The Opinions - Are Post-Trump Politics Emerging?

Episode Date: November 8, 2025

Tuesday’s election results have big implications for Democrats — and also for Republicans who have yoked their fortunes to President Trump. The Opinion national politics writer Michelle Cottle, along with the columnists Jamelle Bouie and David French, discuss whether the results indicate a new dawn or a predictable political swing in an unstable year.Thoughts? Email us at [e-mail] episode of “The Opinions” was produced by Vishakha Darbha. It was edited by Alison Bruzek and Kaari Pitkin. The rest of the show's production team includes Derek Arthur, Kristina Samulewski and Jillian Weinberger. Mixing by Carole Sabouraud. Original music by Pat McCusker, Carole Sabouraud and Aman Sahota. Fact-checking by Mary Marge Locker. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta and Kristina Samulewski. The director of Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

This is The Opinions, a show that brings you a mix of voices from New York Times opinion. You've heard the news. Here's what to make of it. I'm Michelle Cottle. I cover national politics for New York Times opinion. And as usual this week, I am joined by my fantastic colleagues, David French and Jamel Bowie. Guys, how's it going? Good, Michelle. Hello, hello. Living the dream.

Okay. It was a huge week for the Democrats. The party scored major victories in high-profile elections in New York, New Jersey, Virginia, California. Voters were fired up, turnout was high, even politically junkies obsessively following these races, myself included, were surprised by the severity of the spanking that Republicans took. So I want to get this party started by talking about what all of this means for Democratic Party, for the Republican Party, and where, American politics are headed next. So Chamele and David, I want your first thoughts. Give me your headline for what Tuesdays elections say about the country at this moment. I mean, I wrote this the night of the elections, but this is just a reminder that Donald Trump has never been a particularly

good vote getter for other Republicans. For himself, he's been a very effective vote getter, right? And he's able to turn broad unpopularity into narrow electoral wins through his ability to mobilize infrequent and low propensity voters. But when it comes to other Republicans when he's not on the ballot, he's an albatross around their necks. And that's been consistently the case. That was true in 2017. That was true in 2018. That was true in 2022. And it's true this year in 2025. When Trump is on the ballot, voters will turn out to vote for Donald Trump. And I think that Republicans should not dismiss this as a bunch of blue states, right? Had these elections gone the other way, right? Had Spanberger underperform the averages?

Had Jay Jones lost? Had Mickey Cheryl lost, which the polling suggested was a possibility. If Andrew Cuomo had won, Republicans should be crowing right now about how they've made inroads into blue states. So what's good for the goose is good for the gander. The scale, of the Democratic wins should be a flashing warning sign to the Republican Party, not just that the national environment is very favorable to Democrats, but that voters have ceased making distinctions between Trump and other Republicans. They're treating other Republicans like they would treat Trump. And that is like the nightmare scenario. It makes it much more difficult for incumbents next year to distance themselves from the president. So I would say if I were a Republican

incumbent right now, I would be like, what can I do? to distance myself from Trump. And interestingly, like the one Republican who seems to have gotten this message is Marjorie Taylor Green of all people. Okay, a couple things. First, we do not under any circumstances have to hand it to Marjorie Taylor Green for anything.

So this is... So harsh. Not when I'm on a roundtable are we giving Marjorie Taylor Green credit for anything. But let me look at this from the standpoint of a similar metric that Republicans used after the 2024 election to indicate that their win, and their view was broader than maybe the final outcome

indicated. And that was that all kinds of places all across America, from blue counties to red counties, they all went more red. And so that gave a lot of Republicans this sort of idea that what we've done is we've started a realignment. We've started a push of the whole country more in this right-word. But if you apply the same analysis now, everything went blueward late in the evening on Tuesday. It looked as if every single Republican county, every single Virginia County was more blue in 2025 than it was, obviously, in 2021. And so applying that same metric, that would be a real warning sign for Republicans. Second, I really agree with Jamel. I mean, we have been down this road for 10 years now.

The MAGA world does not tend to do well when they're not named Donald Trump unless they're in a super, super, super, red place. And so when I was writing my book several years ago, at the very beginning of the pandemic, when I was wrapping it up, I did this thing where I went and I look back at every, the rhetoric around every election cycle. So whether it was Bush winning re-election in 2004, the Democrats having a big 06, Obama's ascendance in 2008, the Tea Party Revolution in 2010, and the rhetoric was always the same. It was, we've cracked the code, we've figured it out, we've got the realignment. It is, we're winning from now on. And so you had that exact same rhetoric after Trump won in 2024, but if you have a memory greater than a goldfish, you know that unless you actually sit down, hunker down, and govern well

and deal with core concerns of constituents, your victory is ephemeral. And so what did Trump do? He didn't sit down and focus like a laser on inflation and grocery prices and all of that stuff. He launched his vengeance tour, right? He has squandered the goodwill that he had when he was inaugurated in near record speed. Maybe the only speed that eclipsed is his first squandering in 2017. Although, to be fair, David, he did build, he is building a glorious ballroom. I mean, that is what we all voted for, right? Okay, can I, can I say something that might sound lunacy? Like, I think the ballroom might have mattered to people a little bit more than I thought. I think so, too. I think so, too. And I'll tell you why I think that, because it's

visual. It's visual. Oh, everything with him is visual. Well, the rule of law is not visual, right? I mean, the Constitution, I mean, you can see it in a case, right? But as a general matter for people, the Constitution is not visible. Corruption, unless you actually have it recorded on video, is not super visible. But you tear down the White House without asking anybody's permission, and it's a living symbol that he's gone rogue. It's a very visual representation that he's gone rogue, I think it didn't do any many favors. I know. I want to totally agree with both of you on the matter of, like, the electorate. So I believe that the electric tends to be thermostatic from one election to the next.

And by the, you know, like, you see it in Virginia especially. Whatever parties in the White House one year, the next year when they do the governor's election, they almost always go the opposite way. They did it again this year. So with individual races, individual cycles, I see that happening. But then I also am a firm believer longer term in that politics is a cycle. That wheel of fortune is coming back around to bite you on the ass at some point, especially,

and it goes slower or faster, in part depending on how much overreach a party plays with. But I think certainly in this narrow off-year race, we saw the thermostatic at play, but also I'm kind of hopeful that I smell a cycle, starting to shift, and people are going to start moving back in a different direction than what we've been embracing for the last few years. You know, hope springs eternal. But I agree that it's not just New Jersey or New York or Virginia.

We had the Georgia Public Utilities Commission give Democrats two extra states by, like, some enormous margin. I mean, you saw like Pennsylvania Democrats made. managed to hold their Supreme Court majority against their state Supreme Court majority against, you know, what expectations were. It was a serious, thorough thumping. So, you know, if I were Republicans right now, I'd be sweating it. I got to say, so much of this was predictable. I mean, beyond the fact of Trump being bad for down-balled Republicans, what do you expect to

happen when you give Elon Musk, Russell, vote, and Stephen Miller, control? the federal government to let them do as they please. There's two reasons why that was an insane choice. The first, of course, is that these are ideological extremists, right, whose own personal agendas are divergent from that of the American public, and have really nothing to do with what voters thought they were voting for, at least the critical voters thought they were voting for the 2024 election. But the other thing, and this is, I think, a little underrated, is that they're not politicians, right? They're just ideologues. They just have these substantive goals, and they do not or unwilling to moderate or weigh those

substantive goals against political realities, against the likely reactions from voters and lawmakers and civil society. And so if you're hell-bent on pursuing your ideological agenda, voters are going to respond very angrily because voters generally do not like hard ideologues. they may be willing to tolerate and support kind of like a set of ideological principles, you know, in the Reagan era, small government, and the FDR era, you know, interventionist government. But the kind of hard ideological, rigid approach they do not like. In which strange to me, honestly, is the extent to which a lot of people, a prominence,

political observers, business leaders, civil society leaders, somehow got it in their mind. that the country had become permanently MAGA. And so, you know, political gravity no longer exists. None of that matters. To my mind, it's just this Tuesday demonstrates the short-sightedness of so many people in the wake of Trump's re-election. You know, I keep thinking back to 2024, and I remember writing about this at the time,

if you followed Trump at the rallies, that was one reality. If all you followed Trump by was commercials on TV or social media ads or whatever, like you're a disengaged voter, one of those low propensity voters that Jamel talked about where you're not getting really your news from anywhere. You're just sort of living your life and politics intrudes on it in some ways, mainly through TV commercials, etc. Then there were just two totally different candidates running for president. The rally Trump was vengeance, conspiracies, vengeance conspiracies. For hardworking Americans, November 5th will be our new Liberation Day, but for the liars and cheaters and fraudsters and censors and impostors

who have commandeered our government, it will be their judgment day. Their judgment day. The TV commercial Trump was inflation, immigration, inflation, immigration. We have created sense. Seven million new jobs, and it led to a growth like we've never seen before. We developed the greatest economy in history by far.

And then the very famous trans ad, and those, that was commercial Trump. And commercial Trump is the one who really won the election, not rally Trump. But rally Trump is the one who's governing the country. The Trump administration in a lot of ways misread its victory in a pretty dramatic fashion. It was not a mandate to pardon all the J-Sixers. It was not a mandate to go after every dissenting law firm in America. It was not a mandate to put masked police all over the streets of American cities and engage in gross and brutal acts of violence out in public on a nearly daily basis.

It was not a mandate to engineer military deployments to American cities on obviously false, fake pretexts. So, you know, look, none of this should be surprising. This wasn't what he was elected by the big, mass of people who are not MAGA. Yeah. Now, you will find on Twitter all the time, this sentiment, where it's a very brutal video or a very vicious statement from Trump, and people will say, I voted for this. Or the grainy videos of the drone strikes or the air strikes in outside of Venezuela. Still not real life.

But that's what I'm saying. That's not real life. They have convinced themselves it is. And then the other thing here that unless the Republicans course correct, unless they get this through their head, they're going to continue to have this problem, is that there's no sign that the administration itself is really keeping its eye on the public as opposed to this weird, bespoke world of right-wing influencers. This is how they're gauging themselves a lot. is how is the right-wing podcast world or the right-wing Twitter world reacting to me? And they're exquisitely sensitive about that. And they don't give a rip about normal sort of political metrics and measures

and normal political rhetoric. And so if they keep doing this, we're not at their floor yet. We're nowhere near their floor. And they have been consoling themselves anytime they feel nervous with the idea that Democrats are even less popular than they are. So this was the first time since Trump's reelect, voters have had a, you know, substantial opportunity to push back, and they have.

So I want to get into a little bit of the juicy details on this, because, again, the early evidence is that it's not just that more Democrats turned out, which they did, but also that there were votes stolen from Trump voter, not, oh, my God, I don't want to say that. There were votes. Stop to steal. No.

Yeah, stop to steal, Michelle. That people who were supporting Trump shifted over to the blue team. So, you know, we talked about how the toxic the brand is for Democrats, but what happened here? I mean, my read of this is that obviously you have voters with strong and deeply felt partisan identities. But like a lot of voters, their sense of either party is very conditional. and provisional, right? It sort of depends on the broad set of messages they're getting from all the different kinds of sources that are in their life, whether that's media or social media or family or friends or what have you. And when it comes to the Democratic Party, I think that first in an

election year, you know, top of the ticket candidates have an opportunity to define the party's brand to a certain extent. They can't fully define it, but for the voters that they're reaching to, they can kind of create their sense of what a Democrat is. And in Virginia and in New York City and in New Jersey, even to an extent, the brand that the top of the ticket Democrats created was like, hey, we are, we want these jobs. First of all, we're happy to serve you, right? This was Mom Donnie's big thing, right? Like, he always has a smile on his face.

It's very clear that part of his brand is like, I want to be mayor of New York and I want to serve you. But Spamberger as well, so much of her appeal to vote, so much of her pits to voters, Wasn't even I'm anti-Trump, but said, I really want to be governor, and I really want to be governor to serve you. And then the relentless focus on affordability that you saw on all the top of the ticket Democratic campaigns, I think just like created a positive impression of the Democratic Party for the voters that these candidates are cheney out to. The other thing, and I think the shutdown has something to play with this, when you drill down in polls of the Democratic Party's low popularity, I'd say half of it. It's just like general anti-party sentiment, like voters just don't like political parties. And I'd say like a solid third of it is Democrats themselves, self-identified Democrats, people would be partisan feeling saying, I wish the party would be more aggressive.

I wish they would fight back. I wish they wouldn't be a bunch of weenies. And the shutdown, in a funny way, Democrats kind of holding the line on the shutdown may have served to improve the party's position with its own voters. Because voters can say, oh, look, Democrats aren't backing down. They're doing what we want them to do. and I would bet that this has also contributed to just more positive feeling. Now, I feel like the big lesson people need to take

from everything, from all politics, is that nothing is static. Nothing stays the same. Like, there's no such thing as a singular majority. There's no such thing as a singular people. Everything is fluid. Everything moves. Everything changes.

And so for Democrats, having won this victory, they have to actually do things to kind of maintain the momentum. In the respective states, they actually have to like deliver the things they promised they would deliver. And for the legislative party, it needs to, I think, continue to adopt this posture of opposition, right? To continuously signal to voters that if you put us back into power,

we are going to fight for you. And then if they get into power, they have to deliver on this. Like they have to deliver. And they do not deliver, the thermostatic public will react accordingly. David. You know, when you look at New Jersey and Virginia in particular, I think one thing that's interesting about both candidates is that both candidates in New Jersey and Virginia, really they don't fit well with Republican messaging about what the Democratic Party is.

So Republican messaging for a long time, especially including Republican messaging on Republican networks like Fox and Newsmax, et cetera, has been to basically cast the median Democrat as a 2020 rioter. So that, and I'm only, I'm only saying. slightly exaggerating here, that the media Democrat is an absolute wild-eyed radical. And so, you know, you may have your qualms about Trump or, you know, you may in ordinary times not be super excited about, you know, masked people in the streets. But these people, these people are the worst. They're horrific. And so then you have Spanberger, Cheryl, and they present about as opposite from that as you can imagine.

Neither one of them sets the world on fire in the charisma category, but in many ways, that's actually a little bit in their favor. So I think that the Democrats did a good job running people who are just sort of living contradictions to a lot of Republican messaging. And I do feel like in some ways that Republican messaging, and it will keep up because this is the irresistible momentum in the moment on the right, is everything is taken to 11, everything is hyperbole, that you're going to continue to see this. But if the Democrats are tacking towards reasonable, normal, okay, where they're attacking towards

somebody that you wouldn't be afraid if your kids are around them too much, you know, then you're talking about a situation in which they're just going to be a living contradiction to a lot of Republican messaging. And the more the Republicans live in that alternative, the more vulnerable they're going to be. This is something that I've did a lot of reporting into this year, the kind of national security moms, which Abigail Spanberger has a background in the CIA and federal law enforcement, and Mikey Sherrill was military for years. And it's this interesting combination where, you know, I talked to some Democrat who were

pointing out that the caricature of a national Democrat is weak, woke, and whiny. And both of these women kind of just don't, you can't stick that to them. You know, they tried to paint them as extremists in certain ways, but you can't paint them as soft on crime like you'd want to. You know, Abigail Spanberger did counterterrorism work for the CIA. These are not, we quote, whiny. But at the same time, because they're moms and they can talk about their kids and their concerns about schools and jobs and economies and safety and housing, I traveled on the trail with Spanberger a fair amount, and it was great to see that she could take those criticisms and just kind of jiu-jit-so them to her advantage. So I agree that with governors in particular, there is this opportunity to redefine the brand because you're not having to worry about all those team dynamics.

And I think both of them did a good job. But all three of them, I just want to stress again, what did they focus on? all three of them focused on affordability. Their opponents tried their best to make this about the culture wars. In Virginia, winsome Earl Sears aired ads that were explicitly anti-trans, trying to, you know, paint Abigail Spanberger as very extremist on this. She even had the riff that they had used on Kamala last time, which is that Abigail Spanberger is for they, them, I'm for you.

But it did not work. And I think you have gotten to the heart of why that is, David. It looks like they weren't addressing the actual candidates. They were running against. They were running against the national brand. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. I mean, other than the affordability, did you guys detect other through lines with, you know, the high-profile races we've been talking about?

I think affordability is the big thing. There's been this ongoing debate about what Democrats should do. But I think to an extent what you see what they should do is they should run candidates that like fit the particular areas that they are campaigning for. and they should, those campaigns should be, you know, voter focus. They should listen to what the voters are talking about, what voters care about, and then like focus on that. And where ideology or approach might come in and district comes in and sort of like, what does, how does a candidate interpret what that means, right?

So, Mom Dani in New York City is hearing voters say, I care about cost of living and being his political background and his sense of how things should go. He says, oh, I'm going to address that with these more, you know, government-focused solutions. But I'm a big believer in, you know, you could let the candidates figure out what works for them in their particular situations and let the candidates do the kind of serious outreach

to voters that can only come through, like, campaigning, can't come through focus groups. Well, that was one of the things Bon Doming was so great at, right? Like, a lot of his stuff won't translate out necessarily outside of New York. And, you know, he just has that very intangible it quality that you cannot train. Like Abigail Spanberger, Mikey Sherrill, never going to be, never going to be that. But he also just worked his butt off.

Like, he got out there, talked to voters, built a ground game. And he had the good fortune of being, you know, up against Andrew Cuomo, who thought he was entitled to this whole job. But you're right. And yet, he was out there listening. Right. And I think that if I had to, like, digore. a problem with Democratic Party politics over the last half decade, it is not just a defensive crowd, not just a timidity, but it's sort of this, we can moneyball this. It's like you can't.

You kind of just have to like, you have to have candidates who are willing to work their asses off, who are willing to, you know, from dawn till dusk, be campaigning, always be campaigning, right? And that's not going to guarantee a win, but it can, up the conditions for winning. And it's a thing, it's an approach that's translatable. I want to know that in Virginia, Democrats swept the House of Delegates winning. They have like a 64-seat majority going into next year, which is wild. So that's a really impressive sweep. And part of what the Virginia Democratic Party did was just run candidates everywhere. Every single House of Delegates district had a Democrat running. And, you know, some of them got lucky. And to me, that's the formula.

Work hard, listen to voters, and the contrast you're making with your opponent is that I'm actually interested in representing you. I'm not running to be the president's little soldier. I'm not running to fight a culture war. I'm running to represent you. All right. Before we shift over to a post-mortem for the Republican Party, I did want to just dig into one more point, which is that both Spanberger and Cheryl won Latinos by a two-to-one margin this

time around according to exit polls. obviously there's been a lot of hand-wringing about the rightward shift among Latinos in the Trump era and, you know, with good reason. But what do we make of this particular shift back? Ooh, Michelle, I got stuff to say about this one. Oh, hit me. Okay. So if you go back to my sort of rally Trumpist versus commercial trumpist, this is where it's very salient. Because a lot of your Latino voters who shifted for Trump, what was the situation? there. For a lot of them, there were actual concerns about immigration. You have a lot of working

class, Hispanic men in particular who moved Republican. This is a group of people who are, who were facing directly as working class folks and as folks along the border, the two worst failures of the Biden administration, which were immigration and inflation. And so they're receiving the brunt of it. So what does Trump do when he comes in? When Trump comes in, he treats all these new Hispanic voters like they're rally trumpists. And he thinks for what, how does anyone think for half a second that you can go and start stopping anyone who speaks with a Spanish accent or when you, somebody who looks Hispanic or somebody who's speaking Spanish that you can now start stopping them, detaining them, and brutal, sometimes in brutal conditions, disappearing them for days and at a time, this is insanity. How did you think that you would retain a Hispanic shift by then winning a presidential election and beginning a nationwide racial profiling spree? Republicans, for a lot of very good reasons, took great pride in assembling a much more multiracial working class coalition. That is something that I think Republicans have been looking for for a

very long time is how does party become more diverse? How does it become more multiracial? And in 2024, it did. And then now what's one of the most salient issues that the GOP is dealing with in 2025? It's the shocking realization that all of a sudden there's a lot of these young fascists, literally fascists in their midst. And this has become the dominant focus, you know, for the last several days in particular after Tucker Carlson hosted Nick Fuentes. You're not going to keep together. a multiracial coalition when you hand the keys to the car to a collection of online edge lords. But that's what's happening. So, yeah, I mean, there's an extent to which, you know, if you organize a program against people,

they're probably going to vote against you. They're going to take that personal. Jamel, Jamel. We don't need, we don't, this is the New York Times. We don't do like hot takes here. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, David, I was going to target you as the formerly proud Republican in the group. The party has just gotten a complete reality, brutal reality check.

What do you want to see or do you have any hope of seeing from Republican lawmakers who must be very nervous heading into the midterms? But at the same time, it's not like Trump is going to ease up. on them. He's not going to give them room. So what do they do? David? Boy, this is a great question. I mean, I think you are already seeing the post-Trump infighting emerging. That is happening all around us. It's just no one is treating Trump directly like a lame duck, but they're already understanding that Trump is not going to be around forever. Right below all of this, you know, unity behind Trump is the realization that nobody really knows what this coalition is going to look like going forward. Because one thing that the Republicans did in 2024 is they created this pretty

big tent that just had one condition for membership. And that's the red hat. If you put on the red hat, you're with us. Well, what happens when Mr. Red Hat is gone? And so prepare to see more and more in fighting. But also, I would say, prepare to see an emerging resurrection of Normie republicanism. Get out. Because I'm, maybe I'm wildly optimistic. I'm, Michelle, maybe I'm, you know, maybe this is the worst aging comment I'll ever make. But if you break the sense that MAGA is the inevitable future of the party, is there a path for a change? But if there's one thing that we've learned. Maga is not in control of its own electoral fate right now. Okay. Well, the last electoral outcome that I want to get to before we shift gears is California,

redistricting. So Trump has been heading up this big push to rig the playing field in his favor. He's been pushing all these Republican state legislatures to redraw their congressional maps, Texas, Missouri, Ohio. But on Tuesday, voters in Big Blue California, we're like, fine, we think we're going to gerrymander too. Now, does the election in general that we've just seen suggest that maybe trying to slice and dice the electorate whenever the mood strikes carry some risk? You know, there's the flow that we're talking about.

It's not a static situation. Should this be a warning about the redistricting craze as well? My view is that if I were a Republican incumbent who living in a place that they're trying to do mid-decade or districting, I would ask them to stop, right? I think gerrymandering, for good reasons, rightfully, is a scorn term. It's basically kind of a boogeyman. But I think people, I think that its status is that kind of makes it hard for people to understand what it is. I think people imagine it is that you're kind of creating new voters somehow. But no, you're just, you're shuffling, around existing voters. And in places that are already very gerrymandered, it's actually quite difficult to create more safe seats without sacrificing some safe seats. And what could very easily happen.

Think about it as you have a bunch of, you know, if you're trying to do a Republican gerrymander, and you have a bunch of dark red squares, moderately red squares, and light red squares, and then a couple deep blue squares. And you want to make one of those deep blue squares or red square. Well, the only place you can actually get more red from is your deep red squares. So you move the red over and you make one of those blue squares a light red square. But all of a sudden, you now have less red squares. And that's fine if everything's static. But if all of a sudden you have a big demographic shift, oh, let's say you were counting

on Hispanic voters to break evenly for you, but now they're breaking against you, two to one, all of a sudden your gerrymander, far from protecting your seats, ends up wiping them all out. And I think that Tuesday suggests that you're going to have a very strong democratic national environment next year and that a gerrymander designed to pick up more seats may actually end up becoming what is known as a dummymander. I do like that term. A redistricting that ends up helping your opponent. And so my hunch is that this is actually going to put a break on all of this. And the fact that Democratic states are willing to go tit for tat, I think also pushes against

the inclination. That willingness to just sort of like play hardball may end up de-escalating the situation, which for me, it's vindication for my view that you kind of have to play hardball to end hardball. Everyone has to be willing to pull the trigger to get people to put their guns down. There you go. Trump responded to all of Tuesday night with a little truth. social tantrum, blaming Republicans for this, in part because of the shutdown. And then just this

week, the FAA has taken the shutdown pain a step farther. They're going to have a reduction of 10% of air travel flights into certain major hubs. This is only going to make people surlier. What do you think Tuesday does to the shutdown dynamic? I mean, if I were a Republican in Congress, I would be like, we got to end this thing. The problem is the president has no interest in kind of good faith negotiation, right? Like that, he, I mean, he doesn't really know how to do it. And the whole administration's attitude towards everything is, I wrote this in my column this week.

It's all stick and no carrot, right? Like, it is all, we're going to try to beat you into submission, and we're never going to offer any concessions. I think this FAA thing is probably necessary, given. the strain on air traffic controllers. But it's going to tick off America. America does not like it when you mess with their holiday travel. And they seem to think that if we just make people angry enough, they'll blame Democrats.

And it's, like, not working. Well, you know, look, this is an administration that is absolutely allergic to compromise. It's a party right now, a national party right now that's absolutely allergic to compromise. And so I don't know that I see this shutdown ending anytime soon, to be honest. And what incentive did the Democrats have to end it right now? They just had an election in the middle of a shutdown that they were definitely not punished for. But I honestly think the more this goes,

the shutdown will not be viewed as some separate thing. It will be viewed as one part of the overall Trump chaos. It's just one, you know, not to use a Dungeons of Dragons term, but as a hyper nerd, I have to. It's like just one side of the 20-sided dice of chaos. Okay. So we've had our Dungeons and Dragons nod, so I think it's time to move on to recommendations for the week.

What you got for me? Who's going first? I'll go first. I watched Barry Levinson's Wag the Dog for the first time this week. Oh, you're way behind that curve. I know. I'm very much behind that curve. I was seven years old when that movie came out, so you'll forgive me.

Oh, Jamel. I was eight years old. I was a child when that movie came out. So you'll forget. give me. Absolutely. No excuse, really. I watch movies in the 1950s.

But I would have recommended it because it's such an interesting time capsule. It is both an incredibly cynical picture of the American public, but also not cynical enough in a lot of ways, right? Yeah. For example, the precipitating incident is that the president might have had an affair. And that's what demands that they have to manufacture this fake war. And it's like today, if news came down to the president, and had an affair, that would be like a two-hour news story, right?

Like, no one would care. Also, fun fact, the movie comes out before the Lewinsky scandal breaks. Oh, dad, I did not remember it all. Yeah. There's a whole set of movies, basically beginning from when Clinton gets in the office that I like to describe as, like, what do you do with the horny president movies? Oh, God. And Whack the Dog is one of them.

The American president's one of them. There's like a bunch of them. Oh, David. All right, so this is a streaming recommendation. Big shock. Big shock, but with a caveat, okay? Okay. Okay.

So there are some listeners who may have watched some documentaries on this family from South Carolina named the Murdox, or Murdox, sorry. This is a sort of a gothic southern murder mystery story about a very powerful family of South Carolina low country lawyers. And Hulu has done a mini-series about it. It's got some great people in it. And I will tell you this, having grown up in the story. small town south. I love and hate this show at the same time. Here's what I love about it. It's really

captured kind of the good old boyism of small town southern power. Captured it very well. Here's what I hate about it. It is really captured the good old boyism of southern life very well. Because what it does, it reminds me of a lot of the people I knew growing up in a small town south. Now, thankfully, I did not grow up around any lawyer slash murderers, thankfully. But as far as the disposition, the temperament, the use of connections, the way in which people escape accountability, all of that stuff is right there in front of you. And it's kind of a slice of life in a particular kind of American corruption that is both captivating and repulsive at the same time.

Okay, okay. I'm here for it. I grew up not a small town south, but, you know, it's a small town south. But, you know, like exurban South, suburban South, I'm sure I will recognize some of these fine folks and all of my relatives in the process. Okay, so I'm going completely different. I'm going pomegranates. Is pomegranates season people not, you know, the juice or the little cups of sad seeds that you'll see sometimes? It is time for the big honkin red juicy.

My family is obsessed with them. It's one of the fruits that, you know, a little bit like tomatoes. It depends seriously what time of year it is as to what you're getting. And a good pomegranate in the fall, I got to go for it. They're a complete mess and they will dye your entire house red and it will look like you've slaughtered small animals with all the juice everywhere. But it's worth it. Go. I was going to say, big honking and juicy is how they were described in the song of Solomon. It's a joke for you, Dave.

Oh, I get that. I get that. I can't take you guys anywhere. What are we doing to this podcast? I know, right? On that note, I'm just going to like shut this down. We're landing this plane. You two are dismissed.

Thank you so much. Let's do it again. See you next time. Bye guys. Thank you, Michelle. If you like this show, follow it on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts. The Opinions is produced by Derek Arthur, Bishakadarba, Christina Samuoski, and Gillian Weinberger. It's edited by Kari Pitkin and Alison Bruzick.

Engineering, mixing, and original music by Isaac Jones, Sonia Herrero, Pat McCusker, Carol Sabro, and Afim Shapiro. Additional music by Amon Sahota. The fact check team is Kate Sinclair, Mary Marge Locker, and Michelle Harris. Audience Strategy by Shannon Busta and Christina Samuelski. The director of Times Opinion Audio is Annie Rose Strassie. answer.