Susan Glasser: Trump 2024 Is Scarier than Trump 2020

[0] Welcome to the Bull Work podcast.

[1] I'm Charlie Sykes.

[2] It is Monday.

[3] What a deranged news cycle this weekend as we are waiting to find out whether or not the former president of the United States becomes the first former president of the United States to be indicted, arrested.

[4] We have no idea.

[5] What we do know is that Donald Trump is playing the same card that he played before January 6th and Kevin McCarthy is all in.

[6] So take a deep breath here.

[7] Joining us, Susan Glasser, Stafford, writer at The New Yorker, and her latest book is, it seems so timely once again, is The Divider, which you co -wrote with her husband, Peter Baker.

[8] Susan, welcome back on the podcast.

[9] Oh, thanks so much.

[10] It's really terrific to be with you.

[11] We need to start with the most important news.

[12] Congratulations to your son, Theo Baker, student at Stanford, who won a Polk Award for writing he did for the Stanford Daily.

[13] Wow, good gene pool.

[14] No, no, no. Are you kidding?

[15] It's Autumn dramatically made me the third best journalist in my family.

[16] That is just fantastic.

[17] It is interesting.

[18] Your son wrote a piece for the Stanford Daily uncovering allegations that some research papers co -written by the university's president contained manipulated images, and he is the youngest recipient ever of a Polk Award.

[19] So that must be the highlight of the year, yet your household, I'm guessing.

[20] Oh, absolutely.

[21] We couldn't be prouder of Theo, who always said he didn't want to be a journalist.

[22] So we'll see.

[23] maybe he'll just, you know, his career will come and go at the top in college.

[24] But it's amazing to see it.

[25] Peter and I have just watched in awe, having nothing to do with it, but just being incredibly proud.

[26] Okay, so we started on a high note because of where we're going now.

[27] You wrote 10 days ago, the 2024 Trump is scarier than 2020 Trump.

[28] And boy, you wake up this morning after a weekend of Trumpian rams.

[29] and threats and calling on his supporters to protest, tweets aimed at the New York Police Department, essentially encouraging them not to protect the prosecutors.

[30] So let's talk about this.

[31] You wrote, the simple truth is that 2024 is all about Donald Trump.

[32] And there's been a lot of wishcasting that he was sinking or that he was losing or he was going to be replaced.

[33] And right now, it does feel as if it is all about Donald Trump.

[34] And he is scarier than 2020 Trump.

[35] Yeah, I mean, look, the capacity for, you know, sort of hope over experience is one of the big themes, I would say, of the Trump era.

[36] And we're still for better or often for worse living in the Trump era.

[37] And he hangs as a long, long shadow over our politics because the Republican Party can't renounce its addiction to this man, it seems to me. And, you know, ever since the 22 midterm elections, I've been struck by people's capacity to just project onto a set of facts that didn't support it, the idea that Donald Trump was over.

[38] And in my view, he has remained the frontrunner for the Republican nomination.

[39] It's not a guarantee.

[40] It's not a slam dunk.

[41] And, you know, he is playing from the same playbook, but without many of the constraints that his inexperienced and, you know, he.

[42] ignorance when he first entered politics, at least put around him.

[43] This is Trump without the guardrails.

[44] So what did we see this weekend?

[45] I mean, one of the big questions was, would the Republican Party rally around Donald Trump if he was criminally indicted?

[46] And there was no question that he got the reaction from his base that he wanted.

[47] So let's just talk about what we've seen happen over the last 48 hours, how aggressive Trump has been and how there's been, as far as I can tell, no pushback, no pushback really from his fellow Republican.

[48] Yeah, I mean, even people who are not supportive of Trump have either been supportive of the idea that somehow this represents vast overreach on the part of the New York state prosecutors have not exactly come out and suggested that maybe the Republican Party doesn't want to have a president who might be under one criminal indictment and possibly featuring additional charges as well from other prosecutors in other jurisdictions.

[49] And, you know, that's, again, something that at this point, you know, this isn't our first Trump news cycle again and again and again, we've seen this playbook run itself out.

[50] And Trump by now has mastered it.

[51] He forces Republicans to choose side.

[52] And they continue to be fearful or whatever of his hold over the base.

[53] And so they choose him.

[54] They choose him, even the ones who are nominally against him or talking about running against him.

[55] I mean, it just we should step back and stay.

[56] Of course.

[57] course, it's still shocking that before we've even seen the charges, Republicans are so quick to condemn them.

[58] Did they really want somebody who is alleged to be a payer of hush many to a porn star actress to be the party standard bear?

[59] Once again, it's kind of mind -blowing.

[60] Well, I mean, the counterfactual is they could have simply said, well, you know, let's wait and see what the jury does.

[61] Let's see what the charges are.

[62] Or let's wait to let the criminal justice system run its course.

[63] We should trust the criminal justice system.

[64] Instead, they're really all in.

[65] And of course, the MAGA folks have unleashed the flying monkeys on Ron DeSantis, saying, you know, you need to come out and also defend Trump and denounce the prosecutor.

[66] What do you think DeSantis is going to do?

[67] This is a trick question, actually, I think.

[68] Well, interestingly, this may pose a tougher challenge for him than Ukraine, where he basically, I guess, looked at the numbers or looked at his own soul or whatever he did and decided to go with Trump.

[69] on the war in Ukraine last week, which is a very interesting moment in the sort of brewing 2024 presidential nomination.

[70] This one, I think, is harder because it seems to me that Ronda Sanchez's campaign looks like it's going to be premised on, I'm Donald Trump without the court dates.

[71] I'm Donald Trump without the legal problems.

[72] And so for him to embrace Trump's grievance over those legal problems might strike a little bit more of a problem for somebody who's carving out an identity as the unsullied Trump, if you will.

[73] Well, based on past experience, I just assume he's going to cave because the one thing that we've seen from Ronda Sanders is that he does not want any daylight between himself and Donald Trump.

[74] He doesn't want to be accused of being establishment or being a rhino.

[75] So we'll see.

[76] What do you make of Kevin McCarthy, who came out immediately, and pledged to have congressional investigations against the prosecutor?

[77] I mean, not simply rhetorically saying that he thought it was.

[78] a political prosecution, but actually threatening retribution against the state prosecutor.

[79] That seems like kind of a new thing.

[80] Kevin McCarthy made his deal, Charlie, in the first week of January, when he couldn't become speaker in any other way, he has been bought lock, stock, and barrel by the Freedom Caucus and Trump's most outspoken defenders on Capitol Hill.

[81] If Jim Jordan wants it, then Kevin McCarthy is going to do it.

[82] and Jim Jordan wants it.

[83] And the bottom line is that it can't surprise anybody at this point that McCarthy is completely already made his choice and is simply following through there.

[84] He wants his job as speaker more than he wants to look independently at any of these issues.

[85] Well, I think you know that I agree with you about this, but let's talk about, you know, your argument that, you know, 2024 Trump is scarier than 2020 Trump and that we need to pay attention to what he is saying and doing because I think there's been kind of this.

[86] tendency to like, okay, he's down there.

[87] Let's kind of laugh him off.

[88] Let's not really parse everything he's saying.

[89] Let's not amplify it.

[90] But what he's doing is a doomsday laden frontal attack on American democracy far darker and more threatening to the constitutional order than even his previous two bids.

[91] Talk to me about this.

[92] Why is this even more threatening than what he's done in the past, which was pretty bad?

[93] Well, there's a number of different ways to unpack that, Charlie.

[94] It seems to me, first of all, that it's important to reckon with the fact that Trump, having already been president over the course of four years, and that's something obviously Peter and I documented in our book, he's probed already the weak points in institutions and individuals.

[95] He understands much better than he did when he came very unexpectedly into office after the 2016 election.

[96] He understands the vulnerabilities.

[97] He's aware.

[98] He's aware.

[99] of the need to have a kind of yesman amplifying staff around him, not officials who would perceive themselves as acting as guardrails against him in any way.

[100] So that's number one is a different group of people around him.

[101] Number two, he survived not one but two.

[102] Impeachments and the Republican Party refused to forswear him after either of those.

[103] He took the party over the cliff of January 6th and seeking to overturn a lawful election.

[104] They still followed him.

[105] And so, he would really be coming back to power without any of the even perceived institutional constraints that hampered him before.

[106] And of course, now he faces the potential of being indicted and possibly beating that rap as well if he were actually to win the presidency again.

[107] So I think it's very important to understand that number one.

[108] Number two, many of the kind of people who held their nose types and surrounded him have disappeared since he left the White House.

[109] They might not be condemning him roundly, but they aren't necessarily in his orbit at Marilago anymore.

[110] And so what you've seen is a Trump who maybe in the past, he flirted with white supremacists, he flirted with Q &N in 2020.

[111] Now he openly embraces those types in a way that has made his rhetoric much more doomsday -laden, much more apocalyptic, much more openly confrontational.

[112] If in the past he was, you know, typing out his tweets and truth, socials with, you know, all capital words every 10th word.

[113] Now, it's every word is all caps shouting at America.

[114] Well, I do think it's also important to realize what he's been doing over the last several years, and we're seeing the fruits of this, you know, delegitimizing the justice system, celebrating, embracing, and promising pardons to the rioters on January 6th.

[115] I mean, this process of revisionist history is not about history.

[116] It is about changing what is acceptable norm.

[117] So, I mean, this whole, you know, January 6th, we're peaceful of, you know, patriotic American protesters who were just outraged at a stolen election.

[118] That narrative now suddenly becomes very relevant to what he's talking about possibly doing in the future and what is considered to be normal.

[119] I mean, I don't think that this week is going to tell us what happens because, you know, it's not going to happen in New York, but if you have indictments in Georgia and the Department of Justice, this will build over the summer.

[120] I mean, this is a long -term process.

[121] And I just have to be.

[122] to ask you, because I go back and forth on the Merrick Garland question, but it really feels like we are feeling the consequences in a very real way of the failure and or delay of holding him accountable for what he did on January 6th, the fact that it has been more than two years, that none of the architects have been charged or convicted, that he was able to announce his candidacy before anything came down.

[123] It feels as if much of this is a consequence of our failure to hold him accountable in real time.

[124] What do you think?

[125] Well, I would note in that vein that it's actually already been longer, as of today, from January 6th, than the entirety of the Watergate scandal from it occurring to the investigations to Nixon being forced out of office.

[126] And that gives you a sense of just how long the process has gone on.

[127] And I do think that this kind of dismay and outrage that Trump has always managed to escape accountability again and again again.

[128] It's one of the things, certainly, that has fueled democratic opposition to him.

[129] But I also think it is corrosive to the system.

[130] It is part of the general dismay at the failure of American institutions, which is now something that left as well as right, I think, increasingly feels and drives our politics in some way.

[131] And, you know, if Trump is indeed indicted, as he said he was going to be by the New York authorities this week, you know, it still is going to fall short of this kind of fantasy of the transformative accountability moment.

[132] You know, Trump is just sort of hauled away in handcuffs and an orange jumpsuit.

[133] You know, obviously, A, it's not going to play out like that, but be given the gravity of the allegations that are being investigated about Trump at the federal level, the idea that he potentially should be held responsible.

[134] for instigating an insurrection against the country's own Congress to remain in power to then have him indicted on, you know, this sort of $130 ,000 hush money payment to a former porn star actress that was covered up before the 2016 election.

[135] You know, that just, that's inevitably going to produce not the accountability moment that people have been dreaming on.

[136] It's unfortunate that this is the first case.

[137] I'm not saying that they shouldn't bring the case, but I think it feels as if This is the case that is the easiest for Trump and his allies to frame as this is just not important.

[138] You have higher priorities.

[139] This is political.

[140] You know, especially given the magnitude of these other cases, the mean that the payoff to the porn star, the changing of the business records, which in itself is a misdemeanor, just pales in comparison to these other possible charges that are hanging out there in Georgia in the Department of Justice.

[141] So I think it's unfortunate this is the first one.

[142] Well, I think the other thing to keep in mind is that there are even many critics.

[143] of Trump attorneys who are concerned that it's just not that strong of a legal case.

[144] Now, again, we haven't actually seen the indictment.

[145] I'm personally very curious to see whether Alvin Bragg has come up with new evidence.

[146] Because remember that this was actually already investigated before.

[147] And it wasn't taken through to a case by federal prosecutors.

[148] And so one of the interesting questions is why was it resurrected now at the state level?

[149] We don't know the answer to that.

[150] The underlying offense, as far as we understand it, is a federal offense.

[151] It is a federal election, after all, that Trump was a candidate in which he withheld this information.

[152] And so is there a rationale that proves compelling to people for why this case now and what information the DA may have that wasn't previously in the possession of prosecutors?

[153] That's something that perhaps will be answered this week.

[154] Listening to the new Donald Trump, you wrote that his speech is CPAC.

[155] should have been front page news.

[156] This is the speech where he vowed that, you know, I am your retribution.

[157] I am your justice.

[158] What did you hear in that speech?

[159] Why did you think that should be a front page story?

[160] Think about it this way.

[161] I mean, now he will organize his campaign around grievance and I'm a victim and they're persecuting me. But, you know, what are the two kind of signal moments of Trump's 2024 campaign so far up to this moment?

[162] I would say that it was when he vowed to even terminate the Constitution.

[163] That was the word he used.

[164] Terminate the Constitution, if that was what was required to return him to power.

[165] He did that just a few weeks after announcing his campaign in 2024.

[166] And then retribution.

[167] So termination and retribution, openly stating in that CPAC speech, essentially that he wanted to go to war against the institutions of American justice and American government on his own behalf, should he return to power?

[168] Yes, I think you should take that seriously because it's not the kind of thing that we've ever had an American would be president, certainly not somebody who was the frontrunner for his party's nomination, saying, as his platform.

[169] And termination and retribution suggests a very different Trump than even the Trump of 2015 and 2016.

[170] And it's very apocalyptic in his rhetoric.

[171] If we don't do this, our country will be lost forever.

[172] He was also describing the January 6th defendants and rioters as great, great patriots.

[173] This is the final battle.

[174] They know it.

[175] I know it.

[176] You know it.

[177] Everybody knows it.

[178] This is it.

[179] Either they win or we win.

[180] And if they win, we no longer have a country.

[181] I mean, that is very, very stark, you know.

[182] And then, of course, he gives the address where he talks about, you know, obliterating the deep state.

[183] He did the video last week where he's saying that, you know, Our real enemy is not Russia or Vladimir Putin.

[184] A real enemy are the Americans in the deep state that he would completely restructure, fire people in the Department of Defense, the intelligence agencies, theoretically also the Department of Justice.

[185] You know, your book was titled The Divider.

[186] I mean, that was so starkly on display that here is somebody who is running for president, pitting Americans against one another and saying, our enemies are not abroad.

[187] Our enemies are other Americans who hate you and who want.

[188] we must destroy.

[189] Well, you know, having spent a fair amount of time in Russia and across the former Soviet Union, of course, that is the language of purges.

[190] That is the language of Bolshevism.

[191] It is in us against them mentality.

[192] Some of that sort of apocalyptic, this is the final battle, explicitly recalls a cleansing fervor, the idea that there is no choice but to fight.

[193] It does seem to be, an explicit call for violence, which is really striking, given what Trump is under investigation for in the aftermath of the 2020 election on January 6th, it's almost as if he's daring the federal prosecutors come and get me, come and get me. Otherwise, we're going to double down on this.

[194] It's a chilling reality.

[195] I understand why many people want to turn away from it.

[196] Trump is out of office.

[197] They can tell themselves that actually the system worked that he was defeated lawfully and clearly in an election in 2020, Joe Biden is the president.

[198] They can say that, you know, there have been trials of hundreds of people who took part in the violence of January 6th.

[199] And, you know, they can say that it's giving oxygen to someone like Trump to, you know, amplify his outrageous and absurd claims.

[200] And there's merit to all of those arguments.

[201] But this is also a story that we've seen before.

[202] And this in many ways was, was why people did not take Trump seriously enough as he was gaining steam in the Republican primers in 2015 and 2016.

[203] And that actually helped to enable him to win that primary election.

[204] And unfortunately, they've internalized the lesson that you should not necessarily go at Donald Trump.

[205] So explain Mike Pence to me. I just need some Pence whispering here because here you have the former vice president who gave a speech to the gridiron dinner, which was neither recorded or televised, where he had some pretty harsh words about Donald Trump's behavior during the insurrection on January 6th where, you know, his life was threatened, his family's life was threatened.

[206] And there were people who went well, like, you know, at least he's now speaking out.

[207] He's being more aggressive.

[208] He's amplifying this.

[209] And yet yesterday, he sits down with Jonathan Carl and refuses to really push hard on Donald Trump, going along with the line that this is a politicized, a political unfair prosecution by the far left.

[210] And then there was this very interesting Exchange, Jonathan Carl from ABC plays a tape for Mike Pence.

[211] And I just want to play the back and forth.

[212] And then, Susan, if you could help me understand the mentality of Mike Pence under these circumstances, let's play this.

[213] Jonathan Carl.

[214] I want to play you something.

[215] Donald Trump said to me when I asked him if he was concerned about your safety on that day.

[216] Were you worried about him during that siege?

[217] Were you worried about his safety?

[218] No, I thought he was well protected.

[219] And I had heard that he was in good shape.

[220] No, because I had heard it was in very good shape.

[221] But, but, no, I think...

[222] You heard those chants.

[223] That was terrible.

[224] I mean, it was, you know, the...

[225] He could have...

[226] Well, the people were very angry.

[227] You're saying hang my...

[228] Because it's, it's common sense, John.

[229] It's common sense.

[230] That you're supposed to protect.

[231] How can you...

[232] If you know a vote is fraudulent, right?

[233] Yeah.

[234] How can you pass on a fraudulent vote to Congress?

[235] I mean, he's...

[236] effectively justifying or excusing the actions of people who were calling for you to be hanged.

[237] There was no excuse for the violets that took place at the Capitol on January 6th, and I'll never diminish it as long as I live.

[238] But the button.

[239] But, look, the president's wrong.

[240] He was wrong that day, and I had actually hoped that he would come around in time, John.

[241] that he would see that the cadre of legal advisors that he surrounded himself with had led him astray.

[242] But he hasn't done so.

[243] And I think it's one of the reasons why the country just wants a fresh start.

[244] Does saying, justifying those murderous chance, does that effectively disqualify him from being commander -in -chief again?

[245] I think that's a judgment for the American people to make.

[246] What's your judgment about him?

[247] And I'm confident they'll make it.

[248] Well, look, I would be honest with you.

[249] I was angry that day.

[250] And, well, I believe in forgiveness.

[251] I've been working hard at that for a while.

[252] The president let me down that day.

[253] Let us down.

[254] You let the country down that day.

[255] But thanks to the courage of law enforcement, the riot was quelled.

[256] We reconvene the Congress the very same day, and a day of tragedy became a triumph of freedom.

[257] And I'll always be proud of our small part in that.

[258] But to be honest with you, the emotions of that day, the emotion since, I just haven't had time for it.

[259] To me, there's just too many issues that we're facing this country today under the failed policies of this administration that I don't have a lot of time for looking backwards.

[260] Could you ever support them again for president?

[261] I think that's yet to be seen, John.

[262] I get to be seen, Susan.

[263] I'm a little bit bad at you.

[264] That is painful to listen to in its full ambivalent glory.

[265] First of all, one tell after a career in Washington is when somebody says, I'm going to be honest with you.

[266] Whatever comes next in the sentence is probably not their most honest observation.

[267] It's painful to watch people, grown men abase themselves.

[268] in this way in front of Donald Trump, as they have done again and again again.

[269] Of course, Mike Pence made a career of that over four years as Trump's vice president, accepting things that he would not have accepted from any other politician having, you know, preached a kind of sanctimonious public morality to the American people.

[270] He excused it again and again and again.

[271] And Donald Trump and continues to do so.

[272] And why he thinks this is a savvy strategy to be neither hot nor cold, neither fish nor foul, why he thinks this is going to work for him, I just don't know.

[273] So am I right that you are skeptical about Ron DeSantis' ability to be the Trump slayer?

[274] Because he, of course, is the great non -Trump hope for many of the magical thinkers in the Republican Party these days.

[275] You know, I'm interested to see how this plays out.

[276] It does appear that DeSantis is moving toward running against Trump.

[277] He seems to have made a very interesting and clear choice to run as Trump without the legal troubles, as a young Trump.

[278] 44 years old, without burdened by possibly being hauled off to jail.

[279] And maybe that's appealing to people to have exactly the same positions as Donald Trump and sort of the culture war without the problems of the first warrior.

[280] But he also, of course, is without some of the advantages that Trump has in terms of his hold over the electorate in terms of his charisma and, you know, carnival.

[281] People are not afraid to criticize him.

[282] I mean, we saw last week.

[283] His carnival barker essence is not something that Ron DeSantis has.

[284] You know, he's an untested commodity at the national level.

[285] And I think we're going to see how that plays.

[286] It's a heady and short run for Ron DeSantis from being a basically an obscure back venture in Congress.

[287] And I have to say, there's a certain merit to this one complaint that Donald Trump has, which is, I made this guy.

[288] It's not untrue.

[289] And in 2018, he was nothing, you know, without me and losing a gubernatorial primary until he decided to go all in on being the Trumpiest of Trump Republicans in that Florida gubernatorial primary.

[290] And, you know, when Trump complains about that, you've got to say there is a little bit of merit to that, isn't there?

[291] Yeah, exactly.

[292] So this is also the anniversary of the beginning of the war in Iraq.

[293] And you had a very interesting column recently that you're getting this strong sense that we still have this big hangover from the George W. Bush era.

[294] I mean, this is the anniversary of the decision to invade Iraq, and we're getting all kinds of echoes of the banking crisis.

[295] So looking back on that, how should America think about that long and tragic and ultimately futile in the eyes of many conflict?

[296] Well, that's right.

[297] And let's start out, first of all, by saying what a tragedy it was for the Iraqi people, first and foremost, who lost hundreds of thousands of dead, millions of lives disrupted.

[298] Saddam Hussein was a terrible tyrant, and I saw that firsthand.

[299] I was a foreign correspondent for the Washington Post at that time.

[300] I entered Iraq on the first day of the war unilaterally with a bunch of fellow journalists.

[301] We literally took our rental cars from the Kuwait City Airport.

[302] You're not supposed to do that, by the way.

[303] I took our rental cars from the Kuwait City Airport and drove over the sand into Iraq.

[304] And we saw firsthand that the parades and the flowers were not there.

[305] And yet also the brutality of Saddam Hussein's regime met people who were tortured, spoke with doctors in Basra, who literally had to slice the ears off deserters at the orders of Saddam Hussein's regime.

[306] So, you know, stipulating that this was a horrible place, almost like Stalinism in the desert, it was also a great political tragedy for the United States.

[307] I think very comparable in that sense to Vietnam in terms of its lasting and enduring legacy on our own political system.

[308] We came to export democracy to the Middle East, but here we are two decades later, and it's an inward -looking time of worries about our own democracy here in the United States.

[309] I think that it has certainly cast a long shadow over foreign policy debates, over our presidential elections.

[310] Arguably, both Barack Obama and Donald Trump would not have been president without the backlash to George W. Bush's decision to invade Iraq.

[311] Now, this is fascinating when you think about all of the political fallout from that.

[312] And as you point out, it's really remarkable the transformation of Bush's own party in the two decades since that.

[313] I mean, two decades ago, Republicans embraced what you called a brash militarism that ought to topple Saddam and transform Iraq and the broader Middle East.

[314] But of course, you know, Iraq was transformed for hundreds of thousands of people who were killed.

[315] But you think about what's happened now to the Republican Party and how far it's come from that.

[316] And you're right.

[317] It's hard to imagine the Republican Party's present state right now without, you know, the twin Bush shocks of the 2008 government bail out of Wall Street and the overreach of the invasion of Iraq.

[318] I mean, both those things now have completely shaped and transformed his own party.

[319] Well, that's right.

[320] And of course, you see a strong echo of this among the Republican primary candidates over support for the war in Ukraine.

[321] Increasingly, you have people like Ron DeSantis joining with Donald Trump in what can only be called a pro -putin wing of the Republican Party, which absolutely would have astonished anyone who was covering the foreign policy debates of the George W. Bush years.

[322] You know, you have Ron DeSantis claiming that Russia's war of aggression against Ukraine, literally a war of annihilation against the neighboring state was a quote -unquote territorial dispute.

[323] This from a man who, as recently as 2015, before Donald Trump came into the picture, Ron DeSantis was out there criticizing Barack Obama for not doing enough to support the Ukrainian people in their conflict with Russia.

[324] So, you know, that's a pretty radical shift in thinking that represents the view that the Republican electorate has just abandoned its previous views around internationalism, around American leadership in the world, around Russia itself.

[325] You know, it used to be that you understood that Republicans were the kind of tough on Russia party.

[326] But that's not the case anymore.

[327] And you have many polls after a year of conflict in Ukraine suggesting that there is a very pronounced gap between the two parties on the issue of the United States support for the Ukrainians and that it is Republicans who are more quickly souring on that enormous commitment of military assistance and financial resources to Ukraine than Democrats.

[328] Perhaps it reflects just another example of the extreme polarization of our politics that we're living through.

[329] Well, and then we spent decades, you know, talking about the Vietnam syndrome and the hangover from Vietnam.

[330] But I think you make a great point about the hangover from Iraq, you know, shattering American confidence, you know, making the whole idea of promoting democracy suspect, distracting us from China and Russia.

[331] And obviously, as you just said, you know, breaking the Republican commitment to a robust foreign policy.

[332] Interestingly enough, George W. Bush has never, he still thinks that invading Iraq was the right call, even after everything we know.

[333] Bush has avoided speaking out publicly, particularly in recent years with Trump.

[334] He does not support Trump.

[335] He voted against him.

[336] But he's been very wary of kind of sticking his head out and having Trump go after him publicly, which he surely would do.

[337] Trump really is a Bush basher of longstanding, of course, ran against Jeb Bush in 2016.

[338] But really, he was running against Jeb Bush's brother, George W. Bush, as much as against Jeb Bush and attacking the Iraq war, notwithstanding his initial comments years ago in favor of it.

[339] And, you know, just basically using the Bushes as a foil for the kind of Republican Party, Trump wanted to have.

[340] And so George W. Bush is really, you know, he's gone into his retirement in Texas.

[341] He's painting pictures of wildflowers and birds and, you know, generally sticking out of politics.

[342] but I was told he was here in Washington just a few weeks ago at a reception sponsored by the Business Roundtable, and a bunch of his foreign policy advisors from the end of the Bush administration had just published a book called Handoff of their transition memos to the Obama team.

[343] Arguably, this was kind of the last good transition that we've had between administrations, because of course, then there was Trump.

[344] Bush came to this party, and he was asked about Iraq, and then these off -the -record comments, I was told he was actually very unrepresentation.

[345] That was the word used by the former Bush official who told me about it, who was kind of stunned, actually, at how adamant Bush was, you know, this was the right decision then, and it's the right decision now.

[346] That's what he said.

[347] There are very few people, even in his own administration, who still think that.

[348] And you mentioned David Frum, who was a speechwriter at the time, you know, is now calling it a grave and costly error.

[349] And I tend to agree with all of that.

[350] So now we have this debate within the Republican Party, as you point out, you know, between Trump and DeSantis, they have 88 % of the primary voter support and they're both saying they're not supportive of Ukraine.

[351] The actual opinion of base voters is a little bit more divided.

[352] You still have people like Mike Pence and Nikki Haley and Mike Pompeo and others who are supportive of more robust foreign policy.

[353] So how do you see this playing out?

[354] Is the Republican Party now gone?

[355] Will it be isolationist for the next decade?

[356] Or do you think there's a possibility that we might have a return to a more internationalist foreign policy?

[357] What do you think?

[358] Where is this going?

[359] Well, first of all, no accounting for flip -flops.

[360] Ronda Stance has already flip -flop once on Ukraine.

[361] So he could certainly flip -flop again if he emerges as the Republican nominee or as the president.

[362] I definitely wouldn't rule that out.

[363] I think this is an example.

[364] of how our politics is pushing the extremes on a country that isn't quite as extreme as this outcomes keeps suggesting that it is.

[365] And, you know, that 80 % of the electorate is supporting right now in the Republican primary Trump or DeSantis, according to recent polls.

[366] But 80 % of the Republican electorate is not against American support for the war in Ukraine.

[367] And so that might be a classic example, actually, of where an extreme position is adopted by a party, even though it's electorate, is not necessarily sold entirely on it.

[368] You have minorities within the parties who are able to dominate and lead the parties in extreme directions.

[369] And I think that's one of my great fears writ large for the country.

[370] Susan Glasser is a staff writer at The New Yorker.

[371] Her latest book is The Divider, which he co -wrote with her husband, Peter Baker.

[372] Susan, thank you so much for coming back on the bulwark podcast.

[373] Well, it's a pleasure to believe with you.

[374] Thank you, Charlie.

[375] And thank you all for listening to Today's Bullwark Podcast.

[376] I'm Charlie Sykes.

[377] We will be back tomorrow and we'll do this all over again.

[378] The Bullwark podcast is produced by Katie Cooper and engineered and edited by Jason Brown.