Bulwark Takes - Our Democracy Is Actually Dying

Episode Date: May 11, 2025

In this conversation, political analyst Bill Kristol and Harvard professor Daniel Ziblatt—co-author of How Democracies Die—discuss the alarming authoritarian trends emerging during Trump's second term. They explore the rapid erosion of democratic institutions, the consolidation of power through executive orders, and the silence of civic and political elites. Drawing comparisons to historical regimes, they underscore the urgent need for institutional resistance, referencing the book Ruling Oneself Out: A Theory of Collective Abdication to explain how democracies can collapse through elite inaction.

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Your dip is your business. McCrispy strips at McDonald's. Hi, Bill Crystal here with Bulwark Live on Sunday. I'm happy Mother's Day to one and all. And I guess Daniel and I are, I don't know what we're doing. We're honoring Mother's Day by spending half an hour talking about the authoritarian threat, not dishonoring it by neglecting our mothers or wives or others, I hope. Yes. You can rationalize this. You're a Harvard professor. You can come up with good arguments, right? Yeah, exactly. Anyway, very

pleased to be joined by Daniel Ziblatt, well-known as the author of How Democracies Die, co-author with Steve Lewinsky and many other books and many, many other works. You've certainly been very prominent, as you should have been over the last six years. I particularly would recommend your more political science-y and historical work, I guess, on conservative parties and the birth of democracy. Is that what it's called? Something like that. That's right.

That's right. Yeah. And actually your earlier work which i even i which i've looked at i've not exactly read on italy and germany and the state development there so i'd say daniel is really an unusual political scientist in in seeing the big picture but also the the particularities of things the the trends but also the contingencies of history, which I think is somewhat rare, in my opinion. Political science has gotten very much in a very big picture, wouldn't you say? It's not very interesting, not quite as interested in history and particularity as it once was, maybe. Yeah, although I think that the real world of events have kind of impinged on people to begin to ask more important questions, I think. Yeah, no, that's interesting. As things have gotten more urgent,

I think people have... Yeah, you think the rational actor analysis of everything doesn't seem quite as compelling anymore. Anyway, it's really good to have you. I've learned a lot from you, really a lot over the last several years and before too. And so let's talk about where we are.

We're 111 days into the second Trump term. And you've studied this and written about this, not just the book, but so many articles that we stop at in the New York Times. I recommend to everyone from this past week. Where are we? We're soft than you expected, better off in terms of democracy, resiliency of democracy, strength of democracy, strength of authoritarianism, strength of Trump's authoritarianism here in the U.S., take it in whatever direction you want. Yeah, well, I guess I had the feeling things were going to be very bad back in November. So, and that's what I've spent the last eight years warning about, sort of the moment we're in. And so, like, you know, people, everybody was kind of paralyzed in certain ways, December, January, and kind of my own version of that was, well, I've been warning about this. And so now it's about to happen. What else do I have to say? But I think one thing that I have learned since January is just one unexpected feature of this, others have commented on this as well, is the pace of the capture of many of the main institutions of our democracy. You know, the first, you know,

I was not naive in the sense that I understood that the same kinds of traditional actors wouldn't be there, but I had expected that the kind of incompetence of the first Trump presidency would be repeated to such a degree that this wouldn't happen so quickly. And so, you know, in some sense, I think this first hundred days really are shocking at some level. And I, you know, in some sense, I think this first 100 days really are shocking at some level. And, you know, the one way of thinking about this and making sense of the pace by which all of these, you know, the course of apparatus of the state, the Homeland Security Justice Department, is to think of this as year five, not the first 100 days. This is the fifth year of the Trump presidency, if one takes into account the first term as well. I think it's such that you mentioned this in one Zoom discussion we were on together a couple of weeks ago. I don't know if you've written this up or if others have written this up, but it's a very important point, I think.

I mean, that, you know, it helps. One thought, well, maybe, yeah, A, the second term was very different from the first term for a lot of reasons, the internal guardrails being a very important one, the no Jim Mattises and Mark Espers and H.R. McMasters and John Kellys and Mike Pence's and so forth. But also, he learned, right? And I think there's some history of that, of authoritarians. He, in a way, had the perfect situation. He had a first term where he learned a lot. He was defeated, but was able to come back. That's pretty amazing in its own right after January 6th and all that. And had four years, not just he, but others had four years to work out what they were going to do. And I agree. I think a lot of us just underestimated. I think it's a very helpful formulation that it's the fifth year of Trump's overall project at work, not the first hundred days.

Yeah. You know, and one, you know, I think actually in How Democracies Die, we kind of had this report card of the first year of different like Orban, Erdogan, Chavez, these kinds of leaders. And that was back in 2018, 2017, 18. We were comparing how Trump compared the first year of the Trump president's first term compared to these other executives. And it was clear that they also didn't get a lot done in those first years. And so, you know, the attack, for example, in Hungary on the Central European University came quite late. And, you know, Orban has been in power since 2010. So it took some time for these leaders to kind of gain, although, you know, Orban tried to work very quickly early on, but some of the worst damage came later. You know, and, you know, if we think of.

You know, we just had Orban for a second. Correct me if I'm wrong on this, but he actually had a term before that also. So he is like Trump and sort of he had a semi that's called a democratic term in office. He lost. He learned some things. I think he talked about this a lot about nativism and populism and authoritarianism, honestly, and takes over again. So in that respect, it is weirdly mirrors Trump, vice versa. That's right. That's right. And when he came in in 2010, you know, I've spoken to some of the opposition people who were in the parliament at the time and part of the opposition, and they were over and they had less of a sense that Orban would be a threat. I mean, I think his first term had been pretty innocuous in the late 90s.

And so they kind of gave him the benefit of the doubt. And this legislation was rushed through Parliament. They would often not read it very carefully because they didn't have much time to look at it. And so he was able to do a lot quickly. But nonetheless, I mean, there was this kind of process of learning as you're describing, even the kind of fascist, the classic cases of fascism in the 1930s, you know, which I compared, you know, with some hesitation to the present, but nonetheless, what you see in those cases is that, you know, the fascists in every instance, as Robert Paxton, the great historian of fascism has taught us, is always, always involves an alliance with the establishment. And the big challenge for the fascists, both Mussolini and the Hitler regime, was how to extract themselves from the establishment, because they really had a revolutionary sense of goals. They came to power with the aid of

the establishment. And so it took some time to gain capture of the state. And so that's, that was always a dilemma and or a challenge, I think, for outsider populist authoritarians is that they rely on their connections to the establishment, however you want to define that, but then at some point try to break from it. I think that's what we that you have your alliance with the establishment, and that's your, as we said, the McMasters and John Boltons, and obviously John Kelly and Jim Mattis and lots of others, actually, though, most of the cabinet, honestly, in the first term, you could have said. Obviously, there were many things he did that were not traditional, and the establishment didn't like it. But even with Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell, so different in the second term. And people, some people looked at the Hegseth and Bondi and Patel and those, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., for that matter, appointments and thought ludicrous, you know, and weaker, it'll be weaker because of these. But I think he's stronger. No, I mean, it turns out that whatever their personal capacities, which are limited, there are people in the White House, at least, who know what they want to do and want to have total loyalists, people who have no other standing. I was very struck talking to General Milley a couple of months ago. I mean, he had been chairman of the Joint Chiefs, but also had been chairman of the Army before that. He'd been

around for a while. When Trump started to move on in 2020 in certain ways on the Defense Department, Milley was able to call out a huge network of friends, allies, people who respected him, people within the military, people in the broader national security community, people in the media, actually, to talk to quietly feel that I, I sort of the clownishness sort of is a bit of a distraction or what's the word I'm looking for? You know, almost covers up the obscures the danger of some of these people. Yeah. They, you know, there's this new book out or that came out last year by Jeff Kopstein and Steve Hansen called the assault on the state, which they argue that there's a kind of global wave of a new form of, you know, they're

less interested in democracy and authoritarianism. What they basically argue is the state is being hollowed out. And they refer to Max Weber's classic concept of patrimonial regimes is the way that most states have been run, which is essentially by loyalists. You sort of treat the state as a private household. And so you fill up the, how the regime or the state positions with family members and friends. And, and that's a bit of what's, I think, I mean, that's, that is what's been happening where I, I guess I disagree with them. I mean, I really liked the book, but one where, where I disagree with them is that in a sense, it's sort of conflating two things. One is about creating a very dysfunctional state that just can't do anything because it's filled up with

incompetence. That's sort of one version of patrimonialism. But there's another version of it, which is you fill up the state with loyalists and the state's going to be very effective, but just carrying out your agenda, which can then represent the real assault on democracy. Because if you have people who are loyal to the leader at a personal level, but not loyal to the rule of law, then of course this represents a problem for democracy. So patrimonialism is not just a weakening of the state, but it's potentially, you know, this term that we use of weaponizing the state to attack the democracy and the rule of law. And I suppose you could have your Steve Billings and Russ Voughts in the White House guiding this, and you could have the front people not be so, you know, obviously

competent or impressive, but the loyalism, I guess, trumps everything, right, there. Yeah. And I think, you know, it's also useful to think about this as a kind of coalition of different interests and different groups. I mean, as any presidency is, it's, you know, representing different, in a vast country as ours, you you have a two party system. So any party is going to be a coalition of different interests. And so you have these different competing strands of, you know, white nationalism, of the kind of obsession with immigration, obsession with China, you know, there are all these different kinds of interest, the trade issue, there are all of these different interests and agendas. And that what ties them together, as you say, as kind of a loyalty to the president.

Go ahead. No, I just say loyalty to the president as a person, not to the law. No, that's right. I mean, are you surprised by the degree to which it seems like they've managed to just overcome so much of the Justice Department's traditional distance from this loyalty to the president as a person and rather loyalty to the presidency, but also to the Constitution as a person and rather loyalty to the presidency, but also to the constitution as a whole and the rule of law. I do feel like they

focused on the power agencies in a way, DOJ and DHS and DOD, the Defense Department. And in all of them, we don't know quite, obviously we're very early days here, so we need to talk about what could happen in the future. But if you had told me that in 111 days that have people in the Justice Department saying the things they're saying and doing the things they're doing, and Hegseth firing the chairman of the Joint Chiefs and firing the Jags from defense, and DHS seemingly totally at their control in that respect, and courts doing some checking i mean i don't know how how worried are you on the sort of i guess i will put it this way it feels like in the world i move in people are very worried and then they're fighting back they're happy the courts are fighting

back there's still a kind of failure to focus on the fact that we're only 111 days in and it's four years i mean this is not a parliamentary system where he can, you know, Canada will have a snap election in five weeks and a new prime minister. So I don't know. Now, on the other hand, you could argue he's overreached and he's died, which is probably true. And he's done some things foolishly. And the reaction is just beginning. Where are you on that sort of spectrum of how alarmed is the four year window as opposed to how possibly reassuring is it? You know, I think I'd share your alarm because there's a real sensitivity to the Trump administration to power. I mean, to understanding what the levers of power are. And I think in some ways, maybe the opposition has not fully grasped that. I mean, the degree to which, how important it is to have access to the course of apparatus of the state.

And so there's a real sensitivity to that. I mean, so it's not just about issues. It's not just about tariff. It's not just about immigration is an issue. It's about gaining control and putting people loyal to the to the president in these important positions. And once you have I mean, this power begets power. Once you have access to Homeland Security, you know, ICE agency, obviously the Department of Defense, the Justice Department, these parts of the government that in a sense is, is very worrisome. You know, and I, and I think of course, of historical analogies where that's the sensitivity to these, or sensitivity is maybe not the right word, but at least a recognition that these, that's how important it is to gain access to these institutions, which is something that I think the first term Trump presidency didn't understand. So that, that of course is worrying at a very, very deep level. Now I think the, what may, on the other side of course is worrying at a very, very deep level.

Now, um, I think the, what may on the other side of the ledger, I guess, you know, there is, as we've talked about here already a little bit, you know, some incompetence. Um, and so, you know, and sort of bumbling of a lot of this, um, uh, you know, the, the new, um, uh, DC, uh, the U S attorney that this appointment that just took place. Martin has just been replaced by a Fox News host, you know, so this is a, you know, a loyalist, you know, with some kind of legal experience, but this is, so this kind of these kinds of appointments then sort of make you say, well, how serious is this really? But I guess a second thing in terms of the four year timeframe, you know, is that it's kind of easy to control the agenda. And I mean, you've been in positions of power

at some point or advised people in power and so on. So, you know, I mean, what happens, of course, the first hundred days you control the agenda, but events, outside events begin to impede on that agenda and can sort of kind of halt the kind of control of the agenda. So that's one thing that I guess I sometimes think about to give myself some hope about all of this. But, you know, so in other words, things will come along, world events,

domestic crises that are not part of the game plan. So far, things have gone according to the game plan, though, it seems like. And so, yeah, that's very worrying. And, you know, an impeachment is basically off the table. I mean, I always think of this like the weapon in the political system that is so powerful, it can't really be deployed. So, you know, the only other kind of checks then are the courts, as you mentioned, and as well as potentially maybe, you know, in best case, we'll have like two thirds of everything that goes through blocked, right? That's in the best case, the most egregious kinds of moves get blocked. But that means one third are getting through, and this will do permanent damage to the American state, this will do permanent damage to scientific research to our democracy, and so on. And so, you know, then that's in the best case scenario. So the courts certainly are one vehicle, but they're really a partial and imperfect one.

Yeah. I do think some of the radicalism, what the, that they've been, they've made their radicalism so manifest that it probably has alarmed the courts more than might otherwise have been the case. Maybe they would have been better off with a little bit of slower boiling of the frog. On the other hand, they got some benefits from shock and awe. It's a little hard to know. Not that I want to be in the business of advising them either way, but, you know. Yeah, that's right.

But there is, I think there's a logic to the radicalism. I mean, I come back again to the cases that I have studied historically that, you know, there's this account again by Paxton where he says these regimes, once they're in power, you know, face a dilemma, they either have to radicalize, because that's part of because they sort of mission driven in a way. And they have to keep momentum going, because if they don't, they kind of just degenerate into corruption and entropy. And so there's a way in which they would need the momentum to go, they need this momentum of radicalization as a kind of driving principle of who they are and what they're trying to do. So I think that's part of it. So it's not just a strategic logic in terms

of getting stuff done. It sort of helps keep the kind of whole coalition together in a way. I think the radicalization, self-radicalization, whatever you want to call it, is such an interesting part. I've never quite, I see it. I think I do see it somewhat clearly in my own mind, but I've been worried about it. I don't quite know what lies see it. I think I do see it somewhat clearly in my own mind, but I've been worried about it. I don't quite know what lies behind it. Some of it is, as you say, kind of an imperative of power, the coalition, the base. Some of it is almost psychological, I think, though.

And some of it may be personal with the man in power that he, I mean, Trump is clearly a more radical, don't you think, figure personally than he was five, you know, eight years ago, or for that matter, when he left office. And so doing, you know, the January 6th thing, which was a little half-hearted and fitful at the end, you might say, and getting it failed, he left. I got to think after you talked to him privately on January 21st, he would have thought, geez, I'm, that was, you know, I'm in trouble here. And getting away with it, if I can put it that was you know i'm in trouble here and getting away with it if i can put it that way i will put it that way getting away with it in the sense of

surviving the immediate threats of impeachment and so forth coming back people forget how much people in 2020 conventional wisdom in 2022 early 23 was he's not going to win the nomination again he's weak look at that pathetic launch of his campaign in november at mar-a-lago to santos you know then he survives all that then he survives the attempt to bring up to justice to the court system and with surprisingly little trouble, you might say. And then he wins the nomination easily. Then he wins the presidency against, he knocks Biden out of the race. He doesn't knock Biden out of the race, but Biden has to leave the race and then he defeats Harris. I mean, I do feel like that must just go to, I mean, that has gone to his head. I think we can say.

As well as the assassination attempt. I mean, in surviving the assassination attempt. I mean, I, you know, I, not, I would think that has to play a role also in the sense that this is, you know, he's on a, he's on a mission, you know, it's like the blues brother, the line from the blues brothers were on a mission from God. I mean, that was sort of the in the, in that movie. So there's a way in which there is a, that's part of what's happening, but you're right. It's hard to know, you know, so this is, this is again,

something where I sort of puzzle over this comparing it to the twenties and thirties, because in that period, of course, you're dealing with a serious, you know, massive great depression, dealing with the kind of consequences of World War One and, you know, and the numbers of people who were killed and injured in that. And so this is this period of real tumult, whereas the Trump presidency is coming, comes into power in January 2025, in a period of economic boom. You know, there's, you know, the borders, borders out of control a little bit, but it's sort of already coming under control. Inflation is out of control, but it's coming under control. So there's a way in

which the crises that normally impel this kind of radical agenda are imagined, you know, to a large degree. I mean, not again, not to deny that some people are suffering and but but at a wide scale level, you know, people are doing pretty well right in the United States. And so as of January 2025, so it's, you know, so if anything, it just sort of teaches you the kind of, you know, the importance of this ability to kind of construct the reality, because they're, you know, the objective, if you just look at the numbers, this is, you know, it's really hard. And again, not to say that there's not reason to vote the incumbent out, that's normal democratic politics, but the radicalism of this agenda, and the idea that we need to dramatically remake, you know, how everything we do in our society is done. It's just, it's hard to find that it's hard for me, at least to see the connection, you know, so just take the

example of like NIH funding, you know, so you say, yeah, there's lots of, you know, you talk to people who work at the NIH or who have worked at the NIH, say, yeah, there's, there's my way in which money has been wasted, that we could do things more efficiently. But the idea of dismantling the system that is certainly the best system in the world for some unknown alternative, it's really hard for me to understand it, especially because it's not really, I mean, in many instances, it's not clearly linked to some coherent ideology. So that's, usually we think of radicalization, I guess this is maybe what you're puzzling over as well, it's connected to some radical vision of an alternative society, utopian society that you want to build. In this

case, it's not really clear what that is for me. So it's hard, it is hard to understand. Yeah, I mean, I suppose, or behind, I don't know much about the details, I guess, how Greer had gone through the financial crisis like everyone else, but was the things in Hungary in 2010 worse than they'd been in 1990? I don't think so. And maybe Venezuela, I don't know enough about. I mean, yeah, I think that isn't, you're right though. I've puzzled over that a lot. What is going on here in the world? I mean, we did not just have World War I 15 years before and going through Great Depression. And why is there so much, not just unhappiness with the status quo, but willingness to entertain very radical alternatives to it, and ones that one would have thought people would be pretty wary of going down that path. But

yeah, it sort of suggests that Trumpism ends up a little more in a kind of mass of corruption, benefiting lots of interest groups in society, not quite undermining them as much as real radicalism would do. Now, of course, that was true, wasn't it, in the 20s, 30s, too? It's not as if every Italian business or German business did poorly. I mean, once you get into World War II, it's a different world. Then you're in a world war. But I think it's very important to sort of cut off one's thinking and assuming we don't get to world war you know instead of what would it have looked like in 35 in germany or i don't know enough about italy but whatever the right moment is where you're not you so we think of it all as ultimately cataclysm which was right but it it needn't have been maybe it need to have

been maybe it didn't need to have been in that case. But in any case, one can imagine this version of it. Yeah, not going down. No, that's right. I mean, to go back to that period, I mean, sometimes we conflate. I mean, this is kind of what you're saying, that we conflate the outcome of the collapse of democracy in Weimar Germany with the rise of Nazism. You could have had the collapse of a democratic regime and, you know, von Pop Pop and these generals and so on who were around at the time sort of running, and this is what they wanted, was a kind of stable autocratic system where they're not real elections

really don't matter where the generals run the show. And that the fact that you've got this radical movement of Nazism was something they had not wanted themselves. Yeah. Or you could have an in-between a fair amount of nativism and discrimination and unpleasant i don't mean to minimize it more than unpleasantness to minority groups and so forth doesn't have to go to 1945 obviously yeah and so i think in the current period i mean this kind of connection between the the corruption this you know the massive corruption which seems to be maybe be the real motive behind all of this i

mean the opportunity for everybody to be on the take and making money and use, you know, essentially using the state in this kind of raid on the apparatus of the state and, you know, is one agenda. And I think that's a big part of the agenda of what's going on. And so, you know, to the degree that this radicalization is part of it, ideological agenda is part of it. You know, maybe that's sort of necessary to keep the whole thing running. You mentioned Congress quickly, but let's talk about Congress and between talking about the Republican Party, which controls Congress and has, I mean, so far not much sign of rebellion. Martin's nomination was pulled last week, I suppose, so it would be a tiny bit, but I mean, is that, well, what's your sense of that? How important a factor is that? Yeah, I was just looking before our conversation, I was just, I wanted to get these numbers here

that, so Trump has issued 147 executive orders, at least as of the first 100 days, which is more than anybody since Roosevelt, 1933, and he signed fewer bills into law than any president in 70 years. And so what this suggests is that, you know, everybody was always kind of worried about the filibuster. You know, so for those of us who are kind of critical of the filibuster, and, you know, I had friends who would say, well, you know, wait till Trump comes back in office, you'll wish you had the filibuster. But, you know, interesting filibuster is sort of irrelevant because that's not where that's not where the action is. And the action is in the executive orders. And so, you know, so he signed five bills in the laws in the first hundred days, which is the lowest number in 70 years. So what that suggests is that that sort of essentially circumvent, you know, through Doge, of course, as well.

But through these executive orders, there's this effort to essentially make the Congress irrelevant. And what's striking about it, of course, is not because the opposition party is in control of Congress. I mean, his own party is in control of both houses. I mean, a small majority in the House of Representatives. But, you know, this is really an instance of, you know, executive aggrandizement. And it kind of, you know, at some level, you could say that the constitutional order is not working as it had, or it's supposed to. And certainly, the base is a lot of the legal challenges to the executive orders and cutting off the funding that these are congressional. Congress has the power of the purse, and the executive is essentially ignoring that.

So it's almost like the irrelevance of the Republican Party at this point. It seems to be the main thing that strikes me about the role of Congress in all of this. But willed irrelevance or chosen irrelevance. I mean, it's unbelievable. It's, when you think about it for two seconds, you shouldn't have to go to the courts to vindicate Congress's power. Congress is supposed to do that in the system. And they have plenty of ability to do it. They could override the terrorists. I mean, okay, they'd have to get 67 votes. They'd have to get, it can't just be a couple of Republicans. But again, it's not as if this has never happened. They could be doing a ton to stop this and they've chosen not to. And I guess the question, one question just is how, is that sustainable? Does that start to erode?

Do you get a little more of a normal reaction from Congress slash the Republican establishment, which I think is a highly overlapping? Right. Yeah. I mean, my sense is that the key indicator to watch here is the approval rating of Donald Trump, in particular among Republican voters., as long as it remains high, then, you know, any, you know, median voter or member of Congress in the House of Representatives, especially, but also in the Senate are going to be very worried about crossing Trump because this is, they know they, in order to stay in office, they have to stay on board with Trump. But as his, as his poll numbers drop and begun to drop, then that, you know, essentially emboldened, potentially emboldens or gives the opportunity for Republicans to kind of

quietly begin to criticize. And we've seen some of it, I think, on tariff issue, but it's been pretty muted, I would say. And so that, that seems to be the link here is, is the kind of pop, the approval numbers. And I think that, I mean, it's interesting about Trump's approval numbers is they have a pretty low ceiling, but they also have a high floor. I mean, it seems like it's not, especially among Republican voters. I mean, I don't have the numbers right in front of me,

but my sense is that those are still incredibly high. And so it's hard to see how those will drop. And so that does suggest that Republicans in Congress won't be the ones doing the checking here. You know, there's a, I mean, I always bring it back to these, but this is what I study. There's this book that's a pretty dense book, but pretty interesting called Ruling Oneself Out, which is a study of why the subtitle is something like, it's by the authors, Ivan Ermikov, a theory of collectiveective Abdication, which essentially, why is it that he looks at both the Weimar Parliament in Germany, as well as the Third Republic Parliament in France. And in both instances, he studies these two key votes where the members of the parliament essentially hand power over to the executive.

So in the case of Germany, this was the enabling law. And in France, the Republic, they vote themselves out of existence and give power over to the leader of Vichy France. So the question that the author asks is, well, why in the world would anybody ever do? I mean, these people, their office, their authority, everything, their prestige comes from occupying a powerful office. So why would you willingly hand over power? So he goes through a couple of hypotheses. One, he says, you know, one is just simply miscalculation. They somehow think that they're actually helping themselves. The second is just raw coercion. I mean, in those cases, that kind of makes sense that there is, you know, there's kind of people in the streets threatening them if they don't vote a long thing. You know, and I think we have a little bit of that going on. I mean,

we hear reports of members of Congress. Lisa Murkowski had an incredible quote a couple weeks ago where she said, you know, she feels she can't really express what she really thinks. You know, how much of that is real? I don't know. But you know that people were reporting that. The third dynamic that he points to is a kind of sort of I forget what he calls it, but it's essentially like peer pressure, you kind of look at what your people in analogous positions are doing. And so there's a few key reference points or key actors, and depending on how they behave, then you mimic their behavior. That's what he finds in these historical cases. So I think each of these things, fourth big factor, he says, he calls ideological alignment, which essentially means that you actually are on board with the agenda.

So you're happy to hand over power because this person is doing what you want anyway. So I think all of the, and he sort of shows how each of these factors played out. So I think each of these are playing out in this case. And they, you know, and I would add to that this kind of electoral motivation that they're worried about being, you know, primary or whatever. So it's called ruling oneself out? Ruling oneself out ruling oneself out yeah i have a theory of collective abdications and the author is the author is ivan ermacoff um yeah i need to look that up that sounds fast and none of us have it's such a it's just puzzling

somewhat puzzling phenomenon the one thing i would say incidentally about the trump approval it's a bit of a vicious cycle too because if voters see the people they literally voted for, for the Senate and the House, who they presumably respect somewhat, and they're Republican governors, if it comes to that, and attorneys general, all kind of on board, or certainly not, whatever they mutter privately, not saying anything publicly. And then they say, and I want to get to this now as a final point, leaders of other institutions they respect, going along, semi going along, certainly not rising up in protest. Then they say to themselves, gee, I'm kind of a little uncomfortable with some of what

Trump's doing. And some of it seems a little mean spirited or these courts seem to have a problem, but I don't know. I mean, this, my, my old traditional Republican Senator who's been there 18 years and isn't the Trump, some of them are, but isn't this many of them aren't Trump creations, right? John Barrasso, the Senator from Wyoming, Republican leadership guy, I've known him, knew him in the pre-Trump days, normal Republican, let's call him a normal Republican, wouldn't say on TV this morning, Sunday morning, that Stephen Miller's floating of the suspension of habeas corpus was out of the question, or that he would necessarily act in Congress to stop it

if Trump did this using immigration as the excuse. I mean, I wouldn't get into the substance of this, but it's such an unbelievable leap from something that's been done maybe one and a half, two times really in American history, by Lincoln and FDR, a tiny bit with FDR really, or a little bit, that somehow this is, and Lincoln's was then approved by Congress, that this is like a reasonable thing to do because of, I don't know, we have some gang members who came in along with other immigrants. But the fact that he can float this, the fact that, in my opinion, 40 Republican senators

and 150 Republican House members and Republican governors and business leaders and civic leaders aren't up today screaming about this is out of the question. This is the enabling act. I mean, to exaggerate a little, but it's kind of a mini enabling act. And this is not within the bounds of like a reasonable debate over the unitary executive and, you know, Humphrey's executor and whether he should be able to fire the head of the NLRB or something. I mean, the fact that it's been met with silence and then when pressed, Barrasso dodges the question two or three times.

Yeah, dodges it, I think, is revealing, of course. Yeah. I do feel like it's hard to ask the voters to get, they'll knock Trump's down around the low, mid-40s because of this was a natural reaction against some of the policies, I think, by the weaker Trump supporters. But it's going to get hard to not get below that if there's not some leadership. And they're the one that has the problems that you just specified.

It seems to be paralyzing them. Yeah, I mean, I really agree with that. I mean, I do think that having some dip in poll numbers because of the economy and the stock market helps. But ultimately, and that's the, you referred to our op-ed from earlier this week in the New York Times, that's really the whole point of that op-ed is to say that at the end of the day, we can't really rely on voters alone to do this. And, you know, and even people, you know, going out and protesting on the weekends, which is really important and courageous. But in fact, really what's been striking is the degree to which the people with the most power, and so in some sense, maybe feel like they have the most to lose, are also as a

result of that, maybe the most unwilling to speak out. And that having major civic leaders, whether union leaders, business leaders, religious leaders, speaking out forthrightly and clearly. I mean, that's part of the issue is not being clear enough. And the condemnation is both gives and heads of other kinds of organization gives cover to everyday citizens, helps them frame what's happening because what's happening is quite confusing. And I think emboldens people. They really sort of realize if these powerful actors, if these powerful, I mean, the converse of this

is if these powerful actors with a lot of resources at their disposal aren't going to criticize it, then why am I going to? And so I think it's really essential. And I guess what the other, only other caveat I'd add to it is that it does seem like there are certain moments where there are openings where the words and actions of civic leaders and political leaders can have a bigger impact. You know, the once kind of normal kind of day in politics, things are pretty frozen. People are kind of pretty set in their ideas. They've cast a vote. They kind of want to remain loyal to that vote, don't want to be able to justify the vote they've made. But there are certain moments of opening

where people are trying to make up their mind. And at that moment, they look to their leaders to see, okay, how is it that they're thinking about this? I mean, a little bit in line with the book that I described. You look not only to your peers and friends and family members and neighbors, you also look to what people who you respect, what they're saying. And so I think, for instance, the January 2021 period was one of those moments where people, it was pretty kind of, you know, most voters sort of felt this was totally out of line, which kind of trying to form their judgments about this. But then if you have leaders at that moment sort of being muted in their criticisms or talking out of both sides of their mouths, then you kind of, okay, well, I'm going to now formulate my view of things. And it's not going to be as critical as it might otherwise have been. So, you know, I think it's important to I mean, it's hard and it's hard maybe at the time to know when those moments of flux and unsettled public opinion are.

But I think that that's what we should be looking for is looking for those moments of opening where actually at this moment, it's really absolutely critical to say something and it won't fall on deaf ears in other words just to sort of almost dot the i on that i mean and there's an interrelationship between your op-ed which was excellent in the new york times on which was really civil society civic leaders a little more addressed to their civic institutions standing up a little more than they than they have um but also that affects the political leaders of vice versa if john barrasso got 20 phone calls from his top donors and say you got to speak up this is intolerable. It would be a different, and if he had gotten 20, of course,

beforehand, if he, and if, and if he was watching the business leaders, he's most responsive to, and not just business leaders, but the, I don't know,

people, Wyoming civic leaders and so forth and church leaders and educational institutions, all, you know, kind of saying, this is out of the question, what's happening with, uh,

some immigrants and so forth. He would be behaving differently. And if he behaved differently, they would then be more willing to behave differently. And I do think that there's that. I come back. I'd love to hear you on this a little more. And we should probably let people go soon.

But we can resume this discussion. We need to resume it, I think. There's a little bit of a kind of one of the public. I go to so many of these panel discussions, only maybe a fifth as many as you do but still what are the when's the public really going to move and i really kind of lost my patience at one recently in washington you know what whatever elite's going to step up i mean it's a little hard to ask the public to do it when i mean of course the people in the room i was in were i had agreed with you and me and they were speaking up so i don't worry it wasn't trying to be critical of them, but I mean,

now there are some obviously elite, some institutions that have leaders institutions who have spoken up, but when voters watch business go out of its way to capitulate during the transition period, that turned out to be a more important period than one expected. Right. And then see the subsequent law firms and some of the universities, not all and general kind of quiet and caution. I don't know. I feel like the elites are really, you wrote about this a lot, right? Prior even to the book in 2018. I mean, talk about that a little more about the political

elites and civic elites, if that's the right term. Yeah. So, I mean, they both, we call it kind of, they play in the political process, they play a gatekeeping role, certainly, in choosing who the candidates are going to be. But just in the sort of dynamics of the current moment as well, I think voters, you know, it's a confusing world and voters are trying to make their calculations and decisions based on all sorts of information. And this is a very important one, what prominent people in society are saying. Um, and so I think it's, you know, I guess two, a couple of things, one that there's evidence that this works and I, that what I would point to is in other contexts. So, you know, it's, so in Germany in 2024, um, or December, 2023, this kind of secret meeting was revealed by some investigative journalists where there

was a proposal to force migration of citizens with migration background, force the out-migration or what they call the re-migration of citizens, German citizens with migration background. And once this came to light, there were these massive protests. But more than that, I think just as important as that were that major, the CEOs of all the major German corporations, Mercedes, the big auto manufacturers, the heads of German chambers of commerce, bankers, the heads of labor unions, the Association of German bishops came out and made absolutely clear cut statements under no conditions can you support. I mean, they're very, I mean, strikingly political, not only saying extremism is unacceptable and bad for German society and German economy, but you can't even some instance say you can't vote for the AFD. In our view, that's not a Christian thing to do.

Now, you know, that's going pretty far. AFD has continued to do pretty well. But you know, if you look at the poll numbers after that, I mean, they did decline actually over the course of 2024. And so I think these kind of loud vocal statements at a critical moment really are powerful. But the precondition for doing that is that we have in our minds and that business leaders and civic leaders of all sorts, university leaders, I haven't mentioned them, have in their minds a clear understanding of what are the red lines, what kinds of things are unacceptable, and what kinds of things are just legitimate policy disagreements. And to really show some forbearance on the policy issues, you know, there's this famous kind of debate now over this position that universities are supposed to stay neutral. And I, you know, generally support that on political issues, but there's certain things that are kind of red lines for the basic survival of democracy, habeas corpus being one of them. So we need to have the kind of conceptual apparatus, and that's the kind of conversations maybe we need to be having with civic leaders. What are

those red lines? What are the things that are just, okay, no, absolutely. If somebody says this, somebody endorses this, we need to uniformly come out and condemn it. And so people need to have awareness essentially what democracy is at the end of the day. So, you know, need to know a little political theory, I guess is what I'm saying. Because otherwise it just all gets very muddled and you sort of, oh, you're engaging in politics. Business leaders don't want to be partisan. They don't want to be perceived as taking one side over another. And so in a two-party system, this gets quite tricky. But if we have very clear criteria of what counts as red lines in a constitutional democracy, then I think we can kind of move forward with that.

It's funny that you mentioned the AFD, because, I mean, for me, I was so startled when, not when Musk actually, but somewhat startled when Musk came out literally for the AFD in the election, not generally saying, gee, maybe they've been misunderstood a little bit. There's some decent people in the AFD, whatever version of that you want. And then Vance echoed him.

And now Vance and Rubio have echoed endorsements that affected the AFD very recently in terms of the German legislation that the AFD thinks disfavors it because they want to keep an eye on terrorists and anti-democratic activities. I feel like, and people just haven't, but that got very little notice here, I've got to say. I mean, it's like the Vice President of the United States of America, gratuitously, it wasn't like he was attacked by the left and had to intervene or something, gratuitously just deciding to tell the German people that they should support

the AFD in an election where the AFD had been moving up, then stalled out, luckily continues stalled out. I think Vance didn't have an effect, but I feel like that, the radicalism of that, I don't know. I feel like didn't hit home here. Right. And I mean, it comes from a lot of ignorance or I don't know what the, you know, there's different kinds of radical rights in Europe. This is one thing maybe that these people don't understand is that, you know, that the Swiss People's Party in Switzerland, which has been in government, is an anti-immigrant party.

And it's not a party I personally would vote for that many liberals would vote for. But there's a difference between different kinds of radical right parties and some are more explicitly and overtly anti-democratic. And the AFD certainly falls in that camp. I mean, you know, the radical right parties, and some are more explicitly and overtly anti-democratic. And the AFD certainly falls in that camp. I mean, you know, the radical right forces and many of the radical right forces in Western Europe won't cooperate with the AFD. So, you know, I think that it comes from a position of sort of not understanding these nuances. Another thing, just to me, while we're on the AFD, one thing I'll say that, because this is a little bit frustrating, I find in the American debate, actually, I think this has just come up in the last couple of days that US Senator said, you know, we shouldn't be sharing intelligence with

German intelligence if they're going after the AFD, because this is a violation of free speech or something like this. So, you know, there's two different kinds of what they call the firewalls in Germany. One is that the, you know, the after a kind of legal process, it's in the German constitution, can potentially ban a party. It's rarely happened in German history, only in the 1950s. And lots of, you know, there's, you know, I can imagine why free speech advocates and so on in the United States would be skeptical of this. And I have my own questions about whether that's a politically prudent thing to do. It's sort of like the equivalent of our 14th amendment, removing Trump from the ballot last year. So that's one debate one can have. But then there's the second part that people kind of mix up with this, which is that the other parties, the mainstream parties have a choice themselves to

make whether or not they're going to form coalitions and cooperate with this party. And, you know, you're under no obligation in a parliamentary system to form a coalition with anybody you don't want to form a coalition with. And so if they say, we don't want to cooperate with this party, there's no sense in which that's not democratic or that that is authoritarian in some way. You just don't want to cooperate. You know, you don't have to invite everybody to your own house for dinner, right? So that's a kind of free choice made by political parties. And that's very different than a kind of the state in a top-down fashion, banning parties or limiting parties' access to the ballot. Now, that's such a good note to end on, I guess we should end on, because, I mean, of course,

the Republican Party in Congress, which these are all elected officials, elected in their own right, could make these choices, right? I mean, the degree to which that's almost not even something they think of these days. It's one thing to ask people, you know, cabinet secretaries not to go along with stuff. I think they shouldn't, obviously, if it's not law to ask people you know cabinet secretaries not to go along with stuff i think they shouldn't obviously if it's not lawful and so forth or resign perhaps in protest but but that's a little more complicated they were appointed by the president and so forth these are people in an independent equal co-equal and independent branch of government who were elected by the voters uh often by larger margins than the president actually right

so that you do come back to the Republican Party. I mean, Trump would be so much less dangerous, don't you think? The party is what makes him dangerous in a way, right? I said earlier, the party's irrelevant. I think that's not quite right. I mean, it's irrelevant. I mean, it's silence is highly relevant, but it's, you know, it's sort of stood back. And that fact is, I think, a key enabling factor of everything that's going on. We need to get back together in a month or two and see if some of that silence is broken. It also will have the end of the court term, a little more sense of what the courts are doing. I think a lot of, don't you think, and I think some of the outside institutions, whether there's been a bit

of more, they're following your advice in the op-ed or not, I don't know who we should. Yeah, I think the thing to look to is just, you know, because at the end of the day, all of this stuff really matters if it tilts the electoral playing field in such a way that it makes it harder for the small Democratic opposition to win. And so I think looking at that process, you know, is the electoral process being distorted because of media, because of, let's say, you know, threats of violence and so on. This stuff all really matters. I mean, at a very minimal level, democracy is simply about alternations in power and allowing free and fair competition. So is that being distorted? That's sort of, at the end of the day, the big thing, you know, looking forward to 2026. Yeah, that's more of a, maybe the next half. Yeah, that was a bit of the background in the first hundred days, but that will now become more prominent, I think. Yeah, I think that's right. Daniel, thank you really so much for joining me today.

It's been so interesting and so provocative, and we'll have to get that together soon because there's so much more to talk about. But thanks for taking the time today, and thank you all for joining us on Bullwork on Sunday. Bettering your business takes working with the best. With the James Hardy Alliance, you gain access to leads, training, networking, and support from the number one brand of siding in North America. Achieve new levels of success by joining the James Hardy Alliance today.

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