Chapter 1: What crises are currently facing the Trump presidency?
I'm Anne Applebaum. Over the past year, as I watched Donald Trump demand unprecedented new powers, I wondered, don't he and his team fear that these same powers could one day be used by a different administration and a different president to achieve very different goals? Well, maybe they are afraid.
And maybe that's why they're using their new tools to change our institutions, even to alter the playing field in advance of midterm elections later this year, to make sure their opponents can't win.
Ultimately, destroying trust is the currency of autocrats. We could win, but we are very, very, very likely to lose if we keep treating this as business as usual.
reporting on the sweeping changes unfolding in our country and preparing you to think about what might happen next. The new season of Autocracy in America, available now.
Hello, and welcome to this week's episode of The David Frum Show. I'm David Frum, a staff writer at The Atlantic.
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Chapter 2: How is ICE's recent behavior impacting the MAGA movement?
My guest this week will be Tim Naftali. You may know Tim from his many appearances on CNN, where he talks about the history of the presidency. Tim is a distinguished historian of US diplomacy during the Cold War. He was also the founding director of the Richard Nixon Presidential Library.
And we'll be talking about the many strange schemes, strange money-making schemes around the plan for a Trump presidential library in Miami. And we'll be talking about the chaos and danger of the Trump foreign policy as it stumbles toward conflict with Europe over Greenland, in South America over Venezuela, in Iran, in the Far East.
My book this week will be Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte, and I'll be talking about that and what it tells us about our changing attitudes toward children and toward cruelty. But before the dialogue with Tim, before the book discussion of Jane Eyre, some preliminary thoughts about what we have seen in these remarkable early days of January 2026.
It does seem that the MAGA movement and the Trump presidency have entered a kind of crazy death spiral. So many bizarre and menacing things have happened in just the past few days.
There seems to be a kind of intensification of the crisis that has been with us since the beginning of the Trump era, the crisis that has been with us since the beginning of the Trump second term, and now in 2026, a crisis that becomes ever more terrifying. Over the weekend, there was a kind of rampage of ICE personnel in the city of Minneapolis.
The weekend opened with the shooting death of a motorist in Minneapolis, Rene Good, and ICE seems to have reacted to the outburst of feeling about that shooting, not by investigating the shooting, not by reconsidering its methods, but by using ever more brutal methods against ever more people in the city of Minneapolis and the state of Minnesota.
ICE seems to be acting more and more not like a proper federal law enforcement agency with all the high professionalism and exacting standards that Americans rightfully expect and usually get from federal law enforcement.
It's acting like an armed mega militia, like the armed force of a political party occupying part of the country and part of the voting population on behalf of another part of the country and another block of the voting population.
This comes as President Trump gave an interview to the New York Times in which he said that one of his great regrets about his first term was that he did not order the National Guard to seize voting machines in the election of 2020. Now, back then, there was some question whether even if he'd issued such a shocking and illegal and improper order, whether the National Guard would have executed it.
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Chapter 3: What is the significance of the proposed Trump presidential library in Miami?
The new season of Autocracy in America, available now.
Timothy Naftali is a senior research scholar and adjunct professor at Columbia University School of International Public Affairs. He previously served as the founding director of the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum. His many books include the 1997 classic One Hell of a Gamble, the definitive account of the Cuban Missile Crisis from the Soviet point of view.
He is a regular contributor to CNN where he is their in-house presidential historian. Tim is a native of Montreal, Canada. We were undergraduates together at Yale in the early 1980s and have been friends ever since. Although I note for the record that Tim was several classes younger than me and is therefore considerably better preserved. Tim, welcome so much to the David Fromm Program.
Thank you for making time today.
So you begin with a lie.
No, no, you are an amazing specimen, and intellectual, moral, and physical. So we've got so many things to cover, but I want to start drawing on your expertise as a founder of a presidential library. There is a project for a Trump presidential library in Miami.
It will not surprise you to hear that this project is laden with scandal, but you think it's not just the financial scandals that are important. So let's talk about the financial scandal and the intellectual scandal of the Trump Library.
First of all, it's great to be with you, David. I had the privilege of working for the National Archives and Records Administration, and I was appointed, I didn't apply for the job, but I was appointed to be the first federal director of the Nixon Library.
After Watergate, because of concerns that the president, President Nixon, would destroy his famous tapes and the documents, Congress seized his materials. President Ford signed the law. And as a result, the Nixon materials couldn't leave the Washington, D.C. area. So Nixon could not have a real presidential library. So he got an ersatz library. His family built a private Nixon library.
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Chapter 4: Why do comparisons between Trump and Nixon often fall short?
They wanted the federal government to run it. Well, for that to happen, they had to get Congress to change the governing law that affected the Nixon materials. Congress did change the law. The National Archives would then become responsible for the Nixon Library, would rename it and would move the presidential materials from Washington, D.C. to Yorba Linda, California.
And they needed a director for that and they appointed me. One of the challenges for my team was to establish the credibility of this new institution.
Understandably, many Americans, not just those who are old enough to remember Watergate, were concerned about what might happen to the Nixon tapes and the Nixon papers if they were moved to Yorba Linda and perhaps technically under some kind of watchful eye of the Nixon family.
And so it was really essential that the first federal director established the credibility of this space, that it be nonpartisan, not anti-Nixon, but not pro-Nixon. And so that was my job. And among my responsibilities was to be the curator of the Watergate exhibit, the old Watergate exhibit.
What we inherited basically made the argument that Watergate was a coup that happened in order to overturn the results of the 1972 election. And the Democrats pushed Nixon out and that Nixon was mistreated.
And given that we were moving to Yorba Linda, the documents, the materials that made clear that the president had been engaged in abuse of power, and he was never indicted, so we can't say he was criminally responsible, but let's say that there was heavy, heavy evidence that suggested the president participated in criminal actions.
In any case, how could you move those documents to Yorba Linda and then have in the public space up ahead, because the archive was downstairs, material that contradicted the basic documents that we had. So the Watergate exhibit had to be changed.
The Nixon Foundation said they couldn't do it, and they asked me to do it, and the National Archives asked me to do it, so I was the curator of a Watergate exhibit. which was one way of establishing the credibility of the institution. Another way was to make sure a lot of materials were declassified and tapes were made available to the public, which we did. I was there for five years in total.
So let's move forward in time from the Nixon Library, as you described it, to the project in the 2020s for a Trump Presidential Library. This library, as I read, is to be built in Miami on an extremely valuable piece of land, about almost three acres big on a highly developable strip of road where you could build condo towers or a hotel or something like that.
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Chapter 5: How has Trump's foreign policy affected relations with Venezuela?
Well, I don't know much more than what you've just described, David, but I believe in the idea of a presidential library. And I believe in the importance of nonpartisan public history. One of the things I learned out in Yorba Linda was that presidential libraries are important local institutions. We had a lot of students from local high schools and middle schools come to visit.
Obviously we have visitors from across or had visitors from across the country. And we were able in a sense to try as a team to set a standard for public history. So I believe in these institutions And I am worried at the development, at the turn that these institutions have taken. You mentioned Barack Obama. President Obama had an opportunity to set a high standard for public history.
We could debate his presidency, but what he did not have was a Watergate. or an Iran contract. He did not have the sort of overwhelming scandal that allies of any president would have a hard time sort of softening, if not deleting entirely. So he had the opportunity to present a, or to create a model, a gem for public history.
allowing the National Archives to do its job overseeing a museum, but he didn't do it. He decided that he wanted a private museum. Now, I'm not suggesting that Barack Obama wanted to recreate what we inherited and had to change in Yorba Linda, but it was clear that he wanted and his team wanted to be in control of how his presidency is portrayed. Now we talk about Trump.
Now, I'm not saying that President Trump would have would be doing what he's doing now if Barack Obama had chosen to have a standard presidential library. But the fact that Barack Obama rejected the standard model of a presidential library just made it a little bit easier for President Trump to create what appears to be Trump land. And I just think it's disappointing.
Our public institutions are under extreme stress. You've talked about this in your podcast on multiple occasions. And I think that as a people, our self-confidence is directly proportional to how willing we are to talk about the peaks and valleys of our history. And one of the places where people can learn about the peaks and valleys of our history are these presidential libraries.
And it's sad that we're gonna lose yet another opportunity to learn about the complexities of this era because the Trump library will be as disconnected from reality as possible. You asked about corruption and Nixon. Before Watergate, Nixon put pressure on a house committee to give up federal land near San Clemente, which was actually part of Camp Pendleton, and allow him to use it for a library.
So that's public federal land, not state land. And Nixon's people were putting pressure on getting that land. Of course, Watergate with Watergate, not only did that pressure campaign end, but the then Nixon Foundation collapsed. The one that exists now was created well after Watergate.
So the idea of putting pressure on a locality or on the federal government to get land that wasn't really yours for a presidential library, that didn't start with Trump. Nixon attempted to do it, but Watergate ended those particular desires.
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Chapter 6: What does Jerome Powell's role reveal about Trump's administration?
Henry Wilson being Grant's vice president. But no one has the heart to tell the president that he's got the wrong Nixon. Now, again, I've not been able ever to confirm or deny this story, but Sapphire would be a pretty good authority. He was there.
Well, Sapphire, one thing about Sapphire is he had a very nice metaphor for Nixon, which was Nixon was a layer cake. And think of him as a layer cake. And you cut down to cut a slice and all these layers, and they're different and they're somewhat contradictory. One thing I want to mention is that, yes, it's true. Woodrow Wilson was a historical mentor of sorts, but so was de Gaulle.
Richard Nixon admired Charles de Gaulle of any leading, next to Eisenhower, of any living leader at the time. And of course, de Gaulle wasn't Wilsonian at all. I mean, he was the most Machiavellian of leaders. So Nixon's a complicated man.
The point, however- But he was also a man, he was in his own way, a man of great integrity and ethic who had refused to join the cell at a French national identity after the fall of France and had taken the enormous risk of going into exile with nothing, not even his family. They followed later. So that's an inspirational example too. Whereas Donald Trump's example seemed to be Roy Cohn. Right.
Well, and one more thing. Again, Richard Nixon also understood the international system. He did not want to destroy the architecture that Truman had constructed. He also, although he had real doubts about elements, of course, of the great society, he wasn't about to dismantle the New Deal. I mean, he came from a poor family and he recognized
the importance of a safety net he's a complicated man one of the reasons we talk about him not simply because he resigned but he had these dark impulses and he was a bigot and he was an anti-semite and these dark past passions motivated policy at times and so that's why we we talk about he was a flawed character the difference however it was he was a smart man
and he was a man who read, and he was a man who understood history, and he cared about history, and he did not want to be an outlier. He was not someone who believed, I am the beginning and the end of American history. I have predecessors, and I have to be mindful of them. So that's also a source of some constraint on his behavior.
And I will have successors.
And I will be passing on to them a better country, I hope, than the one that I received. But remember, he was thinking in terms of the country. His self-dealing involved a $7,000, get this, a $7,000 shield around his pool in San Clemente. That was the great corrupt bargain of his presidency.
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Chapter 7: How do Trump's actions reflect a broader trend in American politics?
But of course, if you don't do the accounting, if you say, well, no, my accounting is this, the public pays all the bills and a small handful of insiders get all the benefits. Then from the point of view of that small handful of insiders, then the war can make sense, which is what seems to be happening in Venezuela. Americans of a certain age forget this.
The United States is now again, by far the largest producer of oil on earth, by far the largest producer of natural gas on earth. If you throw in Canada and Trump wants to not throw in to grab Canada, but he group the United States and Canada together, whether Canada retains its independence or not, it's about almost 30% of the planet's output of oil. It comes from the United States and Canada.
And the price is at barely break-even right now. So it's not like we're desperately short of it. As I record, it's about $58 a barrel. And in most parts of North America, that's a break-even price. So the idea of having lots more of it For what?
But there are people saying, if I can get my personal hands on Venezuelan oil at someone else's expense, then I personally can make a lot of money, even though it's a crazy deal for, a crazy bad deal for the American people.
And you know, one of the things that students of the Cold War, some, missed was that we did not engage in our Cold War crusades in search of resources. In fact, the area where we were most, the quagmire area was Vietnam and there were at the time no resources whatsoever. We were in the business of regime change and regime construction because we were contesting the world with the Soviet Union.
And we were also worried about the credibility of our alliances. When we were dragged into some countries, we were dragged in because of the weakness of our allies. And Iran is a perfect example. We topple the government of Iran because the British have been pressing us to do this.
This is in the early 1950s.
I'm bringing this up because what the president is doing, our president is doing now, is what weak countries do, not strong countries. The British... were weak and they needed to control the oil refinery in Abadan in Iran. And they did not want the Iranians to have a better share of the money that was really theirs. And so the British put pressure on us to help them.
And we knew how weak the British were. So it's absolutely true that the mercantilist Trump vision of how states are powerful is a vision of a weak country, not a strong one. We have the resources to buy what we need. But I agree. What I think is going on is that his buddies are going to benefit, which is why he
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Chapter 8: What insights can we gain from Jane Eyre in relation to contemporary issues?
You name it and they're not going to want to do it, which means we've just managed to create a failed state in Venezuela, or at least that's the possibility. It's amazing to me the hubris that has led to this. But by the way, as we've seen before, hubris begets hubris because we're already talking about the next great American expedition and acquisition in the Western Hemisphere, Greenland.
It's demoralizing. Do you think the Trump Library in Miami will in fact ever be built? Hmm.
Well, after the first term, of course, the president, the current president decided he hadn't lost and his interest was in the was in regaining power, not in legacy. And so there was no Trump library that there was no foundation for Trump library after the first term. There seems to be some interest in legacy right now. After all, this is a president who wants his name on everything.
So he's clearly thinking about the future. It's fascinating. I mean, he's already putting his name everywhere as if he's about to retire. So I have a feeling that the old man actually wants a Trump library.
Let me develop the thought a little bit. he's tapping out hundreds of millions of dollars for this Trump ballroom that he wants to, that is being built beside the white house. And right now the estimate began 200 something million. It's risen to $300 million. I don't know that there's any real cost accounting going on here. I would not be surprised if it turns out to be a lot more than that.
He won't care because he's raising the money from people who are buying influence. They don't care. They just, well, what does it cost to keep Trump happy? $25 million. I give it, I get something in return. But a lot of those people are going to be tapped out. He's not going to want to pay for the Trump library himself. He's going to want to turn to that same network of donors.
And their calculus of interest in paying for it may be quite different after November than it is now. They're not giving it because they like him so much. They're giving it because they expect something from him. And that library advances to the extent that Trump can deliver benefits to people of whom he's asking tens of millions of dollars.
Well, we have to ask ourselves, to what extent will the government of Congo, will Qatar Will the UAE, will Saudi Arabia, how much, to what extent are they gonna front load payments to this library as part of elaborate agreements that the Trump team is engaged in? I wouldn't be surprised if there are promissory notes for all these things that have already been established.
And that would allow the Trump library to be sort of a laundering mechanism for whatever, So I wouldn't put it past this team, I'm talking about the Trump team, that they are not thinking about ways to use this quasi-commercial Trump library as a place to park money and money that we can get from governments that have an interest in what we're deciding today, get it from them now.
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