The Opinions - Was 2025 the End of ‘Teflon Trump’?

Episode Date: December 20, 2025

As a tumultuous year comes to an end, the New York Times Opinion politics writer Michelle Cottle talks to the columnists David French and Jamelle Bouie about the year that was — the damage done by the Trump administration, including his most recent speech, any silver linings and what to take into 2026.Thoughts? Email us at [e-mail] episode of “The Opinions” was produced by Vishakha Darbha. It was edited by Alison Bruzek and Kaari Pitkin. Mixing by Carole Sabouraud. Original music by Pat McCusker, Isaac Jones and Carole Sabouraud. Fact-checking by Mary Marge Locker and Kate Sinclair. 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. This week, as usual, I am joined by my delightful colleagues, David French and Jamel Bowie. Guys, how you doing? Doing well. Hello, hello. This is our last roundtable of the year.

How are we feeling about saying bye to 2020? I'm glad to see it gone. See you later, you son of a bitch. Okay, for can't gotten spicy, David. You know, I don't know, Jamel. As the elderly grandfather in this group, I have found that like wishing away time is like not my thing anymore. So I'll be sad to see 2025 slide in the rear of your mirror, though. It will not be sad that a lot of the events of 2025 are over, no question about it. And then we're rolling into an election year.

So can it get... It's going to be calm? It's going to be... Yeah, it's going to be chill. I chill is the word that I'm looking for. Absolutely. Speaking of magical political events, did we all watch Trump speech last night?

Because that's what I want to talk about, the economic state of the country as described by our president. From my perspective, that really looked more like a primal scream than a presidential address, but I kind of want you guys to get in there first. Give me some initial

sauce. Did anything surprise you? What, you know, like, what struck you about this whole thing? I mean, nothing surprising. I will say, as per your first comment, Michelle, that it was less than addressed than a harangue. And I did find myself sort of like, I mean, I think I'm coming down with

the cold, first of all. So a combination of, like, my sinuses are a little stuffy, and then I, then the president's like, bra, you know, for 20 minutes. Straight for the cold medicine, did you? you? It was sort of like, ah, it was jarring. It was striking. I mean, the thing about that address is that it's hard to identify anything that was like true. You know, he's throwing out all of these statistics, all of these numbers, and like none of them are true. There were church,

Jamel. He had charts. Come on. You know, statistics and damn statistics. He was throwing out charts, but sort of he's making these claims about inflation that aren't true, making these claims about waste for it that aren't true, making these claims about costs that aren't true. Just a torrent of falsehoods, you know, all clearly coming from a place of deep frustration that he isn't as popular and well-beloved as he believes he should be, which on the one hand is a sign that something of reality is penetrating this White House. On the other hand, it's clear that they have no sense of how to respond to that. David. So I would call it banana republic-flavored Soviet. propaganda. Because, you know, this is what...

I've been waiting hours to pull that one out having... You've been workshopping that all morning. It did well in the focus groups, Michelle, I just have to say. But, you know, if you go back and you remember Soviet propaganda in the 70s and the 80s, the five-year plan, it is working. The five-year plan always was working. Everything is always going so well. They are going on to greater and higher achievements.

And so you always had this like presentation of relentless forward momentum. And then the reason why I say banana republic flavored, it was filtered through this sort of demagogic figure who essentially, and not without some justification, believes that he can basically talk his way out of anything. That if you just get me in front of the American people, I'll fix this affordability thing. get me in front of the American people, I'll fix this political decline. And so here he is coming in with that Trump personality, with that Soviet-level economic propaganda. And that's why we kind of looked at it like, what did we just see? It was about an 18-minute version of the one-to-one-a-half-hour

riff that Trump does when he's at a rally. Well, that's one of the things that sort of struck me is Like the morning after coverage of this, somebody who was in the room, some media person who's in the room, was saying that Trump looked to Susie Wiles and asked how he did, his chief of staff. And she's like, well, I told you 20 minutes and you were spot on. So well done. So I got the sense that they had handed him this thing and told him to keep it short. But he just kept finding things to complain about. I mean, the title of this, as best I could tell, was screw you, all you whiners. The economy's great. and if it's not blame Biden. I mean, like, that was it, just again and again, and hate the immigrants. So I am just not sure what they're hoping to accomplish with that other than maybe to increase the calls for him to get another cognitive assessment.

But I thought it was pretty magical. I really did. I think that the aim is just to give him something to do, right? Like you put him out there to give this 20-minute hurray, And then you tell him it was great and everyone loved it. And this will turn things around. And then he just goes back to, you know, going to his clubs and, you know, hang out in the Oval Office. But it's not clear to me that this is meant to serve a particular objective, right?

Like, it's not going to reverse any fortunes for the president. I mean, are you just suggesting they're trying to keep grandpa busy? I think they're trying to keep grandpa busy. And this is one way to do it. I want to say real quick, just you mentioned that he kind of went off on immigrants. I do feel the need to mention that part of this was, a brief but really disturbing attack on the Somali-American community of Minnesota, which has been a particular obsession of his over the past couple weeks. And I think it's really worth emphasizing

the kind of just crude and base racism of these attacks. So this is sort of the worst kind of worst kind of demagogic language, the worst kind of assaults on people's dignity. And it's really unbecoming. I mean, this feels like an understatement, but it's truly unbecoming of the office of the presidency. And it's a dangerous thing to come from the office of the presidency. I will say this about Trump that is particularly insidious about the Somali issue is, okay, look, you had an actual, a lot of really good reporting recently about fraud in the Somali community that is a problem. It's a real thing that really occurred that is actually a problem. But this is what Trump does is he takes a real thing that actually occurred that is a problem

and then turns it into something else entirely. And then he uses that as a pretext to engineer a wave of hatred against an entire group of people that then gets picked up. and amplified and amplified, to the point where it is now a common sight to just see across sort of this right-wing internet the hatred and mockery of Somalis writ large. And this is just what he does on issue after issue after issue. He latches on to an actual problem that people are worried about,

but then injecting this incredibly toxic hatred into the body politic. Well, for all of his self-pitying, whining, and complaining, and complaining. He hasn't actually made a great case to anybody who hasn't already been drinking the Kool-Aid that he has rescued the economy. I mean, also, we got job reports and inflation numbers. There was not good news for the November job report. Unemployment rate was the highest we've had in four years.

Wage growth has slowed. Now, inflation has unexpectedly fallen. But even Susie Wiles in her very juicy vanity. Fair Peace this month has been, you know, saying that the tariffs were even more painful than she expected. So all of this is not like a glowing testimony to Trump's, what was it, A plus, plus, plus self-graded economy. So what does he need to do? I mean, we can't just keep grandpa busy. Grandpa needs to do something, right? I mean, part of it, so I wrote this week about how we have this strange confluence of a largely checked out president.

I think you can fail to describe Trump as checked out from the business of governance. And a court that's sort of larding the presidency up with like a ton of authority and power that didn't have before. But in practice, what these two things mean is we don't have so much like a unitary executive as we do have like a unitary deputy white house chief of staff, right? Like all of the authority that the presidency has is being exercised by people who are not the president and who are largely unaccountable to anything, the political wins. And you can kind of just pursue their own narrow ideological political goals. It's the deep state.

It's the president's authority, right? Oh, my God. The deep state is running the government. The deep state. And so that's the, to answer your question, you know, what does the president need to be doing? Well, a president who were actually running his administration might say, and, you know, knows that to turn around my approval, I have to turn around the economy, might first of all back off on the tariffs. That's probably item number one. But then it might also go to say Stephen Miller

and say, we got to cut out this deportation stuff because that removing a ton of labor from the economy is going to cause inflation, right? Might go over to Russ Vaught and say, we got to kind of calm down this trying to destroy the bureaucratic state because, you know, firing a bunch of people is taking money out of the economy and creating all this regulatory uncertainty. It's bad for the economy, right? He tried to get a corral his, I've been calling them viziers,

so I'll use that here, corral his viziers into doing things a little less tailored to their own particular interest. But because he isn't really governing and because these people are largely autonomous of the president in terms of how their actions go, none of that can happen, right?

There's not going to be any, you know, pull back on the deportations, even if this ends up providing a significant blow to the national labor market. David, you got anything before I've regrettably let this go? You know, I think the basic reality is we have a really mixed economy right now. There is an enormous amount of AI spending that is fueling a GDP increase. We've had some pretty high, you know, pretty good GDP numbers. At the same time, we have highest unemployment we've had in around four years. We had an unexpected dip in inflation, but we've had some real problems with inflation in the very

recent past. He has implemented tariffs to try to reshor manufacturing, but manufacturing jobs are diminishing. So it's this very mixed picture, and I think the reality is, and it's one thing that folks learn every few years is it's very, very difficult to spend the economy to people because they live in it. You can spend a lot of things, but it's really hard over time. to convince people that things are great when maybe they're fine or not fine. And, you know, like, this is something that the Biden campaign and the Harris campaigns learned is that you can't fact-check people out of their experience. So I think Trump's going to run into the same thing the Biden folks ran into,

which is it's very hard over time to spend the economy. Oh, well, moving on from this, I do want us to go. get big picture and look back at the year overall. First, I'm going to give you an easy one. Scale of one to 10, one being a dumpster fire, 10 being a joyride at Disney. Where does this year fall for you? I mean, I'd say this year is pretty solidly. I mean, in terms of politics, this year is pretty solidly at two. Obviously not the worst possible, but... It can always be worse. But pretty bad, you know, pretty suboptimal. David? Yeah, I'm going to go maybe slightly higher just because I think maybe my basement of what a one means might be very,

it's very, very low, so I might go for a three. But, you know, what would a one be for you? It was like we were actually in a shooting war. Fort Sumter. Fort Sumter's the one. Okay. Okay. One's good.

Yeah. That's fair. Yeah. So if Fort Sumter is your one and VE Day is your 10, then, you know, we're heading more towards, say, a three. But I think the thing that we're going to look back on on 2025 isn't for any one specific scandal. It's going to be for the totality of the Trump onslaught on the rule of law. But also, I think you're going to have a lot of tail-in consequences for his assault on the civil service, his assault on USAID.

We're going to pay some real prices. And people are already paying the price with their lives for the cuts to, you know, USAID, for example. And I think the tail end effect of a lot of that is we're not even close to experiencing it yet. I very much agree with that. We've arguably gotten somewhat lucky this year that there haven't been any particular big external crises facing the United States. But the kind of damage done to the civil service, kind of damage done to the federal bureaucracy, to agencies whose job it is basically to help the United States handle acute crises,

I think it suggests that should we have something like that in the next year or two years, we're going to experience it in a much worse way than we would have without Trump. And then the destruction of USAID is, I mean, I think one of the great tragedies of recent memory, right? Like, researchers are already expecting or estimating death tolls in the hundreds of thousands of people because Donald Trump and Elon Musk destroyed this agency for no particular reason. Just did it to do it. Well, you guys actually have already preempted what was going to be my next question, which is what, what do you think is one of the moves that will have the biggest impact going forward? And I was, in fact, going to bring up PEPFAR and USAID, you know, just like global perspective.

So, you know, you beat me to the punch. I am thinking that the assault on health care, which they're going to continue the fight, Congress is going to continue its fight on into the new year, is going to have some immediate effects. It's not just the slashing of Medicaid. it's letting the Obamacare. Subsidies expire. I mean, people already have a hard time affording their health care. I think that this was just a devastating,

just misreading of the American public and what it needs. Oh, and I have to go with a three if we're going to go ranking, just because I thought the year was going to be much, much, much worse. So I actually, thought there would be more external problems, or I thought that there would be more violence that

broke out in the country because I saw, you know, the unleashing of the National Guard on American cities and just all of these kind of abuses as having worse repercussions than they did. Now, this suggests that I'm a very dark and negative person in my expectations, but I'm just saying. Okay, so I want to switch now just slightly and say, were there any under the radar stories that you wish had gotten more attention? And I realize we're talking about a president who manages to get saturation coverage and widespread attention every time he burps or naps. But was there anything that you want to throw out there that bothered you and you just don't think it got quite enough play? I'm going to say that we don't focus enough, and this might sound weird to people, because we've heard a lot of conversation about it kind of off and on, of the atmosphere of threat that pervades now the judiciary, as well as Congress, as well as essentially state and local governments when you defy Trump. You know, we've seen stories about the experience of Indiana Senate Republicans who defied Trump on redistricting.

Way to step up, guys. Oh, I know. And then subjected to this wave of harassment and intimidation. And I honestly think that we're going to look back on this moment and recognize the extent to which all of American politics was distorted by fear in this moment. And the extent to which MAGA, at a very grassroots level, was constructed in large part through the use of fear. it is still underappreciated as a central factor in American politics. And we don't like to think about it and talk about it because we don't like to think that that's what American politics is like.

We think of American politics is about debate and dialogue and discussion and compromise, not fear, threat, intimidation. But I honestly think that pervasive sense of intimidation and threat is still a not sufficiently understood part of our politics. Jamel. I mean, I think that's right. I don't know if I have an under sort of covered story or anything from the year. I think I might actually just second David's here that like the extent to which one of the

enforcement mechanisms for Trumpism is just death threats. People like levying credible death threats against you. If you decide to, you know, speak up for your own interests, you know, buck the party line, like, what have you.

And the thing is that, like, you know, Republicans have spoken about this before. I've Mitt Romney spoke about it, at least from Rukowski, recent, this year I think spoke to it.

I mean, it's not as if this isn't in the air, but it seems to sort of like not be taken as seriously as what it is, right? Yeah. The Republican lawmakers are just being,

like, threatened with violence to themselves and to their families if they don't, if they don't fall in line. And I think David's right to say that this is, we're going to look back can identify this as one of the key mechanisms behind Trump's control over the entire Republican Party.

So now I'm torn. Do I go really small bore or do I just like talk about my vague concerns about how much Trump has been meddling in the private sector and bullying media organizations and, you know, grabbing shares of companies for the government and playing favorite. and just generally trying to exert his will on private actors. You know, I've been struck by how much we just kind of nod and are like, oh, yeah, okay, that's totally normal. I'm sure it's fine. So, like, I could go very generic like that,

or I could bring up my kind of personal terror of AI and say that his executive order starts. stomping on state's efforts to kind of step back and think about regulation for this strikes me as just short-sighted. But, I mean, when isn't he short-sided, I guess? Okay. So I got both of those in there. So there you have it. Is there anything more like a silver lining that you see as we exit this crazy year?

You know, what has made you hopeful? The clear political silver lining to me at least is that like, yeah, politics are still occurring, right? Like political gravity still exists and voters are reacting the way you'd expect them to react to unpopular administration during unpopular actions. There isn't like the Teflon Trump thing seems to maybe apply during election years or when he specifically when he is on the ballot running for president. But outside of that, people don't like this stuff. And that to me is the silver lining that. we're probably going to see next year a very standard thermostatic reaction to the president. And the depth of the president on popularity will determine just how large that is.

Yeah, I mean, the silver lining, I think, is pretty transparently the majority revulsion at what we're seeing. And we really are looking at a situation where with the out to the kind of weird, unique appeal of Trump, but with all of the things that make that repel people from Trump in operation, it does seem like there is at least some thought that we're turning the page and that there is some evidence. Let's go back to Indiana Senate Republicans. I don't know that that happens even four months ago, even, you know, three months ago, that there's that kind of defiance. But I think people have seen that this era will in fact end and the knowledge that this Sarah will, in fact, end means that you're going to start to see some alternatives peaking out, you know, some green shoots of some alternatives.

I think you're right that it has that what we needed was for the public to feel like there was a light at the end of the tunnel. Or even if you're talking about people in kind of Trump's own circles, Republicans on the Hill or whatever, they were buying into the idea that there's just nothing you can do and this is going to last forever. even though they know that's not true. So what has happened is quack, quack, quack. The guy's a lame duck. He's not going to be at the top of the ticket anymore. You know, political gravity is beginning to reassert itself in terms of you've got to start planning for the next step. So you have this confluence of events.

And every time Trump opens his mouth, out comes all this crazy stuff. But also behind it, I can hear the quack, quack, quack, quack. I mean, this speech that he gave yesterday was a lame duck speech. I mean, it's sort of the kind of almost impotent thing that presidents on their last legs do. Well, let me see if I can't convince them to get behind me with one last go of it on the stump. And they can't. They never can. And to the thing, I mean, the thing that's interesting to think about, interesting, you know, ominous.

I don't know. Is that there's still three more years of this, right? So what is, to me, it feels like they're. kind of burn themselves out this first year, kind of a maximal attempt to do everything. And as the pushback has gotten stronger, as the electoral defeats begin the mount, they have one of two choices, which is another to pull back and try to consolidate what they've achieved or continue, you know, with this, you know, full spectrum attack. And I think they're going to try to do the latter. And I just don't think that that's sustainable through another year, politically or otherwise.

You know, the smarter people in MAGA are already recognizing that by coming out of the gate with an executive order agenda, as opposed to a legislative agenda, they have turned a lot of the actual legal elements of Trumpism into vaporware because executive orders, on the hierarchy of American law, executive orders rank near the bottom. There's a reason why we don't talk about FDR's Social Security Executive Order. I mean, that's, or the Medicare executive order, no. Trump doesn't really want to be president, David. He wants to be king.

Yeah. He wants to make decrees. Yeah. I think, and I think that was very much the appeal of the executive order. As David points out, though, there's a real chance that, you know, come 2029, right, not that far away. Come 20209, there's a Democratic president who wipes away of these executive orders. there's Democratic Congresses that pass laws, right, that try to push back on what Trump did.

And then Trump himself, depending on how things go, may end up presiding over a lot of failure. And so far from being this triumph, Trump ends up being this real albatross for the Republican Party. I'm saying that both is sort of like, oh, this could happen and also sort of like,

inshallah, this shall happen. So, um... Nice. Nice. All right. So it's, you know, as we're wheeling into, to 2026. Do you have any resolutions or goals? Do you want to share? You know, we used to as a family have a very sort of formalized New Year's resolution process, and we still often do it. We'll gather at a

Waffle House on New Year's Day. Oh, hell yes. Waffle House. Yep. So gathered a Waffle House on New Year's Day and walk through. Do they have Waffle Houses in Chicago? Well, that's a problem. No, I have not found one. Or sometimes late on New Year's Eve, we'll be at the Waffle House, Listen, I have pared down my resolutions year by year by year to the point where I now have won every year for the last five years. It's the same resolution I've been able to keep it. And it is move more than the year before. In other words, more exercise, more steps, more whatever, move more than the year before. And so because I've just seen, you know.

I'm going to steal that. Yeah, it's attainable and it's healthy. and yeah, so that's my annual resolution. Chimel? I do not do resolutions. It's never been a thing that I've really been into. I'm always much more of the type that, you know, there are things I want to accomplish,

and I'm going to accomplish them this year. And that's how it's going to be. Well, okay. I'm always up for trying to maintain and improve good habits. Like one thing, I'll say one resolution is just sort of like, I have a pretty healthy diet, but sort of like there are things I could improve about it. I could probably stay in to eat a little less sugar or that kind of thing. So I'm going to aim for that.

It just makes me feel guilty. I'm a very, I'm sure I've mentioned this before. Both my parents were in the military and I just have a very kind of like, I've, I was raised with and continue to have a very kind of like, oh, I have a task. I got to do it. It's going to get done kind of approach to life. I do do resolutions. I am just that kind of fond of a good gimmick. I have been trying to find a local organization,

charity, nonprofit, whatever, to get involved with this year, not just donate to financially, but to get in there, spend some time with the community. So that is my goal. I have looked into a few, but still on this. If people out there have a good recommendation in the D.C. area, hit me with it. Before we go, okay, give me one more wreck for the year.

This is it, last chance. Top rec. Oh, top wreck for the year? Top recommendation for the year. I don't have a top recommendation for the year. I'll say, Michelle and I did a little roundtable on the career of Rob Reiner, who died this week. And so let me recommend a film from that remarkable run he had, from basically like the early to mid-1980s to the early 1990s. I watched, this isn't going to be like a surprise pick, right?

Like, I watched a few good men two nights ago and I hadn't seen it in about 10 years. And that, that is, that is a picture, right? That is a movie, right? And it hits all the pleasure centers of a good Hollywood movie. But I have to say, Jack Nicholson's performance and obviously, like his climactic courtroom scene, is endlessly parodied. endlessly reference. But I recommend just watching it, trying to watch it with fresh eyes.

It is first a remarkable performance. But then also it feels so relevant. This notion that defending our freedoms requires brutality, requires people with no regard for the law or for decency or for humanity. And the movie being a rejection of that is so relevant.

I think it's a movie that's like actually well worth watching in this moment. In addition to just being, you know, a tribute and a testament to Reiner's abilities as the director. So, Jamel, I'm so glad you went in the Reiner direction. That's a great. I feel like that's a great way to end. I was going to point to Princess Bride. The irony here is Reiner was a pretty left-leaning guy, not known for being particularly religious, but Princess Bride turned into like the most quoted movie in evangelical youth group history.

Because it is... What is they like? It's just a super wholesome movie. It's a super... You know, it's the kind of movie. It's that really rare movie that is incredibly wholesome and also extremely popular

at the same time. But I will also say, for me, when I think of Rob Reiner, I think of this as Final Tap. And I probably have watched that 10 times minimum. I have been to a live... Spinal Tap concert of the actual band.

What? That's a thing? Yes. Yeah, they did a tour back in the early 90s, in fact. Yeah, I was there in the early 90s at Starwood, the now defunct Starwood Amphitheater outside of Nashville watching this. I've been to Starwood. Oh, absolutely. But what a brilliant man who left a marvelous legacy of art and just what a crushing loss. Well, plus, I mean, Spinal Tap gives us the quote for this podcast that is the most useful during the Trump era. This goes to 11. Everything is going to 11. Like, everything goes to 11. So, you know, far be it from me to break the trend with Rob Reiner. I, as poor Jamel had to hear ad nauseum, am an enormous when Harry Met Sally fan. This was the defining romantic comedy of my youth. I can quote the whole damn thing if you get me

started with just no provocation. It's just I'm all about that. So I think since we're just going full Rob Reiner, that'll be my recommendation. All right. And with that, we're going to land this plane for the last time in 2025. Jamal, David, thank you so much as usual. Yeah, see you guys next year. Happy holidays, happy new year, and see you again soon. Okay, that's it for the year for us, guys. Everybody enjoy their holidays. If you like this show, follow it on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts. The Opinions is produced by Derek Arthur, Bashaka Darba, Christina Samuoski, and Jillian Weinberger. It's edited by Kari Pitkin and Alison Bruzik.

Engineering, mixing, and original music by Isaac Jones, Sonia Herrero, Pat McCusker, Carol Sabro, and Afim Shapiro. Additional music by Amon Sohom. 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 Strasser.