Latest / The Fourcast / Could Trump’s executive orders totally change America?

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Could Trump’s executive orders totally change America? · The Fourcast

0:00
Welcome to the forecast from Washington, DC.
0:02
We still have the inauguration speech of Donald Trump ringing
0:05
in our ears. And of course, he's been a very
0:07
busy man, signing something like 200 presidential orders that
0:10
have really done a lot to dismantle not just the Biden
0:12
legacy, but also so much else to discuss the implications of all
0:17
this. What we are in store for now.
0:19
I've got 2 guests, Naira Hack, who's a Democrat strategist and
0:23
used to work for the Obama administration and Deanna Bass
0:26
Williams who used to work for the first Trump administration
0:29
and drives herself as a Republican strategist.
0:32
Welcome to you both. Let me start first of all, with
0:34
you, Dina. When you saw what was happening
0:36
yesterday, when you saw all these presidential orders being
0:39
signed, especially the one that pardoned all the thousand, was
0:45
it 300,500 detainees, convicts who were, you know, you know, in
0:52
a jail round the corner from us here in Washington, serving time
0:55
for what they did on January the 6th, what went through your
0:56
mind? Well, Donald Trump told us what
1:00
he was going to do. And that's one thing that we
1:02
have always gotten from him is transparency.
1:05
So I voted for him knowing that he was going to do that.
1:08
And I also didn't want him to do it.
1:09
But there were things that were more important for me.
1:12
And I would say that there were things that were more important
1:14
for other voters as well. So one thing about President
1:18
Trump is that he's transparent. He's as he's an open book, he
1:22
says what he's going to do and he's going to do it.
1:24
Now, there were other things. The federal government
1:29
recognizing that there are two genders, that was important to
1:32
me. Strength on the border, Those
1:34
things were important to me. So I feel like, you know, I
1:38
would rather him not have pardon people who attacked police
1:42
officers, but I knew he was going to do it.
1:44
He said he was going to do it and and he did it.
1:47
But does that make it OK? It does not make it OK, but
1:51
what? But what you have to understand
1:53
is that there are other things that are far more important.
1:56
And I feel like we should get down to to business in in one,
2:01
in less than half a day. Donald Trump did more, was more
2:05
active than Joe Biden was in, in a week.
2:08
And and I won't disparage an American president, certainly
2:12
not on international media. So I respect Joe Biden, I thank
2:16
him for his service, and I'm excited that we're in a new
2:18
phase. Nero, what do you make of that?
2:20
I do think that that is something very prevalent in
2:22
American Society right now, this idea that, well, if there's one
2:26
thing I like, I'm OK as a voter with other people getting hurt
2:31
or other things going wrong, because I'm now going to
2:33
prioritize what works for me. And that's part of a greater
2:37
challenge I think we're having around the world is this idea of
2:42
retreating into tribalism. And rather than rather than
2:46
doubling down on the idea of of government, that's not for that
2:52
that is not right, is doing things to people rather than a
2:55
government that is doing things for people.
2:58
So this is this is not a government.
3:00
Nothing in the speech yesterday that Trump said was about there
3:05
wasn't a like a unifying theme of how we re knit as a pluralist
3:09
society. It was very specifically
3:12
delivering on the things that he said he was going to do for
3:16
people that voted for him. And, and, and I, I find this,
3:21
and I know that as a Republican, I have to, I should get used to
3:24
this because we are once again entering the season of selective
3:28
outrage. People are elected on their
3:31
campaign promises. And for you, for you to say or
3:34
for anyone to say that I should not be concerned about things
3:38
that impact my family, the price of eggs, the cost of gas,
3:43
inflation, things that you know, and I, I should say I'm blessed.
3:47
I'm married to a retired Colonel who did well.
3:50
I do well. We don't have the same struggles
3:52
that most Americans do. But when I go into the grocery
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store, even in my middle income and I see that butter is $6, I
4:01
like my gasp. So there, there are people.
4:03
And you look at African Americans and Hispanic Americans
4:07
in large numbers who were like, you know what, we've been told
4:10
this over and over again that we should be on Team Blue.
4:13
But we're getting we're not getting anything for it.
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And I do not just really quickly, I do not support
4:18
tribalism, which is why I come on.
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I'm very clear about the things that I do and don't support
4:24
about Donald Trump. What we have to have is people
4:27
who are courageous enough to say this is my party, but not
4:30
everything thing is right about it.
4:32
And understanding that that may make me look disloyal to some
4:35
Republicans, but I love America enough to say that everything
4:38
isn't great, but I want to. But I want to go in this
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direction and so. And we appreciate both of you
4:44
coming on because you both represent different sides of the
4:47
political spectrum. Just want to get to the pardons
4:50
a little bit more before we move to some of the other pretty, you
4:53
know, jaw-dropping stuff that he announced Neera.
4:56
I mean, I know there's, you know, those pardons for the
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January the 6th crowd were incredibly contention.
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And like Dina, I've spoken to other Republicans, Republicans
5:05
who are not happy about them at all because of what they did to
5:08
law enforcement agents on January the 6th in 2021.
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But Biden also, you know, pardon pre emptively pardon, you know,
5:17
many members of his own family as well as some other people who
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might very well be in Trump's crosses.
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That was also pretty weird and unprecedented, wasn't it?
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It is a very weird time, and I think the Biden administration
5:29
failed in the early part to recognize that the system,
5:33
belief in the system and how the democratic system works in the
5:36
United States had already fundamentally changed and the
5:40
relationship that people had to it had fundamentally changed.
5:43
So the idea that it took multiple years for any
5:47
accountability for the January 6th insurrection, right, open
5:51
the door for this idea of, well, if it's technically legal, we're
5:56
going to start doing it. And Biden, ironically enough,
5:59
ended up there himself in the last week of his presidency.
6:02
So Biden was, I think, the last of the traditionalist,
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institutionalist presidents. And it was inevitable that we
6:11
would end up with a Donald Trump, somebody who came in on
6:15
the heels of fun, not only fundamental change, but
6:18
potentially burning it all down. I mean, I was really struck
6:22
yesterday by not just the way that he signed the decrees,
6:26
which was, you know, first in the arena, call it the Colosseum
6:30
of today, you know, when then throwing the Sharpies into the
6:32
crowd after he'd signed, you know, one decree after another
6:35
as if they were kind of baseball caps or indeed Marga caps.
6:39
When he went to when he was in Puerto Rico for the disaster,
6:42
disaster relief of the hurricane, he was throwing paper
6:44
towels out, you know, very, very showman like in how he how he
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approaches this. But it's more the fact that he's
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doing this, you know, he's, he's basically using, you know, the
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most authoritarian powers that any president can use
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constitutionally, which is the, you know, the presidential
6:58
order, the decree which bypasses Congress.
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He, he's doing that in an arena in front of all his supporters
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as a very kind of public piece of presidential theatre.
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And then he, of course, carries on and does the same thing on
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the Resolute Desk, you know, in the Oval Office and, you know,
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and is announced every time he does it.
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There's an announcement from one of his officials about which
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which particular bit of America's political legacy he's
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shredding. I just want to hear from you,
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Dina. Do you think when you saw that,
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did you think this is something that is fundamentally different?
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And were you reassured by it or did you think it was a bit
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scary? You know, I did not think it was
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scary. I definitely thought it was
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different. I wasn't, I wasn't, you know, I
7:39
know that we had to make changes because of the snow and the
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weather and the cold that you're experiencing here.
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And so some things change and he was there.
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But we know that Donald Trump is a showman.
7:48
And one thing that Donald, not only is Donald Trump dismantling
7:51
some things that are that that are traditional in America, like
7:56
Norm that are traditional, but he's also advancing things.
7:59
And, and you have to look, he the Republican Party has
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transformed into a working class party.
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And it's large and not just working class white people,
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working class African Americans and Hispanic Americans.
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And it is because Donald J Trump has he has dismantled legacy
8:17
media as well. Now imagine that's one of the
8:19
reasons why we're doing a podcast now.
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This is like there are like he has in one tweet or X or true
8:27
social. Donald Trump can reach more
8:30
people than Rachel Maddow on MSNBC, which is one of our
8:36
networks here in the US. And so he is, he's dismantling
8:40
everything. Everything is different now.
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The Republican Party that I grew up in, I'm 52 years old.
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I started working on my first Republican campaign when I was
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11 years in Columbus, GA. We elected the first black woman
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to the City Council in my hometown in Georgia.
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This is a different Republican Party because Donald Trump is
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actually delivering things that other Republicans have held in
9:01
front of our head as red meat for, for decades.
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So yes, it's different. It's, it's you know what?
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But I will say this, I am, I am a right of center evangelical
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Christian Bible believing like I'm, I'm all of those
9:15
conservative, prudish things that you think about.
9:17
That is me. But I will take this billionaire
9:20
Playboy who is delivering conservative, the conservative
9:24
agenda any day over these bland do nothing Republicans who have
9:30
delivered absolutely nothing. OK, just quickly, Dean, I've
9:34
never thought of you as prudish in any sense of, of the word, to
9:37
be honest. But I just wonder, you know,
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when Donald Trump stands there in the Rotunda of the capital
9:43
yesterday giving his speech after taking the oath of office
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and says, you know, basically more or less, I'm paraphrasing
9:50
here, but but I'm here thanks to God.
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God put me here on this earth to, you know, to be president
9:57
for a second time. You know, God help me to survive
9:59
the Assassin's bullet. He might have added, God help me
10:02
to stay out of jail. That's the kind of thing the
10:06
presidents in the past might have said to themselves
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privately, but not in public and not in that kind of speech.
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Well, there are those of us that really do believe in the
10:14
millimeter miracle, you know, and they're like we watch.
10:17
What is that by the way? That is when the bullet grazed
10:22
him, 11 head turned the other way, and this man would be dead.
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And so we have to wonder whether you believe in God.
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I do. I believe in Christ.
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Whether you believe or not, you have to wonder what on earth why
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did that? And we can think of those things
10:38
in our own lives like near misses in car accidents, the
10:41
chance meeting of your, your, you know, the chance meeting of
10:44
my husband, all of these things. If I had gone to this party and
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not that party, I wouldn't know him, right?
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So all of these chance meetings, are they divine?
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And people who believe in Christ, many of us do believe
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that there, that there's something divine about it.
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OK, let me ask, Naira. I mean, I don't know what your
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beliefs are, but when when you see a guy like Donald Trump,
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who's now the president, the most powerful man on the planet
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who thinks he's got a special in with God, or maybe God has a
11:09
special in with him, does that reassure you?
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I I'm a woman of faith, do believe in God, and I also
11:16
believe that there were voters who put Donald Trump in office
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and who decided to show up on Election Day and voters who
11:23
didn't. And the enthusiasm gap was
11:25
significant. All Trump voters were
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enthusiastic. They showed up.
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Now, Trump does have the lowest margin of victory when it comes
11:33
to the popular vote ever, but he still won.
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So that is, he's there because of the way the American system
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works and how voting works and people who showed up.
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So I would like to give voters credit and voters will get what
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they asked for. But is is a president, a
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commander in chief who thinks he's been ordained by God to run
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this country? Is that a good thing or a bad
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thing for the? Republic.
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I think in a country that tech still values separation of
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church and state as enshrined in the Constitution as believed by
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the founders, some of whom like Thomas Jefferson, who was a
12:06
deist and didn't identify as Christian at all.
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I think that separation of church and state should
12:11
continue. But not convinced that that's
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what Donald Trump or the Supreme Court wants, given the language
12:17
again, Dina said. He's very transparent.
12:20
That type of rhetoric of God first before voters, before
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democracy, as part of a pluralistic society, indicates
12:26
that yes, that line between separation of search and state
12:29
is already blurred and will continue to blur under this
12:32
administration. This idea that the, that the
12:38
church or that people of faith should shrink from public, from
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the public square, that's not good either.
12:44
We should we, you know, and so I, and I don't see, I think that
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if, if Donald Trump is going back to there being 2 genders
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and that's like his, his faith is, is making him do that.
12:56
I think that's common sense. And I think that that his faith
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is driven of common. Sense, sorry to interrupt.
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I mean, the common sense is a phrase that has come up a lot.
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And I think he called it the revolution of common sense.
13:06
And it's a line that I heard, you know, very much on the
13:09
streets yesterday in Washington, DC from his supporters.
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But if you're the parent of a transgender child, you know, and
13:16
I'm not talking about the politics around them.
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You know, I'm just talking about, you know, the fact that
13:19
there are, you know, some kids, you know, who are uncomfortable
13:23
in the body that they've been born with and they want to
13:25
transition. If you're a parent of one of
13:27
these kids, or if you're one of these kids themselves, then to
13:31
have, you know, the lead of your country decree that there are
13:34
only two genders must make you feel very, very uncomfortable
13:38
indeed. I think it would make you feel
13:40
uncomfortable, but I also say that Donald Trump is standing up
13:44
for girls who don't want to play sports with people who identify
13:47
in a certain way. And, and, and finally, I think
13:50
that what we, we have to take a step back and protect children.
13:54
And if you are a child who feels like you're in the wrong body,
13:59
then maybe 10 or 12 is not the age to start making those kinds
14:04
of decisions. Neera, I mean, was he making a
14:06
populist point here for his base or was he, you know, does he
14:09
actually believe in this and that, you know, or maybe a bit
14:12
of both? Oh, well, listen, this is this
14:14
is a a president as a human who has changed opinions over time.
14:20
Like his consistent thing is that he will change his point of
14:22
view for what meets the moment as a showman and as a
14:25
politician. So he was a Democrat, then he's
14:28
a Republican. He was a Clinton supporter.
14:29
Now he's not. He wanted the TikTok ban in his
14:32
first administration. He signed the executive order.
14:35
Now he doesn't. So he very much a transactional
14:38
president and he has managed to somehow connect this idea of
14:43
outrage over gender identity with the price of eggs.
14:47
I mean, Dina did it in her opening remarks.
14:49
Donald Trump has connected those two things.
14:51
And that worked for many people. The connection of the economic
14:54
grief and the culture outrage, He's been very effective at it.
14:58
But I need, I need and want a government that will do right by
15:02
many kinds of people. Because at the end of the day, I
15:05
don't know what my child or what resources my child will need
15:09
when they're 30 or 40, whether it's social support systems, any
15:13
kind of mental health, I mean, all of that.
15:15
So I I that is the fundamental difference.
15:18
Neera, I just wondered if I could take you back, both of
15:21
you, actually to the scene yesterday of the of President
15:23
Trump, fresh from the oath of office, kind of really shredding
15:27
not just the legacy of his immediate predecessor, but all
15:30
the predecessors who were sitting there.
15:32
Frankly, you know, ashen faced. I mean, George Bush junior
15:36
looked pretty out of it. You know, Bill Clinton looked,
15:38
you know, visibly aged. I think I saw Hillary Clinton
15:41
shaking her head a little bit. I mean, he was basically
15:44
shredding his predecessors and their record.
15:47
And to some extent, I guess you could say they are all of what
15:50
they did to their office, including Obama.
15:53
You know, the result of that on one level is Donald Trump.
15:56
So, you know, Bill Clinton's behaviour in the Oval Office
15:59
with Monica Lewinsky, you could say, you know, befouled the
16:03
reputation of the office in the way, you know, that his
16:05
predecessors, even Kennedy, hadn't done.
16:08
George Bush started a war of choice.
16:10
You know, that was completely unacceptable.
16:12
It turns out after 9-11, in the kind of white heat of revenge,
16:16
you know, Obama deported more people than Donald Trump did but
16:19
kept it quiet. He used drone warfare without
16:22
putting boots on the ground, you know, again and did it sort of,
16:25
you know, America's power on the sly, your old boss.
16:29
And then, of course, you know Joe Biden.
16:31
Well, we've talked a lot about Joe Biden.
16:32
Joe Biden may have been railing against the new oligarchy, but
16:35
these oligarchs, if that's what they are, accumulated a lot of
16:38
power on his watch. So there's a fair degree of
16:41
hypocrisy in some of this, isn't there?
16:43
Nearer. I, I think that they truly
16:46
believed that this idea of norms and institutions would last
16:51
beyond any individual president. And I think that's, that's a
16:56
mistake because at the end of the day, the norms and
16:59
institutions that we have are, are built on belief.
17:03
They're built on the idea that people will behave according to
17:07
that. And as we saw, that's not the
17:09
case. And Steve Bannon, for you know
17:11
what, whether he's not in the White House or not these days,
17:14
called us out early and saw an opportunity and what he calls
17:17
the burning down of the administrative state.
17:19
And they were able to build a consistent movement around that.
17:23
So there's, there's been it's I to some degree, absent an
17:27
alternative fighting back perspective.
17:30
This is a, this has been for the last eight years, even
17:33
throughout the Biden administration, a moment of
17:36
fundamental shift and change for how American systems and
17:41
American democracy work. I'll end it on this one, this
17:43
idea of birthright citizenship, which right now the one of the
17:47
executive orders said that if you are born here as a child of
17:52
an undocumented person, you are not going to be considered a
17:55
citizen. That's a very big change.
17:56
Many other countries do that. Many other countries actually
18:00
say that if your parents are not citizens, right, you cannot be a
18:04
citizen. The Gulf countries do that, some
18:06
European countries, but this is what it is.
18:08
This, this idea of birthright citizenship is what made America
18:11
different. So my question for the next 4
18:13
years is what? What about America's
18:16
exceptionality and difference and innovation?
18:19
Are we going to maintain? Or is America going to be
18:22
turning into one of these other countries that we've seen but
18:26
many people have not wanted to live in?
18:28
OK. Dana, on that point, I mean, you
18:31
saw that. Yeah, Go, go on.
18:32
And, and this is what this is what I'm going to try to do and
18:35
what I encourage my friends in the middle of the aisle and on
18:38
the left side of the aisle to do.
18:41
You rattled off a a number of things that were kind of
18:45
hypocritical for previous administrations, both Democrat
18:49
and Republican, but because and but Trump stood and kind of
18:53
called him out. We have to and and like we have
18:57
to be able to say, yeah, you know, that that actually was
18:59
pretty hypocritical. I on the right, I have to hold
19:02
Donald Trump and my party accountable when we're doing
19:05
wrong, which is why I say the J6 thing is not right.
19:09
So we so on the left rather than identifying yes, it's kind of
19:13
hypocritical. We have like we people of
19:15
goodwill and common sense. The only way it works is if like
19:19
I am team red, I'm not even going to pretend from from my
19:22
ideology to the way I get paid. I'm team red.
19:25
But I have to have some loyalty to Team America, Team World.
19:30
And if the left is only going to rail against Trump, then it's
19:34
not going to work like. On that point, yeah, sorry to
19:38
interrupt Dina, but on that point, I mean, you know, this is
19:41
a country having lived here for 11 years, I kind of I got, you
19:45
know, very used to the idea that America loves ritual and
19:47
customs. You know, whether it's, you
19:49
know, at Halloween or Presidents Day or Columbus Day, you know,
19:52
the way you do things, you know, is you couch yourself in a
19:55
ritual much more actually than we as an older democracy, a
19:59
constitutional democracy, a constitutional monarchy rather
20:01
do in in the UK. And yet at the same time, you
20:05
know there are some rituals. That just weren't there
20:08
yesterday. So, you know, normally when you
20:10
give a presidential address after your inauguration, you,
20:13
you, you know, you reach out to the other side, to the other
20:16
side of the aisle, you at least make a show of bipartisan unity.
20:20
I mean, there was a mention of unity almost as a decree.
20:23
But he did not really reach out to the other side.
20:25
Why didn't he do that? I mean, this is the a great
20:28
moment that he missed because now we'd all be talking about,
20:31
look at the gentler, kinder side of Donald Trump.
20:35
You know what, if I and my family had been gone after in
20:40
the way like every single word, anthrax in the mail to his
20:44
daughter-in-law in the way that he has, I would, I don't know
20:46
how gracious I would be because I'm, you know, I'm Team Bass and
20:49
I'm Team Williams and I don't know how gracious I would be.
20:53
I think he is far more gracious than I ever would have been.
20:56
So I look at that and I say, you know what?
21:00
On every turn on, you know, and, and you, you live here, you what
21:05
you see the American press on every turn.
21:07
It doesn't even matter. He is, he could walk, he could
21:11
walk across the street and give a bunch of poor minority kids
21:15
$1000. And then they're like, Oh my
21:17
gosh, you didn't give him $1001.00.
21:18
It doesn't matter what he does. And I think he really.
21:21
That I think he was. That now?
21:24
I mean it. Would have.
21:25
It would have been nice. It would have been nice.
21:26
But but for me, it's not necessary.
21:28
I want him to get busy. I want him to get, get, get.
21:31
I'm working. So, I mean, you know, we've
21:33
we've talked about this before, but you know, for every and I'm
21:36
talking mainly about the world of cable television here, which
21:38
is so influential in politics. You know, for every MSNBC
21:42
diatribe against everything Trump does, I raise you a Fox
21:45
diatribe for everything that Biden did or Clinton did so or
21:49
Obama did, for that matter. So, you know, we live in these
21:51
sort of weird, you know, silos of information.
21:55
But I just want to turn to something else.
21:56
And that's the kind of global footprint Naira.
21:58
I mean, you dealt a lot with foreign policy when you work for
22:01
Barack Obama. It strikes me as if what he did
22:04
yesterday, you know, with his pen and his words, was to really
22:08
tear apart in some fairly important pillars of the kind of
22:11
global construction which had been built and was pretty stable
22:16
thanks to America's involvement, WHO Paris Agreement itself.
22:21
Yep, it is. The idea of the international
22:23
world order is not something that Donald Trump is going to
22:26
maintain as it has been. That was very evident in his
22:29
first term. And Biden did work.
22:32
Again, another norm that the United States would lead Europe
22:35
in unity, that the United States would be a leader when it came
22:38
to investments in countries to counteract China, all of that.
22:43
Donald Trump has made it very clear he is not going to do
22:46
that. So the one of the first acts to
22:49
while we have wildfires raging in LA and record cold snaps in
22:53
the South, that his version of climate change action is not
22:58
going to be a global solution. It's not going to be the United
23:03
States as part of that. And So what does that idea of
23:05
American leadership look like? As a former diplomat, I think
23:09
that it is going to require the diplomats who are on the ground,
23:13
working inside other countries and spreading the idea and
23:16
message of the United States to really have to operate with a
23:18
lot of humility. The lecturing the United States
23:21
used to do is not going to hold up anymore.
23:23
But the question is, in the absence of that, what's going to
23:26
happen? Where does the United States
23:28
step in and for leadership? Dina, are we now in a world
23:31
where might is right? No, I think that we're in a
23:34
world where America is stop is tired of stop paying for
23:37
everything. And I was watching, you know,
23:39
listening to pundits this morning talk about how in Davos
23:46
the, the global community is concerned that America not only
23:50
wants to be the leader, we want to be the winner.
23:53
Well, I don't want to be the leader or the winner.
23:55
I want to be a team player. But a team player means that
23:57
everybody's paying their fair share.
23:59
The, the burden of saving the planet is not on America alone.
24:03
And, and so I think that I want to be a team player.
24:07
And, you know, my analogy is like, I always feel like America
24:11
is the the rich, unpopular girl at the party who's who's
24:15
continuing to pay the tab just so that she can stay in the
24:19
party. You know what?
24:19
I'd rather not be at the party. But Helen.
24:23
But does the rich, unpopular girl also want to eat all the
24:25
cheeseburgers? Because what we heard yesterday
24:27
about the Panama Canal, which is, you know, it sounded to me a
24:30
little bit like a, a declaration of war, or at least a menace.
24:34
Is that being a team player, Dina?
24:36
I think that is, that is Donald Trump showmanship again.
24:40
It is. And I, I don't want to make
24:41
again, I have to be, I have to walk the walk and talk the talk.
24:46
I don't want to make excuses. I, you know, Hillary Clinton
24:49
chuckled when Donald Trump said that.
24:52
I think many of us, of us chuckled.
24:55
I don't understand it. I don't know.
24:57
I need to know more about it before I say if I agree with it
25:00
or not. But but in, in the bravado, in
25:02
the showmanships, in, in the look at us, America, we're back.
25:06
I was, I thought it was, I thought it was a, a smart Donald
25:09
Trump play. The execution of it is is.
25:13
I don't really understand how that's going to work out.
25:16
Well, well, that it could be pretty crucial, couldn't it?
25:19
Be the execution of all these things?
25:21
Is it just showmanship? Is it just bluster and rhetoric?
25:23
Or is it actually, you know, military menace at the end of
25:26
there? Because then we're in a totally
25:27
different world, aren't we? Well, we are certainly in an
25:31
administration now where Trump has people who are very capable
25:35
and have studied and understand how to use these levers of
25:37
government to execute these policies.
25:39
So I, I don't think it's a joke that the idea of an America that
25:44
is going to be expansionist and try to take over territories, I
25:47
don't think that's a joke. I think that, again, as Dina
25:50
said, Trump tells me what he's going to do and he wants to do
25:52
it. The difference between the first
25:54
administration and this one is that he he will have people in
25:57
place who will help him get it done.
26:00
Right. So is it no longer isolationism
26:02
that we should be worried about, but American expansionism back
26:05
to the 19th century? Manifest Destiny?
26:08
The Monroe Doctrine. I listen, you certainly have the
26:12
the kinds of folks who want to see more power around him, Elon
26:16
Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, right? They the tech giants who welcome
26:21
this idea of American expansion because it benefits them.
26:23
So I think there is a through line here.
26:26
Obviously more more to come. But he's not backed off the idea
26:30
of Denmark or Panama, and in fact added in more rhetoric
26:34
yesterday about this vision of America that is expanding.
26:38
OK, final question to you, Dina. Should Elon Musk be told not to
26:42
do a Roman salute in an arena? You know, I am not comfortable
26:46
with that salute either. But I really think that there
26:49
I'm, I'm not confident that it was a Roman salute, Roman
26:53
salute. But no, he should, he should be
26:55
more mindful and not do that. Absolutely.
26:57
I mean that's the polite way, but there's some people just say
26:59
it was a Nazi salute. You know, I, I, I, I think Dean
27:03
and I are on the same page on this one as professional folks
27:06
who've been in this space, like just, you know, when you're when
27:08
you're at a podium in a position of power, be mindful.
27:11
And I think that's part of what's hard to understand right
27:14
now is somebody with the kind of money and access that Elon Musk
27:17
has is, are, are these mistakes like what, what is being
27:20
signalled here? And so, yeah.
27:23
Yeah, I guess what we can say about Elon Musk and maybe about
27:25
a few others in this new administration is that filters
27:29
are so yesterday. OK, We're going to leave it
27:32
there. Thank you very much to both of
27:34
you for having this civil disagreement about these
27:37
extraordinary new days in Washington, DC Mayor Rahak Deena
27:42
Bass Williams, that's it. Thank you very much.
27:45
Goodbye from us here from the forecast in Washington, DC.