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Will Donald Trump be an ‘authoritarian’ in power? | The American Fourcast · The Fourcast

• 0:00
  We are going to see a Trump who is unleashed in this
• 0:03
  administration, who has fewer wise advisors around him, who
• 0:07
  has a deep sense of vengeance and who has a court majority
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  basically, that will probably aid and abet his decisions.
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  The Democrats have to look reality in the face this time
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  and recognize that this is the result that Americans wanted and
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  they need to offer something more appealing to the American
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  people if they want to win election.
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  In his about victory speech, he spent a good chunk of time
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  talking about Elon Musk and his SpaceX rocket ship, so I think
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  he's going to begin to reward those people who he saw as his
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  supporters. Is he an authoritarian?
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  Is that what America's Got now as a president?
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  Well, welcome to this latest edition of The American
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  Forecaster with me, my two guests, Molly Ball from The Wall
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  Street Journal, Christine Amber from The Atlantic.
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  Thanks, both of you for making this time.
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  Did you get any sleep, Christine?
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  I actually did get a little bit of sleep.
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  I'm awake this morning and it seems that Donald Trump will be
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  our next president. These are words, Molly, that
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  most people that I spoke to, even if they were going to vote
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  for him, never thought they would actually be uttering on
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  Wednesday morning. Which is odd because you know,
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  this is not that shocking of a result.
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  If you were following the polls and believing what they said,
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  you know it, it was always likely that one or the other of
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  these two candidates would sweep all of the swing states by a
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  narrow margin. And that is indeed what Donald
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  Trump appears to have done. And that is very much in line
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  with what the polls were telling us going into the election where
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  the candidates were basically tied within the margin of error
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  in all of the swing states. Did you expect him to win the
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  popular vote, Molly? I try not to have expectations
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  or make predictions about politics, but again, that that
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  is a result that is basically in line with what the polls were
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  telling us, which was that this was a a, a close race within the
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  margin of error. Christine, what really surprised
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  me is that as the exit polls, you know, emerged overnight, one
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  of the biggest concerns in a whole number of swing states was
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  the issue of democracy. And I kind of interpreted that
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  to mean a vote against Donald Trump for Kamala Harris.
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  It turns out I was wrong. Yeah, No, I think that was a
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  result that surprised a lot of people.
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  And I think we'll have woken many people up.
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  You know, yes, the concern for democracy was was great on, you
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  know, the liberal side. On the democratic side, it was
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  clearly the idea that Donald Trump was an autocrat, a
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  fascist. That was the message.
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  But I think many commentators forgot to think about the other
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  side who were also hearing this message about democracy.
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  You know, when Joe Rogan endorsed Donald Trump the day
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  before the election in conversation with Elon Musk,
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  their conversation centered around how if Kamala Harris was
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  elected president, there would be no more elections.
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  They were accusing the other side of communism, socialism, of
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  destroying the American state. So there were concerns about
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  democracy on on the Republican side, too.
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  Were they well founded? I mean, we'll see.
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  But democracy can mean very different things to different
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  people. And I just want to under score
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  that because, you know, we don't want to read too much into exit
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  polls, but I'm looking right now at the CNN exit poll.
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  And they asked, they asked the voters how, how, how threatened.
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  Do you believe democracy in the United States is secure or
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  threatened? A plurality of voters, 38%, said
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  democracy in the US is very threatened.
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  Trump won those voters 50 to 48%.
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  So, and, and I think if you had been listening to Republican
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  voters, if you've been listening to Trump voters over the last,
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  over the course of this campaign, you would know, as
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  Christine said, that they too harbored these deep concerns
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  about the future of democracy. I mean, I spent quite a bit of
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  time in Pennsylvania, as have most of us in the last few
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  weeks. And it was so interesting going
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  to, you know, a Trump event and the Harris event.
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  And you ask them that open question, you know, what's the
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  what's at stake for you in America?
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  And you're right, Christine, both sides would say what's at
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  stake is the future of democracy.
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  And you think, hang on a minute. I thought that was the line the
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  Democrats use, but actually turns out Republicans use that
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  line as well. What about abortion?
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  Because again, people assumed that reproductive rights, Roe V.
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  Wade, being overturned by the Supreme Court would be something
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  that would drive women to the polls in such huge numbers that
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  there was no way that Trump could win.
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  Obviously, Christine, that didn't happen.
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  Yeah, obviously. I mean, I think Democrats banked
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  on that as a really, really galvanizing issue.
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  A lot of their ads spend focused on, you know, these these
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  terrifying and sad stories of women whose lives were lost or
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  who were irreparably harmed by not being able to get
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  reproductive care. And while those were affecting,
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  they did tend to be a heavily gendered message.
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  And, you know, I think that they were messages that, while heart
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  wrenching, didn't necessarily address what, again, the exit
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  polls told us were the core concerns of voters, You know,
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  this question of democracy and also, frankly, just the economy.
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  As, you know, past politicians have said often, it's the
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  economy, stupid. And maybe that is something that
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  the Democrats should have spent more time on, simply because
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  that was closer to hand for a wider swath of voters.
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  Molly, I can't tell you how many podcasts I listened to where,
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  you know, both men and women were saying, well, if you if you
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  rely on men for your victory, you're in big trouble because
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  you know, the Bros, the blokes never get off the sofa, you
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  know, to actually do what they're supposed to be doing,
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  which is cast a ballot. It turns out that they did, you
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  know, and they could. And they are a force in
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  politics. And one shouldn't be surprised
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  by that. We saw what we usually see,
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  which is a, a disproportionately female electorate, about 53% of
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  the electorate was women and Harris won women, but while
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  Trump won men by about equivalent margins to about 10
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  point margins. So in fact this likely will not
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  be a historic gender gap. It is about in line with what we
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  have seen. So I, I think as, as Christine
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  was saying, while while we did see a gender gap in these
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  numbers, it was not as extreme as Democrats hoped, They were
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  not able to really drive up either the turn out or the level
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  of her support among women beyond where it would sort of
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  naturally be in the course of of regular partisan politics.
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  Christine, there are people who worked for Trump and described
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  him as a fascist. Most importantly, John Kelly,
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  his former chief of staff, like merely the, you know, the the
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  the country's top soldier said this guy's dangerous.
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  He's a wannabe dictator. Plenty of people on the campaign
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  trail said it. You know, as you said earlier,
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  the end of democracy was something that Democrats kind
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  of, you know, baked into their campaign.
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  Do you think that that language combined with the charges
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  against him in the courts was overstepping the land?
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  And actually, that was far more damaging to the Harris campaign
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  in the end than the Trump campaign because people, many
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  ordinary Americans, saw that, you know, it's just hysteria or
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  in the case of the courts, an infringement on, you know,
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  individual rights. You know, I'm not sure that the
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  language was overstepping the line in in that many of those,
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  you know, generals and former Trump employees were just
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  repeating the words that he himself said.
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  But you, you have to wonder if Democrats maybe over relied on
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  on that case. You know, they also have relied
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  on it in the past. They've sort of been banging
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  the, you know, Trump is bad for democracy, democracy is on the
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  ballot, etcetera, drum for the past 2 elections and eventually
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  it becomes a little bit of a boy who cried wolf situation, right?
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  Trump was president. Contrary to, you know, some of
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  the more extreme claims of the Democratic Party, America did
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  not completely collapse. So saying that again just
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  doesn't have quite the same punch as it might have if it
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  were the first time. But let's be clear.
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  I mean, you know, Trump as anyone as well as anyone else
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  does. You know, we've all read the
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  stuff. We all know what he did in his
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  first administration. We remember those quotes on the
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  campaign. Is he an authoritarian?
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  Is that what America's Got now as a president?
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  I mean, I think we're going to have to see whether he lives up
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  to the statements that he made. You know, he's not actually
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  famous for living up to what he has said he will do.
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  That's not something Trump is known for.
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  But I think we are going to see a Trump who is unleashed in this
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  administration, who has fewer wise advisers around him, who
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  has a deep sense of vengeance and who has a court majority
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  basically, that will probably aid and abet his decisions.
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  What that actually looks like day-to-day, we'll see.
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  But I'm I'm not optimistic. Right, Molly, What about you?
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  The Supreme Court has handed him any president, whatever they're
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  called, extraordinary powers. Does that worry you?
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  I think, you know, Trump has made very clear that he has
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  little respect for the historic norms that have governed our
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  politics or the institution. In fact, much of his his his
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  sort of pitch to voters was that he viewed these institutions and
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  as rotten and corrupt and promised to smash them.
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  So I think there's very little doubt that he will, for example,
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  fire the head of the FBI and the special counsel and make the
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  criminal cases still standing against him go away.
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  The Supreme Court, as Christine said, has helped clear the way
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  for him to do that by establishing a, a broad right of
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  immunity for him and for all presidents going forward.
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  I think it's up to the scholars and, and, and, and the study,
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  those who study semantics to decide what constitutes an
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  authoritarian. But, but I think he certainly is
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  poised to govern in a way that contradicts a lot of people's
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  assumptions about what ought to be the guardrails on the
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  presidency. And certainly he did that last
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  time as well. And as Christine said there
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  there will be far fewer restraints on him this time
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  around. Let me ask this in a very
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  delicate way, Christine. We've spoken a lot over the last
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  few months and I remember your your criticism of Trump being
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  quite trenchant. Is there a do I detect a hint of
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  maybe self restraint in what you're saying to me this morning
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  after his victory? You know, I wouldn't say that my
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  criticism today is is less trenchant than it has been in
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  the past. I think, you know, we're all
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  waking up this morning to a new result.
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  Results are still trickling in. Votes are still being counted.
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  And until we have more information, I think it will be
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  difficult to make conclusive statements about what the next
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  administration will look like. And I do want to be respectful
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  of the information that we have and not leap ahead of the fact.
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  But we can make some, you know, assumptions or conjectures based
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  on Trump's past behavior, based on past politics.
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  That said, we're also seeing some of the expectations that we
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  had for, you know, this election, for the next 4 years
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  perhaps being upended. And I think we have to hold back
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  until we see what's really going on.
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  Just briefly on this point, I interviewed Fiona Hill a few
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  months ago, who of course was, you know, Russia, the Russia
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  expert both in the Bush administration, then the Obama
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  administration, then the Trump administration.
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  She was one of the star witnesses in the, you know, the,
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  the, the Russia interference hearings on the Hill.
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  And she said that if Trump gets re elected, she is afraid of
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  getting a knock on the door one day of being hounded by Trump's
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  administration. Do you think that's an
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  unreasonable fear, Christine? You know, I actually don't it's
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  it's interesting as you know, I was on the IDN doing commentary
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  with a number of people, including Stormy Daniels, and
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  she made an actual non joke that, you know, she was worried
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  that in the next Trump administration she would be
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  arrested again. She joked that she would be able
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  to complete her set of four different mug shots.
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  But she was very clear that she expected Trump to come after her
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  if he had the power to win and come after more of his enemies.
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  I don't actually think that that's an unfair to need to
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  think at all. It's what he said he would do.
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  And that, I think is the is the point is that this isn't some
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  kind of, you know, liberal conjecture.
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  This is a these are explicit promises that Trump has made.
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  Now, maybe it's bluster, maybe he's not being serious.
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  I think a lot of his supporters don't necessarily take all of
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  his his many threats seriously. But he has said that, for
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  example, he believes that Liz Cheney belongs in front of a
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  military tribunal. He has said he plans to
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  refashion the Justice Department into an instrument of of his
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  will and prosecute his enemies. Many of his supporters have said
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  that one of his and their regrets from his first
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  presidency is that after promising to lock up Hillary
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  Clinton, he didn't actually do it.
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  So, so these are not why this is not wild speculation.
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  This is based on the, you know, the reporting and on the things
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  that Trump himself has promised. What are the three things you
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  expect him to do as soon as he gets back into that White House?
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  I think this idea of beginning to dismantle and weaponize the
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  the Justice Department is going to be one of the first things
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  that he does in parts that he can do away with any guardrails
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  against him and any cases that are still lingering against him.
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  I can see him installing kind of immediately some of his boosters
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  and supporters. You know, even in his victory
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  speech last night, apparently he spent a good chunk of time
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  talking about Elon Musk and his SpaceX rocket ship.
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  So I think he's going to begin to reward those people who he
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  saw as his supporters. So that would be perhaps the
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  flip side of weaponizing things against his enemies.
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  And As for 1/3, I, I feel like we're going to see a real
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  cleaning House of experts, frankly of long standing civil
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  servants who may have worked for past administrations who Trump
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  saw as contradicting him or not in favor of his policies and
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  installing his friends. What about you, Molly?
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  Three things he's going to do as soon as he gets in there.
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  I think Christine's right about the Justice Department.
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  That will absolutely be one of his top priorities, given how
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  imperiled, you know, he has personally felt by these legal
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  cases. He has promised to seal the
• 14:23
  border and deport unauthorized immigrants and Mass and his
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  advisors and the people around him are quite serious about this
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  and have drawn up plans for him to utilize executive authority
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  to do that. He's promised a massive across
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  the board tariffs. Many of the people around him
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  and, and many of our readers on Wall Street, I believe that this
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  is sort of an idle threat being used for leverage as a
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  negotiating posture. And we will see if he's serious
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  about it. But he has.
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  He certainly says it in every single speech.
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  And he has also promised that before he even takes office, he
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  will have resolved the war in Ukraine.
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  His critics believe that he intends to do that by brokering
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  a deal that is favorable to Putin.
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  We'll see what, if any, resolution he's able to bring to
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  that, but that is certainly a top priority for him.
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  You know, I think that Trump promises a return to
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  instability. We're not sure what he's going
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  to do. We're not sure what actions he's
• 15:21
  going to take. He does not necessarily act in a
• 15:25
  a reasonable or trackable or predictable manner.
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  And uncertainty in this way is, is dangerous for financial
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  markets, for international stability, for our allies
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  continuing to remain our allies and rely on us and allow them to
• 15:40
  allow us to rely on them. Many Americans are feeling a lot
• 15:44
  of fear today. And you know, we asked this
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  question in our final Wall Street Journal poll a couple of
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  weeks ago. 87% of voters said they believe that the country
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  would sustain permanent damage if their candidate did not
• 15:59
  prevail. And 57% of Kamala Harris
• 16:01
  supporters said the principal emotion that they would feel if
• 16:04
  Trump were elected was fear. With with, with smaller
• 16:09
  percentages saying that, you know, the sort of milder
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  reactions of anger or disappointment that I think are
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  are relatively normal when your side loses an election.
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  This was an election that inspired massive turn out.
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  People felt the stakes were very high.
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  Over and over again, voters told me that this did not feel like a
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  normal election to them. It felt like a sort of hinge
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  point in history with everything at stake.
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  So it is certainly the case that a lot of people in this country
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  are feeling a sense of fear today.
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  There are people all, you know, all over the world who will be
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  saying, and some of them told me there's no way America will
• 16:44
  elect a black woman as president.
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  You know, they didn't elect Hillary Clinton.
• 16:47
  They're not going to do that with Kamala Harris.
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  It's just not going to happen. The country will never do that.
• 16:52
  And I said, don't be ridiculous. You know, they had a black
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  president before we had the Prime Minister of color in the
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  UK. You know, you're completely
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  underestimating this country. You know, it's diverse, it's
• 17:02
  versatile and it, you know, and it's prepared to do this.
• 17:05
  I guess I was wrong, Molly. What does it say about this
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  country that it can't elect a female president, little at one
• 17:12
  of color? Well, it hasn't.
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  I don't know that that means it can't.
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  I think there were so many factors that went into this
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  that, you know, it's impossible for anyone to say definitively
• 17:25
  that that was the reason. Look, I think the fundamental
• 17:29
  dynamic, the story of this election, which is the same
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  story you could have told a year ago or even two years ago, was
• 17:35
  that this, that the electorate wanted change and the Democrats
• 17:38
  refused to give it to them. And over and over and over
• 17:41
  again, people told pollsters by overwhelming margins they
• 17:45
  believe the country was on the wrong track.
• 17:47
  They did not like the way the administration was managing
• 17:50
  immigration. They did not like the way the
• 17:52
  administration was managing the border, Sorry, the immigration
• 17:56
  and, and inflation, the economy. And over and over again, you
• 18:01
  know, the, the administration, which includes Kamala Harris and
• 18:04
  who, and Kamala Harris, who said that she would not have done
• 18:07
  anything differently than Joe Biden has done.
• 18:10
  And the Democrats answer was to sort of say, well, we're right.
• 18:12
  And you just have to hang on and, and, and believe or, or to
• 18:16
  blame Donald Trump for it, for the problems that were occurring
• 18:19
  on their watch. So I think, you know, it's,
• 18:23
  it's, it's fundamentally unknowable whether the I, I I
• 18:27
  would also note, though, that Donald Trump again, did not do
• 18:30
  any worse with women than he has done in the past and did much
• 18:35
  better with minorities, with black and Latino voters than he
• 18:39
  has done in the past. So the idea that that was the
• 18:43
  major obstacle for all of those voters, it it certainly could
• 18:47
  still be the case, but it requires you to believe that it
• 18:50
  was a lot of of black voters and Women Voters who harboured those
• 18:53
  sentiments. Is is this a mistake that we, we
• 18:56
  reporters, those of us with emotions and opinions make?
• 19:00
  That we think that demography is destiny and it just isn't always
• 19:06
  or maybe even sometimes. Yeah, that's a great question.
• 19:10
  I think that this election is going to cause a real reckoning
• 19:15
  in sort of the media and analytical class.
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  I think that over the past several years, especially in
• 19:21
  this election, we saw evidence of, you know, some real great
• 19:25
  divergences from the past, new coalitions forming.
• 19:29
  You couldn't take for granted necessarily the beliefs of black
• 19:32
  voters or female voters or male voters.
• 19:36
  And it does feel like the media didn't catch up in time.
• 19:39
  We saw some these shifts happening and assumed, well,
• 19:42
  Latinos will be mad at this or obviously black people will
• 19:45
  support a black candidate and that's just not necessarily the
• 19:48
  case anymore. So I think we have a lot of hard
• 19:51
  thinking to do ahead of us. If I could just defend the media
• 19:54
  for a moment, I think actually, you know, all of these phenomena
• 19:57
  were covered extensively in the media.
• 20:00
  It was the Democrats who said this isn't really happening.
• 20:03
  And despite the fact that hundreds of polls showed these
• 20:06
  shifts and and all kinds of anecdotal evidence was making
• 20:09
  clear that it was really happening, it was the Harris
• 20:11
  campaign and the Democrats who said over and over and over
• 20:14
  again, this isn't real and they got their comeuppance.
• 20:18
  That is the point. I'll take that defense of the
• 20:20
  media. Kristin, you first.
• 20:22
  What's going to happen to the Democratic Party now?
• 20:25
  Clearly the knives are already out, right?
• 20:27
  There's a lot of licking of wounds.
• 20:28
  There's a lot of blaming that's going on.
• 20:30
  What's going to happen to the party?
• 20:32
  Yeah, the knives are out. I'm wondering if we're going to
• 20:34
  see the fissures that were already visible in the party
• 20:37
  grow even deeper and see some real battling battling it out.
• 20:42
  You know, there were Democratic moderates.
• 20:44
  There were sort of the the party knows best.
• 20:46
  The the let's move forward with Joe Biden and then Kamala Harris
• 20:50
  wing of the party. There was also also a huge left
• 20:53
  resistance within the party who wanted to push back against the
• 20:58
  Biden policies on Israel, Gaza, which potentially lost Kamala
• 21:04
  Harris, a a lot of votes in a key swing state in Michigan.
• 21:08
  There were leftists who wanted much more attention paid to
• 21:14
  family care issues, worker care issues, yes, even stronger
• 21:18
  brands of feminism and sort of gender questions than the
• 21:22
  Democratic Party came or gave. And I, I don't know if there
• 21:28
  will be visible splits, if there will be new parties or new
• 21:32
  groups formed, but I think there is going to be a lot of internal
• 21:35
  anger. And I'm I'm interested to see
• 21:38
  where that goes and how that's translated into policy and
• 21:41
  statements moving forward. Molly, the the Democrats used to
• 21:45
  love to point to the Republicans and say, you have become, you
• 21:48
  know, the hostage to Donald Trump.
• 21:50
  It's, you know, it's a corporate takeover, you know, and you are
• 21:53
  now Trump's creatures. Well, that may be the case, but
• 21:56
  but that creatures also won an election, you know, with a
• 21:59
  resounding majority. The Democrats are far more
• 22:02
  divided, perhaps, than people gave them credit for at the
• 22:04
  time. You know, after Hillary Clinton
• 22:07
  lost, the Democrats, you know, went into resistance mode and
• 22:12
  spent the next four years freaking out constantly over
• 22:17
  Donald Trump. But it was possible for them to
• 22:18
  see him as a sort of freak accident, an aberration.
• 22:21
  He had not won the popular vote. He no one had expected him to
• 22:24
  win. So there and and and and the
• 22:26
  election was extremely close. So you could blame any number of
• 22:30
  sort of exogenous factors for this freak occurrence.
• 22:33
  That's not the case anymore. This election has delivered a
• 22:36
  mandate to Donald Trump as as you said, he has won the popular
• 22:40
  vote. He has won all of these swing
• 22:42
  states by by slim but healthy margins.
• 22:46
  And, and so I think the Democrats have to look reality
• 22:49
  in the face this time and recognize that this is the
• 22:53
  result that Americans wanted and they need to offer something
• 22:57
  more appealing to the American people if they want to win
• 22:59
  election. Indeed, I think Joe Biden
• 23:02
  described the first Trump administration as an apparent
• 23:05
  moment in American history. It turns out it wasn't.
• 23:08
  To both of you, Molly Ball of the Wall Street Journal,
• 23:11
  Christine Ember of The Atlantic, thank you very much for taking
• 23:14
  part in the American Forecast. Have a good day.
• 23:18
  Get some sleep.