The NPR Politics Podcast - How Trump Is Remaking Culture To Fit His Worldview

Episode Date: August 29, 2025

President Trump has made unprecedented moves to influence American culture, from taking broadcast corporations to court to his efforts to control the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and the Smithsonian Institution. We discuss what could be motivating these efforts and what impact they’re having on arts and culture.This episode: White House correspondent Deepa Shivaram, critic-at-large Eric Deggans, and senior political editor and correspondent Domenico Montanaro.This podcast was produced by Casey Morell & Bria Suggs, and edited by Rachel Baye. 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 NPR and the following message comes from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. RWJF is a national philanthropy, working toward a future where health is no longer a privilege but a right. Learn more at RWJF.org. This is Christy from Trophy Club, Texas. I'm currently on my first trip to Alaska, enjoying the soothing sounds of cold water rushing by me at the base of a waterfall near Valdez. This podcast was recorded at... 12 p.m. on Friday, August 29th, 2025. Things may have changed by the time you hear this,

but I will be missing this weather when I return to the Texas heat. Enjoy the show. Ooh, so many travel intros lately. End of summer. It's so relaxing. I love that sound. I need that for my white noisemaker. Ooh, I like that idea.

Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Deepa Shiverom. I cover the White House. And I'm Domenico Montanaro, Senior Political Editor. and correspondent. And we also have NPR critic at large. Eric Deggans here. Welcome back to the podcast, Eric. Hey, great to be here, although I'm feeling a little sleepy after hearing all that white noise. We're going to pick up the pace. Don't worry. So today on the show, we're looking at how President Trump has put his mark on culture, from taking over major cultural institutions to his

near daily presence on television and social media. So, Eric, let's back up here for a moment. Remind us about some of the ways Trump has basically taken over cultural institutions? Sure. So at cultural institutions where the federal government has a lot of power, he's acted very aggressively, he's notified the Smithsonian that there's going to be a review of their exhibits and take a hard look at what the exhibits they're presenting and make sure that they more conform to his vision of what they should be saying about America. he's also taking control of the Kennedy Center, replaced people on the board, and gotten very aggressively involved with who they picked for the Kennedy Center honors this time around, and even talked a little bit during a press conference about how he should get one. And there's a lot of aggressive action there to sort of put his imprint on cultural institutions. Dominica, what appears to be some of the reasoning behind some of Trump's efforts here to essentially remake

these institutions. Yeah, I think it's no surprise that he wants to try to reshape American culture. That sounds like a big, vaunted goal. But, you know, he and the MAGA movement have said for a long time that they feel like that the culture in America is too negative toward American history. It stresses diversity too much. We heard this during the campaign trail, during the Republican primary, calling it quote-unquote woke, which has been a, you know, misdefinition of what that word is or how it originally.

And we've seen this really kind of permeate across all kind of aspects of American life that the president can try to leverage. You know, think about, we're talking about the media here, academia, law firms and who they can represent. The Smithsonian and the arts, as Eric has noted, governance, talking about democratic-controlled cities and bringing national troops into those places and talking about crime in those places. Always fundamentally at the heart of MAGA has been culture. More so in the economy, Trump has essentially stressed. culture, way more than almost anything else. And that's what he's doing here with the Office of the Presidency, trying to sort of consolidate power, control the narrative,

and do it in any way that he possibly can. You know, I think he's seeking to replace the value of expertise and the value of competence with fealty to Trump and fealty to his ideological leanings. So when you see him come to the Smithsonian and say that he's going to examine their exhibits, it's not just about eliminating wokeism, It's about replacing the judgment of trained curators and experienced historians with the judgment of his political appointees and people who are loyal to him. Same thing with the Kennedy Center.

It is about reforming that institution and getting rid of the people who might be able to say, hey, here are great artists and replace them with people who are say, oh, here are artists who make Trump look good. Or here are artists who align with his ideological leanings. And so much of this is like very integral to like Trump's own history, right? We can't talk about Trump's influence on culture without talking about TV and his history with television. I mean, Trump is a showman. He spent several years hosting the show The Apprentice. So Eric, I mean, tell us about a few of the major changes he's maybe provoked on TV from the White House. He seems to be running many aspects of his presidency like it's a reality show.

I mean, it is, you know, when you see him run this. marathon, you know, cabinet meeting, and it's filled with all these people coming in and praising him and talking about, you know, how wonderful he is as a leader, it really provokes flashbacks to the boardroom scenes from The Apprentice, where, you know, everybody in that room knew that he had the power to remove them from the TV show. So the first order of business is to tell, you know, Donald Trump how great he is so that he likes you and he doesn't act negatively towards you. And in an odd way, we have seen that play out, not just with the cabinet, but we've seen that play out with almost everything this White House touches from the way, you know, world leaders are summoned to America, to the way, you know, he deals with the captains of industry, people from Apple and people from Facebook and meta. You know, they're all expected to bend a knee in some way in order to get favors from him or to avoid punishment.

Yeah. It's very like flattery first, personality first, which is just, you know, it's just so interesting to put that in the context of the White House and, you know, the person leading the country. But, Domenico, I want to ask you, I mean, it's not unusual for a president to kind of have, you know, these sort of personality driven elements. But how unique is Trump in this sense? Well, look, I mean, I think that clearly, I think Eric's describing sort of an executive producer in chief here with Donald Trump. And that's not something we've really ever seen. before. I mean, we've had a lot of presidents obviously try to work the refs, but this goes beyond that. I mean, looking back to someone like Richard Nixon, you know, his vice president Spiro Agnew was certainly highly critical of television news or the advent of TV news, which he felt was too superficial. People who covered President Obama liked to joke that he was someone who tried to kind of be our editor sometimes, said that we were too focused on the small. And he tried to go around the media doing things like these podcasts.

with, you know, like between two ferns with Zach Galfinacus back then. But no one has really done what Trump is doing in trying to operationalize this attempt at control using really whatever leverage he has at his disposal, whether it's lawsuits, cutting funding, threatening to revoke licenses. I mean, just this week, you know, he encouraged the FCC to take away the licenses from NBC and ABC and they're under the microscope. And look, I think there are differing priorities between corporate ownership and, say, journalists, for example, like we saw with the CBS lawsuit where they settled for millions of

dollars with Paramount, the parent company of CBS and CBS News, for something that was really routine journalistic editing of an interview with Kamala Harris during the 2024 presidential campaign. So, you know, we're seeing ways in which Donald Trump is trying, you know, in ways that past presidents never could even wrap their heads around trying or never even attempt to really kind of leverage these media organizations to get them on. the same page with his narrative. All right, we're going to take a quick break here, and we'll be back in a moment. Support for NPR, and the following message comes from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

RWJF is a national philanthropy, working toward a future where health is no longer a privilege but a right. Learn more at RWJF.org. And we're back. So, Domenico, how much of all of this comes, you know, from Trump's personality, rather other than, you know, you mentioned part of like the broader MAGA political movement. Well, like I said, culture is really a fuel to Trump's political rise. And as Eric was talking about and you were talking about earlier about The Apprentice, you know, he really does feel like everything should sort of revolve around him.

You know, he's sort of the sun to the planets kind of orbiting around him. So to that point, he clearly wants full control of all of that. He's very aware of optics. We know that's what he really cares about. and that means his image and wanting fealty. You know, so as president, he's using whatever leverage he can to try to break these industries. And we think about mass media, the arts, comedy, journalism,

all of them lean toward the counterculture, toward irreverence to power. And that doesn't exactly fit with what Trump wants. He doesn't want that kind of criticism at all. I have to say, too, what's interesting to me about this is how the personal and the political intertwine when you talk about Trump. For example, let's talk about the ways

in which his ideology is about suppressing the way America has historically oppressed and disadvantaged people of color. One of the major goals he seems to have and his followers seem to have is to try and erase or minimize the legacy of slavery, the legacy of Jim Crow segregation, the legacy in the impact of redlining in America, all of these things that are sort of wrapped up in racial superiority and the rise of whiteness in America, he wants to minimize. And I think the very name of the movement, make America great again.

In a way, the only way you can maintain that America was truly great in its past history is by maintaining the impact and the legacy of racial oppression was a long, long time ago, and now everything's equal. And these diversity programs and inclusion programs that are aimed at sort of minimizing and erasing systemic oppression, are really just disadvantaging white people. And so some of this, I think, is very much about him feeling like people have unfairly criticized him about race

and reflecting the way a lot of his followers also feel the very same way and then taking action against the Smithsonian and the Kennedy Center and TV and media outlets and newspapers, journalists and academics, who all their job is documenting that history and documenting how it plays out in the modern day. And politically, that's very different than, how past presidents have talked about the country, right? I mean, most past presidents, you've heard say things like, you know, the country has had its flaws, but we're leaning toward trying to rectify those things, even apologize for past ills within the country to be able

to make amends and to be able to lead towards something that's, you know, greater, something that's evolving, a more perfect union, you know, as the Constitution would put it. So I think that that's a really important piece of historically what presidents have done. And Trump is really, for lack of better term, trying to whitewash that. So, Eric, how has Trump's interjection into cultural affairs directly affected the arts and, I'll say culture more broadly? Yeah. So, you know, he's created, of course, this atmosphere of chaos. People are uncertain. They don't know what's expected of them. People with expertise are being replaced by people who are loyal to Trump and support him. And then we've also seen artists and figures disassociate themselves from some of these

institutions. So at the Kennedy Center, for example, actor Issa Rade canceled a sold-out show, TV producer Shonda Rhymes resigned as the board's treasurer, musicians like Ben Folds and opera singer Renee Fleming, you know, also announced that they were going to resign as artistic advisors for the Kennedy Center. We've also seen companies sort of react to the Trump administration anti-D-EI mandates. So, you know, Paramount before its merger with Skydance was approved, agreed to suspend any diversity or equity in inclusion programs it had or not implement them. So there's a lot of different ways that we're seeing this kind of play out as companies decide how much to go along with Trump's agenda and what they can do to either please him or avoid

punishment. So what kind of pushback to these changes are you seeing? Well, it's been interesting. Of course, performers have spoken out who were opposed to Trump. Stephen Colbert, whose show The Late Show is going to be canceled in May, has been aggressive about stepping up and criticizing Trump even more. And we've seen South Park, for example, which is another show that's part of Paramount, where because it's popular and they've recently signed a billion-dollar deal with the company, they seem to have the freedom to really be aggressively criticizing Trump. I mean, it's an animated show, and they depict Trump. They've used AI to sort of recreate him. They make fun of how he looks. They have the procession of business and political leaders, you know, constantly praising Trump

and constantly saying he looks amazing. I think performers are responding in the way that they can, which is to step up the commentary that perhaps Trump doesn't like and make sure at least some of them that people know that they are not intimidated. Yeah, and I think if you're talking about, like, you know, art imitating life or life imitating art. I think it hit a nerve a little bit because, you know, truth in comedy is kind of as long as there's a kernel of something there.

And them, you know, talking about foreign leaders and business leaders coming in to praise Trump in over the top ways, you know, just this week we saw that in a three and a half hour cabinet meeting where cabinet members seemed to be bending over backwards to praise Trump and tell him how great he is and what an honor it is to work for him and why his leadership was so great while he sat there and smiled and, you know, kind of said back to them that they were doing a great job after they would praise him. So, you know, that's where I think sometimes it can feel effective when, you know, you have something that seems to have at least a kernel of truth. And, you know, it was really bizarre was that cabinet meeting happened after South Park

had aired an episode satirizing that very thing. It sounded like the real life people were reading a script from this show. Oh, wow. That's funny. It is interesting, though, because I think, you know, compared to, let's say, after the first, you know, Trump election back in 2016 and in the year 2017, 2018, there were a lot of, you know, protests that maybe we're not seeing right now. So, you know, yes, South Park is sort of satirizing Trump and, and doing these kind of critiques in that way. But I'm curious why there maybe hasn't been more pushback on this cultural takeover. Well, I think the left has had a really hard time figuring out. out how to focus in on Trump. I mean, they want to see more fight from their politicians,

but they're out of power completely in Washington. And I do think that there's been a little bit of traction with these No Kings protests because it fits on a bumper sticker. The joke has always been that their pushback doesn't fit on a bumper sticker as neatly as stuff from the right. So, you know, I think that they're finding their voice a little bit, but they're needing to find ways to cut through all of the firehose of things that can come at them from Trump. And frankly, he's exhausted a lot of people. And with the power of the office, being able to push back on corporate owners of the media or in the arts, it's had a chilling effect on a lot of people, including academia as well, you know, aside from seeing, you know, somewhere like Harvard take the president to court, but they also have a very large endowment and are able to do that. So, you know, they're weighing the pros and cons of really going to war with the president of the United States.

A lot of people are also talking about this having been the result of a vibe election, right? The idea that people were voting more for the way Trump made them feel than they were voting for any specific policy or set of policies that he might enact. And one of the things that Trump has been masterful at doing is extending this vibe to everything he does. whether it's sending out ICE to capture people that he says are dangerous criminals or it's, you know, intimidating news outlets, or it's taking over the Kennedy Center of the Smithsonian, he has a vibe that he's extending to every area of government that he possibly can. And I think his opponents have had a hard time coming up with a competing vibe that is as compelling. There are a lot of people who don't necessarily agree with what's happening, but they don't necessarily agree on the vibe to counteract. on top of all of that you have a lot of these institutions the smithsonian and the kennedy center depend on federal funding or connected to federal control so they are easier to intimidate

and you have media figures who work for gigantic companies where the media outlet that's being targeted is a smaller and smaller part of their business so disney is not necessarily concerned with keeping jimmy kimmel happy and and as we saw with paramount and skydance they weren't necessarily concerned with preserving Stephen Colbert's image when they have this whole gigantic other merger and a film business and all these tech media plans that they really want to implement and they look at the late show and they say, well, it's losing money, do we really need to care about this?

And I think part of the problem is that a lot of the most outspoken media people work for gigantic media and technology companies that in various ways have decided to bid in the knee. And so then people who work for those companies don't know how much can I speak out before my employer may work in concert with the Trump administration to make the life difficult for me. All right. We're going to take a quick break. And when we get back, it's time for Can't Let It Go. And we're back.

And it's time to end the show like we do every week with Can't Let It Go, the part of the show where we talk about the things from the week that we just can't stop thinking about politics or otherwise. So, Eric, since you're our guest, we're going to kick it off with you. Oh, thank you. Well, you know, because, you know, I'm a TV critic, I'm already viving on a couple of shows that are going to come out in the first week of September. The first one is this show called Task that features Mark Ruffalo. Everybody who thinks that Mark Ruffalo is a dreamboat are going to be really surprised by this role where he plays this middle-aged, you know, overweight, kind of run-down FBI agent who's running this task. 4 is trying to catch a bunch of knuckleheads who are knocking over drug dens in the rural areas around Philadelphia, but it's created by the guy who created Mirro of East Town, if you

remember that. This show is also on HBO Max, and it's really about Ruffalo's character. He's endured some tragedies in his personal life, and he's trying to overcome them while he's trying to catch this other criminal play by Tom Palfrey. It's really, really great. And then the other one is the paper, which is this much-heralded sort of continuation connected to the office. It's a mockumentary about a very small, struggling newspaper in Pennsylvania, in Scranton. And so, you know, of course, I'm viving with it because

I'm a journalist. It makes fun of a lot of sad truths about where we are, and it's a mockumentary in the same style of the office, really well done. And both of those are going to drop in the first week of September, and I've already enjoying them. You know what we need more of is, bad truths. We need more of that in our lives. Yeah, I saw a clip of it. It looked like a Portlandia for newspapers, so I'm not sure that that's a great thing. That's so funny. Hopefully it's funny. I think calling it Portlandia would make it a little too sophisticated. That's amazing. Well, I actually can't wait to see that.

I also never thought of Mark Ruffalo as a sex symbol. So now I'm thinking about it differently. Well, that's really, you're one of one, Domenico. That's just you. I don't know. I mean, I'm not saying. I just never thought of them that way. I just thought them as the indie film guy. That's so funny. All right, Domenico, what can you not let go of? I can't let go of corgis.

What? There was apparently a corgi race in Lithuania that brought together 120 teams from around Europe and elsewhere that saw these corgis sprinting out of boxes, going as fast as they can, all four paws in the air, little big bodies and their little tiny legs. They're just adorable. I just think it was one of the, it just made me smile.

There was a costume challenge. There was a little corgi in a Batman suit. You know, there's the mightiest voice competition where they're, I guess, barking. You know, and maybe it hits a little close to home because I have this little mutt of a dog that, like, is like a corgi, chihuahua, pit bull mix thing that nobody quite knows. And she's getting older. And she's having a harder time walking now. And I was just thinking of her young, like sprinting out. the way that these dogs do and it just it brought a smile with all of the gloom out there that is really

sweet i like that please send me those picks go watch the video it's fun uh all right deepa what can't you let go of well i'm ending on a little bit of a nerdy note um after the fun tv and the cute corgis um my thing that i can't let go of is that there's a campaign to basically change the world map that we basically know of called the Mercator map. And basically the African Union earlier this week backed this campaign because they say that it distorts the size of the African continent. And this is a map like the Mercator map that is the typical map that you know of. It's the map that you saw in your classroom walls and schools. It's in all the textbooks. It's basically been around for like a very, very long time. I think like since the 1500s and this Flemish cartographer made it. And it sort

was a map that helped, you know, people who were exploring the world to plot their tracks like across the oceans in a straight line. But it really distorts actually the way that we see the world. So one thing that that was like really interesting is that on the Mercator map, the entire continent of Africa is like about the same size as Greenland. It's actually about 14 times bigger than Greenland. But the map makes it seem like it's the same size. So basically the African Union is saying like, hey, we've been minimized, literally physically on paper and it really distorts the way people see the continent of Africa. So there's this big campaign to change the map to this other kind of map that sort of makes the world and all these continents

a little bit more equal and in perspective. I have to say, though, as a geography nerd, I have never noticed Greenland in the way that I notice Africa on the globe anyway. I don't know about maybe that the map makes Greenland humongous. But that's so interesting to me. That should get it to scale. I know. So there's already a version called the Equal Earth map. But the thing about that is that because it sort of makes everything, obviously, to scale and truly to what these consonants are sized as, it doesn't really look as neat and tidy the way we're used to. So there might be a pivot in our lives where maybe we just think of maps and use maps in an entirely different way, which I feel like is kind of cool. Cool. All right. That's a wrap for today. Thank you for joining the pod, Eric. And I should

note that today is your last day as a full-time correspondent at NPR. So Thank you for all of your reporting, your insights over the years, and it's especially nice that you are doing to pop with us on your last day. I'm transitioning into a full-time job as the Knight Professor of Journalism and Media Ethics at Washington and Lee University in Virginia. But I'm also going to be a critic at large at NPR, so I will still pop up here and there. Amazing. Well, you're not going too far then, and we hope to have you back. So thank you, thank you. Thank you.

All right. Our executive producer is Mathony Maturi. Our editor is Rachel Bay. Our producers are Casey Morrell and Brea Suggs. Thanks to Megan Pratz and Claire Lombardo. I'm Deepa Chivaram. I cover the White House. And I'm Domenico Montanaro, Senior Political Editor and Correspondent. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.

Support for NPR and the following message comes from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. WJF is a national philanthropy, working toward a future where health is no longer a privilege but a right. Learn more at RWJF.org.