Ezra Klein

So the Trump who comes in last year and the economy is already getting better and is kind of strong by then and does not do tariffs.

just does some of his popular policies, passes a bunch of tax cuts, and just takes credit as opposed to holding the economy back to some level and also freaking people out with a very, very chaotic and aggressive tariff regime.

The Trump who does what he said he was going to do, or at least what he sometimes said he was going to do, which was secure the southern border, which they've more or less done, and focus on violent criminals.

Right, the worst of the worst.

The worst of the worst.

A Trump who did less...

And then had more room to brag about Trump-RX, where you can now get... Or to just focus on it.

Or to just focus on things.

You know, you can talk about having pushed Hamas and the Netanyahu government to a deal in Gaza.

And he has chosen, I mean, I wrote a piece about this with you, he has chosen to create a huge number of problems for himself politically, when he could have done a lot less and really...

benefited from it.

I mean, there is a world in which he got to the waterline of his popular policies and his popular promises and then just stopped.

Because sprinkled throughout his speech is something that I think is very dangerous about Trump for Democrats, which is he will happily take their issues away from him.

He'll negotiate down prescription drug prices using the government's power, a longtime Democratic priority that Republicans foiled again and again and again.

But Trump is just trying to take that from the Democrats.

More or less literally took it, right?

Isn't that Biden's program that they've rejiggered?

No, what Trump is doing is a little bit different, but both things are happening.

And, you know, immigration-wise, like close the border, right, there's a lot of political viability and value in that.

There's a lot in there where Trump could just do the more Bannonite populist thing and have gained from it.