Chapter 1: What warning does David Frum give about President Trump's actions?
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 The David Frum Show. I'm David Frum, a staff writer at The Atlantic. My guest this week will be Mona Charon, and we'll be discussing things we've changed our mind about since our days as young Reaganites a long, long time ago.
My book this week will be an essay on a similar theme, My Early Beliefs by John Maynard Keynes, in which the great English philosopher and economist discusses how his views had changed from the early 20th century to the time in which he delivered this essay just before the Second World War. But before either the dialogue or the book,
Some thoughts about a remarkable development in the week just passed. One of the defining characteristics of the Trump years has been the determination of President Trump and the people around him to turn into instruments of presidential will, federal agencies that were always thought of as more or less independent and apolitical.
The Department of Justice, well, it's part of the administration for sure, and the Attorney General is an appointee of the President, but there had always been a belief that the actions of the Department of Justice, especially the criminal enforcement actions, were not dictated for political reasons by the President. Well, that idea has just gone up in smoke in the Trump years.
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Chapter 2: How have David Frum and Mona Charen's political views evolved over time?
But...
Senator Tom Tillis of North Carolina, who was outgoing, has said, I am not going to consider any nominee by the president, meritorious or not, unless we end these fool prosecutions, these sinister prosecutions that Trump has instituted against one Federal Reserve governor already, Lisa Cook, and is threatening against another, Jerome Powell, because they wouldn't cut interest rates as fast as he wanted.
Until these prosecutions are at an end, no consideration of any nominee whatsoever. And because of the closely balanced nature of the Senate and the rules of the Senate, Tillis may be able to make the stick.
And if he is joined by other United States senators, then there's a real trial of strength to say the president cannot treat the Federal Reserve as an instrument of his vengeance and policy and his crass ambitions to cut interest rates and try to get some inflationary juice into the economy before the election of 2026, no one will be considered until the prosecutions are ended.
That's more than just a defeat. That is institutional counterpoise against the attempt by the president to corrupt institutions. He has successfully corrupted the Department of Justice. He's trying to corrupt the military, so far with minimal success, but things may get worse. And he is attempting against the Federal Reserve. In the Federal Reserve case, there is resistance.
And Senator Tillis is doing exactly the right thing. And let us hope that more senators join him. Absolutely no consideration of any Trump nominee to the Federal Reserve until this menace against the existing governors is completely dropped, quashed, withdrawn, defeated, given up, abandoned, sealed forever. Only then.
And the irony, of course, is that if President Trump doesn't do this and the Senate continues not to act...
powell's term continues because he remains as a member of the federal reserve board of governors even if he's not chairman he will stay on the board of governors and the board of governors can at that point elect its own acting chairman and it may still be powell so the punishment for trump's attempt to pervert the federal reserve may be getting more of what he doesn't like which would be a fit irony but the best outcome
end this nonsense, ideally replace Bondi with an attorney general with some integrity, but failing even that, just end these shameless prosecutions, end these shameless acts of intimidation, drop the cases, close them, and then let the Senate consider the Warsh nomination on its merits, such as they are. And now, my dialogue with Mona Cherub. But first, a quick break.
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Chapter 3: What impact has Donald Trump had on the conservative movement?
I liked all of that. So...
So you were on board with the conservative program into the second Obama term.
Yes.
When Donald Trump declared for president on that June day in 2015, did you take it seriously?
No, not a bit. And I remember, I think it was the Huffington Post said that they were going to only cover him in their entertainment coverage, not in their political coverage. And I thought that was about right.
At what point did you decide or accept that this might be a real thing?
When he continued to dominate the polls, when I saw that even the grotesque... There are a few things that stand out, of course, but the threatening violence against protesters at his rallies, mocking a handicapped reporter... scorning John McCain's heroism, all of those things that I thought would have disqualified him obviously didn't. And I began to worry.
And then I remember the primaries in 2015 really gave me chills that, or I guess it would have been 2016 by then.
So this is a very full buffet and you can have more than one serving and make more than one trip. But as I hear you talking about your reaction, you are emphasizing in the first trip to the buffet, The human qualities of Donald Trump. That's, as you're describing it here, that was the first reaction, the first repulsion. Yes. How did the rest follow?
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Chapter 4: What significant event occurred at Fort Bragg involving President Trump?
Well, I'm going to give you then in a moment an inventory of things you've changed your mind about and things you have not. And we can do it either. You decide which of those inventories you'd like to catalog first.
Okay.
Okay.
So one big thing is I've always been interested in race relations and racial progress in America. And I wrote, if I go back on my work over the decades, I wrote a lot about school choice and about school reform and about family formation and other things where I felt that those were the areas to focus on to lift up African Americans who lag behind whites and Hispanics on many social indexes.
But part of my focus was a belief that the worst days of racism were really behind us, that only really kooks and fringe figures were still like old-fashioned racists in America, and that the new problems were things like, you know, the teachers unions were too powerful and didn't allow
school experimentation and reform and family structure was a problem in the black community, of course, in all communities, but it started in the black community with family breakup and that we needed to focus more on building up family structure because that was so important for people's success.
And what I saw in the last 10 years showed me that I was really, I had underestimated the degree to which the naked racism that had been part of American history and which I was very familiar with, but did not think persisted to this day. I now think that was wrong, that there is a tremendous amount of it and that it was naive of me to believe that we had conquered it. So that's one thing.
Where are the things that you feel like, I'm still the same as ever, I still believe these things?
So I still believe that free markets are the best approach to many public policy challenges. I still believe... passionately in free trade, looking for a party.
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Chapter 5: How does the Federal Reserve maintain its independence from political pressure?
Most American Jews are opposed to the Trump presidency, but many of the most active and prominent American Jews are quite passionately in support of his presidency for the reasons I mentioned and for others as well. How do you, as someone who's, as you said, began your political journey because of this Jewish inheritance, how do you make sense of Trump as a Jewish woman?
My feeling about this is, there are a couple. One is... that there is a tendency all too common to say, well, whatever else he may be, at least he's good for my group. And that is not a principled position to take, in my opinion. But also, I think it misses the bigger importance of what
His destructiveness means not just, well, for the Jewish people among many others, because he is destroying the United States as a bulwark of free nations and a strong alliance. And so even though for now he has taken positions that seem to please the Netanyahu government and supporters of Israel, first of all, he's for sale. So who knows if that will last?
I mean, it's never about his true beliefs. It's always about what's good for him. And certainly there are many People on the planet who have a lot more to offer him in that regard than the Jews do. So who knows how long that would last. But also a secure Israel and a secure Jewish people depend on Israel. Moral and and principled leadership of the United States.
So let's leave Israel aside for just a second. What Trump is doing to poison the social conversation here at home to allow in these voices to to to really mainstream, people like Nick Fuentes and Tucker Carlson, that is deeply frightening. That's where we live. And it is opening the door to the kind of
Yeah, there's a lot of left-wing anti-Semitism, but frankly, the right-wing variety still scares me a little more because it is truly Nazi-like in its ferocity against Jews.
Let me push back on that just a little. And again, I say this in a spirit of uncertainty, not in the spirit of argument. The polls look pretty bad for Trump and his party at the moment that we speak. Who knows whether that will continue? Who knows whether Trump will try to find some way by fraud or by force to seek a third term.
He says so, and I think by now we should take those warnings seriously, although the body does fail us all in the end. Trump's running mate and the presumptive front runner for the 2028 Republican nomination, assuming there's still a constitution in 2028, is JD Vance, who's very, very close to Tucker Carlson.
And I will argue this with some of my more, again, Israel oriented Republican friends, but I think is clearly not a friend to either the Jewish state or the Jewish people. On the other hand, assuming there is an election and J.D.
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