A Conversation: Mark Mansour and Rory Truex

Join Princeton Professor Rory Truex and me as we discuss politics, democracy, Trump and the future of our elections, among other issues.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:01

Welcome back to America's Factor Politics. Today I'm happy to have with me Rory Truex. Rory is a professor at Princeton University, where his research and teaching focus on Chinese politics and authoritarianism. He hosts the Civic Forum, a podcast and speaker series on the biggest issues facing democracy in the U.S. and elsewhere. Please welcome Rory Truex. Rory, it's great to have you.

SPEAKER_00 0:23

Thank you, Mark, for having me on. I really appreciate it.

SPEAKER_01 0:25

No, my pleasure. Let's kick it off with a broad question, but one that begs an answer. Is the U.S. still a democracy? And following that up, is this the right question to be asking?

SPEAKER_00 0:36

So I think it is the right question to be asking. And there's no easy answer here. So in political science, that's my background, democracy is defined as a system where leaders run in free and fair elections and leave office when they lose. And so every word in that definition is doing work, right? So there's a lot of non-democracies that have elections. And if we even just rewind back to 2020, we had an election that Trump uh tried to steal. And had he succeeded in doing that, we would have been very clearly in an authoritarian, uh, an authoritarian chapter. So then we have him coming back to power and behaving in a certain way. And the question is, are we still democracy or not? And I think the way I would answer the question is by saying this is clearly a leader and a faction of the GOP that is fundamentally authoritarian in nature and they govern in an authoritarian way. And we can talk about kind of what the key markers of that are. And the key thing that a lot of political scientists are worried about is whether we transition from what we would call liberal democracy towards something resembling competitive authoritarianism. So a lot of people, when they think about authoritarianism, they think about China, North Korea, these kind of very draconian authoritarian systems. But most uh authoritarian systems in the world have elections, actually, and they have opposition parties and other candidates. And the key marker of competitive authoritarianism is it's a system where the leader and the people in power use that power to try to tilt the playing field to their advantage. And that might mean uh trying to silence the opposition with lawsuits or trying to change the rules of the elections and so forth. And so I think we're seeing the Trump administration display that kind of intuition and that kind of strategy of trying to use the power they have to tilt the playing field to their advantage, and whether or not they're succeeding is a different question. So I think we're entering into something resembling that. Now, the good news is I think a lot of those efforts have been thwarted, and I actually am very confident in the pro-democracy movement, and I think this is a budding, uh, would-be authoritarian regime that's kind of running out of steam and isn't particularly popular. So I'm broadly optimistic, but I think it's important to call it what it is, and I do think calling it authoritarian to a certain degree is is appropriate.

SPEAKER_01 2:58

Aaron Powell He's losing case after case in the courts. And so there is some pushback. The question is whether or not he'll he'll actually abide by those court rulings. And that's a question I think that remains to be answered.

SPEAKER_00 3:12

Aaron Powell Yeah, and there's it's important to remember, I mean, and you know better than anybody, the amount of damage that has been done already. And I think the normalization of um gerrymandering, like trying to search for seats in Texas and elsewhere, uh, using the power of the state to intimidate critics, prominent people like Jimmy Kimmel or leaders in in Congress and so forth, uh, the takeover of media institutions, like a lot of damage has been done. Um, but I think the pushback is quite real. And I think he he's kind of a bumbling authoritarian figure. He's just so corrupt and and uh centered on himself that I think he's squandering whatever political capital he had. For me, I think it really comes down to the election in November. And if there is a free and fair election, the polls would suggest uh the Democrats are gonna do pretty darn well, and that will be an important moment. And we don't quite know what will unfold. And I think in the authoritarian world, um, there's quite a lot that's fair game, including canceling elections and other things. So to me, it's sort of we're in this a little bit of a lull until November. And at that moment, we're gonna learn more about where where we really are.

SPEAKER_01 4:20

It always comes up. So I'm gonna ask you as a political scientist, do you believe we're gonna have free and fair elections?

SPEAKER_00 4:26

I do. Yeah, I do. And I think if we did, and if there was an effort to cancel them, I think, or cancel them, or or there's so many different cards that could be played, right? One is one is outright cancellation, another is ballot boxes. There's already been a fair amount of efforts at disenfranchisement. There's intimidating people when they go to the polls with ICE or other agents of the federal government. There's kind of delegitimizing the results after the fact and saying they were the product of fraud or interference or something like that. So there's a lot of different cards that could be played, and I would be I would be surprised if they go completely, um, completely smoothly. Uh, but we have seen reasonable elections in the last year that do seem, you know, that the results are being broadly honored. And so I am optimistic. I think it's important to kind of maintain our vigilance about this. And I'm optimistic in that if there was something as drastic as canceling the election, we would see mass unrest in the country, uh, given how on given how unpopular. And I think all of that, that lead up with no kings, all of the different protests over the last year or two, that's basically like building our democratic muscles. And we're it's a kind of like practice runs for potentially bigger moments. And so November could be one of those big moments, and I think the pro-democracy community is ready, and I think that will put a lot of pressure on Trump and others and the Republican Party to do what's right. So I am broadly optimistic.

SPEAKER_01 5:51

So speaking of the pro-democracy movement, how would you assess its progress? How is it doing?

SPEAKER_00 5:57

It's hard for me to tell. I mean, I think on the one hand, so things that are good is we've had the largest protests in American history, and that's not nothing. And that's a very significant uh event. Those are very significant events. I've gone with them, gone to them with my family, and they're all over the country, and they're cutting across bar broad swathes of society. So we have uh mass mobilization. I think our democratic immune system is kind of firing into gear and it's creating a political consciousness that wasn't there. Like even for me personally, like I study China. I'm a China scholar, like that's my trade. But I feel more American and more invested in my own citizenship than I ever have in my entire life. And I think that's true for a lot of people around me. So I think broadly speaking, the one pleasant side effect of the Trump administration might be to re-energize civil society, re-energize our democracy. And there's a lot of data in political scientists, in political science to suggest it's been in decline for decades now. Now, I think another big question is how broad is that um coalition? And for me, I've been noticing, I don't know if you share the same observation in DC, that the movement skews a little older. Uh I'm not seeing a whole lot of 20-somethings uh out there. I'm a college professor. Uh campuses are are shockingly quiet, uh, shockingly quiet right now. And I don't know if it's apathy or if it's a hangover from protests about Gaza or Palestine, whatever it is. But it's noticeable to me that it's really the older generations, notably the boomer generation, which is doing a lot of the work. Um and so that's a uh I think something. What are you noticing for you, like down in DC, when you go to these events?

SPEAKER_01 7:40

Exactly the same thing. Um we probably have more students here than in many other places because we've got a good, vigorous university like here in Washington and a lot of very politically active and politically conscious students. My own opinion is that this country is exhausted and somewhat apathetic. And I think that the pile-on effect of all of Trump's scandals has exhausted people to the point where they just don't feel the need to go out into the streets anymore because what's the use? I think what it will take is exactly what we discussed earlier, and that is an effort to tamper with the elections. I think that's going to shake people out of their torpor and result in demonstrations that will clearly shake the administration to its core because I don't think they're equipped to handle mass riots and mass demonstrations and mass unrest.

SPEAKER_00 8:26

Yeah, and I I think you're right. And I I think I'm glad you brought up this idea of a torpor or apathy or that kind of feeling. And we know that this is core to how authoritarian regimes function. Like I study China, uh, they thrive on political apathy. They want to teach people that political participation is sort of useless and that they can't make a difference. And we've talked about this uh before this podcast, this idea of flooding the zone. Like there's just so much going on, there's so much to be angry about that at some point your body feels that that cortisol, that tension, and you decide you can't keep, you can't live in the news cycle like this for four years. There's a real cognitive uh emotional cost to people. So I think people are checking in, checking out. I think it's hard to stay furious for four years on end. Um and I think, you know, the kind of reflecting pool thing that's going on right now, that's captured people's imagination because it's such an obvious manifestation of corruption and incompetence. But that's not going to get people really in the streets. And so, but I think people are primed. I I think people have been educated about authoritarianism. Like the language of authoritarianism is commonplace. People know what it looks like now, they know what to be watchful of. I think the narrative about the election being stolen and the big lie, all that is is being pushed back on by our politicians and our civil society leaders. So I think people are primed uh to be paying attention at the moments that really matter. And I do think the election is the big one.

SPEAKER_01 9:52

Yeah. I just published a piece on the nature and scope of repression under Trump. And I'd like to get your views regarding where pre where we're where we are on the scale of repression right now and where you think it's going.

SPEAKER_00 10:04

So I think I was worried, honestly, at the outset of this that like the authoritarian chill would take hold. And that and by that I mean in authoritarian systems, like the key difference is that there is a cost to political expression, a cost to opposing the regime or the leader, whoever it is, you pay for that. And that's a key demarcation between democracy and authoritarianism. And so Trump is trying to impose that cost. Um, and that might be through intimidation through ICE and kind of normal people. It might be uh directed primarily at opposition leaders, right? Like people in the Senate or even members of his own party that kind of go against him. So he's trying to impose that cost. I would say primarily at this point, um, it's being directed at other elites and not necessarily at the American public. Like I think going to a No Kings protest or saying something about Trump on Twitter or whatever, at this point doesn't carry much of a professional or personal cost to most citizens, which is a good thing. And then the other good thing I would say is that the chill hasn't really taken hold. And in fact, it's backfired. So I think uh people peep Americans are kind of an unruly bunch, right? And so people have reacted by being more angry. And so that's another feature of repression that we see actually in the authoritarian world, is sometimes a little bit of repression backfires because it generates this backlash. And I would say that's been the result. So I think his efforts at repression have kind of sputtered out. Um a lot of the efforts to take down prominent leaders have have failed in the courts. He kind of looks silly. And I think he's kind of maybe slightly pulling back from that strategy. If we compare like that first six to eight months when it was, you know, ICE being deployed in major cities and kind of in that like boots on the ground way. I think we've kind of seen a pullback from that, which is good. So I I do think it it's significant. The repressive component is significant, but I think American society has pushed back in a pretty important way. What do you what do you think? What are your what's your rating of this?

SPEAKER_01 12:08

My rating is that we are pretty much at the same place you described. Um people are reacting, they're angry, they haven't reached critical mass yet, and the repression itself is sputtering because he keeps trying, and as you said, he keeps getting defeated in the courts. And I think that there is a sense on his part that going too far might backfire. And although he wants to, I think that there are enough voices that tell him, be careful with this because you might get what you wish. And what he wishes is in what's politically beneficial are two different things.

SPEAKER_00 12:43

Yeah, and and I think it's also worth noting that I mean the American people are demonstrating a fair amount of courage. Not everybody, right? We can go through the list of law firms that have capitulated. Like the private sector, I think, has been pretty darn craven.

SPEAKER_01 12:56

And being a lawyer, I'm incredibly disgusted.

SPEAKER_00 13:00

Yeah, and and I think not not all, but you know, I think people are seeing a business opportunity where they should be seeing authoritarianism. And I think that's been disappointing. Um but I think the American people, in terms of the amount of people going to protest, people documenting abuses of ice in in Minneapolis and other places, like I think they're the everyday Americans are kind of doing the right thing and reacting appropriately and and putting themselves out there. And so I think that is meaningful. And also leader, you know, our our media leaders, people like Jimmy Kimmel and Stephen Colbert, like in an alternative world, those guys shut up. Uh and they haven't shut up. They've continued to be critical of Trump. And so I think that's that's meaningful. So I I don't, I'm optimistic that that chill won't take effect. And to do to institute that type of chill would require a level of repression that I think wouldn't wouldn't stand. Like I you can't just you can't get away with it at some point. And I think the societal pushback has been strong enough, and I think people around Trump have realized um it's not gonna work. So we're kind of settling now into kind of like a corrupt, crony capitalist stage of this, where it's just about enrichment and and personal glorification, which is tiresome and painful to see unfold, but it's in some ways uh kind of less less threatening, I think, than the bigger picture stuff we were seeing in the first six to eight months.

SPEAKER_01 14:23

Related to this, I get this question on SubSec all the time. What can I do as an individual to further the pro-democracy movement?

SPEAKER_00 14:32

That's a great question. I I asked, I have a little pot myself, and I ask people that question all the time. And I gotten a series of answers, and I'm gonna convey those insights and pawn them off as my own. I think one answer that I really liked was from a guy named Brendan Nyhan, who's a political scientist at Dartmouth. And he likened the kind of fight for democracy, like the fight for climate change, in the sense that it's not an all or one. It's not a zero or a one. Every little uh ounce of or gram of carbon that we prevent going into the atmosphere matters. Every little pushback we give matters. So we're we're going through a moment of democratic erosion. It's kind of undeniable. But the question is how deep, how steep is that decline, and how long it lasts? And for that reason, every little pushback matters in whatever domain is your expertise, right? So part of this is that there's so many different attacks happening at once. There's attacks on science, right? And the independence of science and scientific ideas. There's attacks on universities, there's attacks on immigrants and the immigrant population, there's attacks on the healthcare system. Like you go down the list, basically, every major institution in the US system is under some sort of duress. And we can't fight every battle at once. No one person can do that, right? But we can find the domains that we care about, that we have expertise, and mobilize and participate however we can. And I think that's like the number one piece of advice is stay active. Like this is the time in our lives where we should be more politically active and mobilized than any other time in our lives ever. That's hard to sustain, but it's important to find that the domain, the area that that you care about, and try to figure out ways to engineer some sort of difference. And if we all do that, there's millions of us, right? If we all do that, that collective pushback does really matter. And that's like the power of small numbers, like power. That's there's um a famous essay by Vaclav Havel about the so-called power of the powerless. Like that's the that's the grand theory of authoritarianism is that we have one leader, one small group of people trying to amass power against a large number of people who don't have power, but collectively we do. So I I really buy into that, and I think what you're doing, even on your Substack, right? Like that makes a big difference. You're mobilizing people, you're educating people. So we all have to find a way to contribute.

SPEAKER_01 16:51

Um just for people who want to know where they can participate, I'd recommend getting in touch with Indivisible and with 50501. They're both doing great work, and it's a way to get involved personally in part and in as well as a component of a larger group. So I'd recommend that. Um moving back to historical context, how would you describe Trump and the Republican Party in a historical context?

SPEAKER_00 17:25

I think so. This is Trump is kind of a um the most kind of uh obvious manifestation of this broader political movement in our country that's centered on um I I would call it white supremacy, white nationalism, um, and that type of political movement um is often associated with authoritarian underpinnings. And so that's I think of him as an extension of that type of movement. Um I think he's a both a product and a symptom of a deeper cynicism in American society. And I think if you look at data, uh how Americans feel about democracy, uh, people don't buy into it anymore. They don't feel like the system is working for them. And that's why they're gravitating towards populist politicians, both on the right and the left, people that are saying the game is rigged, the system's broken, let's tear it down. And Trump has one version of the tear it down, other politicians have others that I think are actually more palatable. So I see him as an extension of angst and grievance. And my hope, Mark, is that if you talk about the long arc of history, I think we're living through this chapter. We've been in the Trump chapter since 2016, which is a long time. Um, my hope is that maybe this leads to some sort of restoration of American democracy. I think one favor that he's doing for us is he's revealing everything wrong, right? So we're militaristic, we're doing these, once again, doing unnecessary wars in the Middle East that are ill-conceived. Uh we he's blatantly corrupt. He's shown what gerrymandering really looks like and why voters, uh, why politicians shouldn't be able to select their voters. It should be the other way around. So he's just showing us everything that's wrong all at once. And maybe, maybe, maybe it will create a political will to kind of think bigger about systematic reforms to our democracy and how we can enliven it a bit more. That's kind of my broader hope that I cling to. I don't know if that answered your question.

SPEAKER_01 19:22

It does. It does. Um a follow-up question. There is a theory that's gained some currency that were it not for Barack Obama, Trump would not have been possible. What are your thoughts?

SPEAKER_00 19:32

Yeah. So this is a there's actually a wonderful scholar, Julia Azari. Uh she's at Marquette University. Yeah. She's um she's a scholar of the presidency. And um she she makes this argument. She calls it kind of the backlash theory of the president. And she's actually on Substack. I would encourage you to encourage folks to subscribe to her. But it's very much this idea, right, where when you have efforts at basically reshaping the racial order and moving towards more racial equality, that can then lead to a white backlash against that moment. And so you could argue that Trump is a manifestation of that. I mean, obviously, part of his rise to power was delegitimizing Obama. Uh and he was one of the key leaders in the Berther movement. He's got a long history of kind of racial language and and and so forth. At his stupid UFC fight, one of the fighters, I don't know if you saw this, I saw it, said Michelle Obama was a man. You know, so it's just blatant, nauseating racism that's been normalized in a way it wasn't even in 2016 to 2020. So I do think there's a part of that. Um and I think part of what's deeply saddening about this is basically race has all along been used to divide the working class, and working class people are kind of widely underrepresented in our system, and the US has higher levels of inequality than almost any other country in the world. And so it's it's people are being sold kind of a race war uh in substitute for policies that might actually uh help them economically. So yeah, I do think it's easy to interpret it through Obama, the kind of backlash to Obama for sure.

SPEAKER_01 21:15

Um The Trump gave permission to the people that constitute the MAGA movement to be racists, to be xenophobes, to be Christian nationalists, uh to embrace uh despotism. Um what do you think?

SPEAKER_00 21:33

Yeah, and I I think there's a noticeable shift from the first Trump administration to the second Trump administration, where um there's an absurdity to the kind of racial politics of this current Trump administration. Because if you remember the first six months, there was a lot of concern about anti Semitism, right? And they they went after Harvard uh on the grounds that it was fostering anti Semitism. They were using that as a kind of tool to attack certain institutions. Yet the administration was filled with people who had espoused racist beliefs, including some Nazi beliefs. And so they it being kind of an open racist was no longer disqualifying in Trump 2.0, uh in the way that it might have been in Trump 1.0. And I do think he's created a space to talk about race in a certain way. You think of people about people like Tony Hinchcliffe, who I think is he's this comedian, the guy who made the Puerto Rico's garbage joke at um one of uh Trump's rallies many, many years ago now. But you know, he's he's he's faced no consequence for that, right? He's he's more popular than ever. So I think Trump is in a way kind of a it's like a rot that is spreading, right? He he's fundamentally soured our discourse, he's normalized this behavior, and you see kind of little trumps popping all over the place. And again, that's like a very deeply authoritarian thing to happen, where there's a something I would call like personality mirroring. So when everybody's trying to please the big guy and please the leader and show their loyalty, they often will mimic their speech patterns, they will mimic their approach. You see this in China with Xi Jinping, where there are like a lot of what they call wolf warrior diplomats, diplomats that were kind of parroting his kind of more bellicose language. So you see that here, whereas there's a there's hundreds, if not thousands, of little Trumps now talking the way he talks and kind of conducting themselves the way he does. And so that's really hard to watch. And it it's uh my hope is that we kind of return to more civil era in the post-Trump period, but it's been a long time now, and I I worry about Gen Z. I I was having a conversation with uh Jasmine's son, who's a Gen Z substacker, and she's talking about Gen Z nihilism. Like these people that their political socialization has been entirely in the Trump period, and they don't trust anything anymore. They don't there's a there's a certain uh kind of get mine type approach to their lives, and and they don't I don't know. So it's it's I think there will be lasting effects on our politics for for in the post-Trump period, but yeah, I don't know. I'm rambling now.

SPEAKER_01 24:10

No, you're not. It makes perfect sense. Um let's move from the um from the structural to current events. Do you think the Epstein files are gonna make it back into the news cycle despite Trump's efforts to distract with monuments and reflecting pools and UFC fights and celebrations in his honor and the like?

SPEAKER_00 24:27

I hope so. I I hope so. I mean, it it's uh distraction is the right word, right? So it's it's like we fall for it every time. Um the Iran War, I don't think was one big distraction, but it was pretty darn convenient uh to kind of shift the news cycle. And and I think it was a play to kind of get a rally around the flag popularity effect from war that kind of backfired because the war was it didn't work because the war was just so ill-conceived and and and so forth. So yeah, he's good at distraction, the UFC fight, July 4th. Now we got the World Cup. People's attention spans are short, and I think people have unfortunately probably resigned themselves to this impunity component, right? Like that people have come to accept that there's a degree of elite impunity in American society, and it's quite sad and disturbing. So we'll see. I think if it were to make its way back in the news cycle, it's gonna have to be because somebody makes, you know, some sort of prominent leak or Democrats win power. Like I accountability will need to happen, and it might, it might not be in the next six months. And I think the Trump administration has you know, they have control of the narrative. They're they're in control of the files. And so unless something changes, um, I don't know. What do you think? You're closer to you're in DC. I'm sitting here in Philly. They're gonna come out someday. Someday, yeah. I think someday we will somebody will leak it. Someone will leak it, but I'm actually and I'm shocked it hasn't already. I mean, that that's what's surprising to me. And I'm not calling for someone to leak it, but it's it's such important information and sensitive information. I do think there's been a cost, right? So anytime he does something like this, whether it's the invading Iran, whether it's you know not releasing the Epstein files, there is a public opinion cost to him, right? And he he's eroding his own base. People like Joe Rogan, others on the kind of MAGA influencer sphere, they're kind of distancing themselves from him a little bit. And his popularity is down to, I think, 37, 38%, which is sort of the floor uh in American politics and potentially even getting below that floor. So I don't think it's without cost. Um, and for me, the other cost that one thing that's important is to stick this on everybody else. Because we often think about this as Trump, but Vance clearly wants to be president, Rubio wants to be president. And these people are complicit. And everything he does reflects back on them, and they need that needs to stick to them. Um, that they backed all these different efforts and did nothing. And so that to me is also a part of this. It's not just about Trump, it's about pinning all of these shameful things on everybody else in that administration and making sure they're out of our politics for the foreseeable future.

SPEAKER_01 27:05

Yeah, I personally don't want to ever hear Stephen Miller's name after this is all over.

SPEAKER_00 27:09

Yeah, yeah, that's the hope is that they've ruined themselves. And and you look around, I mean, they're they are dropping, right? Like gabbards out, Bondi's out, Bon Ginos out. Like there's it's generally not a pleasant thing to serve this type of leader, this kind of erratic, personalistic, narcissistic leader. The lieutenants are the ones that go down. And so uh tying yourself to Trump is not really a smart strategy in the long run. And I think it's important to make sure people who did feel those consequences.

SPEAKER_01 27:36

You know some of his victims are women too. A lot of his victims are women. He fires women with great regularity.

SPEAKER_00 27:43

Yeah, no, I think there's data on this, right? That for whatever reason, you know, Hegseth, Rubio, they're still they're still kicking around. And it's the women in the administration who are put in these difficult positions of basically being his attack dogs like you know, Bondi, uh trying to use the tools of justice against his political enemies. Um they're the ones who are going down uh yeah, at a higher regular. I would have to look and see if that's the sole the I think that's clearly a pattern, right?

SPEAKER_01 28:12

Yeah. Um how do you see the midterm shaking out, just from your personal opinion?

SPEAKER_00 28:18

I'm not a pollster. So I I can tell you what I've been reading, and I, you know, I read people uh like Elliot Morris and Nate Silver and the different folks. I mean, I I think um the data would say, first of all, I think it's important to be open-minded about what will happen. Like I really, anytime someone says we're going to win the election, and if we didn't, it was compromised or rigged or something. Like that's what the other side does, right? So we need to be there is electoral uncertainty, it's real. Um we don't know. Polls are are increasingly unreliable. Sometimes I I work with survey data and with polls myself. We don't even know what's an AI agent anymore responding to our polls. So I think it's important to acknowledge uncertainty. Um, but provided that the election is free and fair, my expectation is that the Democrats uh take back the House uh in a pretty significant way. And potentially even the Senate, I think there's a real possibility. And then the question is, well, what does that look like? And my my concern, I don't think it's, I think it would still be a great thing if there was more checks on his power, is that then Trump uses the Democratically controlled Congress as like this scapegoat for everything that goes wrong, right? And right now there's unified government. Everything that's going wrong is a is a result of Republican government. And once it's divided government again, maybe then that gives Trump a kind of excuse. I think there's also, I'm curious to see how Congress is treated if it falls into Democrat hands. Like does do we see even kind of an increasing marginalization of the institution? Like things happen, like in other systems, like parliaments are disbanded. I don't think that would happen in the US because of the backlash. But I I have trouble envisioning a scenario where the Democrats gain power and are able to hold him to account easily without without issue. Um, but I'm broadly optimistic. I I think this is the moment. This is what we in political science we would call a critical juncture. And we returning to your point about what do people do, the most important thing is to win the election. And people, I I've seen stuff on Twitter like, oh, we need to have a revolution. Like people are talking like this is get up and vote. You need to get vote. We have a channel. And and and in any system, there's a channel for influence. And in certain systems, the electoral channel is gone or non-viable. Uh, even in a place like Hungary, we just saw it happen in real time, right? Like, no five years ago, nobody would have predicted that. No. But if opposition is strong enough and well-organized enough, it can topple a system that's even very entrenched. And Trump is no nowhere near as entrenched as Orban was. So I think it's really just about focusing on this election. This is the election of our lifetime. It's it's unfortunate that it feels like every election is the election of our lifetime. And maybe one day we'll have a boring election, you know, like a McCain Obama type election again or something like that, you know. But I I I we're not there yet. What do you think, Mark? I I need to keep you you're you know more than me about some of this. Like in terms of the midterms, are you broadly optimistic as well?

SPEAKER_01 31:21

I'm very optimistic. Um, I think Trump's our best friend. Um the the he has given the Democrats ready-made quotes that all they need to run is just inflation doesn't bother me. I don't spend a lot of time thinking about the the American people's welfare, things like that. And all you need to do is link it to the congressman in question for a particular race, and basically say this man has voted for Donald Trump on every issue. And this is what Donald Trump thinks, and that's what this guy thinks. Vote democratic. If they did that, they could really make a big difference because they need they need to focus on affordable affordability, but you also need to link Trump to the fight for something other than affordability, for the fight for despotism, the fight for for control, the fight for corruption to maintain corruption and things like that. They need to emphasize all those things. But I think based on what I'm seeing, and based upon the midterm uh sorry, the uh interim poll, the interim elections, um, the off-year elections and the elections that have been um uh been held, the special elections, Democrats are winning them one after the other, after the other, after the other, after the other. And they're flipping Republican districts by 20 points.

SPEAKER_00 32:29

Yeah, by huge margins, right? And and even Texas is in play um with Talarico. Like I I think it's I completely agree with you that he is a gift to the Democrats. And you one thing that's universally true across all political systems is people hate corruption. And the corruption is in plain sight. You know, it's not even it's even the algae thing, like it's it's so um blatant and easy to describe. And then the inflation aspect tied to the Iran war. And so that that actually is also what gives me some optimism is Trump is just so incompetent and and selfish. And if he were remotely savvy, this could be a very different situation. So if he actually focused on the needs of the poor and the middle class and actually tried to engineer good outcomes for them and showed some, showed that he cared, we would be in a very different situation. He could be popular, right? But instead, he just is so focused on himself and his cronies that I agree. I think he's a gift. And I think Republican people in the House and Senate are in it stuck in a hard place because they have to win their primaries, they have to kind of kiss the ring in order to keep him on their good side.

SPEAKER_01 33:35

And if they don't general, that's a disaster.

SPEAKER_00 33:37

And then in the general, then they have to turn around and try to run in a general election. And he's he's endorses the more extreme candidates, the people who endorse the big lie and all this crap. So I I think, yeah, he is a gift to the Democrats. And I think um I hope I and I think this election's easier than the next one. I think the presidential election, I just feel like we're gonna I I'm not saying we're gonna botch it again, but I I think the field is gonna be pretty messy. And uh I hope we nominate a good, a good, solid candidate. Um so, but let's not get ahead of ourselves.

SPEAKER_01 34:10

Yeah, exactly. Um I'm gonna switch over to China. I don't want to miss the opportunity to talk about China. Um assess the power balance between Trump and Qi after the summit.

SPEAKER_00 34:21

So I think US-China relations have been on a bit of a roller coaster, which people probably aren't paying too close attention to because there's so much else going on. But it it's for many, many years, the kind of default China policy was engaged with China. And then in Trump 1.0, he he definitely adopted this tough on China approach, and that was the trade war and calling Xinjiang a genocide, all these different things he did. And then the Biden people largely continued that tone, uh, although they had difference in substance and they relied, I think they were much smarter about it. And then this time around, I think what's happened is the Trump people have realized the limitations of American power. And trade port, trade war 2.0 was a bit of a huge backfire. And Trump and and Trump and others around him underestimated the willingness of the Chinese side to show their power, namely rare earths. So the Chinese side has a near China has a near monopoly on these rare earths, which are part of the periodic table that nobody knows about, but they happen to be huge to the world economy, and they can cripple the American economy within a few weeks if they just withhold them from us. And so I actually think we've now reached this new moment where the two sides are realizing they need to tone things down. Uh Trump is calling Xi Jinping a friend. That worries me because Xi Jinping does not actually have any friends. And so Trump thinks that their kind of personal relationship is gonna stabilize things. So Xi Jinping met Trump and then turned around and met Putin. Uh so it that shows us a little something about what he really cares about. So I think I for me, honestly, when we got in this round of the Trump administration, I was worried about war uh with China. I was worried about kind of instability. I think we've settled into kind of a coexistence moment here. Um I think both countries are dealing with a similar issue, which is um the economies are kind of sputtering along. AI is going to present real challenges. Youth unemployment in China is about 20% in certain parts, and a lot of these people are really highly educated graduates who can't find work. And so an AI could potentially displace that even more. And unemployment is bad for any government, especially an authoritarian government. So I've always thought of Xi Jinping as primarily domestically focused because the CCP is always worried about domestic stability. Um yeah, I'm broadly optimistic about the relationship this kind of broader stability holding. Um and I think Xi Jinping looks at Trump as kind of, I think he knows how to deal with him now. You know, this isn't they've been studying him for a decade. They know he's prone to flattery, he can be bought, he can be kind of his ego can be managed. And Xi Jinping's gonna outlast Trump. That's the the Chinese side thinks in terms of five, 10, 15, 20 year time horizons, not two to four year time horizons. And so he's just another American president to be dealt with for Xi Jinping.

SPEAKER_01 37:17

Yeah. On the domestic front for China, um what do you think happens as China depopulates? I mean, the the birth rate's going down, down, down, down, down, and they're not replacing them with um and people are getting older. Um what's your thought?

SPEAKER_00 37:34

This is a major concern, and and what's this is soften striking to people. So if you look at population projections by 2100, so this is a what quite a ways away, several decades away, there's projections that say China's population might be 800 million to a billion, you know, so a major contraction of the population. And they're trying to change that. So the one child policy is a relic of the past, and now they're actually engaging in what we would call pronatalist policies. They're trying to get young people to have babies, and their local governments are almost in like this race to do so. They'll provide cash incentives for couples, they'll do anything they can. Um, but young people aren't having babies at the same rate. I'm I'm of that generation. I I have two children myself, but my whole generation is having fewer babies. So all of us are having fewer kids because the world is so uncertain and the economies are so uncertain. So, yeah, I think what what does that mean for China? I think a few things. One is the kind of stature of China on the global stage may well decline. Part of what makes China so impressive is just the sheer size of the population and of the market. And if the population contracts, uh that might uh decrease China's stature. People talk about peak China. Is China power already, has China's power already peaked? I don't think it has. Um, but maybe it will have in 30 years or so. Um, and that's striking. And then um, how do you sustain economic growth? And I think the big question for all of these countries is what will AI do? And how will they manage the transition towards AI being integrated into the labor force while maintaining stability and economic growth? So those are big, big, big fundamental questions that China and the US are both gonna have to answer at the same time.

SPEAKER_01 39:19

Will China ever invade Taiwan?

SPEAKER_00 39:22

Oh man, you're getting right to the core of it. I I'm more optimistic than most people about I am too. I I think and I'll give you my my hot take. So for those who don't know, Taiwan is uh within the Chinese system, Taiwan is considered basically a renegade province. Um, it operates basically as an independent country, but cannot be recognized as such. And so it occupies this kind of murky status in the international system. And we know Xi Jinping has for many years, and and many Chinese litters have have sought reunification with Taiwan. And they talk about peaceful reunification, um, but there's always this kind of underlying threat of invasion or military coercion. Now, there's a big question of is China going to just press the button and go for this thing? Um and I would give you two reasons for optimism. One is I don't see the domestic political calculus in China. So if this is a regime that's concerned about domestic political stability, they don't need this. They still enjoy relatively high levels of support. If they went for a war with Taiwan over Taiwan and lost and bungled it, that could be the kind of thing that would really destabilize the system. That's one way authoritarian leaders go down, they lose wars. So they don't need to win Taiwan. Xi Jinping doesn't need to win Taiwan. He needs to not lose Taiwan. And by that I mean if there were credible moves either in Taiwan or on the US side towards independence, um, like, for example, like diplomatic recognition towards Taiwan, that would put Xi Jinping in a position where he would have to do something to please hardliners at home. And so that's why I think for the US side and for others, like supporting Taiwan's means uh ensuring deterrences there, military deterrence, like a military commitment, I think is important, but also simultaneously reassuring the Chinese side that we're not moving towards some new equilibrium, some push towards independence. And both those pieces are important. And then the other thing that's noticeable in China is Xi Jinping has purged his military. So he recently purged this guy, Zhang Yo Xia, who he's been he's known since kindergarten. And um, the PLA is a notoriously corrupt and inept organization. It hasn't been to war since the 70s. And they're looking across at the US uh and doing what it's doing in Venezuela, Iran, and they have they don't have that uh experience or capacity necessarily. We don't quite know what the PLA, the People's Liberation Army, is capable of. And so, and then you're gutting the top leadership at the same time. So I just don't think they're quite ready, and it would be a high-risk move, a very, very high-risk move. Um, and I just don't think Xi Jinping operates that way. He also looks at domestic politics in Taiwan. The Taiwanese people are hedging closer to Beijing because they no longer view the U.S. as reliable and they look at Trump and they don't see a reliable partner. So if Xi Jinping is looking across the strait at domestic politics in Taiwan, I think he's broadly optimistic in the next two to four years. So those are my reasons. So I'm optimistic that peace will prevail, and I think that's kind of the best we can hope for with Taiwan is just kind of keep kicking the can down the road and preserving the status quo that still exists.

SPEAKER_01 42:38

One thing I would add on Taiwan is that from a military perspective, it would be very difficult. The straits are very narrow. It would be very hard to take a land army across the straits into China without them all bumping into each other, into Taiwan, without them all bumping into each other. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Very difficult militarily.

SPEAKER_00 42:54

Yeah, this isn't Ukraine, right? This is a very different situation. And it it would be also difficult for the United States. And I think it's important to acknowledge that if there were war between the U.S. and China over Taiwan, it would be a global catastrophe. Uh if we were to win that war, if the U.S. were to intervene and win, it would likely come at the cost of tens of thousands of American lives, is my understanding. I'm not a military expert. And so, and potential nuclear escalation is also on the table. And so it's something that needs to be avoided. And I think the two powers have a responsibility to manage this issue and avoid war. And I'm optimistic, actually, that I think peace will prevail. I just think it's too um it's it's just too risky on all sides. And I think the current situation works for Xi Jinping because what can Taiwan do? You can blame your problems on the U.S., you can foment nationalism, and you can have a huge military budget, which we know in authoritarian systems is really important because you can buy off your generals and so forth. So I've always thought that this current situation, China complains all the time, but I think it really does work for the CCP. And so I Again, I'm pretty optimistic.

SPEAKER_01 44:02

Sort of like Netanyahu, but in in in a different different manner. Um war begets him. He needs war in order to survive. So a forever war for Netanyahu is basically a uh a necessity from his own personal um survival standpoint.

SPEAKER_00 44:18

Yeah, and I mean I think the big question mark is when we talk about deterrence, it's about deterring one person. It's deterring Xi Jinping. It's what does he want? He's aging, um, and he's thinks of himself as a great man of Chinese politics. He talks a lot about national rejuvenation. And will he be satisfied with his legacy as it stands? What will he look like in five, ten years? I mean, he my guess, and I don't know, but my guess is he'll stay in power until he dies, or at least he will try. That tends to be what we would see in this type of situation. And so aging paranoid dictators uh are not a good thing. And so I that would be one situation I'd be I get worried about looking longer term, five, ten years, um, what does Xi Jinping look like at the end of his road? Um, but he all signs suggest this is a person that operates. He's very bold domestically, but um he's not irrational. I wouldn't say he's he's Putin. Uh I think he's not quite as militaristic or aggressive. And the Chinese population thinks about Taiwan differently. When you talk to Chinese people, they'll often say the Taiwanese are family. They they think differently about Taiwan than they say like the Japanese or something who they view as uh often with enmity. I think with Taiwan, it's the hope is peaceful reunification. That's what Xi Jinping would really like to engineer. And he might be able to do that, right? If if if the Taiwanese public opinion continues to shift. So we'll see.

unknown 45:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 45:47

Um, as far as aging paranoid dictators, we have our own, but he's not rational.

SPEAKER_00 45:53

Yeah, good God. I mean it's it's hard to I I there are days when I think, how can this last for four years? And I think for I and I think for J.D. Vance, there's a I I'm not inside the man's mind, but he clearly wants to be president every day that goes by. Trump does something irrational or embarrassing. He's falling asleep in meetings, he's just openly corrupt. And so will there be a move in the MAGA coalition to kind of oust Trump in some way, and I'm not saying violently, I'm saying kind of politically through constitutional channels. I'm not sure. But I think that's the other thing I've been thinking about lately is like we often say this is the Trump movement. But in a way, Trump is an expression of a lot of different interests, whether it's Christian nationalist interests, it's the tech right business interests. And he's kind of an unreliable puppet. And his only usefulness is that he's got, you know, a third of the country uh enraptured.

SPEAKER_01 46:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 46:50

Yeah. And so if that starts to deteriorate, maybe there there will be an effort to kind of push him aside and get someone like Vance in power earlier in order to um kind of solidify him as the successor. I don't quite know, but it it is uh, God, it's hard to imagine this going on for another two and a half years. And it it may well. And I I think what my hope is that you know there's uh democratic wins in the fall, and then we see kind of the worst impulses of the Trump administration start to fall away, and it just winds up becoming the Trump enrichment fest. And we can scrape his name off buildings, you know, and we can we can prosecute people for corruption eventually. But I like that's that's the kind of in some ones the best case scenario at this point is and uh in our field we talk about what's called tinpot dictatorships. Tin pot. Tin pot is like a is a flimsy pot. It's made out of tin. And the idea with a tin pot dictatorship is there are leaders whose sole focus is enriching themselves and corruption versus kind of leaders with military ambitions or kind of more totalitarian social ambitions. Trump doesn't really care what American society looks like. Like he doesn't want to re-he doesn't really want to reshape it that much. People around him might. So if we kind of just resolve goes back to his like narcissistic, corrupt impulses, like that might be the most palatable thing for us in the next couple of years. We'll see. What do you think, Mark? I mean, you're again, you're in DC, you're closer to those types of conversations.

SPEAKER_01 48:21

I think he implodes sometime after the midterms.

SPEAKER_00 48:24

And what would that look like?

SPEAKER_01 48:26

Oh, I I think he'll he'll ultimately be forced to step aside. I I think that that Congress will finally turn on him in revenge for what he's gonna do to them in the midterms. I think that there will be no reason to be loyal to him anymore because he's a he's a lame duck. And I think the damage that they believe he'll inflict on them in the next two years after the midterms will be so great as to guarantee they'll never be re-elected. And um the losses will pile up, and I think they'll finally step aside. They'll step in and and and probably.

SPEAKER_00 48:55

Well, and by that do you mean Republican defection? Like because that that's kind of what it would take. And you look at other systems like South Korea, had this brush with authoritarianism and Yoon declaring martial law, and you had people from his own party defect. And that's what it takes. We need mass Republican defection, and I I think that's the big question is what does the future of the Republican Party look like? Is it gonna be the kind of Lewis Cheney, uh Lincoln project, uh bulwark kind of faction of the GOP that re-emerges and kind of oust MAGA? I I don't know, but that that's what's been saddening. Honestly, if I was gonna say the thing that's the most sad to me, is like the Republican political elite going along with this because it serves their policy goals. And I know people in the Trump administration, smart people. Um, and I can't even believe they're a part of this. I honestly I'm like, what happened to you that you think this is remotely okay? So that's the big question is defection. And I think what you're alluding to, like we've seen a little bit, right? Every time you fire somebody, Gabbard's out, Bondy's out, um, Gnome's kind of marginalized. Every time you do that, there is a cost, right? Like these people can be whistleblowers, they can, you know, Marjorie Taylor Green is part of the resistance now, right? Who would have predicted that? So I think this defection story is the one. I think you're right. I think it's the one to track. And I'm glad thank you for sharing some optimism about that. I hadn't I didn't have that myself, but I appreciate what you said.

SPEAKER_01 50:18

My thought is that that the Republican Party is in for a very long period of exile. Because there will be infighting that that will last for years.

SPEAKER_00 50:28

Yeah. And the hope is that I mean, in political science, we talk about parties that are loyal to democracy itself. And and in like Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblat, they have this book, How Democracies Die, which is like really important read for people. And do does the party honor the results of elections? Does it uh denounce political violence? Does it do basic things that signal that it's loyal to democracy itself, or is it more authoritarian in nature? And under Trump, the the GOP is tipped. It's it's no longer loyal to democracy, and the whole big lie narrative and Save America Act is just one symptom of that. So that's the big question is will people repent? Will people who went along with Trump face real electoral consequences, societal consequences? And it could be painful. And my hope is that those kind of more moderate voices re-emerge and we can do what we can to elevate them. Any final thoughts? I should say thank you for doing what you're doing. And we we had talked about um making small contributions to democracy however we can. And I've been following you on Substack for a while, and I think you have a nice balance between speaking with the emotion that the a moment needs, but also keeping cool and writing around things analytically. So I just want to say thank you for having me on and for uh for doing what you're doing. I really appreciate it.

SPEAKER_01 51:46

It's my pleasure. This has been an incredible conversation. I hope people listen in. I know that I just found it incredibly educational and enjoyable, and um we'll um hopefully do it again soon.

SPEAKER_00 51:58

Yeah, anytime, Mark.