Hilda.
I'm Chelsea Daniels and This is the Front Page, a daily podcast presented by The New Zealand Herald. Donald Trump is set to be inaugurated as the forty seventh president of the United States after four years out of office. After losing in twenty twenty, Trump is set to return to the White House with a vengeance, with his make America Great Again agenda front and center. His administration has already raised eyebrows for some.
Of his unusual cabinet appointments, and Trump's usual bluster has seen him make bold promises about what he'll get done on day one, including being.
A dictator just for the day. So what are Trump's plans for his second term in office and why are so many tech giants falling to his side this time round? Today on the Front Page, Washington based New York Times reporter Kenneth Vogel is with us to discuss what to expect from the next four years of Trump. Kenneth, how much anticipation is there in the US for Trump's inauguration?
Well, there's a lot, I mean there's a lot.
Obviously, the culturally, This is the selection was seen as something of a tipping point but also among the business community and the folks who are among the major donors to his inauguration, there's a real sense that some key businesses, including tech and cryptocurrency, could be unshackled, that there could be a lot less regulation than what we saw under
the Biden administration that could be good for business. So that explains why the inauguration has raised so much money from people who want to tap into and take advantage of that more favorable regulatory environment.
And the actual event, what will it look like and who's going to.
Be the So there's actually a whole suite of events over several days. In fact, by this point they've already been going for several days. We're talking about parties. Both parties that are part of the official inauguration package. These are candlelight dinner and a reception with Trump and Vice President of like vance, but then also unofficial parties on the sidelines, including many that are sponsored by big money organizations.
These are political nonprofit groups or political action committees, but also lobbying firms that all have a stake in matters that are going to be considered before the Trump administration, and so if they can attract clients and donors along with Trump incoming Trump administration officials. You can see why that would be a recipe for folks to want to give a lot of money to get into those parties.
So we'll talk about that in a moment. But on day one, what's first on Trump's agenda.
Well, he's talking about tariffs, you know, against China and other trading partners that he feels and has felt for many years. One of the few issues that he's sort of been consistent on for decades that these trading partners are taking advantage of lacks US.
Trade policies to eat our lunch.
And that's been his thinking. That's one of the major messaging points of his campaign both in twenty sixteen and his reelection campaign in twenty twenty and then his re reelection campaign in twenty twenty four. So that's a major thing that he's going to dive into. He's also talked about pardons, pardons for people who were convicted of offenses
related to the January sixth riots at the Capitol. He and his supporters believe that those folks have been unfairly and and sort of disproportionately prosecuted, and so he's talked about partning them. Those are just a few of the things that we expect him to dive into immediately, and these are things that he has unilateral executive authority to do. These aren't things that require a congressional bill that has to work its way through chambers of Congress where he
is narrow majorities in the Republican Party. These are things that he can literally do with the stroke of a pen.
Let me ask you about another group of people, the estimated four million families in America who have mixed immigration status.
So I'm talking about parents who might.
Be here illegally, but the kids are here legally.
Your borders are you're talking about separation.
I mean, there are two aspects to this.
Your border Zara tom Holman said, they can be deported together.
Is that the plan?
That way you keep the well, I don't want to be breaking up families. So the only way you don't break up the family is you keep them together, and you have to send them all.
Back, even kids who are here legally, well.
Well, what you going to do if they want to stay with the father? We have to have rules and regulations.
He's also spoken about closing the border with Mexico and deporting millions of undocumented migrants as well. What do Americans make of that?
Well, you know, immigration was a major issue during the campaign. It was one where he you know, though his rhetoric and his policy position seemed extreme to a lot of folks, they were closer to I think, you know, polls show closer to the positions of a majority of folks than those of Kamalahiris, at least initially. Now Kamala Haris did attack.
I guess maybe it's sort of wrong to look at this as a traditional left right partisan issue, but she became sort of more of a hardliner as the campaign went on, and I think that was a testament to the fact that these public opinion polls show that people did want to see a crackdown on immigration.
And so Trump is going to try to do that.
I mean, he tried to do that to some extent during his first term. And that's one that does have a little more or a lot more in some cases, bureaucratic processes around it, and so it's less easy to do something like that, even if you do enact some executive order on day one. He certainly says he's going to take action. We'll see if he's able to deliver in a way that is commensurate with his campaign rhetoric.
And one of Trump's boldest promises was that he could end the war in Ukraine within twenty four hours of taking office. Is there any indication there will be anything like this?
I know, that's another one that's a lot easier said that. You know, there's a lot of promises on the campaign trail that sound good and that are much harder to actually implement, and certainly ending the war in Ukraine seems to be in that category.
Trump's cabinet picks have received a lot of attention worldwide as well. You've got the vaccine skeptic Robert F. Kennedy Junior as Health Secretary.
What I'm going to do is make sure that Americans have good information with the beast, call centered science, out their flood and medicines, and then leave the choice to them.
Fox News host Pete Hegseth as Defense Secretary.
Department of Defense under Donald Trump will achieve peace through strength.
And anti China. Foreman Senator Marco Rubio as Secretary of State. How can America promote the cause of peace on Earth if it is not first safe at home? What good is America to our allies if it is not strong? To name a few, what can we raid from these? Do you think?
Well?
I mean the ones that you just kicked off there are pretty good representative sampling, and there's no consistent theme. Some of these folks are functioning in a traditional sort of Republican orthodoxy. I'm thinking of Rubio in particular there. You know, he's a hawk, he wants to He's in favor of robust American foreign policy that has a sort of interventionist bent to it, and that's very different from what Trump and a lot of his supporters in the
sort of Maga base want. They support a more non interventionist foreign policy, including in Ukraine. So that right there you could see some potential tension where you know, Trump has said that he doesn't want more US military assistants going to Ukraine and would prefer the US sort of mind its business on that one, and that the US doesn't really have business Ukraine. Whar's Marco Rubio has been a real Russia hawk and wants to clamp down on Russia,
including by army Ukraine. So where will they find sort of common ground? There and what will the policy be. It seems most likely that the policy will be Trump's policy, and Marco Rubio will be forced to bend his approach to Trump's. You know, in other instances, RFK Junior, that guy's a real heterodox character. He was a Democrat until he ran in the Democratic primaries, or to the extent
that there was a Democratic primary. He sought to challenge Joe Biden for the Democratic nomination in twenty twenty four.
And as a long.
History of you know, being aligned with democratic causes, a support of abortion rights, and support for environmental policies that are anathema to the Republican position. Then you mentioned the vaccine skepticism. Well, that's a little more you know, anti establishment. I don't even know if it is necessarily it fits
with Trump's policies or Trump's thoughts on this. He's been asked a little bit about his stances on vaccines and it seemed to take a more supportive approach than what we've seen from RFK.
So it's a real eclectic hodgepodge.
And I think that to the extent that there is a strong anti establishment sort of being that runs through some of the nominees. It's certainly not universal, as is shown by folks like Marco Rubio or at least Stefanaic, who is the nominee to be or the presumptive nominee to be the United Nations ambassador of the US Ambassador to the United Nations is also sort of more of a traditional hawk. So how does that fit with Trump's foreign policy?
We'll just have to see.
You've written about the tech industry and how the elite of Silicon Valley are celebrating Trump's return to power. Who are some of his major backers and how have they been commemorating ahead of the inauguration.
Well, by far his biggest and most influential backer, not just in the tech industry but overall, On Musk, the billionaire owner of Tesla, SpaceX X formerly Twitter. Arguable that we've never seen a private individual with as much influence as he has right now. It's not just the wealth, it's that he's actually been appointed to a position to
oversee a slashing of government spending. And it's sort of notable because some of his companies, including SpaceX, have huge government contract You know, he is aligned with Trump, even though there are again sort of points of divergence, including Elon Musk being for years one of the sort of leading private sector fighters of climate change and Trump not necessarily having that as one of his core positions or one of his core concerns.
So you know, Elon must will be influential. Then that we have some.
Some even newer comers to if not the Trump supporter fold, at least folks who had been seen as critical of Trump bender now seemingly on board with or at least not opposed him. I'm thinking of Jeff Bezos, the owner
of Amazon and the Washington Post. He has sort of taken a more hands off approach or maybe even supportive approach with Trump and is going to be at the inauguration along with Mark Zuckerberg, who is the founder of Meta, which owns Facebook, and he is going to be at the inauguration as well, the CEO of TikTok, which is poised to be banned in the United States if a legislation goes into effect shortly as is called for and
if that is not stayed by the Supreme Court. Trump is you know, at one point was supportive of that ban on TikTok, and then he started using TikTok and became a supporter of TikTok because he saw how it could be used to reach vast audiences of Americans and help his election campaigns. So you know a number of sort of strange bedfellow tech entrepreneurs or moguls who are
now on board with Trump. That's to say nothing of all the cryptocurrency executives who have found and Trump a great friend, to the point where he's promising to unshackle crypto and take a less aggressive approach towards regulating cryptocurrency.
All of these donations, and we're talking millions and millions of dollars, Where does that money go and what is it used for?
It goes into this inaugural committee.
It's a nonprofit group that stages the events that we talked about, everything from the balls, to the parties, to
elements of the perks that the major donors get. But we understand that Trump is raised so much money into this inaugural committee that it's much more than they need, and they are talking about transferring the surplus that's left over after the inauguration and all the associated festivities are over into a nonprofit group that will be funding his Presidential Foundation and Library when that get going, whenever that
is there. No, we haven't seen any firm plans related to that, but it just goes to show this guy's raising so much money from business executives and others who want to get close to him that it's more than he needs, especially since he's not going to be running for reelection in twenty twenty eight, because he's going to be term limited out of the presidency, so they really
have a surplus of cash. They'll also be you know, he's raised a lot of money into some of these political groups that will be used to support his agenda, both by supporting candidates who are aligned with his agenda and by targeting candidates for defeat or members of Congress for defeat who are dissenters or critics of his agenda.
He also wants to invoke something called the Insurrection Act, which will allow him to use US military force against American civilians at home, and he says he's going to invoke that on day one, which would give him from that day forward the ability to use the army against US at home. So floating all of those things at once and calling his opponent's verman, he's deliberately inviting the criticism that he is behaving like a Hitler and Mussolini style fascist.
I mean, to me, from the outside, it looks like with this money and with this financial backing and like you said, supporting up and comers, he's kind of trying to create his legacy here, right, Yeah.
There's a little bit of that.
I mean, certainly, you know, his first term, at least initially, and you know, really all the way through is marked by a lot of chaos and a lot of folks who seem to not understand the way the process works and to be learning on the fly, and that limited
his ability to push through his agenda. And so this time he's got a lot more money, both in terms of money in the bank of his political groups and his inauguration and potentially his presidential library, but a lot more business executives and you know, wealthy donors who are
appear to be on board with him. And now whether that's on board because they support his agenda, or whether they fear that he will make good on his promises to seek retribution against his critics and enemies, his political enemies, you know, I think it's probably a mix of both
of those things. But either way, whatever the motivation is, it's really made for a you know, a confluence of events and individuals and companies and supporters that at least appear, you know, from the outside and at the outset to be giving him quite a lot of momentum headed into his second term in office.
Where does this sit with his traditional magabase because we've already seen some tensions over visas for tech workers emerge, for example with former Trump ally Steve Bannon calling Elon Musk racist and a truly evil guy.
Yeah, I think we'll see some tension. I mean, the thing about MAGA is it sort of is Trump. I mean, there are you know, there certainly are some philosophical issue stands that pure to have white support, cracking down an immigration obviously being one of the main ones, this sort of populist nationalist sensibility, that the non andventionist approach to foreign policy. That are things that he supports and most
of the people around him support. But as I've said, you know that there are here nominees that he's picked for key positions that don't support them. And so I think there's a feeling that like wherever Trump comes down on these things. Is what MAGA is, despite the fact that there sometimes seems to be some discordinance between what the base wants and what he wants, or what he wants and what the people who are staffing his administration want.
That's sort of the Trump the Trump approach. He's sort of all over the place on any number of issues, and wherever he lands, which may be different from one day to the next, is what MAGA is.
And last of Kenneth, what do you make of his new presidential portrait.
Oh?
Yeah, it's the very very blue steel there similar to his mugshot in some ways that famously circulated after the authorities in Georgia indicted him or and a series of crimes related to the effort to overturn the twenty two the election. This is again, this is his part of his appeal to his supporters. They like that, they like that he has this tough guy persona.
They like that he has.
Positioned himself and claimed to be persecuted by the establishment, by Democrats and by whomever his enemies of the moment are. And so I think the portrait sort of captures that vibe.
Thanks for joining us, Kenneth.
Yeah, it's a pleasure.
That's it for this episode of the Front Page. You can read more about today's stories and extensive news coverage at enzid Herald dot co dot mz. The Front Page is produced by Ethan Sills and Richard Martin, who is also a sound engineer. I'm Chelsea Daniels. Subscribe to The Front Page on iHeartRadio or.
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