Welcome to the forecast from Washington, DC.
We still have the inauguration speech of Donald Trump ringing
in our ears. And of course, he's been a very
busy man, signing something like 200 presidential orders that
have really done a lot to dismantle not just the Biden
legacy, but also so much else to discuss the implications of all
this. What we are in store for now.
I've got 2 guests, Naira Hack, who's a Democrat strategist and
used to work for the Obama administration and Deanna Bass
Williams who used to work for the first Trump administration
and drives herself as a Republican strategist.
Welcome to you both. Let me start first of all, with
you, Dina. When you saw what was happening
yesterday, when you saw all these presidential orders being
signed, especially the one that pardoned all the thousand, was
it 300,500 detainees, convicts who were, you know, you know, in
a jail round the corner from us here in Washington, serving time
for what they did on January the 6th, what went through your
mind? Well, Donald Trump told us what
he was going to do. And that's one thing that we
have always gotten from him is transparency.
So I voted for him knowing that he was going to do that.
And I also didn't want him to do it.
But there were things that were more important for me.
And I would say that there were things that were more important
for other voters as well. So one thing about President
Trump is that he's transparent. He's as he's an open book, he
says what he's going to do and he's going to do it.
Now, there were other things. The federal government
recognizing that there are two genders, that was important to
me. Strength on the border, Those
things were important to me. So I feel like, you know, I
would rather him not have pardon people who attacked police
officers, but I knew he was going to do it.
He said he was going to do it and and he did it.
But does that make it OK? It does not make it OK, but
what? But what you have to understand
is that there are other things that are far more important.
And I feel like we should get down to to business in in one,
in less than half a day. Donald Trump did more, was more
active than Joe Biden was in, in a week.
And and I won't disparage an American president, certainly
not on international media. So I respect Joe Biden, I thank
him for his service, and I'm excited that we're in a new
phase. Nero, what do you make of that?
I do think that that is something very prevalent in
American Society right now, this idea that, well, if there's one
thing I like, I'm OK as a voter with other people getting hurt
or other things going wrong, because I'm now going to
prioritize what works for me. And that's part of a greater
challenge I think we're having around the world is this idea of
retreating into tribalism. And rather than rather than
doubling down on the idea of of government, that's not for that
that is not right, is doing things to people rather than a
government that is doing things for people.
So this is this is not a government.
Nothing in the speech yesterday that Trump said was about there
wasn't a like a unifying theme of how we re knit as a pluralist
society. It was very specifically
delivering on the things that he said he was going to do for
people that voted for him. And, and, and I, I find this,
and I know that as a Republican, I have to, I should get used to
this because we are once again entering the season of selective
outrage. People are elected on their
campaign promises. And for you, for you to say or
for anyone to say that I should not be concerned about things
that impact my family, the price of eggs, the cost of gas,
inflation, things that you know, and I, I should say I'm blessed.
I'm married to a retired Colonel who did well.
I do well. We don't have the same struggles
that most Americans do. But when I go into the grocery
store, even in my middle income and I see that butter is $6, I
like my gasp. So there, there are people.
And you look at African Americans and Hispanic Americans
in large numbers who were like, you know what, we've been told
this over and over again that we should be on Team Blue.
But we're getting we're not getting anything for it.
And I do not just really quickly, I do not support
tribalism, which is why I come on.
I'm very clear about the things that I do and don't support
about Donald Trump. What we have to have is people
who are courageous enough to say this is my party, but not
everything thing is right about it.
And understanding that that may make me look disloyal to some
Republicans, but I love America enough to say that everything
isn't great, but I want to. But I want to go in this
direction and so. And we appreciate both of you
coming on because you both represent different sides of the
political spectrum. Just want to get to the pardons
a little bit more before we move to some of the other pretty, you
know, jaw-dropping stuff that he announced Neera.
I mean, I know there's, you know, those pardons for the
January the 6th crowd were incredibly contention.
And like Dina, I've spoken to other Republicans, Republicans
who are not happy about them at all because of what they did to
law enforcement agents on January the 6th in 2021.
But Biden also, you know, pardon pre emptively pardon, you know,
many members of his own family as well as some other people who
might very well be in Trump's crosses.
That was also pretty weird and unprecedented, wasn't it?
It is a very weird time, and I think the Biden administration
failed in the early part to recognize that the system,
belief in the system and how the democratic system works in the
United States had already fundamentally changed and the
relationship that people had to it had fundamentally changed.
So the idea that it took multiple years for any
accountability for the January 6th insurrection, right, open
the door for this idea of, well, if it's technically legal, we're
going to start doing it. And Biden, ironically enough,
ended up there himself in the last week of his presidency.
So Biden was, I think, the last of the traditionalist,
institutionalist presidents. And it was inevitable that we
would end up with a Donald Trump, somebody who came in on
the heels of fun, not only fundamental change, but
potentially burning it all down. I mean, I was really struck
yesterday by not just the way that he signed the decrees,
which was, you know, first in the arena, call it the Colosseum
of today, you know, when then throwing the Sharpies into the
crowd after he'd signed, you know, one decree after another
as if they were kind of baseball caps or indeed Marga caps.
When he went to when he was in Puerto Rico for the disaster,
disaster relief of the hurricane, he was throwing paper
towels out, you know, very, very showman like in how he how he
approaches this. But it's more the fact that he's
doing this, you know, he's, he's basically using, you know, the
most authoritarian powers that any president can use
constitutionally, which is the, you know, the presidential
order, the decree which bypasses Congress.
He, he's doing that in an arena in front of all his supporters
as a very kind of public piece of presidential theatre.
And then he, of course, carries on and does the same thing on
the Resolute Desk, you know, in the Oval Office and, you know,
and is announced every time he does it.
There's an announcement from one of his officials about which
which particular bit of America's political legacy he's
shredding. I just want to hear from you,
Dina. Do you think when you saw that,
did you think this is something that is fundamentally different?
And were you reassured by it or did you think it was a bit
scary? You know, I did not think it was
scary. I definitely thought it was
different. I wasn't, I wasn't, you know, I
know that we had to make changes because of the snow and the
weather and the cold that you're experiencing here.
And so some things change and he was there.
But we know that Donald Trump is a showman.
And one thing that Donald, not only is Donald Trump dismantling
some things that are that that are traditional in America, like
Norm that are traditional, but he's also advancing things.
And, and you have to look, he the Republican Party has
transformed into a working class party.
And it's large and not just working class white people,
working class African Americans and Hispanic Americans.
And it is because Donald J Trump has he has dismantled legacy
media as well. Now imagine that's one of the
reasons why we're doing a podcast now.
This is like there are like he has in one tweet or X or true
social. Donald Trump can reach more
people than Rachel Maddow on MSNBC, which is one of our
networks here in the US. And so he is, he's dismantling
everything. Everything is different now.
The Republican Party that I grew up in, I'm 52 years old.
I started working on my first Republican campaign when I was
11 years in Columbus, GA. We elected the first black woman
to the City Council in my hometown in Georgia.
This is a different Republican Party because Donald Trump is
actually delivering things that other Republicans have held in
front of our head as red meat for, for decades.
So yes, it's different. It's, it's you know what?
But I will say this, I am, I am a right of center evangelical
Christian Bible believing like I'm, I'm all of those
conservative, prudish things that you think about.
That is me. But I will take this billionaire
Playboy who is delivering conservative, the conservative
agenda any day over these bland do nothing Republicans who have
delivered absolutely nothing. OK, just quickly, Dean, I've
never thought of you as prudish in any sense of, of the word, to
be honest. But I just wonder, you know,
when Donald Trump stands there in the Rotunda of the capital
yesterday giving his speech after taking the oath of office
and says, you know, basically more or less, I'm paraphrasing
here, but but I'm here thanks to God.
God put me here on this earth to, you know, to be president
for a second time. You know, God help me to survive
the Assassin's bullet. He might have added, God help me
to stay out of jail. That's the kind of thing the
presidents in the past might have said to themselves
privately, but not in public and not in that kind of speech.
Well, there are those of us that really do believe in the
millimeter miracle, you know, and they're like we watch.
What is that by the way? That is when the bullet grazed
him, 11 head turned the other way, and this man would be dead.
And so we have to wonder whether you believe in God.
I do. I believe in Christ.
Whether you believe or not, you have to wonder what on earth why
did that? And we can think of those things
in our own lives like near misses in car accidents, the
chance meeting of your, your, you know, the chance meeting of
my husband, all of these things. If I had gone to this party and
not that party, I wouldn't know him, right?
So all of these chance meetings, are they divine?
And people who believe in Christ, many of us do believe
that there, that there's something divine about it.
OK, let me ask, Naira. I mean, I don't know what your
beliefs are, but when when you see a guy like Donald Trump,
who's now the president, the most powerful man on the planet
who thinks he's got a special in with God, or maybe God has a
special in with him, does that reassure you?
I I'm a woman of faith, do believe in God, and I also
believe that there were voters who put Donald Trump in office
and who decided to show up on Election Day and voters who
didn't. And the enthusiasm gap was
significant. All Trump voters were
enthusiastic. They showed up.
Now, Trump does have the lowest margin of victory when it comes
to the popular vote ever, but he still won.
So that is, he's there because of the way the American system
works and how voting works and people who showed up.
So I would like to give voters credit and voters will get what
they asked for. But is is a president, a
commander in chief who thinks he's been ordained by God to run
this country? Is that a good thing or a bad
thing for the? Republic.
I think in a country that tech still values separation of
church and state as enshrined in the Constitution as believed by
the founders, some of whom like Thomas Jefferson, who was a
deist and didn't identify as Christian at all.
I think that separation of church and state should
continue. But not convinced that that's
what Donald Trump or the Supreme Court wants, given the language
again, Dina said. He's very transparent.
That type of rhetoric of God first before voters, before
democracy, as part of a pluralistic society, indicates
that yes, that line between separation of search and state
is already blurred and will continue to blur under this
administration. This idea that the, that the
church or that people of faith should shrink from public, from
the public square, that's not good either.
We should we, you know, and so I, and I don't see, I think that
if, if Donald Trump is going back to there being 2 genders
and that's like his, his faith is, is making him do that.
I think that's common sense. And I think that that his faith
is driven of common. Sense, sorry to interrupt.
I mean, the common sense is a phrase that has come up a lot.
And I think he called it the revolution of common sense.
And it's a line that I heard, you know, very much on the
streets yesterday in Washington, DC from his supporters.
But if you're the parent of a transgender child, you know, and
I'm not talking about the politics around them.
You know, I'm just talking about, you know, the fact that
there are, you know, some kids, you know, who are uncomfortable
in the body that they've been born with and they want to
transition. If you're a parent of one of
these kids, or if you're one of these kids themselves, then to
have, you know, the lead of your country decree that there are
only two genders must make you feel very, very uncomfortable
indeed. I think it would make you feel
uncomfortable, but I also say that Donald Trump is standing up
for girls who don't want to play sports with people who identify
in a certain way. And, and, and finally, I think
that what we, we have to take a step back and protect children.
And if you are a child who feels like you're in the wrong body,
then maybe 10 or 12 is not the age to start making those kinds
of decisions. Neera, I mean, was he making a
populist point here for his base or was he, you know, does he
actually believe in this and that, you know, or maybe a bit
of both? Oh, well, listen, this is this
is a a president as a human who has changed opinions over time.
Like his consistent thing is that he will change his point of
view for what meets the moment as a showman and as a
politician. So he was a Democrat, then he's
a Republican. He was a Clinton supporter.
Now he's not. He wanted the TikTok ban in his
first administration. He signed the executive order.
Now he doesn't. So he very much a transactional
president and he has managed to somehow connect this idea of
outrage over gender identity with the price of eggs.
I mean, Dina did it in her opening remarks.
Donald Trump has connected those two things.
And that worked for many people. The connection of the economic
grief and the culture outrage, He's been very effective at it.
But I need, I need and want a government that will do right by
many kinds of people. Because at the end of the day, I
don't know what my child or what resources my child will need
when they're 30 or 40, whether it's social support systems, any
kind of mental health, I mean, all of that.
So I I that is the fundamental difference.
Neera, I just wondered if I could take you back, both of
you, actually to the scene yesterday of the of President
Trump, fresh from the oath of office, kind of really shredding
not just the legacy of his immediate predecessor, but all
the predecessors who were sitting there.
Frankly, you know, ashen faced. I mean, George Bush junior
looked pretty out of it. You know, Bill Clinton looked,
you know, visibly aged. I think I saw Hillary Clinton
shaking her head a little bit. I mean, he was basically
shredding his predecessors and their record.
And to some extent, I guess you could say they are all of what
they did to their office, including Obama.
You know, the result of that on one level is Donald Trump.
So, you know, Bill Clinton's behaviour in the Oval Office
with Monica Lewinsky, you could say, you know, befouled the
reputation of the office in the way, you know, that his
predecessors, even Kennedy, hadn't done.
George Bush started a war of choice.
You know, that was completely unacceptable.
It turns out after 9-11, in the kind of white heat of revenge,
you know, Obama deported more people than Donald Trump did but
kept it quiet. He used drone warfare without
putting boots on the ground, you know, again and did it sort of,
you know, America's power on the sly, your old boss.
And then, of course, you know Joe Biden.
Well, we've talked a lot about Joe Biden.
Joe Biden may have been railing against the new oligarchy, but
these oligarchs, if that's what they are, accumulated a lot of
power on his watch. So there's a fair degree of
hypocrisy in some of this, isn't there?
Nearer. I, I think that they truly
believed that this idea of norms and institutions would last
beyond any individual president. And I think that's, that's a
mistake because at the end of the day, the norms and
institutions that we have are, are built on belief.
They're built on the idea that people will behave according to
that. And as we saw, that's not the
case. And Steve Bannon, for you know
what, whether he's not in the White House or not these days,
called us out early and saw an opportunity and what he calls
the burning down of the administrative state.
And they were able to build a consistent movement around that.
So there's, there's been it's I to some degree, absent an
alternative fighting back perspective.
This is a, this has been for the last eight years, even
throughout the Biden administration, a moment of
fundamental shift and change for how American systems and
American democracy work. I'll end it on this one, this
idea of birthright citizenship, which right now the one of the
executive orders said that if you are born here as a child of
an undocumented person, you are not going to be considered a
citizen. That's a very big change.
Many other countries do that. Many other countries actually
say that if your parents are not citizens, right, you cannot be a
citizen. The Gulf countries do that, some
European countries, but this is what it is.
This, this idea of birthright citizenship is what made America
different. So my question for the next 4
years is what? What about America's
exceptionality and difference and innovation?
Are we going to maintain? Or is America going to be
turning into one of these other countries that we've seen but
many people have not wanted to live in?
OK. Dana, on that point, I mean, you
saw that. Yeah, Go, go on.
And, and this is what this is what I'm going to try to do and
what I encourage my friends in the middle of the aisle and on
the left side of the aisle to do.
You rattled off a a number of things that were kind of
hypocritical for previous administrations, both Democrat
and Republican, but because and but Trump stood and kind of
called him out. We have to and and like we have
to be able to say, yeah, you know, that that actually was
pretty hypocritical. I on the right, I have to hold
Donald Trump and my party accountable when we're doing
wrong, which is why I say the J6 thing is not right.
So we so on the left rather than identifying yes, it's kind of
hypocritical. We have like we people of
goodwill and common sense. The only way it works is if like
I am team red, I'm not even going to pretend from from my
ideology to the way I get paid. I'm team red.
But I have to have some loyalty to Team America, Team World.
And if the left is only going to rail against Trump, then it's
not going to work like. On that point, yeah, sorry to
interrupt Dina, but on that point, I mean, you know, this is
a country having lived here for 11 years, I kind of I got, you
know, very used to the idea that America loves ritual and
customs. You know, whether it's, you
know, at Halloween or Presidents Day or Columbus Day, you know,
the way you do things, you know, is you couch yourself in a
ritual much more actually than we as an older democracy, a
constitutional democracy, a constitutional monarchy rather
do in in the UK. And yet at the same time, you
know there are some rituals. That just weren't there
yesterday. So, you know, normally when you
give a presidential address after your inauguration, you,
you, you know, you reach out to the other side, to the other
side of the aisle, you at least make a show of bipartisan unity.
I mean, there was a mention of unity almost as a decree.
But he did not really reach out to the other side.
Why didn't he do that? I mean, this is the a great
moment that he missed because now we'd all be talking about,
look at the gentler, kinder side of Donald Trump.
You know what, if I and my family had been gone after in
the way like every single word, anthrax in the mail to his
daughter-in-law in the way that he has, I would, I don't know
how gracious I would be because I'm, you know, I'm Team Bass and
I'm Team Williams and I don't know how gracious I would be.
I think he is far more gracious than I ever would have been.
So I look at that and I say, you know what?
On every turn on, you know, and, and you, you live here, you what
you see the American press on every turn.
It doesn't even matter. He is, he could walk, he could
walk across the street and give a bunch of poor minority kids
$1000. And then they're like, Oh my
gosh, you didn't give him $1001.00.
It doesn't matter what he does. And I think he really.
That I think he was. That now?
I mean it. Would have.
It would have been nice. It would have been nice.
But but for me, it's not necessary.
I want him to get busy. I want him to get, get, get.
I'm working. So, I mean, you know, we've
we've talked about this before, but you know, for every and I'm
talking mainly about the world of cable television here, which
is so influential in politics. You know, for every MSNBC
diatribe against everything Trump does, I raise you a Fox
diatribe for everything that Biden did or Clinton did so or
Obama did, for that matter. So, you know, we live in these
sort of weird, you know, silos of information.
But I just want to turn to something else.
And that's the kind of global footprint Naira.
I mean, you dealt a lot with foreign policy when you work for
Barack Obama. It strikes me as if what he did
yesterday, you know, with his pen and his words, was to really
tear apart in some fairly important pillars of the kind of
global construction which had been built and was pretty stable
thanks to America's involvement, WHO Paris Agreement itself.
Yep, it is. The idea of the international
world order is not something that Donald Trump is going to
maintain as it has been. That was very evident in his
first term. And Biden did work.
Again, another norm that the United States would lead Europe
in unity, that the United States would be a leader when it came
to investments in countries to counteract China, all of that.
Donald Trump has made it very clear he is not going to do
that. So the one of the first acts to
while we have wildfires raging in LA and record cold snaps in
the South, that his version of climate change action is not
going to be a global solution. It's not going to be the United
States as part of that. And So what does that idea of
American leadership look like? As a former diplomat, I think
that it is going to require the diplomats who are on the ground,
working inside other countries and spreading the idea and
message of the United States to really have to operate with a
lot of humility. The lecturing the United States
used to do is not going to hold up anymore.
But the question is, in the absence of that, what's going to
happen? Where does the United States
step in and for leadership? Dina, are we now in a world
where might is right? No, I think that we're in a
world where America is stop is tired of stop paying for
everything. And I was watching, you know,
listening to pundits this morning talk about how in Davos
the, the global community is concerned that America not only
wants to be the leader, we want to be the winner.
Well, I don't want to be the leader or the winner.
I want to be a team player. But a team player means that
everybody's paying their fair share.
The, the burden of saving the planet is not on America alone.
And, and so I think that I want to be a team player.
And, you know, my analogy is like, I always feel like America
is the the rich, unpopular girl at the party who's who's
continuing to pay the tab just so that she can stay in the
party. You know what?
I'd rather not be at the party. But Helen.
But does the rich, unpopular girl also want to eat all the
cheeseburgers? Because what we heard yesterday
about the Panama Canal, which is, you know, it sounded to me a
little bit like a, a declaration of war, or at least a menace.
Is that being a team player, Dina?
I think that is, that is Donald Trump showmanship again.
It is. And I, I don't want to make
again, I have to be, I have to walk the walk and talk the talk.
I don't want to make excuses. I, you know, Hillary Clinton
chuckled when Donald Trump said that.
I think many of us, of us chuckled.
I don't understand it. I don't know.
I need to know more about it before I say if I agree with it
or not. But but in, in the bravado, in
the showmanships, in, in the look at us, America, we're back.
I was, I thought it was, I thought it was a, a smart Donald
Trump play. The execution of it is is.
I don't really understand how that's going to work out.
Well, well, that it could be pretty crucial, couldn't it?
Be the execution of all these things?
Is it just showmanship? Is it just bluster and rhetoric?
Or is it actually, you know, military menace at the end of
there? Because then we're in a totally
different world, aren't we? Well, we are certainly in an
administration now where Trump has people who are very capable
and have studied and understand how to use these levers of
government to execute these policies.
So I, I don't think it's a joke that the idea of an America that
is going to be expansionist and try to take over territories, I
don't think that's a joke. I think that, again, as Dina
said, Trump tells me what he's going to do and he wants to do
it. The difference between the first
administration and this one is that he he will have people in
place who will help him get it done.
Right. So is it no longer isolationism
that we should be worried about, but American expansionism back
to the 19th century? Manifest Destiny?
The Monroe Doctrine. I listen, you certainly have the
the kinds of folks who want to see more power around him, Elon
Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, right? They the tech giants who welcome
this idea of American expansion because it benefits them.
So I think there is a through line here.
Obviously more more to come. But he's not backed off the idea
of Denmark or Panama, and in fact added in more rhetoric
yesterday about this vision of America that is expanding.
OK, final question to you, Dina. Should Elon Musk be told not to
do a Roman salute in an arena? You know, I am not comfortable
with that salute either. But I really think that there
I'm, I'm not confident that it was a Roman salute, Roman
salute. But no, he should, he should be
more mindful and not do that. Absolutely.
I mean that's the polite way, but there's some people just say
it was a Nazi salute. You know, I, I, I, I think Dean
and I are on the same page on this one as professional folks
who've been in this space, like just, you know, when you're when
you're at a podium in a position of power, be mindful.
And I think that's part of what's hard to understand right
now is somebody with the kind of money and access that Elon Musk
has is, are, are these mistakes like what, what is being
signalled here? And so, yeah.
Yeah, I guess what we can say about Elon Musk and maybe about
a few others in this new administration is that filters
are so yesterday. OK, We're going to leave it
there. Thank you very much to both of
you for having this civil disagreement about these
extraordinary new days in Washington, DC Mayor Rahak Deena
Bass Williams, that's it. Thank you very much.
Goodbye from us here from the forecast in Washington, DC.