How Trump moves political norms – both slowly and suddenly
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What recent actions has Trump taken regarding Greenland?
President Trump told a gathering of world leaders that, for now at least, he won't take Greenland using military force.
Because people thought I would use force. I don't have to use force. I don't want to use force. I won't use force.
That was in Davos, Switzerland, at the World Economic Forum. Trump later said, in fact, he had met with NATO's secretary general and has, quote, a framework of a future deal with respect to Greenland. So a transatlantic crisis that threatened the very existence of NATO is perhaps on pause. But the mere fact that the world was talking about the U.S. coming to own Greenland in any capacity says a lot about the Trump administration one year in.
And here I am in a place called the White House. It's a beautiful place. Who would have thought?
In his second stint in the presidency, Trump has repeatedly said and done things that were previously assumed to be unacceptable to voters. In a surprise 80-minute appearance at the White House on Tuesday, Trump celebrated several of them.
We cut millions of people off the federal payroll. I don't like doing that, but the good news, I don't feel badly because they're getting private sector jobs and they're getting activists. Can you believe it? Began the process of abolishing the Federal Department of Education and returning education back to the states. And Linda McMahon is doing a fantastic job. Terrible. halted all refugee admissions to the United States, including from Somalia, which is a terrible, terrible place and other dangerous places.
There have been lawsuits, protests, a record-breaking government shutdown, resignations at top levels of government and the military. But in general, the Trump administration continues undeterred on almost all of its agenda. Consider this. One year in, Trump's most notable move might not be in foreign policy or his federal prosecution of his political enemies or his deploying troops to cities amid protests. It might be in how he has discouraged effective challenges to his power. From NPR, I'm Scott Detrow.
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It's Consider This from NPR. In just one year, the Trump administration has pushed the window of what is possible in politics so far that its opposition just seems exhausted. Ashley Parker wrote about this for The Atlantic. Ashley, thanks for joining us.
Thanks for having me.
I want to start with the title of your essay. The president has had this term for critics for years now that they suffer from Trump derangement syndrome. And you wrote that there's been so little meaningful resistance this term that we might think about Trump exhaustion syndrome instead.
How has the Trump administration changed political norms?
Can you tell me more about what you're thinking about with that?
Yeah, what I was really trying to explore with this piece one year into his second term was sort of the boiling frog theory of American politics. And I should say up front that this theory is apocryphal. It's not actually true, but I think it works for our purposes, which is the way it goes is that if you drop a frog in boiling water, it will hop out. But if you put a frog in lukewarm water and slowly turn up the heat, it will not know to jump out because the changes will be so incremental and gradual and it will boil to death.
I think you also gave a really good example when you talked about the boiling frog. You walk through the series of events leading up to the seizure of Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela.
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