The Current - Trump is pushing for big changes. Can he deliver them?

Episode Date: January 24, 2025

Donald Trump signed executive orders on everything from immigration, to trade, to trans rights in his first week back in the Oval Office. We ask two political reporters to unpack the big changes for the U.S. — and the wider world — and whether Trump can really bring them about.

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Find Uncover wherever you get your podcasts. This is a CBC Podcast. Hello, I'm Matt Galloway and this is The Current Podcast. This has been a truly historic week in the United States. Three days ago, I took the oath of office and we began the golden age of America. That's US President Donald Trump speaking about his return to the White House, to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland yesterday. He was not surprisingly bullish about the future.

What the world has witnessed in the past 72 hours is nothing less than a revolution of common sense. Our country will soon be stronger, wealthier and more united than ever before and the entire planet will be more peaceful and prosperous as a result of this incredible momentum and what we're doing and going to do. Sounds great. Of course, there are many critics, among them Canadians, who might have bristled at parts of that same speech in which Donald Trump suggested yet again that this country should become an American state. But no one seems to doubt that big changes are underway, both for the United States and for the rest of the world. Already, President Trump has issued

executive orders on immigration, trade, climate, diversity, and trans rights, as well as pardons for those who took part in the January 6th attack on the Capitol and a group of anti-abortion activists. It has been a week, and so here to make sense of it are two reporters covering US politics. Molly Ball is Wall Street Journal's senior political correspondent,

and David Graham is a staff writer for the Atlantic magazine. Good morning to you both. Morning. Good morning. It has been, as I said, a week, difficult to keep up, whatever metaphor you want to use, like being strapped to a rocket, chasing

a piano down a steep hill. Molly, what is the overarching message that you took away from this week and, and Donald Trump's return to the White House? Well, some have termed it shock and awe. The Trump consigliere, Steve Bannon says it's actually days of thunder, but clearly this flood of early action is itself the point in some ways.

The idea is to sort of overload the system with unilateral action in order to, number one, send a message in keeping with what you heard the president saying at Davos yesterday, that this is a sort of revolutionary level of change, because people do want change. And part of the reason Trump was elected is that people overwhelmingly feel that the country's on the wrong track and they want really drastic action to turn it around. And so he wants to send the message that he is seeking to the fullest extent possible to fulfill his campaign promises. And also I think, you know, the sort of resistance to Trump that we saw the

first time around is quite demoralized to non-existent this time. But the idea is to so overwhelm people that they're unable to pick a point of resistance if they oppose any of this and sort of have no choice but to submit and to watch it all play out. You wrote that he has returned in some ways as a conqueror. That's right. I think there's a sense, particularly among his opponents, among Democrats, that this win was much more meaningful, more consequential, more significant than eight years ago when it was possible to see it as a sort of fluke that he himself hadn't expected to win, he hadn't won the popular vote,

and so there was a sense that he sort of wasn't supposed to be there. But he spent his years out of power very deliberately building his political movement, building his political power, particularly within the Republican Party. And so he comes in with a much better sense of exactly what he wants to do and crucially how he wants to do it, a sense of where the levers of power are and what a president can do or can try to do. And we see with some of these actions, one of which a judge has already declared, quote, blatantly unconstitutional, that he really intends to push the boundaries of presidential action.

David Graham, pick up on that. From your perspective, what's the biggest contrast from Donald Trump 1.0 to what we have seen in Donald Trump 2.0? Well, I think it is the organization and the preparation. So in this flurry of executive actions, you know, there was, when Trump took over eight years ago, we didn't see quite the same thing. There was a lot of controversy about, for example, Trump's travel ban that came seven days

into the administration last time. We see all these things on day one. And I think it's a little bit hard yet to know how a lot of them are going to shake out. We've already seen a judge enjoying the birthright citizenship order. We may see more of those. So what exactly the result of these actions is going to be, I think is too soon to tell. But it is very much overwhelming.

There's too much for the public to focus on. There's too much for the press to focus on, frankly, and there's too much for activist groups to focus on and sort of direct their fire on anyone. We just heard him talk about how this is the golden age of America, but you have said that in some ways it's the Gilded Age instead. What are you making a comparison to there?

Yeah, I mean, I was struck watching his inauguration speech when he spoke about a golden age. It does remind me a little bit more of the late 19th century What Mark Twain called the Gilded Age, you know, we saw this tableau of Titans of industry musk Cook Pichai Bezos behind him in the rotunda We then saw him with Titans of AI certainly thereafter. He's sort of appealing to these wealthy interests He's you know pulling regulations off of businesses.

It's an era of concentration of wealth and of real disadvantages for groups that are out of society. So in some ways, I do think we're seeing a return to that sort of attitude. I also see that in the kind of imperialist language he's using. The Panama Canal was a late 19th century project. We see the desire supposedly

or apparently to annex Canada, to annex Greenland. And that's the same sort of, I'm speaking about manifest destiny. That's a kind of 19th century vision of American expansionism as well. Molly, just briefly, what did you make of, I mean, that front row of trillionaires, you know, or billionaires at the very least

who combined would be trillionaires, ahead of people who, would think would be in the front row at an inauguration. And there it is, the business elite, the people who control how the message gets out. What is the message that Donald Trump is trying to send in putting them there in that inauguration? Well, many of these same businesses or business people were skeptical to hostile to Trump the first time around. So Trump feels he's successfully caused them to submit to him and it was a show of dominance on his part and we know he loves shows of dominance. Has he been captured by them? Is he going to do their bidding or will it be the other way

around? Are they sort of sucking up to him in order that they're, that they not become victims of his policies? I think it remains to be seen if he'll actually challenge them in any way. We've seen him, for example, hold off on the tariffs that the business community so fears so far. The other thing I thought was striking about David's comparison, which I think is quite apt, is that the tone of that, especially first inaugural speech, invoking an age of American ambition, this would be the sort of upside to all the downsides he's talking about. The idea that we can dream in America again and that we can think of things happening, you know, in a big way, planting the flag on Mars and so forth, is very much what he hoped to invoke. And while I think that was obscured with a lot of the darker language of the speech,

there is a very intentional attempt to paint a picture of an America where we can build things and do great things and sort of pull out of the funk that we've been in. Can I ask you just briefly, you hinted at that around the tariffs. This is the subject of great discussion and concern and anxiety in this country. Of all of the things that he moved so quickly on Mali, the tariffs seem to be the one thing that he is slow to put into place.

And now he is musing about how he doesn't really actually wanna put tariffs on China, let alone Canada or Mexico. How do you think this is going to play out? Is the pushback that he's getting from some Republicans over this starting to stick? Well, there's always been many people in Trump's orbit who insisted that the tariffs, that he wasn't really going to do the tariffs,

that it was for leverage, that it was a negotiating tactic in order to gain leverage over allies and enemies alike to force the likes of and enemies alike to force the likes of Canada and Mexico to the negotiating table to get better trade agreements. And Trump always insisted that no, he was really going to do the tariffs, but now we see he's only directed the government to study them. And he says maybe he'll do them on February 1st. There's only so many times you can make that threat until people realize it's an empty threat.

So we'll see if he's actually going to do it or not. But we know it's the subject of quite a lot of controversy, not just externally, but inside the administration because so many in the Republican Party and in the business and financial community agree with the near unanimous consensus of economists that this would be ruinous for the American economy and would drive up inflation to a severe degree. Should Canadians begin to think about possibly exhaling now? I can't tell you that. I don't know and the whole point of this strategy, if it is a strategy, is to be unpredictable.

So the question I think is more, will there be a deal made and So the question I think is more, will there be a deal made and will there be some kind of negotiation that satisfies Trump to the point that he decides not to impose the tariff or to delay it further? David, the impact of that is that there are nations around the world that are already caught up. He's been in power for five days that are caught up in the wake of this. It's Canada, you have NATO and the conversations around NATO and how much NATO members should be contributing to defense. You have what's happened in the Middle East and it goes on and on and on. How should the rest of the world look at these five days?

You know, I think it's very hard to say. It's hard to say for anyone outside as it is inside. You know, I think the sort of saber rattling about Panama is a good example of this Where when he started talking about this? I think there was a not there's a sense in the sort of foreign policy establishment in the US and in the press of is This serious is this sort of one of these things he's picked up on and he's going to set aside Where does he mean surely this is kind of a lark? But then we see him talking about in the inaugural address and we see him sending Marco Rubio

The newly minted Secretary of State to Panama on his first trip and so it's very hard to tell Whether he's serious or not and you know molly's exactly right that you know It seems like it could be a negotiating tactic But it wouldn't be a good negotiating cat if you said it was a bluff and so he's not going to do that You know, I think the lesson we can take from Trump's first tune is it when he talks about these things He is ultimately usually going to try them in some form or another, but by the time he gets there, they're sometimes watered down or altered.

So it's rare that there's a moment where you can totally exhale, but I don't think that all of the threats necessary should be taken quite at face value. Molly, should we take this seriously, that he wants to annex Greenland, that he's gonna take back the Panama Canal, that Canada should be the 51st state,

that that would be much better, isn't his words, for all of us? I think people have learned not to completely dismiss any of these things that Trump talks about. As David said, you do now have a serious conversation about what might be in it for both America and for the Greenlanders if there were at least some kind of

increased partnership between the US and Greenland and The same with the Panama Canal, perhaps we won't fully take it back In fact, it was let go in part because it was disadvantageous for the US to have to continue to defend it at the time in the 70s But perhaps he can succeed in bullying Panama into lower shipping rates or getting some of the Chinese companies that have interests there to take a reduced role. So no one is treating these things as mere rhetoric. But I think, as David said, the idea is to see what he might actually be after

and how that might be achieved in a way that accommodates his whim. Hey there, I'm David Common. If you're like me, there are things you love about living in the GTA and things that drive you absolutely crazy. Every day on This is Toronto, we connect you to what matters most about life in the GTA, the news you gotta know, and the conversations your friends will be talking about. Whether you listen on a run through your neighbourhood or while sitting in the parking lot that is the 401, check out This Is Toronto, wherever you get your podcasts.

During the campaign, he promised to end the war in Ukraine within 24 hours of taking office. Now he's been threatening sanctions against Russia and tariffs as well. Have a listen to what he said about this war yesterday. One thing very important, I really would like to be able to meet with President Putin soon and get that war ended. And that's not from the standpoint of economy or anything else. It's from the standpoint of millions of lives are being wasted. Beautiful, young people are being shot in the battlefield. David, what do you think that meeting with Vladimir Putin would look like if it were

to happen? Well, so the first thing I'd say is, you know, Molly pointed out the tariffs are a place where there's real disagreement within the administration and the Republican Party. And I think one of the few other areas where you see that is on foreign policy and in particular with regards to Russia, where there's really a lot of skepticism toward Russia and toward Putin by the remaining, even in the sort of new MAGA foreign policy establishment, even if there isn't by Trump. On the other hand, even though we see Trump taking a harder line toward Putin, what we

have seen is when he sits down with these leaders, and particularly with Putin, he tends to back down a lot. He seems to sort of fall under the sway of them and he really, he finds himself attracted to these sort of autocrats. So I would be, I'll be curious to see if after a meeting he manages to maintain this kind of hard line. Molly, do you, I mean, he talks about being a peacemaker. How do you square the idea of him as a peacemaker with the talk of aggressive action against countries that might stand in his way?

Well, we'll have to see what he actually does. You know, I think the people around him would argue that this is the way that you make peace by scaring everyone to the point that they But this is the way that you make peace by scaring everyone to the point that they don't do things that would lead to wars. This has always been his line that Putin never would have dared to invade Ukraine if he was still president and so forth. And I'm not saying I believe that's true, but this is the viewpoint of him and the people around him is that in you know, in accordance with the so-called madman theory of being just so incredibly unpredictable, that people

don't want to set you off for fear of what the consequences could be, that you then end up sort of pacifying the world because people simply stay home and don't do the things that could cause further outbreaks of international chaos. But he's talked remarkably little in particular about the Ukraine war since winning the election. And it has been interesting to hear him put the onus on Russia to end the war, I think, for those who support Ukraine. That has been a little bit reassuring because there was a fear that he would instead put pressure on Zelensky and on Ukraine and would try to end the war by simply giving away the store to Putin. So we'll see if it works at all. So far, the Kremlin is not

very receptive to these threats that he's making. Once he actually gets in the room with Putin, these threats that he's making. Once he actually gets in the room with Putin, as David said, the tendency has been to be very friendly, but at least so far it's Russia that he's threatening and it's Putin that he's saying has to be the one to bring this conflict to an end. He's also threatening people closer to home. He has released those who were in prison for taking part in the January 6th attack. He has talked about taking revenge on his political opponents, sending some of them to jail, did an interview with Fox News in which he all but suggested that he wanted to prosecute Joe Biden and was surprised that Joe Biden didn't pardon himself.

David, are there early signs that he, he's talked about this before, that he might take action against his rivals? And we're once again in a place where there are these strange conflicting signals because the idea that the federal government should never be Weaponized against political opponents. I will never let it happen again was one of his big lines in that inaugural address And then we see him turning around immediately Uh and talking about uh, you know implying that he might investigate biden Going on truth social and saying that MSNBC shouldn't be on the air.

One way to sort of cynical way to think about this is he didn't really write the inaugural address, but I'm not sure that that's really the right way to think about it. I think he's just not all that consistent. But we have seen him consistently threatening people talking about retribution. And so I expect we'll see that. Again, we saw that in the first term, and it's been a major centerpiece of this term, so I think we're gonna see that.

And even sort of some of the ways we see him working the executive branch, changing the way the Justice Department works, opening the doors to investigations, trying to find information, I think we see laying the groundwork for potential retribution in the future. How much support, Molly, do you think he has

for what he is doing right now? You talked about at the beginning, the fact that there are many Americans who feel like the system is broken and that they want drastic change. He talks about this being a revolution of common sense in some ways. How much support does he have for what he's doing?

I think we've gotta give it a few weeks to settle in before we start looking at sort of early polls that would take the temperature of how America is reacting to all of this. On the one hand, you can point to individual actions and say that pre-inauguration polls showed these to be quite unpopular, things like pardoning the January 6th rioters. January 6th is not popular with the American public. The people have not gone along with this recasting of it that Trump is trying to do into a glorious patriotic event. People

think it was bad and a stain on our nation's history and they don't want him to pardon the rioters as he has done. And you can point to actions on immigration and say, well, there's polling evidence, at least before he started doing it, that things like deporting convicted criminals who are in the country illegally, that's quite popular. And we see him starting to do that, albeit a little bit slowly and gradually, not all at once. But in terms of the big picture, I would say, not all at once. But in terms of the big picture, I would say, yes, people want drastic change in theory. Do they like it in practice? You know, what we see as a pattern throughout American history is that presidents tend to overreach. They tend to overread their mandate. Trump won the popular vote, but it was a plurality. It was not 50 percent, and it was the narrowest

election victory in 25 years. So given that this is such a closely divided country and that he is very much not, despite the rhetoric, trying to sort of govern to the center in a moderate way in partnership with the other party, how does all this go over? The pattern in history is that presidents go too far, think they have a mandate to do more than they really do. And that's why the election, the national election two years later tends to go in the other direction. So Trump came into office with the best approval ratings

of his political career. He's more popular now than he's ever been. And we'll see whether that lasts. David, we are out of time, but one of the things you said was that he's trying to shift in some ways what seems American. That's right, I mean, he wants to change the baseline said was that he's trying to shift in some ways what seems American. That's right, I mean, he wants to change the baseline, and I think he has at least some mandate to do that,

as Molly says. The question with him, as with every president, and this is the way in which he's conventional, is that the sort of broad ideas eventually hit reality, and then people start to question them. I'm really glad to have the chance to talk to you both after what has been a wild week of news, and I hope we have the chance to speak again.

Thank you both for being here this morning. Thank you. Thank you. Molly Ball in Washington, DC, senior political correspondent for The Wall Street Journal. David Graham is a staff writer for The Atlantic Magazine. He was in Durham, North Carolina.