The Opinions - Trump Has a Religion. What Do Democrats Have?

Episode Date: October 23, 2025

The Conversation convenes this week with the Opinion columnist David Brooks, the contributing Opinion writer E.J. Dionne Jr. and the former host of NPR’s “All Things Considered” Robert Siegel to discuss and debate Zohran Mamdani’s mayoral run, gerrymandering and what the No Kings protests achieved.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 and original music by Carole Sabouraud. 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 Robert Siegel, now a contributor to Times' opinion, and I'm in conversation with two old friends, both of the New York Times, columnist David Brooks. How are you? And contributing opinion writer E.J. Dion. Great to be with you always. Once again, we're together to talk about politics, and there's no shortage of things to talk about. But last month, we started off with the question of authoritarianism.

Do all the various claims of new presidential powers amount to a loss of fundamental liberties? Well, it seems that several million Americans think so. They turned out all around the country to protest against kings. So let's start there. E.J., what did you make of the no kings protest? What did you see in it? And what did you make of the reactions to it? Well, you know, I went down to the one here in D.C., and what I saw was

patriotism. The symbol that was most on offer everywhere along the march route was the American flag. There was even one part of the march. There were a bunch of people who held, respectfully held out a very large American flag. And little kids were running underneath the flag because there were a lot of kids there with their parents. It was a very, if I may say so, of a march in D.C., a middle American march. And I think you saw that in a lot of parts of the country. And I think that. And I think I think it put the light as something that I found really disturbing from Speaker Mike Johnson and others on the Republicans side said this. They referred to it as the hate America rally.

It couldn't have been more different than that. And I think since we are on authoritarian watch here, I think it was such a disturbing thing for him to say because if you are opposed to his party or opposed to his president, a president he supports, that means you hate America. and one party, one leader, one country is something that our soldiers fought against in many wars. That's not a conception of Americanism. And I think a lot of those people who were marching, who were very aware of the acceleration of the move toward authoritarianism. You think of the prosecution, the indictments of James Comey, Letitia James, John Bolton, the first two utterly without reason except that the president hates them.

And so I think the people at this march weren't ideological. They were just deeply concerned about the direction of the country. Well, David, you've called for a national movement, you say, is what we need. First in a column back in the spring and most recently in the longer piece in the Atlantic. Was there no King's movement of the movement you had in mind? Does it fit the bill? It's getting there. You know, it's weird for me.

I'm not a movement guy. I'm more conservative than not. And now I find myself like reading Saul Olenski and all these lefties. And I'm going, yeah, yeah, the power of the people. So I'm going total revolutionary here. It's about time, David. And what I liked about the No Kings rallies was just what EJ mentioned, that people like me who are kind of center-right would feel completely at home there.

If it starts looking like Occupy Wall Street, then I think, oh, good for you people, but, you know, it's not for me. You know, I'm hanging around Occupy and my hair starts falling out. But around No Kings, I just feel it's pro-American. It's basically in line with the cultural DNA of this country. And so I'm very impressed by it. I think a couple reservations I would have that I think, not criticisms, but things that are not yet there. If you look back at social movements that have succeeded, they're decentralized, they happen all over, but they're always central collaborating committees.

You look at the civil rights movement. They had the NWCP, all these acronyms of all these organizations who are leading. Second, I do think you need leaders. And I think sometimes, like Occupy, people were averse to having one person at the top. But without that, you can't control your message. You can't really conduct a strategy. The civil rights movement conducted soap opera every day. They told the story every day about segregation.

And through that repeated storytelling, you really built the movement. So you made the segregators. You gave them an unwinnable proposition. When you control the streets, either they cede the streets to you or they crack down on you and look like monsters. And that's a way to achieve civic power. The final thing that I think No Kings is so far not making. is a vision. Donald Trump has a vision. Trump is a culture. It's a, he has a core story. The elites have

betrayed you. But he doesn't only have that story. He has a culture of MAGA, a culture of what a man looks like, what a woman looks like. He has a religion, basically, if you looked at the Charlie Kirk Memorial Service. He gives you identity. He gives you belonging. It takes a counterculture to best the culture that Donald Trump is leading. And so far, the Democrats don't have that. They have a bunch of tax credits. And so far, the No King's Movement doesn't have that. E.J. You know, there was a bunch, a lot of stuff in your piece. I appreciate it. I particularly like the line that where you said Trumpism is seeking to amputate the higher elements of the human spirit, learning, compassion, science, and the pursuit of justice and supplant those virtues with greed, retribution, ego, and

appetite. And there's some very good stuff here. But I'll tell you where I take issue with you. You talked about a myasma of passivity seems to have swept over the anti-Trump ranks. I don't think that's true at all. I think that you've seen this movement grow. I think that what is making things difficult is in our history, I think it's fair to say that we have never confronted a government that was willing to break the law as freely, not just break norms, which they are, they haven't cared about for a long time, but break the law as freely. We haven't seen a situation where all of the institutions of government are behaving in a partisan way.

The Congress is behaving in a partisan way. And I think on many of these cases, most so far, the Supreme Court is behaving in a partisan way. So people are trying to find purchase here. Where we probably agree is on this need for a strong movement across the country. I read a very good book this week by Suzanne Metler and Trevor Brown

called Rural v. Urban. I think that you need to revisit organized all the way down in the country. And you need to put pressure on Republicans because until some of the Republicans who clearly know better are willing to say so, it's going to be very hard

to break this power that Trump is amassing. Well, he has the core story that people believe in. The eliz that betrayed you. The passivity I was talking about was not so much at the bottom, though I do think it's there.

It's at the top. Yeah, and they're like the head of this company, the head of universities, the head of law firms, they're just laying low. and it's part because they're intimidated, and part just because of collective action problem, who's going to step out first?

And I had a friend, a business leader, who went to Europe, and he said, you know, we've lost faith in the United States forever. And I said like, it's Taylor Swift, like we are never getting back together. And the Europeans had something interesting to me. It's not because you elected Trump. We all have Trumps in our country.

So any country could do that. It's because you didn't rise up. And so he's looking at his business leaders, and he's seeing them say something in private about how awful things are going, and then public speaking a very different language. And you can measure the amount of authoritarianism in a country by how high the price is to oppose. Totally agree about a lot of business leaders, but let's look at some real pushback. Some law firms went over to Trump, but a whole lot of law firms said, we're not going there.

They went after Jimmy Kimmel, and a whole lot of people protested, and Jimmy Kimmel was put back on the air. A lot of universities are saying no to what. Trump is doing. So I totally agree with you that I want more pushback from people at the very top of the economy, but I think you're seeing seeds of revolt that are very useful. But let me ask you both this. David, your article made me think back to the civil rights movement and my extremely minute role as a one-time member of the Stuyvesant High School of Friends of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. God bless you. And the civil rights movement achieved

major civil rights act, the voting rights act, a constitutional amendment against poll taxes. I don't even know after the restoration of the Medicaid tax break, I don't know what the agenda of the No King's movement is. I assume they can't enact it now, but I don't even know what would be on the wish list. Yeah, I think that's the wrong way to think about it with all due respect to my friend. Please. I went to Stuyvesantown. You went to Stuyvesant High School. That shows you're smarter. But I don't think the anti-Trump forces understand the nature of the fight, which is that Trumpism didn't emerge overnight. It started back in some ways the 19th century with no nothing, but it really started with people like Sam Francis, who may be unfamiliar names to Christopher Lash,

his book The Revolt of the elites. There was a big intellectual movement. And Trump just picked up everything Christopher Lash wrote in that book in 1995. And so what you need is a whole movement and a vision. And it has to be intellectual first. What I think Democrats need to do is understand that they can't go back to their narratives, their core narratives. Democrats have had some great narratives. The New Deal, we're going to soften capitalism and make it more humane. In the 1960s, we're going to take people who have been marginalized and we're going to give them respect. Those are great narratives, but they're not narratives right now. The final thing I'd say is there's a Bulgarian political scientist who made the observation that once the revolution

happen, everybody changes. So it's not just the Republican Party. He makes the point that the Democratic Party is going to change just as much as the Republican Party. And then he makes the point, once the revolution happens, you can't go back to who you were. And he phrases it this way. You can have Kerenzky before Lenin, but you can't have Kerenzky after Lenin. And Kerenzki, for those who didn't go to city college in the 1930s, was a sort of a Democrat before the Russian Revolution. Once Lenin comes along and creates the revolution, you're not going to go back to the moderate Kerenzky. And so I just emphasize how radically different people have to think about we're going to be in five years. Well, on that note, let's turn to the races that are on the ballot in

November. The odd-numbered year after the presidential election always draws our attention to New Jersey and Virginia, which elect a governor in that year. And of course, New York City, which elects a mayor in that year. And this year, there's special interest in California a referendum on a congressional redistricting. David, which of these races do you find especially interesting. I'm going to go to where E.J. wants to go because I am a good friend, Mondani. And so I'm profoundly impressed by how much the Democrats want to be the party of rich people. If you looked at how Mamdani did against Cuomo in the primary, Cuomo did very well among working class voters. And Mamdani did very well among Mercos making $200,000 a year or whatever. And he is a perfect candidate for

educated elites. His dad was a professor. His mom's a filmmaker. Nothing wrong with that. My dad was a professor. And he has the cultural values and the progressive politics that go over well in prospect heights or in Park Slope, these are neighborhoods in New York, and would go over well in Santa Monica, would go over well in various affluent places. But to me, the core problem for the Democrats is they need to win a working class back. And if he's their face, which he is about to be, I just think that's a setback to the core problem for the Democratic Party. But isn't he running against the high cost of living? No one can afford an apartment that the right things are going.

Yeah, but he's doing things that I think are outside the mainstream. Our colleagues on the editorial page produced a data-strewn editorial, and it was basically about something called the centrist voter theory, that you run to the center and you win by running to the center. And that may not be true in New York because New York has a lot of rich progressives, but it's generally true. And so running to the center is probably a smart thing to do. Does Mondani, are his ideas, do they appeal to me?

No, I don't think government knows how to run a grocery store. New York already has a lot of great family grocery stores. So that's one of the beauties of New York. They're bodegas everywhere. And so his ideas, I think they sound good if you haven't lived through socialism. But socialism is still socialism. You know, I find it amazing, David, that you're saying that the richest people in New York support Mamdani. I wish I could do a really good Bernie, but the millionaires and the billionaires are all

supporting Andrew Cuomo over Mamdani. I looked at the great map the New York Times had of the primary. Every precinct facing Central Park, except one little one way up in the corner in the north. I didn't say the millionaires and billionaires. I said 200,000. That's his sweet spot. No, it's sort of 50 to 200,000. And I think that what's interesting about Mandani, two things. one, let's celebrate the paperback of your book, your new book, How to Know a Person. And Mamdani acts like he read your book. How did he start his campaign? He went to the Bronx when he was at 1% in the polls and went to precincts where Donald Trump did well or better than a Republican had done in a long time. And he asked people, why did you vote for Trump or why didn't you

not vote at all? What did they tell them? They said they were worried about the cost of living. How did he orient his campaign? You can argue with this or that proposal, but the entire campaign has been oriented around not cultural issues. He's a cultural progressive, but that's not what he talks about. He talks about the high cost of housing. He talks about the high cost of childcare, the high cost of groceries, the high cost of transportation. He has run an economically based campaign to say New York should be affordable to everybody. And I wrote a column in the Times saying that he was a sewer socialist, which To many people might sound like I'm running them down,

but I was actually building him up because the kinds of socialists who have succeeded in American history, there was a big movement for municipal socialism. Dan Hone was mayor of Milwaukee for 24 years as a socialist. They focused on fixing problems, fixing the sewers, which are making people sick in working-class neighborhoods. Bernie Sanders, who was a mayor, talked about making sure the snow was picked up in working-class neighborhoods.

So it's snow socialism. to sewer socialism. So I think he is very grounded and down to earth. And he is running in an odd way, a campaign that's quite related to that New York Times editorial that you referenced, even though its message, underlying message, was rather different from Mondanis. Look, I would love, I love pragmatic leaders. Mike Bloomberg, he was my version. I think New York worked a lot better after Mike Bloomberg. There was a guy in New York, maybe, in Detroit, you can help me, Dugan, I think it was his name, Mayor Dugan. And he was like the least charismatic guy on earth, but he said, if you want your sweetlights to work, I'm your guy.

He was like just a boring and ministry. I love those guys. And so if Mamdani was like that, I'd be all for it. And I should say he's a great campaigner. He's one of the more interesting people in American politics right now. So I don't take that away from him. But he is an ideological person. There's a reason he's a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, which has gone

further left. So a lot of the people I like to were in the DSA have all quit. So, and then the final thing to be said is, he's got to explain why New York is so affordable. Houston doesn't have this problem. If you look at where people are moving, almost every fast-growing state is a Republican state with low taxes and low housing regulations. And so people are moving to Tennessee, to Texas, to Florida, to South Carolina,

because they create a positive business climate. New York has spent all of our lifetimes, and I grew up there like you. We were in the same housing project. and has had rent control, it's had horrible zoning regulations. It's just super hard to build. And therefore, I think the vacancy rate in New York apartments is like minus zero. And so there's just not enough housing. And then finally, this one, this is something I think about all the time.

I love a book called The Death and Life of Great American Cities by Jane Jacobs. Jane Jacobs, yes. And I grew up and we were all told she was a hero. She saved the West Village. And that guy Robert Moses, who was putting in all these highways, he was the villain. But now it's looking like Jane Jacobs taught everybody if you sue the government, you can stop them from doing anything. And so citizens to block the lower Manhattan Expressway from going through. And so suddenly the story looks a little more complicated because we've had 50 years of blocking all development.

And this is the point our colleague, Ezra Klein makes and Derek Thompson in their book Abundance, a book Yoni Applebaum named Stuck. And so the abundance movement is an effort to get. some of the zoning regulations reduced, not out of some Reaganite policy, but just because we need to be able build things anymore. And I have my doubt that somebody that ideological is going to reduce the grip that government has on the housing market. Do you know what's ironic is that Mamdani actually did an interview with Derek Thompson where he endorsed some of the core principles of abundance and argued that you judge a government by whether it can deliver and that he thinks that abundance raises questions that people who want government to work and want government to work on behalf of

working people need to address. Okay. One other question about Election Day coming up, just one, which is about the California referendum. My question to each of you is, is gerrymandering okay if the other guy did it first? Well, I think the answer is, I guess, the logic of what I'm going to say is yes. Yes is what you say. I'll give you the answer straight up and then get there. I am like a lot of people who are for the commissions like the one California cast. I think it would be better. And you're against politicians selecting their voters rather than voters, electing their politicians.

And so if you had a commission system or some sort of nonpartisan plan of making districts in every state of the country, that would be great. That's what I'm for. In the absence of that, when one party on the order of the president, or the request of the president, goes and redraws its district lines, Texas we're talking about, to say, we're going to arbitrarily create five more congressional districts. And then other states start following and say, well, we'll create more Republican districts. Then the other side can either say, gee, this is terrible, but we're still for commissions,

or they can do what the Democrats and Gavin Newsom did in California would just say, we're still for commissions. But we're going to draw lines to offset those five, so we have a fighting chance in the election. And, you know, Barack Obama, who is somebody who's been fighting partisan redistricting, is one of the most effective advocates out for Prop 50 in California, precisely because he liked nonpartisan redistricting, but in this circumstance, he regards it as an emergency. You know, there was an essay written by Daniel Patrick Moynihan years ago called, I'm hitting all your sweet spots, called Defining Deviancy Down. And so this is what it looks like, that Donald Trump defines deviancy down. We're redistricting and we're just, we're going to pick our voters. And then Gavin Newsom

matches them. And the people who should be offended, by the way, are the voters of California and Texas. They are, you are basically, if you live in those two states, you are basically being disenfranchised. Because you will be living in a district where the election outcome is predetermined. And so there should be outrage about this. People fought for their vote to have the right to vote. And now people don't care. And to me, the worst example of defining deviancy down is what we've come to tolerate just in how our politicians speak and in the crooked ways they rig the map. And suddenly nobody's bothered by this. And where's your dignity, people? Then the question I would ask for E.J. is who was right, Obama or Newsom? And I mean Michelle Obama.

You know, she had this famous comment years and years ago. When they go low, we go high. Gavin Newsom, maybe it's unfair to him. But the other alternative is when they go low, we go lower. And so put aside morality. What's the smart thing for Democrats to do? It's not obvious to me that sinking to the moral level of MAGA is the right answer here. It seems to me if people want to turn the page on this moment, they're going to want to turn the page in a little the way they turn the page, and this is not a great example of Jimmy Carter after Watergate. They're going to want to say, I want somebody so clean, somebody who respects government, somebody who plays by the rules who will uphold the norms that I remember. And it seems to me that's actually a smarter

play for Democrats. Now, I understand the temptation you can't hand away the House in 26. So I understand the temptation. But it seems to be the long-term play here is to go high when they go low. Just for the record, Texas, the state legislature is imposing those districts on the people of Texas. See, California, they are going to the voters. The voters of California themselves are going to decide in this referendum whether they think this is a necessary thing to do now or not. And my friend here, of course, always quotes Moynihan for his purposes. But I think that what Moynihan counseled very much throughout his career was political realism. And this is not about some abstract argument of whether who goes lower or higher.

Of course, there's stuff Trump does that no one should do. but in a straight-up political fight where power is at stake and where the authoritarianism we talked about earlier in our conversation really need somebody to check it. Winning that next fight really matters. And again, this proposal they put in California acknowledges that this is not the ideal way to do it. It's a temporary expedient. If I could just – I've heard this argument before. I just don't understand it that California of the voters get to decide that there are multiple forms of democracy. We happen to live in a republic where we elect people to make decisions for us.

California has this system of referendum where it's direct democracy. I happen to think that's an inferior form of democracy than to electing people who get to make decisions. But it strikes me that Texas is not undemocratic. And so they're both versions of democracy. You started talking about the people and the people here, individual voters in California will have a say on this question in a way they didn't in Texas. And so I agree.

We need to make systems. Do I have no say in what my congressman does? No, we elect people. Well, I think we'll have to just accept that you guys differ about the... Would you vote for Prop 50? No comment. I would be sorely tempted, to be honest, just in this one case. A great many people cast their votes, not on the basis of either foreign policy or

culture war battles, but on kitchen table issues. What's happening with the price of food, with price of grocery? with the price of gasoline at the pump. Life is pretty rough for a lot of Americans right now, and yet the stock market stays in record territory, keeps setting records. Is the U.S. writing for a fall? And if not, why not?

You know, it's funny. We were talking this weekend in transparency for our listeners and viewers about the fact that we wanted to talk about this. And right after I hung up the phone, I looked at my email. And I had an email from Adam Roberts, an editor at The Economist, a newsletter, which begins for the words, you're, you are probably

more exposed to a looming market crash than you think. I think there are a lot of people who are extremely nervous. I don't know what's going to happen in the market. I'm a kind of congenital bear who's predicted 10 of the last two downturns. But I do know that there is a real disconnect between what the market has been telling us and the experience of Americans. two really good stories in the Times this week. Sidney Ember wrote a story,

the headline, lower-income Americans are missing car payments. And she points out that this is one of the clearest indications that low- and middle-income families, the economy's foundation, could be starting to buckle. Day before that, Ben Castleman and Kobe Smith, they had a really good piece about how wealthy are Americans buoyed by the stock market have continued to spend freely while lower-income households are hit by inflation

and weakening of the job market or pulling back. So I don't think you can have a successful economy if the middle and the bottom are falling out. The wealthy alone cannot prop up an economy. So call me nervous not just about the economy itself. Again, I don't know what's going to happen in the stock market, but this is a very unhealthy situation. It explains why so many Americans are discontent.

You know, I don't believe in timing the market, but I've been tempted for the past year to call my broker. Go to cash. and pull the vast Brooks fortune out of the market. It would have hurt the market when you lose that much money. But I haven't done it, and I'm glad I haven't done it because I've been wrong. And, you know, there are some really solid fundamentals. GDP growth is about three, unemployment's around four, wage growths around four,

rent inflation is going down. And so there are some good things in the economy. And yet, for part of the reasons EJ said, and then, you know, look at the economic number, And then you look at consumer sentiment. Consumer sentiment is in the basement because people feel rotten about the country. And then the big issue here, which is what everybody is suddenly talking about, is are we on the verge of an AI bubble? And the reason for thinking we're on the verge of an AI bubble are pretty damn obvious. The combined bill, all these big companies, meta and Open AI, they're spending on the order of $400 billion a year.

We have the total consumer spending on AI is $12 billion. What? You're spending $500 billion next year, and where's the revenue? And now they're obviously, and then you add the fact is you can't just build a chip plant the way you built a Ford plant where you can use the machinery for 10 years. It's obsolete in 10 months. And so you think, wow, they're just vastly overspending, as they did in the railways, as they did in the early car, we're going to have a big crash, and then AI will be fine. The counter argument to that is that AI, revenues while small are really going up fast. The second thing is AI is not like any other technology. It's not like the railroads. It's like inventing omniscience. And maybe this is a like remarkable opportunity. They all think so because they're all investing zillions of dollars. But it feels a little bubble-ishous to me. Well, I've heard comparisons to 2000 and the dot-com crash, the bubble. And in an article in the economist, the Harvard professor, Gita Gopinath, writes that a stock market decline comparable to the 2000.com crash would wipe out, she estimates, $20 trillion in wealth

for American households. That's the equivalent of about 70% of last year's gross domestic product. And there's just a lot of money out there. And that's a pretty scary, pretty scary. I am going to call my broker after. Tell them, Robert, told you to. Well, look, I think we should wrap up as we did last time by finding in the midst of all of this angst, some joy, some experience that you've had recently, that each of us has had recently, that might be a good antidote to the stuff we follow in the news. David, you go first. Because my wife likes people, we entertain a lot. And so I've actually found hospitality, not as many people have people over anymore. And we'll have three or four dinner parties a week sometimes. And I'm exhausted by it,

I do a lot of dishes. But I've found hospitality as like, maybe that is my hobby. It's certainly a great pleasure to me. And one of the things we do is she has a lot of friends who are musicians. And one of my golden rules of life is never turn up the opportunity to hang around with musicians. And so we've had a lot of ton of music in the house,

and it's been great and exhausting. I agree with David on all of that. Two things. One, this is a great time of year for sports fans. You've got the World Series. The NBA starts in the middle of the football season. That's fun. But this weekend, I'm going up to New York and our youngest daughter, not the one I mentioned the last time.

I'm going to go up to celebrate her birthday and also walk with her when she early votes in that election in New York that we talked about. And when you can bring together love and democracy, that's utopia for me. I spend Saturday in New York at my grandson's bar mitzvah. I am, to use a technical term, Stilk Felling. And what added to the joy, actually, were other things that happened to be happening at that synagogue that same morning, the welcoming of two people

who just converted to Judaism and the naming of a newborn. And I thought it was a celebration of life at some of its richest moments, and I felt very enriched. Mazel tov. That's great. I also feel enriched by hearing from you guys again. EJ.J.D. on David Brooks. Thanks so much.

Thank you. Thank you. If you like this show, follow it on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcast. The Opinions is produced by Derek Arthur, Bishakadarba, Christina Samuelski, and Jillian 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.

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