The core theme of the content is an analysis of Donald Trump's rhetoric and actions, particularly his questioning of election legitimacy, his administration's dismantling of the post-WWII international order, and the potential mental and political instability of his leadership, all framed within the context of a critique of Republican policy and a call to action for the American public.
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So, you asked a lot of questions. I'm
going to see if I can pull them all
together today. Um, but I wanted to
start in a different place than you
asked about because you may have not
seen this. Uh, President Donald J. Trump
spoke today to the House of
Representatives, which is back in
session for a really long time. And he
was all over the map. But he did say
something that really jumped out to me.
He said, and I quote, "They say that
when you win the presidency, you lose
the midterm." And then he said to the
people to whom he was speaking, "I wish
you could explain to me what the hell is
going on with the mind of the public
because we have the right policy.
Excuse me. Because we have the right
policy." They, meaning the Democrats,
don't. They have horrible policy. They
do stick together. They're violent.
They're vicious. They're vicious people.
They have the worst policy. How we have
to even run against these people. I
won't say cancel the election. They they
should cancel the election because the
fake news will say he wants the
elections canled. He's a dictator. They
always call me a dictator. Nobody is
worse than Obama and the people that
surrounded Biden.
There's an important rhetorical piece
there in uh what Trump was saying that I
think explains an awful lot of what's
going on in his administration. And that
is for uh 40 years now, since the 1980s,
the Republicans have insisted that their
policies are the only ones that will
work. And that the Democratic policies,
which are actually really quite popular
if you strip away the parties, people
like what the Democrats do. If you strip
away the names, the the polls show they
like the kinds of policies that
Democrats embrace. Republicans have
insisted that those policies are
socialism, that they are handing money
from the uh hardworking white taxpayer
to uh undeserving minorities and so on.
Even though since 1981
um actually I think it's since 1976
uh more than $50 trillion has moved from
the bottom 90% of Americans up to the
top 1%. So they have really pushed this
rhetoric, the idea that any democratic
policy is by definition bad and that the
people who vote for it, often women,
people of color, black Americans, are
either illegitimate voters. They talk a
lot about voter fraud, although there's
never been any evidence um that they're
of anything other than a few odd ducks
um voting twice or whatever, never
anything to change an election.
um that they that they either insist
that there has been voter fraud or that
the people who are voting for Democratic
policies are illegitimate. They
shouldn't vote. They should lose their
vote. And this is what's behind voter
suppression. Well, the logic of that
says that
uh Republicans should win all the
elections, that Democrats should never
win an election.
And that really jumped out to me in this
moment, of course, when we're looking at
a president who is extraordinarily
unpopular. He's in at historic levels of unpopularity,
unpopularity,
facing a midterm election, which most
pundits think the de the Democrats are
really going to romp the Republicans in
that election. And here he is saying,
"Well, maybe we shouldn't even have
elections because um you know the our
policies are so much better than the
Democrats are." And I want to chase that
down a little bit before I actually talk
about the difference in those policies.
So if you think about this idea that the
Democratic policies are terrible and
only the Republicans know how to rule,
then you can see the logic behind
January 6, 2021. Uh an election an
attempt to overturn the election of
November 2020 in which Democrat uh Joe
Biden won election by more than seven
million votes. The election was not
close. It was not close in the electoral
college either. In fact, somewhat
ironically, um, uh, Biden won that
election in the electoral college by the
same margin that Trump won it in 2016
over Hillary Clinton, the Democratic
candidate. Although Trump in 2016 did
not win the majority of the vote, you'll
remember that's one of those occasions
on which more people voted for the
person who did not end up in the White
House. Um, so the um the uh that idea
that a Democrat could not be
legitimately elected, all evidence to
the contrary,
is something that Trump has increasingly
latched on to. And one of the things
that came out today was an attempt of
the official White House website to
insist that January 6 was caused not by
Trump, not by the Republicans who were
trying to destroy our uh peaceful
transfer of power and the election of
Democrat Joe Biden, but rather it blames
the Democrats by saying that they
refused to recognize that Trump had been
the the true winner in that election by definition
definition
and that is going to be a really
important frame I think going forward.
It's also an important way to think
about what Trump and his cronies people
like Russell vote at the office of
management and budget and uh Steven
Miller as the deputy white house chief
of staff have done since they've been in
power because what they are doing is
they are erasing the US government that
has been in place since World War II. uh
a time when you started to see the
democratization not only of um domestic
policy but also of world policy. They're
trying to get get rid of all that alto
together because those policies, those
incredibly popular policies that seek to
restrain power and use it in fact to
deter wars rather than cause them and
seek to use power domestically in such a
way that people create laws that that
create um systems in which people have a
say in their government and have equal
access to resources. They're trying to
get rid of all that to go back before we
had that system, arguing that that
system is in fact no good, as Trump
said. But I've pulled for fun um a quote
from um
Peter Baker of the New York Times when
um Joe Biden took office after Trump had
been in office before. On January 5th of
20 um 25, Peter Baker wrote that um the
the US that Biden was leaving was in
better shape than the US had been since
at least 2020. I'm sorry, since at least
20 2000. And he explained why. He said,
"There are no US troops fighting in
foreign wars. Murders have plummeted.
Deaths from drug overdoses have dropped
sharply. Undocumented immigration is
below where it was when Trump left
office. Stocks have just had their best
two years since the last century. The
economy is growing. Real wages are
rising. Inflation has fallen close to
its normal range. Unemployment is at
historic uh near historic lows. Energy
production is at historic highs. The
economy has added more than 700,000
manufacturing jobs among the 16 million
total created since 2020. Uh the chief
economist of Moody's Analytics, Mark
Xandandy, said quote, "President Trump
is inheriting an economy that is about
as good as it ever gets." that is the
system of government that um the United
States really pioneered under Franklin
Delanor Roosevelt, although it had its
roots in the progressive era under
people like Republican President
Theodore Roosevelt. Uses the power of
the federal government to as I say
restrain power internationally and at
the same time um uses the power of the
federal government to make sure that
people have equal access to resources.
They have things like education. They
have health care. They have decent
roads. They have opportunities to um to
get an education. They have
opportunities to uh to be entrepreneurs.
They have opportunities to buy houses.
That sort of an economy uh benefits the
most people. It creates a roaring
economy. It always has for all the
rhetoric to the contrary. So Trump has
this idea that if only people like him
can be in power,
everything is going to be great. America
is going to be great again. And that
means erasing everything that Democrats
have done. So, where has that gotten us
of late? And I I may not have the time
to go into domestic policy now, but I
very well might do it with uh with Jim
in a little bit, but um but the the
obvious place to start here is with what
whatever is happening in Venezuela. And
I will get there in just a second. I
want to start by saying a lot of you
asked about the 25th amendment and its
policies for removing the president of
the United States in case that person is incapacitated
