Daron Acemoglu

Well, thanks for having me on the program.

Look, I mean, obviously, there is a flood zone element in there, and it looks chaotic.

But in my mind,

Worryingly, there is a bit of a theory, which is that all of these actions are aimed at centralizing power in the hands of an executive presidency with fewer and weaker checks, which come either from institutions or norms.

So even the foreign actions are all about increasing domestic power.

Even the

sort of unconventional appointments are about weakening norms that control what the president can do and bringing in more loyalists that have now more room for maneuver because all the norms that had guided U.S.

political dynamics have been broken.

Well, you know, part of the reason why those actions would not have been taken in the past is because they go against norms.

There weren't explicit laws that said these things.

So it was part of an institutional equilibrium with norms of acceptance and backed up by other politicians.

deviating and sort of distancing themselves if a president did that or bigger sort of pushback from civil society or the media.

But President Trump and his team have been breaking these norms systematically for

the first year but even if you go to the first term of the president there was already the same attempt and all of these have now culminated in trump controlling the party and the rest of the party even part of the judicial system are no longer able to stand up to him and all of the norms that would have helped them sort of mobilize around some sort of objection saying this is not acceptable

You know, we don't see them now.

Recently for the Fed case, a few senators have started making grambling.

So perhaps there might be some limit to what the legislature is going to put up with.

But the part of the agenda that is, I think, now very clearly visible is sort of break down one piece of after another of this edifice that was constraining other presidents that are now gone for President Trump.

Yeah, I mean, exactly.

The sort of separation of powers with, you know, not just the Congress and the judiciary, but also the independent agencies acting like the fourth branch.