets by their government. There\u2019s no more fundamental form of disorder than that. But you go to DC when the National Guard is there, you go to Los Angeles when the National Guard is there. That doesn\u2019t feel like safety and order. It feels like being occupied and people don\u2019t like it, and they react against it. I mean, the Minnesota reaction was incredible and brave and heroic, but one reason Trump is failing is not just because people think his immigration policy is cruel, though they do. But at its core, what they were asking for was things feel out of control. We don\u2019t want them to feel this way. And Trump made things out of control in a different way. He did reduce border crossing, but then he brought this almost war into the interior of the country, and nobody wanted that. What they wanted was for their life to feel calm and safe, not to all of a sudden have masked agents running through their streets and picking up with military grade, with military grade weaponry, picking up the guy who you buy pizza from, right. Picking up somebody who\u2019s their kids go to school with your kids, and then all of a sudden you\u2019re seeing Americans gunned down by federal agents. So Trump is up there making this whole pitch about all the blood being spilled by immigrants. I don\u2019t think he understands that. What he was. In some ways, channeling was an anger disorder. And now what he is the bringer of is a kind of state sanctioned disorder. Which is, of course, incredibly dangerous. I mean, an A cornered Trump. A wild Trump. A Trump who feels there\u2019s nothing to gain. It\u2019s not something I\u2019m not looking forward to that it\u2019s not is this. People always say this, and I\u2019m not saying it isn\u2019t true. I mean, he\u2019ll lie. And we saw the January six riots and stop the steal. But I think something interesting has been the degree to which Trump, when backed into a corner, seems to be backing down. He backed down out of Minnesota. He got the negative ruling from the Supreme Court on the tariffs. And I thought one thing that was interesting in the speech he was quite soft on the Supreme Court. He didn\u2019t go to war with him. I thought he might. He doesn\u2019t. He wants to show a fight, but he doesn\u2019t seem to actually have a lot of appetite for them. Even the police forces in these cities. And I shouldn\u2019t even say even the police forces in these cities are freaking out about the federal presence in their own cities, which is just if you think about that for a second, it\u2019s just an amazing event, and it\u2019s that part of it. It\u2019s very scary. And this is why I do think the State of the Union was revealing about Trump\u2019s mental state. Like, take the whole hour 45 plus and extract out what he said. He said the economy is great. It has never been better. That\u2019s the economy ever. Best economy ever. And he said the main problem America has is bloodthirsty, murderous, illegal immigrants roaming the streets causing havoc at will and Democrats who won\u2019t stand and Democrats who won\u2019t stand. And the fact that neither of those things is true. Like it\u2019s just not true. Those are not the problems that it\u2019s not or the benefit. It\u2019s not the structure of American life at this moment is not what people feel does not what people are reacting to. It puts him in the Republican Party in a tough place. It\u2019s interesting about the immigration. I think it\u2019s very much people freaking out about the deaths and the mayhem. But it\u2019s also it\u2019s like for the longest time, people were saying can\u2019t run on democracy. Don\u2019t talk about that. No one cares. But the thing is, people do care. And by preparing the ground on that, when authoritarianism or a tendency toward authoritarianism and authoritarian violence showed itself, people knew how to read it. They\u2019re like, oh, whoa, O.K, this is where we are now. People have been talking about this, and I\u2019ve been saying that the boy who cried wolf, but they just shot this woman for nothing. They just shot this guy for nothing. And it was laid down on a bedrock of urgency that a lot of people thought would never be realized. And I think that\u2019s part of it. But there\u2019s another part of it, too, which is why are they bothering all this. And you\u2019re getting at it a lot here. They\u2019re solving a problem that only exists. And during the campaign. And the problem was there eating our pets. Like, what is the problem that\u2019s being solved there. And I\u2019m not saying there shouldn\u2019t be an obviously, there has to be a border. There has to be immigration. But no one\u2019s really for open borders. Like that\u2019s all just a canard. And that\u2019s why I was talking about that case in Charlotte, in part because an earlier Trump obsession, which was to be incredibly racist about Black criminals has been superseded to some degree, not completely, but superseded to some degree by his obsession with so-called with illegal aliens. I always just find it incredibly weird. Not inexplicable because it comes from, I think, racism in certain highly ideological views he has about the world, but why he\u2019s always worried about murders committed only by a certain group of people as opposed to murder. What I worry about is murders. Total number of murders. The chance that I get killed or somebody I love gets killed or that, frankly, anybody gets killed by anybody. And he\u2019s right that murders are dropping. And that\u2019s a thing to encourage and take credit for. And you could give police agencies more money to solve murders that are outstanding. There\u2019s a lot you could do if you want to have an anti murder policy, but to just be laser focused on murders by illegal immigrants is just a little bit odd, because most murders are not committed by illegal immigrants. I also think there\u2019s a. What you were just saying about independence. I sometimes think about the Trump that I think could have been not at 41 percent in the polls right now, but at 48 or 51 percent Their approval ratings. Approval ratings. So the Trump who comes in last year and the economy is already getting better and is kind of strong by then and does not do tariffs, just does some of his popular policies, passes a bunch of tax cuts and just takes credit as opposed to holding the economy back to some level. And also freaking people out with a very, very chaotic and aggressive tariff regime. The Trump who does what he said he was going to do, or at least what he sometimes said he was going to do, which was secure, the Southern border, which they\u2019ve more or less done and focus on violent criminals. The worst of the worst the worst of the worst. A Trump who did less and then had more room to brag about Trump, where you can now get to would go focus on it or to just focus on things. You can talk about having pushed Hamas in the Netanyahu government to a deal in Gaza, and he has chosen I mean, we wrote AI wrote a piece about this with you. He has chosen to create a huge number of problems for himself politically, when he could have done a lot less and really benefited from it. I mean, there\u2019s a world in which he got to the waterline of his popular policies and his popular promises, and then just stopped because sprinkled throughout his speech is something that I think is very dangerous about Trump for Democrats, which is he will happily take their issues away from him. He\u2019ll negotiate down prescription drug prices using the government\u2019s power. A longtime Democratic priority that Republicans foiled again and again and again. But Trump is just trying to take that from the Democrats. He will cut more or less literally took it right. Isn\u2019t that Biden\u2019s program that they\u2019ve rejiggered? Jiggered know what Trump is doing is a little bit different, but both things are happening. And, immigration wise close the border, right. There\u2019s a lot of political viability and value in that. There\u2019s a lot in there where Trump could just do the more Bannon right populist thing and have gained from it, but because he actually sincerely believes in a series of very, very dumb and cruel ideas, he has ended up creating a lot of crises for himself. And that is before, I mean, any have been created for him. He\u2019s not facing, as he was at the end of his first term, a global pandemic. He\u2019s not facing as he might by the end of this term, a recession. And so he\u2019s created, if things begin to go wrong, the kind of things that any president has trouble dealing with he\u2019s not working with a lot of goodwill or frankly, even a lot of policy space. He\u2019s used a lot of money on these different moves to respond. That\u2019s part of why when we were talking at the beginning about reality. That\u2019s part of what\u2019s going on here too, is that they so believe what they say or they think it\u2019s politically effective. I don\u2019t know whether he thinks he actually won the 2020 election. I\u2019m still a little dubious about that. I think they may just think it\u2019s effective and gets the group riled up and it\u2019s great. Whatever maybe he does. I have no idea. Obviously can\u2019t get into his brain and I don\u2019t want to be there. But the reality problem is an enormous one. That then leads you to believe that, as he said last night in Congress to Congress, right. The Democrats want to cheat. They want to cheat. They have cheated. And their policy is so bad that the only way they can get elected is to cheat. And we\u2019re going to stop it. We have to stop it, John. They want to lie. The reason they want open borders is to bring illegal immigrants who are then going to vote for them. And that\u2019s why we have to have the SAVE act like it\u2019s a whole world view. It\u2019s very simple. All voters must show voter ID, but it really struck me like, O.K, here\u2019s the fringe at the center. Here\u2019s the lunatic, paranoid, crazy material that we used to keep roped off that the right tried to keep in certain phases, tried to keep roped off from itself. And here it is, the President of the United States actually arguing that Democrats want to bring illegal immigrants in order to vote for Democrats, and that\u2019s why they won\u2019t stand up. I mean, it\u2019s just pretty mind boggling when you actually put it all together. And this is how you get I don\u2019t want to dwell on the PET eating, but that\u2019s how you get to the pet eating. And Vance even admitted that, well, he said, you got to tell stories. I think it\u2019s been interesting to watch a lot of people on the right. Chris Rufo, for instance, the right wing provocateur who was very much part of spreading the pet eating slanders. He was out on X the other day, as he has been occasionally. Recently he\u2019d just been like, I don\u2019t know what\u2019s happening to our empirical standards here on the right. All our people are getting radicalized and they\u2019re swimming in conspiracies and slop, and a successful movement cannot have this much online brain rot. And there\u2019s a lot of I\u2019d say, pointing and laughing, because Rufo has been part of pushing the movement towards online brain rot. And I think he feels he stays. Or Ben Shapiro complaining about Candace Owens, who used to be on his show, who used to be on under his Daily Wire umbrella. Yes but there is a broad thing happening here, which is that the president is deep in right wing brain rot. And the people around him who wanted to weaponize the right. They wanted to use it to amp up their base and get certain things and win certain fights, but they can\u2019t stop it. They\u2019ve set up a set of systems and a momentum and a culture on the right that they do not actually control. And then Elon Musk took over X and took away the moderators and let all the Nazis back in. And it turns out if you let all the Nazis and the racists back in, that has a real audience on the right too. And so there is what is happening with the president at one level, very high up is also happening down a lot lower. And this is not a movement that is going to effectively come up with normal solutions for political problems. So you have always a danger that it moves into straight repression that he uses a military and other things to try to win elections. And cannot win through votes. But right now, it seems to me there is a genuine possibility. It\u2019s not huge, but that Republicans will lose the Senate because Donald Trump will not endorse John Cornyn in Texas. And if he does not endorse John Cornyn in Texas and Cornyn, one of the reasons Trump seems to not like him is Cornyn did not buy in to the 2020 lies. But if he doesn\u2019t endorse Cornyn, which he hasn\u2019t, and voting is beginning, Ken Paxton, who\u2019s a much weaker nominee, absolutely scandal plagued in every emblematic of our era in so many ways, might become the Republican nominee for Senate in Texas. And Texas is a red state, and Paxton might win anyway. But if Democrats nominate, Talarico seems to me like their stronger candidate in that race. But who knows. You could end up in a situation where I don\u2019t think Crockett or Talarico could beat Cornyn, but I think Paxton is beatable. And in a situation where you have a Democratic wave year and a very, very scandal plagued Republican Senate candidate, that could end up being the decisive Senate race, and then people will look back and it will have been Trump like. Trump could have interceded to protect himself and just chose not to. And the reason I bring this up is that I think it\u2019s really important to distinguish between somebody who has a clear eyed, strategic picture of the situation in front of them and is acting cynically lying and using conspiracy theories to rile up the base. And somebody who actually doesn\u2019t have a clear eyed picture of the situation in front of them and is acting impulsively and emotionally, or at least strategically in ways that can harm them. And I think what we\u2019re seeing right now is Trump is the second thing, not the first. He\u2019s not a brilliant manipulator. He is a deluded manipulator. What\u2019s interesting about the 2020 lies, whether or not you think that Trump believes them or whether he didn\u2019t, and then he does. What\u2019s interesting about it is that the loyalty test is stronger if you know that in reality, he lost the election and you\u2019re still willing to say, as Congress did, that yeah, actually, we\u2019re not going to certify those results, even though they know perfectly well that they were legit. That\u2019s actually the more powerful move to get people to acknowledge a non-reality. And this is why people are always making references to Eastern Europe to the history of Latin America and even to Hitler and Mussolini and all the rest of it, because making someone believe something they know is not true. It\u2019s a bigger power move than getting them to acknowledge something that\u2019s true. And watching last night, that was something I was thinking about too, because they\u2019re trying to get people to accept a reality, obey a reality, acknowledge a reality that doesn\u2019t exist. And sometimes that works, but it often doesn\u2019t, right. It decays. I think one thing that is interesting and on some level, a little bit inexplicable to me right now about how things are going for Trump and Congress, is that if you actually look at what Congress is doing quietly, and this is a Republican dominated Congress at the House and Senate level. Trump is actually facing, I would say, a fair amount of resistance they have. I mean, they have agreed to at the high level, just unfathomably unqualified and corrupt cabinet appointees. But they have rejected forced the withdrawal more subcabinet appointees than we\u2019ve seen from any president in the modern era. And if you look at spending. Trump just did not get a lot of what he wanted. I mean, Russ Vought sent all these DOGE inspired spending cuts. And in fact, the government is spending more this year than it did the year before. Republicans in Congress just rejected a lot of what Trump wanted to eviscerate. So there is this dynamic that is happening between Trump and the Republican Party, which is Trump only cares about a couple of big things. He cares that you flatter him. He cares that you agree with him on some of his big lies. He cares about tariffs. He has some things that he really does. He doesn\u2019t want to be impeached again, doesn\u2019t want be impeached again. But they are not in an aggressive way riding Herd on Republicans in Congress to back their agenda all the way through. And at this point. They don\u2019t even seem to have a legislative agenda for 2026. There\u2019s a lot of drift in this presidency at this point more than I think one would have expected. There are a couple of things Trump really cares about. Again tariffs, immigration. But beneath that I mean this is we\u2019re only it just passed the year Mark in this term. They shouldn\u2019t be this out of ideas this out of movement. But instead Trump seems to be spending his time on foreign policy, which is not what people wanted from him. And a lot can go wrong depending on what he decides to do with what people do in their second terms. They get sick of trying to do things that are hard, which is legislate, and then just start winging it because they have more control over that. That seems to be where Trump is Yeah I mean, the impeachment thing also, I think is significant because he went I forget whether it was before the Republican House, but maybe it was some Senate thing where he\u2019s talking to the members behind closed doors, but everything always leaks. And he said to them, if you lose, they\u2019re going to impeach me a third time. And if we think of Trump as a cunning political operator, for a moment, we\u2019ve been talking about him not being. But the dude got elected president twice. Completely unqualified. Like he shouldn\u2019t be the president. He is. So like, I\u2019m not going to give him political advice in one sense. And I think he recognizes that the third impeachment, first of all, just spectacular on its face, but is very dangerous for him because there will come a point and we are seeing it. And this is when you just said made me think of it. There will come a point when they have to start to pretend they didn\u2019t do all this. They weren\u2019t participating in the whole thing. They weren\u2019t gung ho about immigration. I mean, one thing I was thinking about a lot as I watched was they\u2019re making such a big deal about what the Republican, what the Democrats are sitting for. They won\u2019t stand up. But I was like, well, look what you\u2019re standing for. You\u2019re jumping up at the idea that your opponents are cheating at the elections. You\u2019re jumping up at that concept. You are jumping up at the demonization of Somalis in Minnesota. I mean, he said a million things, but he actually called them Somali Pirates, because again, his brain just defaults to certain things at this point. And they\u2019re leaping up and cheering like it\u2019s the Roman Coliseum, not the US Capitol. So at some point they\u2019re all going to have to pretend, I wasn\u2019t really doing that right. I was just there for the tax cuts, and I was just there for oh, the border and. And how do you make that point. Most emphatically is if he gets to a weak enough point, you start to see Republicans peel off. And I know this sounds insane right now, but it\u2019s not. And I see that he fears it, that there could be as there should have been certainly the second time around, enough Republicans voting to actually convict him if he\u2019s impeached a third time. I know I\u2019m getting way out into the future here, but I actually think he\u2019s afraid of that. He might be afraid of it. I am, I think it is very unlikely. Not completely impossible, but what would have to come out would. It\u2019s hard for me to imagine what at this point would crack their support for him. But between Trump getting impeached and convicted, and where we are now is, I think, the more obvious thing that will happen if Democrats win the House and\/or the Senate, which is a huge amount of investigations. And one thing that was very smart of Trump last night was to pick up the ban, insider stock trading from members of Congress. And that\u2019s a very I mean, I\u2019ve seen a lot of polling on this that is about as popular a policy as exists, and Democrats did not implement it. And Pelosi is very identified with this. And people believe certainly looking at the returns of her sometimes see these ads right now in the New York subway for a online stock trading platform where you can just hit a button and have Nancy Pelosi\u2019s portfolio on the theory that, well, if she knows what\u2019s going on. So maybe you should too. He made a joke about that. That\u2019s smart politics for him. But the thing behind it is. People don\u2019t like seismic levels of political corruption. And within his administration and his family are the most seismic levels of political corruption. I think that we have seen in the modern era in American politics. And once Democrats have subpoena powers, things are going to start coming out Yeah and that was just about the tariff that was an undersold or under-recognized joy of the tariffs for him is that it makes personal negotiations crucial. So this Rolex has to the Swiss have to show up with this Rolex gold bar to get their tariff lowered. That\u2019s given to him. So I think if I were Donald Trump or the Trump family or a lot of key members of the administration, I\u2019d be pretty worried about Democrats getting that subpoena power Yeah and I\u2019d be pretty upset that Trump is doing so little to stop it from happening. So if you\u2019re Hakeem Jeffries or you\u2019re Chuck Schumer and you\u2019re sitting there in the audience last night, I think you\u2019re pretty happy with how that speech went, because the thing you fear is Trump and the Republican Party getting serious about pivoting into a strategy, into policies, into messages that could help moderate their losses in 2026. And you didn\u2019t see any evidence of either Donald Trump doing that, or Donald Trump being willing to let the rest of the Republican Party say the things necessary for them to do that. Fair enough. I hate maybe to end on Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer, but I think we got to stop there. So thank you very much, Ezra. Thank you. 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