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Welcome back to Risky Business, a show about making better decisions. I'm Maria Kanakova.
And I'm Nate Silver in the show.
It's going to be a Trump heavy episode, I think, Maria, there have been a lot of headlines lightly last week. We took a break to talk about AI, but we're going to talk about immigration, We're gonna talk a little bit more about terrors, We're going to talk about Trump versus Harvard, and more generally about political strategy. If you're a Democrat, if you're anti trumped, if you're part of the resistance, then.
How should you fight back?
How should you think about Trump's strategic objectives?
And how do you know which are the right battles to pick.
Let's start with the case that has been in everyone's mind. I'll let you start because you had an entire issue of Silver Bulletin about this. But I go to c NA give us a lignry.
What that's fanis saying. I don't know, Maria, I don't know. I don't know.
I'm jealous, but I'm not going to try it. I'm going to anglicize everything.
Ate Nate a broad in Spain.
What can I say?
One of the challenges with this case is that, like, there are relatively few undisputed facts, right, But let's take a couple of undisputed facts, right. Kilmar Aberdo Garcia, who is twenty nine, is from El Salvador, entered the United States illegally, I believe through Texas some time ago. Father of two, He has never been arrested or charged with the crime. He has, however, been detained on a couple
of occasions, and was not convicted of those charges. However, you know, judges at various times revealed that a preponderance of evidence was that he was a.
Gang member of MS thirteen.
His lawyer tells a different story, which is that, well, in El Salvador, you kind of get forced into picking a gang. I think the evidence is based on some degree of hearsay and profiling. The government is not necessarily releasing all the evidents that had but.
You know, but the judge was making.
These judges were making I suppose a probabilistic assessment, including tattoos that he had and clothing that he was wearing. Right, However, he was not supposed to be deported specifically to El Salvador because of a status he had, which is a step short of asylum, which said that because he could be threatened by a rival gag to MS thirteen if returned to El Salvador, that his deportation process was suspended.
Right, and then was it a few weeks ago?
He is supported Basically, the Trump administration is taking bus loads and planeloads of immigrants and sending them back to their native places or other countries that may be adjacent to their native places or not.
Right now, I've ingested a lot of information about this case. I hope I'm remembering a right, right.
It's not quite clear why he was included in one of these deportation flights. Right anyway, he sent to prison in Al Salvador. He's trince been transfer to another prison right based on what the administration said was an administrative error. I should say, not because I want to dignify it, but just for the sake of completeness, that the administration Stephen Miller has now changed this to and it said, oh yeah, this was actually what we mentioned you all along.
But in court filings the administration said, we made this mistake. A district court ruled that the US should quote facilitate and effectuate his return to the US for due process right. It gets appealed to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court says facilitate, yes, but we're not going to pull this effectuate part for now.
Right.
But like the point is, the administration has no interest in bringing him back right now. How you would bring him back at El Salveder really's won back is tricky, right. This is why Supreme Court sot of Mayor wrote the ruling was concerned that, Okay, are you now acquiring the US to go and like snatch this guy from a foreign country. You know, you can't have the court dictating US foreign policy negotiations or invasions. So I don't think the court ruling is as clear as some of the
coverage in liberal outlets that I've seen. I think the court there's a good podcast with Russ Stout, who's a conservative really center right Times New York Coimes columnists Jack Goldsmith, who is a Bush era attorney, and Goldsmith's view is like, the Court is actually trying to prevent a constitutional crisis here and hope that the administration comes to its census.
And how the lower court is now kind of saying, okay, you got to give us your little book report on how you're trying to facilitate his return.
Right.
You know what's interesting and this now gets into the theory is like and the strategy is like, you know, Trump could take a bunch of kind of somewhat bad faith, perfunctory steps to say, well, but Kelly Real doesn't want him returned, right, And we sent an official democratic cable and request to this officially, and we have a plane or a battleship whatever ready to take him back whenever
El Salvador commits to it. Instead, they really kind of like thumb their nose at this process by changing their story. The other thing, too, is the administration is also making these moves because of things. The political battle is fine, too good for it, I think, right, you know, jd Vance, I believe we could go Tuesday treated. Why is all the liberal media making this not exact quote, Why is all the liberal media making this such a big deal of this case and then proceeds to tweet about it
like another nine times over the next three days. It's clearly adminterstory for them than tariffs. I think that if I bring Garcia, we're just a mirror and father with no brushes with the law. By the way, his wife also filed an order against him because of an accusation of domestic abuse that he could become violent. She is no longer pursuing that right. But you know, this is not the ideal test case. So I've said a lot. I have a longer summary of this in silver bulletin
the newsletter if you want to read that. But Maria, I spoke for five minutes, so it's not I owe you the floor.
It's all it's all good. You were you were setting up the you were setting the stage. But I think we have a few things going on here that we should really highlight because it is a mess and there are a lot of gray zones here where we don't have adequate information, right, Like we don't actually know a lot about the background, we don't know a lot about the decision process. Like there's just a lot of uncertainty around this on purpose, by the way, like there it
could be much clearer. And I think that this ambiguity is being put out there on purpose in this kind of grayish way to allow for different interpretations and you know, basically to give the administration in the room that they need. But there are certain things that are that we do know. One is the deportation did happen without any sort of due process, right, So this is someone who was already
in the US legally, right. So he yes, he originally entered illegally, but he now had protected status in the United States, married to a US citizen, you know, US citizen kids, and someone who has no criminal record in the US, which is so here.
Here's why I get set. I guess I have to let you. But here's why get the spin part of you know I mean.
Well, I'm not trying to do spin right now, I'm just trying to do like, what do we know? Right, we know that there's someone who has a protected status in the US. We have no idea if he was a former gang memor or, like, we don't know, right, Like we know that there's some evidence, there's some evidence to the contrary, we just do not know. So so that like, I don't know, but that doesn't That's not
the thing that's relevant right now. The thing that is relevant is that he had protected status in the United States and that he was just deported right without any warning, without anything, without any due process of law. That's the scary part, Right even if he was even if we knew with one hundred percent certainty that he was a former gang member, right, but he was granted protected status
in the United States. You can't just unilaterally say, you know what, even though the courts have said that we are not allowed to deport you, We're just gonna go ahead and do it with no warning, no attempt to have any sort of say your lawyer isn't going to know, No one's going to know. We're just going to put you on a plane and get you out of there. That's the one part of this story that is incontrovertible, regardless of who this person is, what his background is,
and that is the scary element of it. And I think that that is the one thing that should be like, it's a legal point, but it's an incredibly important legal point, right, because that is the constitutional crisis. If that is allowed to happen, and happened with no repercussions, then what happens
after that? Right? What happens if we just one of the wonderful things about the United States used to be due process of law, Right that you actually knew that no matter what, you would have kind of the legal system, and that that would that whole process would have to unravel. And then if it decided against you, Okay, you know, sometimes.
It's not fair.
It includes, by the way, in actual wars, we have foreign combatants who are still supposed to be given and usually we're given process.
And they do.
Yeah, we had so when I was in college, i interned at the DOJ and I was an intern at the Special Investigations which was prosecuting the remaining Nazi war criminals, and they had a number of huge cases where these notorious Nazis still got a trial, right, they went through the entire trial process in the United States, and in some cases, like the Demyano case, which was incredibly famous case multiple decades ago, these were people who weren't notorious
guards who killed people, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Due process, Right, you don't like it. You know they're guilty, and yet they still have that entire process appeals Like there's you go through the entire thing and in this particular case, none of it right zero. That should be
actually scary to everyone. But as you point out strategically, why does jd vance, Why is he so thrilled that this is kind of the thing that people are talking about, because most people aren't talking about like the the legal part of it, the due process part of it. That's actually you know, democracy is at stake in some senses. They're talking about oh, you know, innocent man, et cetera, et cetera, and so many people are like, oh, we
don't want gang members here. This is a talking point where Trump actually resonates where like we don't want immigrants, we don't want this, we don't want that. So they're trying to conflate the two stories and use this as a see, we're making the country safer and we're making you safer. And so they're trying to take this something very bad and actually conflate it with something that people are more sympathetic with.
The JD Evans, I mean, he is an old school blogger. He'll argue with people on Twitter, not from the official VP account, but from the JD Events account, which follows me emmutually. His best version of the argument is that, look, you elected me and Donald Trump to crack down on illegal immigration, right, and Biden and Obama had put way too much of a finger on the scale where it's very hard to remove people, and we have to shift that paradigm. And if there are a few mistakes, may well,
tough shit. These people are in the country illegally. And this guy, a particular guy, is not a not a good guy.
Anyway, He's a gang member, right like.
You know that gets undermined when Stephen Miller Lader says, oh, we meant to deport him, right, that gets undermine when Trump says what about US citizens?
Right? You know they're bad guys. Want to send them down there too.
But like, you know, but that argument is like understandable, I think, and relatable to some degree. And and you know, immigration is Trump's least bad issue in the polls.
I would debate in some sense both kind of like.
The substance and the strategy of like picking this case.
So, first of all, this is not the worst thing Trump has done.
The worst thing it was January sixth, from a standpoint of undermining legal norms or some of the different firings that he's done, you know, even in this term.
I mean, you know, some people would say that.
Like.
What he's done with TikTok, where Congress basically passed a law to say we're outlawed tektuck in the US, and the administration is like filibustering that and delaying that, and that's being litigated. Like that's directly over overturning you know, Congress's vote.
I think, you know, arguably that's bad.
I mean, there are a whole array of deportation cases. The Supreme Court issued a mid dank order saying stop doing this. Right, it is a genuinely difficult point of law to compel the United States administration to do something in a foreign country, and Trump would make himself much more sympathetic if he like gave a shit or pretended to even pretended to pretend to give a shit, right, But like it is like a genuinely ambiguous thing, and I don't I mean, look, I don't think it absolutes, right.
I mean I think you know, if zero was everything is great, and one hundred is a constitutional crisis, right, you know this six is from sixty two to sixty.
Six or something like or something.
But you know what I mean, And you kind of get in this kind of brinksmanship situation that does get into game theory and things like that, right. And part of the problem with brinksmanship is that the party who's behaving inappropriately or trying to be more aggressive, right, can say, Okay, well we're in it fourtify this territory a little bit further across this line, right, But you're not going to mix such a big deal over this.
This isn't a battle worth picking.
And then that kind of like cycles back again and again and again.
By the way, I.
Think liberals are pretty I think the Supreme Court is going to wind up being pretty unfriendly to Trump, right,
And I think it's very strategic. Roberts in particular is quite strategic, and it's gonna say, Okay, we know we have to be careful because we don't want to get in a position where he's openly defying us, right, but we can make his life hard in various ways, and we see ourselves like maybe the only bulwark and st I mean, it's ironic that, like you know, and Alito and Thomas are too far to the right on many issues.
Right, Roberts, to facto is a centrist right.
So ironically, you know, the left is relying on three on the three Trump avoided judges, right, Kavanaugh, Barrett, and Gorsich, who you know have a little using differences from issue to issue. Right, but those three are you know, kind of you know, democracy's best.
Defense until until the midterms at.
Least, and excluding state government. But you know, but like that there is a deep irony there.
I think, yeah, no, there's an irony on the fact that there are best defense actually puts my constitutional crisis meter a little bit higher than yours. State. I think we're a little above sixty six percent. But but I think I think that there are two things here. One this is just one, and you kind of hinted at this of a litany of legal issues that are happening right now. Right there are challenges all over the country.
But I think that there will probably come a moment where there is kind of a black and white confrontation, right because right now there are kind of degrees you can say, well like he is he openly defying it. But I think there will come a point where there will be like a Okay, you have to do this,
or or where in a constitutional crisis. I think that breaking point probably probably will come, and I'm interested to see how the Trump administration will respond to that, because right now they've been very defiant, and as you said, it would be much more sympathetic if they at least made an effort and was like, oh, you know, we're really trying to get him back, and instead Trump's like, fuck you, like we don't want to get him back, We're not going to do that, and then they just
lie also about what the Supreme Court said, Oh you didn't you know, you didn't tell us to do this. That's why I said, right now we have like these ambiguities. There will come a point where I think there will be an an ambiguous moment where where there's going to be a decision point.
And will be right back after this break.
I think that the other issue here, and this is something that we've been hinting at and that I think you've written about, Nate, is that so immigration, right? Why is it a good issue for Trump? Because you can make it emotional. You can make it visceral, like people can be like, oh, you know, they're taking my jobs, they're making me you know, whether or not it's true, right, whether or not these things are true. You can make this emotional appeal that people can like immediately see right,
it's something that they can respond to. Constitutional crisis, democracy is at stake, is something that's much more intellectual, much kind of broader, and in the long run, obviously this is hugely important. This is kind of what our country
is founded on. But it's not if Democrats are going to say, Okay, this is an issue that we can focus on, that's probably not it if you want to win votes, because it's much easier to say yeah, but immigrants right, as opposed to oh, constitutional crisis, it's working its way through the courts. It's a much more difficult You can't make an emotional appeal here you can't be and people will always say, oh, well, it doesn't affect me,
right until it does, they'll say it doesn't. And so in some ways, like we can all agree that this is important, and this is an important battle that needs to be fought, but is this the one issue that people should be focusing on? And you made the argument and I actually agree with this, and we made this argument on the show that there are things that people do agree on that can win the election, that can help you with everything, like the constitutional crisis says like tariffs.
I mean, Nate, why didn't the United States decide to go to war with England before it was the United States, when it was still a colony? Do you remember remember the Boston Tea Party?
What was that all about?
Oh? Right, tariffs on tea. We went to war with England over tariffs. That's how much we wanted to have us say, no taxation without representation. Right. So tariffs are an issue that has been resonant with the United States for centuries and continues to be so, so we can you know, on a broad level, there are lots of people who can and should be fighting these battles, these
constitutional battles do process. I'm petrified. You know, I'm a US citizen, but I'm a naturalized citizen, right, Like what happens if he says, well, people who aren't naturalized citizens, Like, we can deport those too. People even if you were a natural born citizen but your parents were illegal, you know, you can be deported too. And that is actually something that's being fought in the courts too. So there are things that are incredibly important and incredibly scary. But then
there's also Okay, how do we win elections? Right? How do we get votes? How do we get people to actually mobilize? And there are things like tariffs that have worked for centuries and things that people can feel because a tariff you can feel it viscerally. Bottom line, it hurts. It hits, It affects a.
Lot of people's stock propolebly is taken to hit.
But also like the University of Mission consumer sentiment number just had it's like second worst decline or print since like the history of the index, right, and inflation expectations are about as high as they ever been now.
And the short way once some people do is they accelerate purchases.
Right, So I want to buy this card now before tariffs go into effect, right to some acceleration of that cycle.
But you already see different.
Local manufacturers surveys at the Federal Reserve index. People are already kind of back planning and hiring. If you go to polymarket check it sult forth. There's more likely than not the US will hit a recession this year. I think if we don't hit a recession, we'll probably scrape just above a recession with zero point five percent GDP growth and stagnant maybe some job losses, some stagflation most likely. Right, And Trump's priple ratings in the economy are like now
his worst numbers except maybe on healthcare. I think his numbers are pretty bad. Right, So it's like it's and by the way, we at silver bills and track Trump's approval rating. It was declining to decline more sharply after the Liberation Day terraces, and then when the topic turns to immigration, democracy, due process, then they begin.
To level out again, because it is abstract.
Unless you are you know, I mean, you know, a student A four and visa. There are other cases like this, right, and also like I mean, like.
You know of the many.
Test cases that you could pick on immigration and due process. I'm not sure or why, like Democrats are choosing this guy who was the propriers I have everge accorded too.
Judges was that he was.
More likely not to be a gang member, right, And I just kind of sense whereas like on I'll put it like this, right on terroriffs, I was down in Miami like kind of briefly for like poker tournament a couple weeks ago, right, and like that's the kind of thing you can like, Man, these terriffs suck, right and bring it up like in a poker table where you don't know what people's politics are, and that's like safe territory to do that, right, because if you look, you know,
the poll's basically eighty twenty against that. And people I know that were like, well, you know, some of the stuff's Trump's sewing. Not I'm a liberal, but right, they were like, Okay, these terrifts are terrible. Why is he taking the economy? Why is he taking the sococker market? If I run a small business, it's fucking up the small business, right.
And then and.
Then immigration, it's kind of back to the partisan spin wars, at least with this particular case.
Right, Yeah, absolutely, And I think that a lot right now, A lot of the constitutional crisis stuff and the democracy stuff is unfortunately centered around immigration. Right So those are the two, Like, it's the counterpoint. So you can't you can't go into one without the other. There isn't kind of this visceral like oh Man tariffs, right like, or inflation like how much eggs cost? Oh Man, enger crisis
right Like. There isn't that kind of reaction that you can say right now to kind of the democratic crisis. And because if you start talking about the court cases, you're going to have to talk about, oh, well, he's a gang member. And even if we don't know this, like, this is going to come up and people are going to respond negatively and no one who is pro Trump is going to be convinced by this, which I think is the other part of this, right Like, what is
the end goal? Is the and goal to try to score a rhetorical victory, you know and say look, you know we were right about this, Or is the end goal to win the twenty twenty six mid terms, to win in twenty twenty eight, right as the democrat And again we're talking as a democratic party, You should really prioritize the shit that brings people together. You're absolutely right, Nate. Like the poker community, lots of Republicans there, right, lots of Trump supporters, lots of things I don't want to
bring up at the poker table. You know, I've been accused of being a fucking liptard to my face at the poker table. So you know that happens, and you just you just kind of want to try to keep
it kind of more even keeled. But tariffs and the economic policy is something that people can really come together on now, as you say, they can and should be fighting these battles elsewhere, and there are other institution tutions that can be fighting other battles because we know we have these we have immigration, we have tariffs, but we also have other things that are happening that we've also
talked about on the show. You know, the huge funding cuts, right, the kind of death of research in the United States. And now you have Harvard University who has been threatened with well, first of all, two point two billion dollars in funding was frozen to them after they said no, we will not be will not be following Trump's demands Columbia. By the way, It's funding has never been returned to it. It's still frozen. Even though Trump got what he wanted
at Columbia and they acquiesced to everything. But this week Harvard said, we're actually even going to file a lawsuit because it's also been threatened with an end to its tax exempt status. And what they're trying to say is, hey, you are not allowed to freeze our funds. This goes back to do process. By the way, there's a process to doing it right. There's you actually have to go through a process to prove that what you're saying is true. And only then after the court rules, can you freeze
the funds. You can't just preemptively freeze all of them, which is exactly what Trump has done. And so Harvard is actually now trying to fight back in the court system. We know, we've talked about this before. Harvard is not popular among the everyman, and so Harvard is a good target for Trump. But Harvard's the single richest private university in the world, I'm pretty sure, certainly in the United States,
I think in the world. Please correct me if I'm wrong, But they actually have, you know, the money to fight Trump legally, which a lot of private institutions don't, and so we have other actors who can very strategically try to bring this to the courts to try to get at some of the extra legal things that Trump is doing and try to get a due process that way.
And that is also something that you know, in the long term is incredibly harmful to the US right the cuts to the NIH, the freezing funds, all of these things, it's really bad. But it's also very hard for every man to care about that and say, well, I don't care, like I don't work for the NIH. Well, you do care if you're in a trial, clinical trial that has
been that has been suddenly halted. These have happened in the United States, but if you're not someone who's directly affected, it can be harder, once again to kind of viscerally feel it. But we do need people fighting these battles and making sure that you know that it remains a priority.
The King Abdullah University of Science Technology in Saudi Arabia has an adabtment of twenty billion, still no match though for Harvard, So I believe it is like there rich is university in the world.
By the way, to Harvard.
Have you ever sent an email, Maria and unintentionally copied someone who is not supposed to receive the email?
Uh? Yeah, I have. I've definitely copied someone unintentionally because I've meant to copy someone else, right, Like the I use Gmail Gmail autofill and sometimes like I'll click on the wrong one. I now use the undo like I have the undue feature, which which I use liberally, but sometimes you can't undo, like and I've definitely had an oh shit moment.
When I work for Baseball Prospectus back in the day. We were kind of frustrated with our book publisher, right, and I think I said something like this is going to be late, but they're not paying in US anyway, so screw them, right, And they were copied on it.
But like, but.
Yeah, So apparently the demonstration was negotiating with Harvard, as it's with a lot of universities, and Harvard had like hired lawyers to preempt this and and but anyway, the Trump administration apparently an error sent a list of demands to Harvard.
And now they're saying, oh, you.
Believe this to night, do we believe that it was an error to send that letter to Harvard. I actually don't believe that. I think that this this is one of the many. After the fact, Lie is like, oh yeah, there's a pattern.
I mean, keep in mind that there are a lot of new people and experienced people.
There is a lot of sloppiness. There is a lot of sloppiness. Okay, you know what, that's the counterpoint. All the people who knew what they were doing have been fired. Well, all the budgets for everything have been completely slashed. There's no more oversight, incompetent people are in every department. So yeah, okay, that's the counterpoint that you're absolutely right. It might have been an error. Please continue.
Yeah, but anyway, Harvard had been helpful that could negotiate this. And then I don't know if you looked this. I mean, you know you're our ivylea correspondent for you, so I'll I'll let you.
Take the Yeah. No, I mean I saw, I saw the list of demands. I saw before the news broke that Harvard was suing. We got we being alumni, I'm assuming Curtain students as well, got a letter from Alan Garber, the president, kind of outlining that they were about to sue. What was going to happen and why they were doing this.
But it was I mean, if it was sent and error, it was not a draft, right Like, That's one of you can always be like, oh, that was a draft, Like sorry, and I've done that too, By the way, I was horrified. Back when I was an undergrad. I was working on kind of a term paper for one of my classes, and I saved multiple drafts, you know, and as I go, like, I will update the version.
And I had finished this and I, buy mistake, sent the wrong one to my TA and it had like placeholder paragraphs that had like three words that said what I was going to put there, and instead of telling me, he just grated it. And it was just it was very clearly a draft. And I asked him, I was like, why didn't you say something like I clearly sent you a draft.
Hey, if the Trump administration is looking for new hirey, I seem very qualified?
Can I seem very qualified? Yeah?
I'm very good at sending drafts. But this is just to say that the letter that they sent to Harvard with the demands was not a draft, right that was it was like a it was a full like, it was a completely there were no placeholders there, and so yes, they might have sent it in air, but it was clearly something that want and the demands were totally crazy.
They were crazy for Columbia too, And you know, you know when I when we talked about Columbia, it looked like Harvard was going to cave because it was before this new letter came out, and I'd said that, you know, I'm ashamed to be a graduate of Columbia, which I
still am, even more now than I was before. But like I'm glad that Harvard has finally, you know, grown some balls, and and I fully support that, but it made it, this second letter made it much more clear cut that they really could not accede to the demands because they had oversight. They wanted basically oversight over hiring over all foreign students, over the research that was being done, over everything that would completely undermine the independence and the
academic integrity of the institution. And this is a fight for the future because we want you know, there are lots of and we've talked about this many times, there are lots of issues with academia. Lots of reforms need to be made, but academic inquiry and scientific inquiry and all of these things are the reason that the United States has the industry that we have, the innovation that we have, all of the you know, all of the
good stuff, right, it comes from there as well. And right now it's just everything is being completely slashed with no I think there's no plan that is there's what's the grand plan? Let's just destroy everything with a sledgehammer and see what happens.
Should I try to steal man it, Maria, let me steal man a version of risky business in ten years where we feel like the US is doing relatively well, right, the steelman is probably that, Look, you had a lot of layers of fat and sediment that built up over the course of the expansion of the bureaucratic state over you know, three democratic presidencies or twelve it out of sixteen years and whatever else, right, And yes, Trump and
Elon did kind of shock therapy. And what happened in the end is that the court fought back and they got about like one third of what they wanted.
And was it the ideal third? Maybe not. But then Democrats won the mid.
Term, and they won in twenty twenty eight, and then they restored some of it, and now and now things are NORMALI ish, but we trimmed some of the fat with some mistakes made along the way. Right, Like that that to me is not crazy. It does depend on the courts and eventually the Congress and the people like like fighting back a little bit, right, But I mean this is why companies do layoffs. Right, Sometimes you easier.
It's also easier by the way, from like a legal perspective, right, but like sometimes just.
Getting rid of everybody is.
Actually more rational than making case by case decisions, because you want to avoid special pleading, right, you want to avoid the transaction costs, and because someone will be clawed back anyways, you kind of like deliberately overshoot the target.
I just want to push back against one thing. I think that that's plausible in some cases, but not in others.
And what we're specifically, like when we're specifically talking about kind of the scientific funding, what's happening there, it's not as easy to say, oh oops, two years later, we'll restore it and it will go back because so many things like you can't disrupt some of these trials, you can't disrupt this research, and in the meantime, people are going to go elsewhere, right, So that might be a permanent change that will make the US worse off for
decades that you can't just roll back because oops, I guess we shouldn't have slashed, you know, eighty percent of that budget.
No, and the.
Decline and again like the the ambitiousness of it and the chao. I mean, the New York Times had like one of these news analysis pieces a day that was like, it seemed like Trump really had.
A shit together in.
The first two months, and now he doesn't. I don't quite know that I buy that frame. I mean, I think from the start you had a very ambitious administration and a sloppy, chaotic one. I think those two ingredients have been present from the start. And or I mean, there are somewhat in some public opinion, right, like rumors
there that Pete Hegseth will get fired. Elon Musk has been back seated a little bit, right, They haven't picked fights on issues like abortion, whereas conversely, so let me just give you just so we're at least staying somewhat grounded in the data.
Twenty fifteen Gallup Poll.
Please tell me how much confidence you yourself have in higher education twenty fifteen, fifty seven percent of Americans have a great d are quite a lot of confidence.
Only ten percent have very little or no confidence.
Right so, mad to twenty twenty four, those numbers are thirty six great deal and thirty two very little or no confidence. Thirty two percent also say some confidence. So basically you've gone from six to one high confidence to low confidence to even And you know, some of that happened during Trump's first term, but it's pretty linear and steady. It's been you know, so this is a case where
Trump is picking an un sympathetic target. Now if you go so far and sympathetic target, then like that target may become like more sympathetic.
You know, I I.
A couple of friends who kind of work in university emissions. I'd be like, if I are you, I'd be like, Wow, now you can not feel selfish and greedy for donating to Harvard because you're fighting in a good fight. I would fucking I would fucking love it if I worked in Harvard's fundraising committee.
Right now, now you're you know.
Because before I would say that giving money to a richivally union is I'm not sure it's actually better than setting your money on fire. Sending your money on fire at least at least causes some degree of deflation.
Right, But if universes are actually tapping.
To their own downlands, then I'm much more sympathetic to that, I would say.
And we'll be back right after this to kind of sum up all of this chaos and everything we've been talking about. From a strategic standpoint, it seems like these are all crucial issues and people should be fighting all of them. But from a messaging like let's win election standpoint, I do think trying to focus on the economics, right, on the tariffs, on the stuff that can actually appeal to people and get them to potentially kind of change
their to change their minds or start voting. I think that that should be kind of if we're talking about democratic leadership, that should be the number one messaging, and then all of the other stuff has to keep happening, right, Keep fighting the court battles, delegate some stuff to Harvard, right, like, keep fighting all of those things, keep those talking points going, yet have that strategic unity that will bring people to your cause and will be sympathetic and will not let
Trump pull the cards of the unpopular stuff.
Right, we bring on one more final game theory example.
Right, Yeah, even when there is some risk of cheating or rules not being followed, then there is still an equilibrium that emerges.
Right, Like you know, if you're in a cash game.
It's a very good cash game, but you're worried about not getting paid, particularly if another.
Player loses too much money. I mean, that might affect your play of certain hands.
Right if you think, you know, we've probably had all the situation where you're playing poker and you check your cards. Both us keep a pretty good lid on our carac right, but sometimes you're can little sloppy. You kind of or the car to slippery. You lift her a little high, and you're worry that your opponent to the right saw
you know, at least a suit of the car. Right, that might make you a little bit more cautious when you're playing out At the point is like Trump is not completely un constrained, right if he had a twenty percent approval rating, so he's unpopular even in redistricts in Congress, would I'm sure have no trouble finding grounds to impeaching, Right, Will it come to that during the next three and a half years, I would tend to doubt it, right, But the point is that like that, like that is
some constraint operating on some level.
Right.
The fact that Jade Vance, I presume, would like to be president and not lose to AOC whatever in four years, that that provides some constraint on Trump.
Right.
The fact that Trump likes to be well liked by certain types of people.
Rides some constraint.
And and the court provides some constraint because you know this everyal Garcia case is what I call a finder's keeper's case, where oops, he's in El Salvador.
The default is he's still there. Right. In other cases, the default is that like, okay.
Well now now someone as if you were in the US and you say you can't deport him, well, now someone who acts in that chain to deport him is violating a law and then they could get in trouble and so like so you know, it's not always the case.
And by the way, if you have stage sitting and we're not.
Going to respect these court decisions, right, I mean you have had this during the Civil rights era, not in a good way, where Southern states were being you know, disobedient and things like that, and then and then you know, it gets very it gets very messy. But the point
is that like Trump does face some constraints. They're not the constraints that I might want or the constraints that the founders might have envision, but like, but they basically all boil down to, like can you marshall public opinion on your side? And the kind of silver bulletin article makes a case that like, you know, it might be kind of a moral thing too, oh, you know, fighting
the good fight. Well, we are a democracy, right, Like, if you think Trump is very damaging to the health or republic, and I'm eighty percent of the way there, I think, right then, like then, like you have to be politically smart.
Yep, I think that's a good end message, be politically smart because we do not want the damage to be permanent and fatal. Let us know what you think of the show. Reach out to us at Risky Business at Pushkin dot fm. And by the way, if you're a Pushkin Plus subscriber, we have some bonus content for you. We'll be answering a listener question each week that's coming up right after the credits.
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Risky Business hosted by me Maria Kanikova.
And by me Nate Silver.
The show is a co production of Pushkin Industries and iHeartMedia. This episode was produced by Isabelle Carter. Our associate producer is Sonia Gerwit Sally helm As our editor, and our executive producer is Jacob Goldstein.
Mixing by Sarah Bruguer.
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