Greg Sargent: This is The Daily Blast from The New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR Network. I’m your host, Greg Sargent.
David Lurie: Thanks for having me, Greg.
Lurie: Well, Greg, on the one hand, the piece was quite gentle to Trump because it avoided the elephant in the room, which is his very evident and advancing state of dementia. But it also was devastating for the reasons that you observed, because his sheer and pervasive state of exhaustion and his ever more inescapable showing of his age is exactly what Trump cannot abide. It’s devastating precisely because it was so factual. The video was perhaps the most devastating part of it, as was the very accurate description of the truly bizarre—I think historically bizarre—moment when a pharmaceutical executive collapsed next to Trump and he—in a state of bewilderment mixed with the apparent desire to remain the center of attention—stood up from his chair and then stared into the void. So it’s a devastating piece, and it’s devastating because of its factuality in my view.
Lurie: Well, on the one hand, it’s his greatest hits. But on the other hand, people are not imagining that Trump is becoming more out of control, that he’s becoming more misogynistic, that he lacks impulse control which causes his natural meanness and bullying tendencies to come out.
Lurie: When the character image is punctured in any way, there’s a risk the whole balloon is going to lose its air. It’s the reason that the Fox News personalities recognize they have to engage in these obsequious and absurd, embarrassing demonstrations of praise, because otherwise the image is vulnerable. It’s ever more vulnerable. And when it goes, there’s really nothing left—nothing left at all.
Lurie: Well, first of all, I think we’re past the point of having a strain of authoritarianism. It doesn’t mean that we are Putin’s Russia. In fact, it’s because we’re not that we’re seeing the kind of displays that you pointed to. It’s because Trump—and his acolytes and, in the case of Fox News, the businesses that depend on the media-slash-political industry that he is the center of—all depend on Trump appearing to be like Vladimir Putin. Vladimir Putin—his regime depends on him appearing to be something he’s not. Well, Trump, it’s even more the case, right? Here we are in—Trump is, and his people are, trying to append a dictatorship to the United States. And yes, it appeared for some time that they were going to succeed. I mean, Trump has been functioning as a dictator in many respects, but the problem is, of course, that it’s a vulnerable dictatorship. Virtually none of these abuses are popular with the American people. And unlike in Russia, where you can—the dictator can—actually kill a million Russians or send a million Russians into their death at a pointless war, in the United States, presidents, even those who aspire like Trump to be a dictator, do things that are wildly unpopular—their political impact. And it’s coming home to roost for Trump, in my opinion.
Lurie: When the image of strength is the linchpin of a leader’s political success, and then all it takes is a puncturing of the image for the success to start to dissipate. And then all of the tools that have been used in the past to promote Trump’s image—some of which you were just referring to, right? The praising of him in the weird Cabinet meetings, they actually end up weakening him. And that, I believe, is the dynamic.
Lurie: It’s now becoming clear that actually having communities organized, through churches and other community organizations, is really, really impairing the invasions on a local level. When they went into North Carolina, particularly through the Catholic Church, communities were immediately organized as soon as they got there. And what had taken a number of weeks to start to organize in Los Angeles, in a shorter period of time to organize in Chicago, took a much—even that much—shorter time to organize in North Carolina, which I believe must have surprised Bovino and Trump. I think they thought they were going into an easy target. At the same time, it’s a much longer conversation, but I think that we’re seeing that his weakness in Washington is developing in a multiplicity of ways. It’s not just the “crack-up of MAGA.” And it’s not just the effectiveness of the ACA strategy that the Democrats implemented. It’s that when the resistance is effectuated and when it’s shown to have a base of popularity, the things that it starts to bring to the fore—that Trump’s not a populist leader—politicians start—including Republicans start—to get worried that if they go along with it, they’re going to pay a price, which is not something they for whatever reason recognized months ago. It was the perceived power of Trump that has been the key to the “success” that he’s realized to this point. And it is the diminishment of that appearance of power that is actually the key to the diminishment of his actual power. I think that’s really what we’re getting at.
Lurie: My pleasure.
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