Speaker 1: Hilda.
Speaker 2: I'm Chelsea Daniels and This is the Front Page, a
Speaker 2: daily podcast presented by The New Zealand Herald. Donald Trump
Speaker 2: is set to be inaugurated as the forty seventh president
Speaker 2: of the United States after four years out of office.
Speaker 2: After losing in twenty twenty, Trump is set to return
Speaker 2: to the White House with a vengeance, with his make
Speaker 2: America Great Again agenda front and center. His administration has
Speaker 2: already raised eyebrows for some.
Speaker 3: Of his unusual cabinet appointments, and Trump's usual bluster has
Speaker 3: seen him make bold promises about what he'll get done
Speaker 3: on day one, including being.
Speaker 1: A dictator just for the day. So what are Trump's
Speaker 1: plans for his second term in office and why are
Speaker 1: so many tech giants falling to his side this time round?
Speaker 1: Today on the Front Page, Washington based New York Times
Speaker 1: reporter Kenneth Vogel is with us to discuss what to
Speaker 1: expect from the next four years of Trump. Kenneth, how
Speaker 1: much anticipation is there in the US for Trump's inauguration?
Speaker 4: Well, there's a lot, I mean there's a lot.
Speaker 5: Obviously, the culturally, This is the selection was seen as
Speaker 5: something of a tipping point but also among the business
Speaker 5: community and the folks who are among the major donors
Speaker 5: to his inauguration, there's a real sense that some key businesses,
Speaker 5: including tech and cryptocurrency, could be unshackled, that there could
Speaker 5: be a lot less regulation than what we saw under
Speaker 5: the Biden administration that could be good for business. So
Speaker 5: that explains why the inauguration has raised so much money
Speaker 5: from people who want to tap into and take advantage
Speaker 5: of that more favorable regulatory environment.
Speaker 1: And the actual event, what will it look like and
Speaker 1: who's going to.
Speaker 5: Be the So there's actually a whole suite of events
Speaker 5: over several days. In fact, by this point they've already
Speaker 5: been going for several days. We're talking about parties. Both
Speaker 5: parties that are part of the official inauguration package. These
Speaker 5: are candlelight dinner and a reception with Trump and Vice
Speaker 5: President of like vance, but then also unofficial parties on
Speaker 5: the sidelines, including many that are sponsored by big money organizations.
Speaker 5: These are political nonprofit groups or political action committees, but
Speaker 5: also lobbying firms that all have a stake in matters
Speaker 5: that are going to be considered before the Trump administration,
Speaker 5: and so if they can attract clients and donors along
Speaker 5: with Trump incoming Trump administration officials. You can see why
Speaker 5: that would be a recipe for folks to want to
Speaker 5: give a lot of money to get into those parties.
Speaker 1: So we'll talk about that in a moment. But on
Speaker 1: day one, what's first on Trump's agenda.
Speaker 5: Well, he's talking about tariffs, you know, against China and
Speaker 5: other trading partners that he feels and has felt for
Speaker 5: many years. One of the few issues that he's sort
Speaker 5: of been consistent on for decades that these trading partners
Speaker 5: are taking advantage of lacks US.
Speaker 4: Trade policies to eat our lunch.
Speaker 5: And that's been his thinking. That's one of the major
Speaker 5: messaging points of his campaign both in twenty sixteen and
Speaker 5: his reelection campaign in twenty twenty and then his re
Speaker 5: reelection campaign in twenty twenty four. So that's a major
Speaker 5: thing that he's going to dive into. He's also talked
Speaker 5: about pardons, pardons for people who were convicted of offenses
Speaker 5: related to the January sixth riots at the Capitol. He
Speaker 5: and his supporters believe that those folks have been unfairly
Speaker 5: and and sort of disproportionately prosecuted, and so he's talked
Speaker 5: about partning them. Those are just a few of the
Speaker 5: things that we expect him to dive into immediately, and
Speaker 5: these are things that he has unilateral executive authority to do.
Speaker 5: These aren't things that require a congressional bill that has
Speaker 5: to work its way through chambers of Congress where he
Speaker 5: is narrow majorities in the Republican Party. These are things
Speaker 5: that he can literally do with the stroke of a pen.
Speaker 6: Let me ask you about another group of people, the
Speaker 6: estimated four million families in America who have mixed immigration status.
Speaker 7: So I'm talking about parents who might.
Speaker 1: Be here illegally, but the kids are here legally.
Speaker 8: Your borders are you're talking about separation.
Speaker 4: I mean, there are two aspects to this.
Speaker 1: Your border Zara tom Holman said, they can be deported together.
Speaker 4: Is that the plan?
Speaker 8: That way you keep the well, I don't want to
Speaker 8: be breaking up families. So the only way you don't
Speaker 8: break up the family is you keep them together, and
Speaker 8: you have to send them all.
Speaker 1: Back, even kids who are here legally, well.
Speaker 8: Well, what you going to do if they want to
Speaker 8: stay with the father? We have to have rules and regulations.
Speaker 1: He's also spoken about closing the border with Mexico and
Speaker 1: deporting millions of undocumented migrants as well. What do Americans
Speaker 1: make of that?
Speaker 5: Well, you know, immigration was a major issue during the campaign.
Speaker 5: It was one where he you know, though his rhetoric
Speaker 5: and his policy position seemed extreme to a lot of folks,
Speaker 5: they were closer to I think, you know, polls show
Speaker 5: closer to the positions of a majority of folks than
Speaker 5: those of Kamalahiris, at least initially. Now Kamala Haris did attack.
Speaker 5: I guess maybe it's sort of wrong to look at
Speaker 5: this as a traditional left right partisan issue, but she
Speaker 5: became sort of more of a hardliner as the campaign
Speaker 5: went on, and I think that was a testament to
Speaker 5: the fact that these public opinion polls show that people
Speaker 5: did want to see a crackdown on immigration.
Speaker 4: And so Trump is going to try to do that.
Speaker 5: I mean, he tried to do that to some extent
Speaker 5: during his first term. And that's one that does have
Speaker 5: a little more or a lot more in some cases,
Speaker 5: bureaucratic processes around it, and so it's less easy to
Speaker 5: do something like that, even if you do enact some
Speaker 5: executive order on day one. He certainly says he's going
Speaker 5: to take action. We'll see if he's able to deliver
Speaker 5: in a way that is commensurate with his campaign rhetoric.
Speaker 1: And one of Trump's boldest promises was that he could
Speaker 1: end the war in Ukraine within twenty four hours of
Speaker 1: taking office. Is there any indication there will be anything
Speaker 1: like this?
Speaker 5: I know, that's another one that's a lot easier said that.
Speaker 5: You know, there's a lot of promises on the campaign
Speaker 5: trail that sound good and that are much harder to
Speaker 5: actually implement, and certainly ending the war in Ukraine seems
Speaker 5: to be in that category.
Speaker 1: Trump's cabinet picks have received a lot of attention worldwide
Speaker 1: as well. You've got the vaccine skeptic Robert F. Kennedy
Speaker 1: Junior as Health Secretary.
Speaker 4: What I'm going to do is make sure that Americans
Speaker 4: have good information with the beast, call centered science, out
Speaker 4: their flood and medicines, and then leave the choice to them.
Speaker 1: Fox News host Pete Hegseth as Defense Secretary.
Speaker 6: Department of Defense under Donald Trump will achieve peace through strength.
Speaker 1: And anti China. Foreman Senator Marco Rubio as Secretary of State.
Speaker 1: How can America promote the cause of peace on Earth
Speaker 1: if it is not first safe at home? What good
Speaker 1: is America to our allies if it is not strong?
Speaker 1: To name a few, what can we raid from these?
Speaker 1: Do you think?
Speaker 4: Well?
Speaker 5: I mean the ones that you just kicked off there
Speaker 5: are pretty good representative sampling, and there's no consistent theme.
Speaker 5: Some of these folks are functioning in a traditional sort
Speaker 5: of Republican orthodoxy. I'm thinking of Rubio in particular there.
Speaker 5: You know, he's a hawk, he wants to He's in
Speaker 5: favor of robust American foreign policy that has a sort
Speaker 5: of interventionist bent to it, and that's very different from
Speaker 5: what Trump and a lot of his supporters in the
Speaker 5: sort of Maga base want. They support a more non
Speaker 5: interventionist foreign policy, including in Ukraine. So that right there
Speaker 5: you could see some potential tension where you know, Trump
Speaker 5: has said that he doesn't want more US military assistants
Speaker 5: going to Ukraine and would prefer the US sort of
Speaker 5: mind its business on that one, and that the US
Speaker 5: doesn't really have business Ukraine. Whar's Marco Rubio has been
Speaker 5: a real Russia hawk and wants to clamp down on Russia,
Speaker 5: including by army Ukraine. So where will they find sort
Speaker 5: of common ground? There and what will the policy be.
Speaker 5: It seems most likely that the policy will be Trump's policy,
Speaker 5: and Marco Rubio will be forced to bend his approach
Speaker 5: to Trump's. You know, in other instances, RFK Junior, that
Speaker 5: guy's a real heterodox character. He was a Democrat until
Speaker 5: he ran in the Democratic primaries, or to the extent
Speaker 5: that there was a Democratic primary. He sought to challenge
Speaker 5: Joe Biden for the Democratic nomination in twenty twenty four.
Speaker 4: And as a long.
Speaker 5: History of you know, being aligned with democratic causes, a
Speaker 5: support of abortion rights, and support for environmental policies that
Speaker 5: are anathema to the Republican position. Then you mentioned the
Speaker 5: vaccine skepticism. Well, that's a little more you know, anti establishment.
Speaker 5: I don't even know if it is necessarily it fits
Speaker 5: with Trump's policies or Trump's thoughts on this. He's been
Speaker 5: asked a little bit about his stances on vaccines and
Speaker 5: it seemed to take a more supportive approach than what
Speaker 5: we've seen from RFK.
Speaker 4: So it's a real eclectic hodgepodge.
Speaker 5: And I think that to the extent that there is
Speaker 5: a strong anti establishment sort of being that runs through
Speaker 5: some of the nominees. It's certainly not universal, as is
Speaker 5: shown by folks like Marco Rubio or at least Stefanaic,
Speaker 5: who is the nominee to be or the presumptive nominee
Speaker 5: to be the United Nations ambassador of the US Ambassador
Speaker 5: to the United Nations is also sort of more of
Speaker 5: a traditional hawk. So how does that fit with Trump's
Speaker 5: foreign policy?
Speaker 6: We'll just have to see.
Speaker 1: You've written about the tech industry and how the elite
Speaker 1: of Silicon Valley are celebrating Trump's return to power. Who
Speaker 1: are some of his major backers and how have they
Speaker 1: been commemorating ahead of the inauguration.
Speaker 5: Well, by far his biggest and most influential backer, not
Speaker 5: just in the tech industry but overall, On Musk, the
Speaker 5: billionaire owner of Tesla, SpaceX X formerly Twitter. Arguable that
Speaker 5: we've never seen a private individual with as much influence
Speaker 5: as he has right now. It's not just the wealth,
Speaker 5: it's that he's actually been appointed to a position to
Speaker 5: oversee a slashing of government spending. And it's sort of
Speaker 5: notable because some of his companies, including SpaceX, have huge
Speaker 5: government contract You know, he is aligned with Trump, even
Speaker 5: though there are again sort of points of divergence, including
Speaker 5: Elon Musk being for years one of the sort of
Speaker 5: leading private sector fighters of climate change and Trump not
Speaker 5: necessarily having that as one of his core positions or
Speaker 5: one of his core concerns.
Speaker 4: So you know, Elon must will be influential. Then that
Speaker 4: we have some.
Speaker 5: Some even newer comers to if not the Trump supporter fold,
Speaker 5: at least folks who had been seen as critical of
Speaker 5: Trump bender now seemingly on board with or at least
Speaker 5: not opposed him. I'm thinking of Jeff Bezos, the owner
Speaker 5: of Amazon and the Washington Post. He has sort of
Speaker 5: taken a more hands off approach or maybe even supportive
Speaker 5: approach with Trump and is going to be at the
Speaker 5: inauguration along with Mark Zuckerberg, who is the founder of Meta,
Speaker 5: which owns Facebook, and he is going to be at
Speaker 5: the inauguration as well, the CEO of TikTok, which is
Speaker 5: poised to be banned in the United States if a
Speaker 5: legislation goes into effect shortly as is called for and
Speaker 5: if that is not stayed by the Supreme Court. Trump
Speaker 5: is you know, at one point was supportive of that
Speaker 5: ban on TikTok, and then he started using TikTok and
Speaker 5: became a supporter of TikTok because he saw how it
Speaker 5: could be used to reach vast audiences of Americans and
Speaker 5: help his election campaigns. So you know a number of
Speaker 5: sort of strange bedfellow tech entrepreneurs or moguls who are
Speaker 5: now on board with Trump. That's to say nothing of
Speaker 5: all the cryptocurrency executives who have found and Trump a
Speaker 5: great friend, to the point where he's promising to unshackle
Speaker 5: crypto and take a less aggressive approach towards regulating cryptocurrency.
Speaker 1: All of these donations, and we're talking millions and millions
Speaker 1: of dollars, Where does that money go and what is
Speaker 1: it used for?
Speaker 4: It goes into this inaugural committee.
Speaker 5: It's a nonprofit group that stages the events that we
Speaker 5: talked about, everything from the balls, to the parties, to
Speaker 5: elements of the perks that the major donors get. But
Speaker 5: we understand that Trump is raised so much money into
Speaker 5: this inaugural committee that it's much more than they need,
Speaker 5: and they are talking about transferring the surplus that's left
Speaker 5: over after the inauguration and all the associated festivities are
Speaker 5: over into a nonprofit group that will be funding his
Speaker 5: Presidential Foundation and Library when that get going, whenever that
Speaker 5: is there. No, we haven't seen any firm plans related
Speaker 5: to that, but it just goes to show this guy's
Speaker 5: raising so much money from business executives and others who
Speaker 5: want to get close to him that it's more than
Speaker 5: he needs, especially since he's not going to be running
Speaker 5: for reelection in twenty twenty eight, because he's going to
Speaker 5: be term limited out of the presidency, so they really
Speaker 5: have a surplus of cash. They'll also be you know,
Speaker 5: he's raised a lot of money into some of these
Speaker 5: political groups that will be used to support his agenda,
Speaker 5: both by supporting candidates who are aligned with his agenda
Speaker 5: and by targeting candidates for defeat or members of Congress
Speaker 5: for defeat who are dissenters or critics of his agenda.
Speaker 7: He also wants to invoke something called the Insurrection Act,
Speaker 7: which will allow him to use US military force against
Speaker 7: American civilians at home, and he says he's going to
Speaker 7: invoke that on day one, which would give him from
Speaker 7: that day forward the ability to use the army against
Speaker 7: US at home. So floating all of those things at
Speaker 7: once and calling his opponent's verman, he's deliberately inviting the
Speaker 7: criticism that he is behaving like a Hitler and Mussolini
Speaker 7: style fascist.
Speaker 1: I mean, to me, from the outside, it looks like
Speaker 1: with this money and with this financial backing and like
Speaker 1: you said, supporting up and comers, he's kind of trying
Speaker 1: to create his legacy here, right, Yeah.
Speaker 4: There's a little bit of that.
Speaker 5: I mean, certainly, you know, his first term, at least initially,
Speaker 5: and you know, really all the way through is marked
Speaker 5: by a lot of chaos and a lot of folks
Speaker 5: who seem to not understand the way the process works
Speaker 5: and to be learning on the fly, and that limited
Speaker 5: his ability to push through his agenda. And so this
Speaker 5: time he's got a lot more money, both in terms
Speaker 5: of money in the bank of his political groups and
Speaker 5: his inauguration and potentially his presidential library, but a lot
Speaker 5: more business executives and you know, wealthy donors who are
Speaker 5: appear to be on board with him. And now whether
Speaker 5: that's on board because they support his agenda, or whether
Speaker 5: they fear that he will make good on his promises
Speaker 5: to seek retribution against his critics and enemies, his political enemies,
Speaker 5: you know, I think it's probably a mix of both
Speaker 5: of those things. But either way, whatever the motivation is,
Speaker 5: it's really made for a you know, a confluence of
Speaker 5: events and individuals and companies and supporters that at least appear,
Speaker 5: you know, from the outside and at the outset to
Speaker 5: be giving him quite a lot of momentum headed into
Speaker 5: his second term in office.
Speaker 1: Where does this sit with his traditional magabase because we've
Speaker 1: already seen some tensions over visas for tech workers emerge,
Speaker 1: for example with former Trump ally Steve Bannon calling Elon
Speaker 1: Musk racist and a truly evil guy.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I think we'll see some tension. I mean, the
Speaker 5: thing about MAGA is it sort of is Trump. I mean,
Speaker 5: there are you know, there certainly are some philosophical issue
Speaker 5: stands that pure to have white support, cracking down an
Speaker 5: immigration obviously being one of the main ones, this sort
Speaker 5: of populist nationalist sensibility, that the non andventionist approach to
Speaker 5: foreign policy. That are things that he supports and most
Speaker 5: of the people around him support. But as I've said,
Speaker 5: you know that there are here nominees that he's picked
Speaker 5: for key positions that don't support them. And so I
Speaker 5: think there's a feeling that like wherever Trump comes down
Speaker 5: on these things. Is what MAGA is, despite the fact
Speaker 5: that there sometimes seems to be some discordinance between what
Speaker 5: the base wants and what he wants, or what he
Speaker 5: wants and what the people who are staffing his administration want.
Speaker 5: That's sort of the Trump the Trump approach. He's sort
Speaker 5: of all over the place on any number of issues,
Speaker 5: and wherever he lands, which may be different from one
Speaker 5: day to the next, is what MAGA is.
Speaker 1: And last of Kenneth, what do you make of his
Speaker 1: new presidential portrait.
Speaker 6: Oh?
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's the very very blue steel there similar to
Speaker 5: his mugshot in some ways that famously circulated after the
Speaker 5: authorities in Georgia indicted him or and a series of
Speaker 5: crimes related to the effort to overturn the twenty two
Speaker 5: the election. This is again, this is his part of
Speaker 5: his appeal to his supporters. They like that, they like
Speaker 5: that he has this tough guy persona.
Speaker 4: They like that he has.
Speaker 5: Positioned himself and claimed to be persecuted by the establishment,
Speaker 5: by Democrats and by whomever his enemies of the moment are.
Speaker 5: And so I think the portrait sort of captures that vibe.
Speaker 1: Thanks for joining us, Kenneth.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's a pleasure.
Speaker 1: That's it for this episode of the Front Page. You
Speaker 1: can read more about today's stories and extensive news coverage
Speaker 1: at enzid Herald dot co dot mz. The Front Page
Speaker 1: is produced by Ethan Sills and Richard Martin, who is
Speaker 1: also a sound engineer. I'm Chelsea Daniels. Subscribe to The
Speaker 1: Front Page on iHeartRadio or.
Speaker 3: Wherever you get your podcasts
Speaker 1: And tune in tomorrow for another look behind the headlines.