Ezra Klein: The Resistance, Back from the Dead
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Who are the guests and hosts in this episode?
Hello and welcome to the Bullard Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. Delighted to welcome back opinion columnist at the New York Times and host of the Ezra Klein Show, which is a podcast, but also available on YouTube. He's also the co-author of the forthcoming book, Abundance, with the Atlantic's Derek Thompson, who I like better than Ezra. That's out next month. We'll be talking about that, you know, I don't know, in March or something. We got some other news. How you doing, Ezra?
I'm all right. An amazing drive-by there in the intro. Thank you for that, Tim. Well, we love Derek. Derek is more likable. I don't actually think that's under debate.
Yeah, I don't know. There's something about your new facial hair also that is, I think, hurting your likability quotient a little bit. It feels like it's a dark Ezra era. Have you looked at the era we're in? You think this is time for light Ezra? That's a fair point. It's a fair point. All right. The last time you were on the pod, we were in the period between the Biden debate debacle and him actually stepping aside. You said something then that created a little stir. It was this. You said, I've had top Democrats say to me basically something like, I don't know why all these Democrats who think Donald Trump is an existential threat to democracy are acting the way they are. You went on to say that essentially those top Democrats said to you that a lot of them were doing kayfabe. They didn't really believe that he was the existential threat that many of them were saying. I think the revealed behavior in the intervening seven months has borne out that. But I'm wondering how you think those folks are feeling about that gamble now.
I don't think they're feeling great about it. I think ultimately it will have proven to be a mistake of Trump's. I mean, you felt this. I feel like part of the job here is sensing the sort of structure, the emotional structure of American politics. And after Democrats lost in 2024... they were psychologically pretty shattered. And there were quite a few of them who were willing to say, okay, this is a new world. This time, the American public voted for Donald Trump fair and square. We have to work with this. And there are plenty of them who are happy to work with Doge and were excited to work with Elon Musk, right? Democrats are not fully turned on him in that sort of interrenium between the campaign and inauguration.
And everything Trump has done has been a giant middle finger to them personally, right? To make them look like idiots personally. And so, yeah, when I talk to some of those folks who I think if the Trump administration had come in with a slightly different strategy, right? If they had come in and they had wanted to aggressively reform USAID and aggressively reform civil service protections and do more in immigration and border security, and government efficiency, if that had actually been what they wanted, if they wanted to get 70%, 60%, 50% of what they're looking for, there was a cohort of Democrats who had, you know, were at least willing to entertain the idea that he was just going to be a president and you could work with him where you could work with him and not where you could not. And now,
Trump has gone into a place where he is threatening, I think both in their view and objectively, the structure of American government itself. He is, I think, a somewhat weak president, but he is acting like a fairly strong king.
Yeah, I want to get to that, your weakness theory there. But are you saying that you think that the Democrats who were of the view that maybe he wasn't quite as existential of a threat as some of the loudest alarmists, including those of us here at the board, including some loud alarmists said, you think they're changing their mind now, like after the first three weeks?
Yes, I think they've changed their mind. That's what I'm saying. I've spoken to them. I've spoken to some of the people I was thinking about when I said that. And I am also watching people who are willing to work with Donald Trump when he won the election. They have moved from, we are willing to work with you, we're willing to work with Doge, we're willing to work with all these pieces.
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