Hunter Harris

And I kind of think emotionally, I wanted to start thinking about kind of what are the seeds of who the country is beyond this guy in the middle.

And when I initially kind of pitched it, there was some question about whether that is even possible, whether we can even see this political moment without foregrounding Donald Trump.

So I kind of wanted to use you all as our first real life focus group about that premise.

What do you think?

Like,

When we think about a politics that does not center Donald Trump, is that possible?

I mean, he is the president.

Yeah.

I mean, what about the question of is Trump a symptom?

of a broken system or the cause of breaking that system.

It feels like we've been in living in that question for a while.

Like, do you think culturally at this point, you feel like you know a clear answer to that?

Yeah, I'm like, in one way that monoculture feels real in the way he hogs attention, but it doesn't feel like the actual outcomes are dictated by some clear vision or some clear set of steps he's going through, more so than this kind of haphazardly nature.

If we were to think about the individuals who are most likely to chart our post-Trump future,

who would come to mind?

Let me throw out the obvious names.

I'll throw out the likely presidential candidates, people like Gavin Newsom or J.D.

Vance.

I would throw out prospective ones like former Vice President Kamala Harris or even AOC as a person who obviously folks are thinking about.

If we get those names out of the way, who are people who you think might be some of the clues about the direction of power in our post-Trump world?