The NPR Politics Podcast - Hear Trump Explain His Vision For A Second Presidential Term

Episode Date: May 15, 2024

Mass deportations, expanded presidential power and a civil service that emphasizes loyalty to the chief executive: here are the things Donald Trump hopes to pursue in a second term.This episode: White House correspondent Asma Khalid, White House correspondent Franco Ordoñez, and political reporter Stephen Fowler.This podcast was produced by Jeongyoon Han, Casey Morell and Kelli Wessinger. Our editor is Eric McDaniel. Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi. Listen to every episode of the NPR Politics Podcast sponsor-free, unlock access to bonus episodes with more from the NPR Politics team, and support public media when you sign up for The NPR Politics Podcast+ at plus.npr.org/politics.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Support for this podcast and the following message come from Autograph Collection Hotels, with over 300 independent hotels around the world, each exactly like nothing else. Autograph Collection is part of the Marriott Bonvoy portfolio of hotel brands. Find the unforgettable at AutographCollection.com. I'm Zach. And I'm Kate. And we're in New York City, where we are about to walk across the stage to receive our JDs at our law school graduation. This podcast was recorded at...

2.07 p.m. Eastern Time on Wednesday, May 15th of 2024. Things may have changed by the time you hear this. Like, we'll have graduated law school after three years of very hard work. All right, here's the show. Congratulations. Congratulations. Well, hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Asma Khalid. I cover the White House. I'm Frank Ordonez. I cover the presidential campaign. And I'm Stephen Bauer. I also cover the presidential campaign. And today on the show, Donald Trump's day one agenda, if he were to win the White House. Stephen, I want to start with you because I don't think a lot of folks spend hours of their life watching Trump rallies,

but you have in fact done that. So can you create an audio postcard for us of what a Trump rally sounds like? What are the, you know, so-called greatest hits that you heard from the former president? This year, I've watched more than 15 of Trump's events all across the country, all sorts of different stages of the primary process. And I noticed that there are some things, this kind of playlist, if you will, that he touches on in a typical rally speech. And a lot of that kind of mirrors his musical playlist that he plays for hours and hours on loop before he speaks. And as you mentioned, there are some of these greatest hits, things like attacking his opponents, whether it's

Joe Biden or Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis in the primary, a lot of things about the state of America and why people should vote for him and kind of riffs on the news of the day, depending on where he is and what's happening in the world. You know, here's a pretty good case in point from a couple weeks ago in Waukesha, Wisconsin, where he hit on one of his favorite themes and topics in immigration. And he was responding to something that the Biden administration floated about having Palestinian refugees settle in the U.S. Under no circumstances should we bring thousands of refugees from Hamas-controlled terrorist epicenters like Gaza to America. We just can't do it. You know, we also have to run our country.

It's nice to be nice. It's nice to be good. We've got to run our country. Our country's in trouble. Our country might not survive. I'll tell you what, if we don't win this election, I don't think our country is going to survive. I will say it. And I've never said that publicly, I don't think. But I felt it for a long time. I actually think our country is not going to survive. There are plenty of neighboring Muslim countries to take them. They should take them. They don't want them, by the way. They don't want them. They don't want them. We do not need a jihad in the United States of America. So, Asma, as you heard, this is something that Trump talks about broadly, you know, the state of America, immigration and things like that. But you got this specific message

about Palestinian refugees that's kind of emblematic of the doom and gloom, darker turn that these rallies have taken in 2024. That specific cut of tape is, you know, related to, you know, that, you know, kind of what Stephen is describing is how he's kind of turning that message into agenda items as well. It actually is one of his day one agendas. That's where he kind of brings in the travel ban. I think immediately after that cut of tape, he actually talks about the travel ban. On day one of the Trump presidency, I'm restoring the travel ban, suspending refugee admissions and keeping terrorists the hell out of our country like I had it before. So tell us a little bit more, Franco, about what the president would do on his first day in office if he were to win another term in the White House as it relates to immigration.

Because, you know, I think back to when he first ran in 2016 against Hillary Clinton, he launched his campaign warning that Mexico was not sending its best to the United States. This has been a constant refrain in his campaign. It has absolutely been a constant refrain. I mean, a lot of what he wants to do on immigration particularly is, one, kind of bring it back to or return to the end of his first term in office, but then push even further. I mean, we all know about many of the strong immigration policies he had, the border immigration policies he's promising on day one to have the largest deportation operation in history. And it's something that gets a huge round of applause. And again, back to what we were just talking about. He also wants to reinstate the travel ban, which is another day one promise.

And, you know, this is one where he wants to go even further. And this was something we saw in his last term. You're saying that the so-called the travel ban that affected many people coming in from Muslim majority countries. Yeah, this is the this is the travel ban that initially was several Muslim countries. Then there were actually it was fought in the courts, fought several times in the courts. But eventually he got it through on the third try. So now he has kind of the framework. And the Biden administration revoked it.

And Trump is promising to bring it back and to bring it back stronger, impacting Palestinians and many other nations, you know, that he deems concerning or that he feels, you know, making this message could help him get elected. So, Stephen, that's on immigration. What else do you often hear in these Trump speeches that you've been listening to? Well, there are a lot of things. I mean, this is Donald Trump's chance to really hold court with his supporters, whether it's in Indianola, Iowa, Rock Hill, South Carolina, Richmond, Virginia. And a lot of these things are the same. You know, they range from the kind of semi-serious, funny ways that he refers to himself, like Al Capone being indicted more than Al Capone, the famous gangster, to reiterating things about his criminal indictments. He's got four different cases against him. He's currently in the middle of

a trial in New York in a hush money payment case. Other cases stemming from election interference and classified documents are pending in the courts. And this is something that he really rails on a lot that ties in also to what Franco mentioned of what he would do in day one. You know, here's him talking in Rock Hill, South Carolina, about this sort of dire vision of America because of the charges against him and also because of Joe Biden. They don't go after the people that rigged the election. They go after the people that want to find out who it was that rigged the election. It should be the opposite way, and we're not going to put up with it. Joe Biden and the fascists that control him

are really the true threat to democracy. Those are the threat to democracy. All of this persecution is only happening because I am running for president and leading very substantially in the polls. This was back in February before the trial started, before all of the recent developments have happened. But in many ways, it echoes what he's saying to this day about his view of the stakes of the 2024 election. It's also striking to me to hear him talk about democracy and the threats to democracy, which, you know, Franco, we know from covering the Biden White House, they fundamentally believe that this election is in some ways a referendum on democracy. And they think this is an issue that they really want to campaign on. So it was really striking to me to hear how Trump is trying to co-opt that message.

Absolutely. I mean, this is one of the top issues, if not the top issue that Biden is running on this year. And yes, I mean, Trump has kind of done this thing where he spins it around on its head and he's reversed it. And I would say he has reversed it successfully among his supporters and among his base and allies. I mean, what his argument is, these cases, these criminal prosecutions against him, he says those are the real threat to democracy, describes them as lawfare, meaning that it's using the legal system against an opponent, in this case, a political opponent. And again, it has worked. I've been at several rallies. I've been at the Republican National Committee's meetings where top Republicans feel this is absolutely politically driven. And it has worked to build support. He uses this every day. I mean, he's in court right now. During breaks in the contenders showing up outside of the courthouse, decrying the trial, decrying the witch hunt,

decrying these cases against him. And so I think you're spot on in the co-opting of this language about democracy. It's definitely one of the defining factors of this race, but for different reasons for each candidate. All right, well, on that note, let's take a quick break and we'll be back in a moment. This message comes from WISE, the app for doing things in other currencies. Send, spend, or receive money internationally and always get the real-time mid-market exchange rate with no hidden fees. Download the WISE app today or visit WISE.com. T's and C's apply. And we're back. Franco, how do you see this talk of the trial and what we've been hearing from Trump intersect with, you know, some other broader themes?

The fact that he has refused to acknowledge his 2020 election loss. The fact that he's described supporters who disrupted the certification of the election as hostages. And he's been campaigning for a while and potentially prosecuting his political opponents. How do you see these themes being a part of the actual policy agenda in a potential Trump second term? I will say it's a lot easier to make promises on the campaign trail and harder to actually govern. But he does need to convince voters that he can do these things in order to get elected. That said, Trump has made very clear that he plans to expand his presidential powers so that he can target political enemies. His allies are already working on executive orders so that he can implement some

of these things on day one. And speaking of expanding presidential powers, there's this thing called Schedule F that would allow him to essentially fire much of the federal workforce, as he calls the deep state, and replace them with loyalists. That is a way that he feels he can replace justice officials in order to do the things he expands. He can replace others that prevented him from taking issues on immigration, as we've talked about. And it's these issues that actually raise a lot of concerns with presidential scholars. I was talking with Barbara Perry. She's over at the University of Virginia Miller Center, and she hears an authoritarian vision in some of these plans and limited ability to stop them. Given that he doesn't seem to mind guardrails, that is, he doesn't follow guardrails, I would

think that he'd have more of a chance than any president up to now to do the things he says he wants to do. Yeah, I mean, she's talking about his experience, that he has been there. He's been in the system. He knows where the choke points are. And he's unafraid to go into the Trump team was genuinely surprised when he came into office and had to assemble and kind of learn the ropes of what it meant to govern. This time around, it sounds like you're saying that they are certainly more experienced, they are savvier. And so what would that mean in terms of their ability to implement a vision?

It means a heck of a lot. They did not have the people in place ready to put them in office when they started their government. This time, they have a lot of people working, building kind of conservative LinkedIn databases, you could say, so that they can have presidential appointees ready to go on day one. They also have a lot of people working on executive orders to go right away on day one. They also have a lot of people working on executive orders to go right away on day one. We were talking about the travel ban. That is an example where they know the nuance. They know how it works. So it sounds like you're saying Trump is a whole lot more experienced and has a whole bunch of policy items that he wants to enact on his first

day in office. You mentioned the travel ban. You mentioned other executive actions. What type of other executive orders? I mean, you have a lot of executive orders that he could do. He has talked about an executive order pulling away school funding for schools that study critical race theory. He's talked about pulling funding away from schools that support transgender rights. He has talked about an executive order to pull back subsidies for electric vehicles. Now, I do want to be clear. Yes, he has more experience. Yes, he has more people that he knows who will kind of help him do this. But there are still checks and balances, the EV subsidies, just as an example. The likelihood is he would need to have Congress

to kind of back him up to do something that expansive that's, you know, that was passed into law. That said, his team is working on a lot of issues. They're combing through old laws to see if they can kind of reinterpret old laws in order to do current bidding. I mean, he's looking at a law from the 18th century, for example, so that he can go after drug dealers and gangs. Stephen, I want to ask you about how some of this is actually resonating with voters, because to me, it feels like this campaign is fundamentally different in terms of people's perceptions of Donald Trump than what they thought in 2020 or even 2016, in part because we are not inundated with Trump the way we were, I think, on social media platforms

or just sort of in mainstream news outlets. And because Trump is on trial, he's really only able to campaign on the weekends. Do you get the sense that his reduced presence is kind of altering people's perceptions of him and his agenda? Oh, absolutely. I mean, looking at his campaign events and his rally speeches, everything that Franco mentioned that's a top priority of a day one Trump administration is there in these winding rally speeches. Everything from the EVs to the social issues around transgender care and things like that are all part of his rally speeches, but also the things that people kind of glaze over unless they're diehard supporters. And even then, these people

aren't at the rallies because they want to hear exactly what he's going to do on day one. They're there because they support Trump no matter what he does. And because these are often the same things, and because they're filled with asides and things about the news of the day, I think a lot of coverage and a lot of people's psyche around Trump 2024 just isn't quite there yet. You don't have to listen to more than 20 hours of Trump campaign speeches to know what he wants to do if he takes office again. But because of the difference in his schedule with the court cases, because of the kind of apathy around there being a Trump-Biden rematch and a host of other factors, we're not really seeing people engaged and tuned in to this election. So I think, and this is something that the Biden campaign certainly has pushed, that people are not really thinking about what a Trump second term would be, good, bad or otherwise. I mean, to echo that point, I would certainly say that in Biden circles,

there is a sense that voters have not yet registered that this election will again be a choice between Donald Trump and Joe Biden, in part because they don't feel like people are hearing from Trump frequently enough. Though, Franco, that could change. We got news today that it appears Trump and Biden will, in fact, meet each other on the debate stage. Yeah, I was going to say, you know, to that point, I think that it is so early in many ways and that, you know, probably people wouldn't start, you know, kind of dialing into that choice until maybe the conventions. But today's news, I think, really changed that. Now we have a first debate announced for June 27th.

And look, that is exactly what you're talking about, Asma, that the Biden campaign wants this to sink in, that American voters need to realize that they have a choice. It's a choice between Donald Trump versus Joe Biden. And the Biden campaign at least feels they will pick their side. All right. Well, let's leave it there for today. I'm Asma Khalid. I cover the White House. I'm Franco Ordonez. I cover the presidential campaign. And I'm Stephen Fowler. I also cover the presidential campaign. And thank you all, as always, for listening to the NPR and the following message come from the Kauffman Foundation,

providing access to opportunities that help people achieve financial stability, upward mobility, and economic prosperity, regardless of race, gender, or geography. Kauffman.org.