Speaker 1: I'm Daniel James, and you're listening to seven ams. In
Speaker 1: just one year, Donald Trump has transformed America's government and
Speaker 1: its institutions. His actions and agenda reflect the far more
Speaker 1: involved in president in his second term, and the guardrails
Speaker 1: designed to keep a president in check from the courts
Speaker 1: to Congress are buckling. Trump's success and reshaping the system
Speaker 1: raises deeper questions about exactly what kind of country the
Speaker 1: United States will become. Today. Director of the Australian Institutes
Speaker 1: International and Security Affairs Program, Doctor Emma shortis on how
Speaker 1: Trump is remaking American politics and whether there is any
Speaker 1: way back from here. It's Friday, January second. We're almost
Speaker 1: a year into Donald Trump's second term. When you look
Speaker 1: at the United States, now, what strikes you most about
Speaker 1: how he's actually governing?
Speaker 2: I think the most striking thing, Daniel, is that Trump
Speaker 2: is doing exactly what he said he would do. You know,
Speaker 2: he in Project twenty twenty five gave us all the plans,
Speaker 2: They wrote it all down.
Speaker 3: And set it out loud, and now they're doing it,
Speaker 3: you know.
Speaker 2: And I think the best description of how they're doing
Speaker 2: it is to move fast and break things.
Speaker 1: Since he's swearing in, Trump has been pursuing plans laid
Speaker 1: out in Project twenty twenty five to dramatically expand presidential
Speaker 1: power and reduce the size of the federal.
Speaker 3: Trump Administration's been getting mass layoffs of federal workers, impacting
Speaker 3: multiple agency.
Speaker 4: Big tremendous saving. We want to downsize government, but make
Speaker 4: it better.
Speaker 1: And Donald Trump's administration is dismantling the US Agency for
Speaker 1: International Development or USA.
Speaker 4: Administration is stepping up its pushed to break up the
Speaker 4: Department of Education, transferring much of the agency's workload, including
Speaker 4: six offices.
Speaker 3: So I think for me that's the most striking thing.
Speaker 2: But I guess perhaps the most prizing thing about that
Speaker 2: is how quickly that has happened. I think that has
Speaker 2: taken a lot of people, including myself, by surprise. Just
Speaker 2: how I guess easily Trump has been able to implement
Speaker 2: that agenda, and how easily the guardrails have fallen.
Speaker 1: Tell me more about the idea of guardrails giving away.
Speaker 1: Where have you sent examples of the system changing to
Speaker 1: accommodate Trump rather than restraining him.
Speaker 3: We're seeing them fall just across the board.
Speaker 2: The demolition of the White House, or the East wing
Speaker 2: of the White House, I think is a small example
Speaker 2: of how that is happening.
Speaker 4: Nobody's actually seen anything quite like it. I think it'll
Speaker 4: be one of the great borums anywhere in the world.
Speaker 4: It's about three hundred million dollars.
Speaker 2: So the Trump administration has engaged in that demolition against
Speaker 2: all legal, normative, congressional political processes.
Speaker 3: Trust for Historic Preservation has filed a lawsuit to stop
Speaker 3: in Trump's White House ballroom construction. The group says, no president.
Speaker 2: And there's apparently no way to resist that. You know,
Speaker 2: by the time legal proceedings are initiated, it's already been destroyed.
Speaker 3: And again that's a.
Speaker 2: Small but important symbol of how that's happening across the board,
Speaker 2: and how Trump is being aided by a legal system,
Speaker 2: including the Supreme Court, which he effectively owns and which
Speaker 2: continually is helping him to destroy those guardrails by saying
Speaker 2: effectively that he has a king like immunity.
Speaker 1: The US Supreme Court has rule that Donald Trump has
Speaker 1: some immunity from prosecution for official actions taken while he
Speaker 1: was in the White House.
Speaker 2: By basically being on the verge of gutting the Voting
Speaker 2: Rights Act, which it's expected they will do.
Speaker 3: So the broad picture there is pretty grim. Really, Can you.
Speaker 1: Just tell us a little bit more about the Voting
Speaker 1: Rights Act? What is it that he's planning to do there.
Speaker 2: So, this is a case from Louisiana that aims to
Speaker 2: completely gut the parts of the Voting Rights Act that
Speaker 2: ensure that discrimination doesn't occur on the basis of race.
Speaker 2: And this is again has been a long term project
Speaker 2: of the conservative movement, aided and are vetted by Trump,
Speaker 2: and key justices on the Supreme Court are already signaling
Speaker 2: that they are at least amenable to making that decision.
Speaker 2: So for the Voting Rights Act, that will mean that
Speaker 2: that key piece of legislation, civil rights movement legislation will
Speaker 2: be effectively rendered powerless. And I think we have to
Speaker 2: see that alongside the Trump administration's other attacks against voting rights,
Speaker 2: you know, his threat to gut mail in voting as well,
Speaker 2: the redistricting of states like Texas. All of that, again,
Speaker 2: at risk of my repeating myself, paints a pretty grim
Speaker 2: picture for the future of American democracy.
Speaker 1: And let's talk about it immigration, because that's central to
Speaker 1: Donald Trump's agenda. He's promised to deport millions of people.
Speaker 1: What has he actually done. Do we have an idea
Speaker 1: of what sort of numbers we're talking about.
Speaker 2: We do have an idea of numbers, although it is
Speaker 2: difficult to get credible information from the agencies that are
Speaker 2: enforcing these policies. You know, certainly Trump the Trump administration
Speaker 2: hasn't fulfilled its promise to deport ten million people. The
Speaker 2: numbers we have suggest ICE is deporting somewhere between ten
Speaker 2: to fifteen thousand people a month, so not near those numbers.
Speaker 2: But it also has around, as far as we know,
Speaker 2: sixty thousand people in arbitrary detention, and is disappearing people
Speaker 2: and deporting people arbitrarily without recourse to due process. I
Speaker 2: think we can't underestimate the damage that that is inflicting,
Speaker 2: not just on individual lives, but on American society more broadly.
Speaker 1: I mean, with that lack of process, is they're a
Speaker 1: feeling in America that if it can happen to immigrants,
Speaker 1: it can happen to US citizens as well. If there
Speaker 1: is no process, well.
Speaker 3: I mean it is happening to American citizens.
Speaker 2: You know, the agents on the ground who are enforcing
Speaker 2: these policies have already arbitrarily detained American citizens, and I
Speaker 2: think that is reflected or that general sense of fear
Speaker 2: and discussed at what the administration is doing is reflected
Speaker 2: in opinion polling that we have. So a recent Gallup
Speaker 2: poll suggests that somewhere around thirty five percent of Americans
Speaker 2: approve of the Trump administration's immigration policies, so a pretty
Speaker 2: low number, very high net disapproval rating, and we can
Speaker 2: see that in opinion polling, not just in the United States,
Speaker 2: but outside it as well.
Speaker 1: Coming up, what does Donald trump ree making of us
Speaker 1: democracy mean for future elections?
Speaker 4: When you look at the costs of groceries, the costs
Speaker 4: of bacon went up four and five times bacon.
Speaker 1: I don't order bacon anymore. It's still expensive, Emma. There
Speaker 1: is one big promise that Donald Trump hasn't lived on,
Speaker 1: and that's affordability. He was elected on the platform of
Speaker 1: making life cheaper.
Speaker 4: One of my top priorities will be to quickly defeat
Speaker 4: inflation and make America affordable again.
Speaker 3: We will quickly defeat him.
Speaker 1: So do you think that failure is going to hurt
Speaker 1: him as well?
Speaker 3: It's a really difficult question to answer.
Speaker 2: I think because Trump is so extraordinarily good at reframing
Speaker 2: narratives and a redirecting blame. So it's been really interesting
Speaker 2: to see a lot of the coverage of a rally
Speaker 2: that Trump held in Pennsylvania, which was supposed to be,
Speaker 2: or was billed as the affordability Rally where Trump would
Speaker 2: address these concerns and public opinion shifting against him when
Speaker 2: it comes to affordability because exactly as you said, you know,
Speaker 2: he hasn't fulfilled those promises.
Speaker 4: Down rapidly, lower prices, bigger paychecks. You're getting lower prices.
Speaker 2: And you know, Trump did talk a bit about affordability.
Speaker 2: He called it a hoax. He called it all hoax.
Speaker 3: Unsurprisingly, you're coming down very substantially.
Speaker 1: But they have a new word.
Speaker 4: You know, they always have a hoax. The new word
Speaker 4: is affordability.
Speaker 2: And spent most of the time in an appallingly, even
Speaker 2: for Trump, an appallingly racist tirade against as he describes them,
Speaker 2: shit whole country where.
Speaker 4: Prisons are emptied into our country, right where where people
Speaker 4: from all over the world being dumped into our country,
Speaker 4: the people that aren't wanted in their countries. By the way,
Speaker 4: I think that's a great like Somalia, welcome, and.
Speaker 2: A lot of a lot of the coverage of that
Speaker 2: rally describes Trump as you know, being unable to stay
Speaker 2: on message when it comes to affordability or being distracted,
Speaker 2: And I don't think that's necessarily what's going on. I
Speaker 2: think what Trump is doing is what he always does,
Speaker 2: which is redirecting blain to others. And I think that
Speaker 2: was a very effective example of how Trump does that,
Speaker 2: and how so much coverage is still unable to grapple
Speaker 2: with how effectively he does that. So affordability, of course,
Speaker 2: is a huge issue for Americans, and the Trump administration
Speaker 2: is actively making the problem worse through tariffs, through the
Speaker 2: failure or the refusal, I should say, to renew those
Speaker 2: tax credits that made health insurance more affordable for people.
Speaker 2: You know, Americans are looking at enormous increases in their
Speaker 2: monthly health insurance cost on top of the cost of
Speaker 2: living crisis. So Americans are deeply economically insecure. But what
Speaker 2: the political consequences of that are and whether it comes
Speaker 2: back to bite Trump, I think is far from settled.
Speaker 1: Looking ahead, we've got the midterms in November of next year.
Speaker 1: In a normal cycle, with this level of discontent, you'd
Speaker 1: expect the president's party to take a political hit. Is
Speaker 1: that what we're looking at you?
Speaker 3: I don't think so. I mean, you use the word normal.
Speaker 2: This is not normal, and we can't treat it like
Speaker 2: it's normal. You're absolutely right that in a normal political cycle,
Speaker 2: we would expect Republicans to be absolutely wiped out at
Speaker 2: the midterms. You know, we would expect to see a
Speaker 2: blue wave and for Republicans to lose control of the House.
Speaker 2: And now look that may still happen. There was an
Speaker 2: election in Miami where a Democrat won comprehensively for the
Speaker 2: first time in something like thirty years. Miami is now
Speaker 2: run by a Democrat, and that's an indication, I think
Speaker 2: of how things are going nationally. I think we saw
Speaker 2: that in the latest round of elections, where of course
Speaker 2: famously Mamdani was elected as Mayor of New York. But
Speaker 2: having said that, Republicans are reading the writing on the wall,
Speaker 2: and Trump is reading the writing on the wall, and
Speaker 2: they are engaged in very effective efforts to engineer American
Speaker 2: democratic institutions and processes so that they can hold onto power.
Speaker 2: You know, they're gerrymandering in states like Texas, they likely
Speaker 2: will in states like Louisiana. They are not the slightest
Speaker 2: bit interested in giving up power. They want to keep
Speaker 2: the power to decide who is American and who gets
Speaker 2: to have a say in what America is.
Speaker 1: And so do the Democrats have any kind of counter
Speaker 1: strategy that matches the scale of what's happening.
Speaker 3: No, in a word, they don't.
Speaker 2: I mean, there are signs of it, absolutely, you know,
Speaker 2: I mentioned New York earlier, I mentioned Miami Democrats one
Speaker 2: comprehensively in a series of elections not that long ago.
Speaker 2: But there is not a broader strategy I think to
Speaker 2: oppose Trump. The Democratic Party is still engaged in a
Speaker 2: war with itself about not only you know, how to
Speaker 2: oppose Trump, but what it even stands for. And I
Speaker 2: think we could see that in the results in New York,
Speaker 2: where you know, the progressive wing of the party mobilized
Speaker 2: a base, won a comprehensive victory and was met with
Speaker 2: you know, indifference and sometimes discussed by the leadership of
Speaker 2: the party. Senator Chuck Schumer couldn't even bring himself to
Speaker 2: say that he had or hadn't voted for Mamdani. And
Speaker 2: in the face of such an onslaught against American democracy
Speaker 2: from Republicans and the Trump administration. That is I think
Speaker 2: an egregious failure on the part of democrats.
Speaker 1: If we take a look beyond just the United States,
Speaker 1: where do you see Trump's influence most clearly on the
Speaker 1: world stage.
Speaker 2: I think I would start by saying that we can't
Speaker 2: draw arbitrary lines between domestic US domestic politics and what
Speaker 2: the United States does abroad. You know, what the United
Speaker 2: States does abroad is a projection of domestic politics, and
Speaker 2: it always has been. Trump, I think, just makes that
Speaker 2: more obvious. And so the influence is everywhere, but most
Speaker 2: of you at the moment, of course, it's happening in Venezuela,
Speaker 2: where the United States is engaged in effectively a war
Speaker 2: against the Maduro regime, where it is throwing out all
Speaker 2: the rules of conflict and the international rule of law
Speaker 2: and behaving really like a rogue state. And that is
Speaker 2: I think going to extreme lengths in Venezuela. But we're
Speaker 2: also seeing it in other areas. The Trump administration has
Speaker 2: just released a new national security strategy where it effectively
Speaker 2: commits to interfering in the domestic democratic politics of European
Speaker 2: nations to its own ends, where it's effectively said it
Speaker 2: will support the far right in Europe in order to
Speaker 2: quote unquote rescue Western democracy. And really what that is,
Speaker 2: what that national security strategy is, is a foreign policy
Speaker 2: of white supremacy. That's I think how we have to
Speaker 2: understand it. And so the Trump administration is quite openly
Speaker 2: seeking to spread its influence and its power across the world,
Speaker 2: with a particular focus on the Western hemisphere and places
Speaker 2: like Venezuela, but it isn't limited to that.
Speaker 1: So these changes that Donald Trump is making to the
Speaker 1: way politics works in the United States, is there any
Speaker 1: coming back from that?
Speaker 2: I think my first question, I suppose, in response to
Speaker 2: that is back to what, you know, what could the
Speaker 2: United States want to go back to?
Speaker 3: You know, what?
Speaker 2: Meaning can we make out of American history? I think
Speaker 2: there's a way out. There are multiple ways out, and
Speaker 2: certainly if you look at American history, the United States
Speaker 2: does have an extraordinary ability to reinvent and revitalize itself
Speaker 2: out of crisis, and it is in a deep crisis now.
Speaker 2: So where it goes from here, I think he's almost
Speaker 2: anyone's guess. You know, American politics is continually surprising in
Speaker 2: that sense, but in a way. I think where it
Speaker 2: goes from here is really dependent on how effective Donald
Speaker 2: Trump in his administration is in its project to radically
Speaker 2: reshape the United States an American society and in those
Speaker 2: decisions about who gets to be American. And at the
Speaker 2: moment they seem to be implementing that radical agenda with
Speaker 2: very little resistance. That may change, but at the moment
Speaker 2: it's not clear where that resistance will come from and
Speaker 2: how united it could be.
Speaker 1: Emer It's always great to speak with you. Thanks for
Speaker 1: taking the time to speak with us.
Speaker 3: It's a pleasure. Thanks so much for having me.
Speaker 1: Tomorrow on the show, we're tracing the origins of the
Speaker 1: eye that gave us the tech industry as we know
Speaker 1: it today. Back in the nineties, a small group of
Speaker 1: men in Silicon Valley imagined a world without governments or rules,
Speaker 1: a world run by code. They wanted technology to replace
Speaker 1: politics all together. Now their dreams have come true, beyond
Speaker 1: their wildest imaginations, and we're all living with the consequences. Tomorrow,
Speaker 1: how democracy is being reshaped by the tech world's most
Speaker 1: dangerous philosophy. I'm Daniel James. This is seven AM. See
Speaker 1: you tomorrow.