Yuval Levin

And in their view, the democratic metrics here are

don't really tell the story.

I mean, we've been talking about leverage a bit, which I think bridges the divide a little bit, but

I would say there's a lot of things that look a lot to me like bribes and transactionalism and cabinet meetings where people go around and give very autocratic praise to the leader.

And you have ICE agents in masks and now collisions on the streets and the National Guard in cities.

And this reflects a little bit of the story you were talking about at the beginning that maybe liberals tell.

But the thing I want to push on there is,

is that in that story, there is a point to all this, that they are trying to build a different form of not even presidency, but regime.

They are trying to make the whole system work differently.

And in that respect, not going through Congress is actually part of the whole point because you do not want to be bound by Congress and its slowness and its deliberation and its laws.

You know, not going through rulemaking processes is part of the point you're trying to create and

This executive who functions more like an autocrat, an authoritarian, or a king.

What do you think of that?

I think in many ways I'm probably closer to your side of the argument here than the other.

But I want to voice the other because I do think this goes to the core of are we looking at democratic metrics where you think about popular opinion and elections?

Are we looking at autocratic metrics where you think about power and suppression?

Because...

Many, many, many people, myself being one of them, have said from the beginning of these deployments, they are creating the conditions for a collision and a tragedy between federal ICE agents, CBP, National Guard, whomever, and protesters, immigrants.

They're doing this in a very aggressive way, and they are creating the conditions in which something is going to go terribly wrong.

And then it does.