The Paikin Podcast - Tom Nichols: Is This a New Low for Trump?

Episode Date: December 22, 2025

The Atlantic’s Tom Nichols joins Steve to discuss Trump’s “ghoulish” comments about Rob and Michele Reiner’s murders, if this is a new low for him, how he sees the Trump administration as a “confederacy of toddlers,” if Trump is losing his grip on the Republican Party, the growing rift within the GOP, the resentments Americans feel, and what happens after Trump.Is it possible for someone to restore the guardrails that Trump has obliterated? Is it possible for someone to win an election on restoring clean, sane government?Follow The Paikin Podcast: YOUTUBE: https://www.youtube.com/@ThePaikinPodcastX: x.com/ThePaikinPodINSTAGRAM: instagram.com/thepaikinpodcastBLUESKY: bsky.app/profile/thepaikinpodcast.bsky.socialEmail us at: [e-mail]

Hi, everybody. Steve Paken here. I got to say that in my 19 years of hosting the agenda on TVO, one of the guests that I used to love having on over and over, well, we had him on quite a few times, I remember, and we like to have him on so much because, well, let's face it, this guy is not a partisan, but he is, he's got such thoughtful and sane views about what's going on in the United States these days that we just always enjoyed having come on. He wrote a wonderful book called The Death of Expertise. We talked about that, I remember once. And how do I put this? Quite frankly, just when you thought that the behavior of the current president of the United States really couldn't get any worse,

well, the man in the Oval Office seems to have hit a new low. So we thought it was high time to get Tom Nichols onto the Paken podcast. So we'll do that. Coming right up on our one-on-one. delighted to welcome into this space for the first time, Tom Nichols. Tom, it's great to have you with us today. How are you? I'm well, Steve. It's great to see you again. Thanks for having me. Well, look, I don't know that there's any easy way to say this other than just to say,

you know, Rob Reiner and his wife, Michelle, who are, look, even Republicans think that they are beloved, some Republicans think their beloved figures in the entertainment world over the last half century. And they were killed. we suspect by their son, who has been charged with the crime, but he is innocent until proven guilty in a court of law, but in a most gruesome and horrific fashion, and yet the president of the United States posted this after it happened. Rob Reiner has passed away, together with his wife, Michelle, reportedly due to the anger he caused others through his massive, unyielding, and incurable affliction with a mind-cripling disease known as Trump Derangement Syndrome.

He was known to have driven people crazy by his raging obsession of President Donald J. Trump, with his obvious paranoia reaching new heights as the Trump administration surpassed all goals and expectations of greatness. That's what the president put out on social media. Tom, your reaction when you heard about this. Well, of course, two weeks ago, as we were learning as a lifetime in American politics now, I was revolted. My first thought, the first word that came to my mind was ghoulish.

The president was just being an actual ghoul. He was delighting in the pain and suffering and violent death of somebody who happened to disagree with him politically. It's perhaps the lowest point of a man who has excavated every possible low point in politics. And I suppose it's a small reassurance that even Republicans, even extreme Republicans, people, including people in the entertainment industry like the actor James Woods, really came out and said, you know, just not acceptable, too far down. But, you know, there's never any, there's never any price. There's never any, you know, real political price. The president pays for this stuff. You know, when Charlie Kirk was killed and there were some

people out there who said really awful, again, ghoulish things. Republicans insistent that they be fired, that they be driven from our public life. And, you know, I was disgusted by those people. But now the shoe is on the other foot. The other thing I think that the reason it broke through is that, you know, Rob Reiner, I actually met Rob and his wife once. I had the pleasure of spending about a half an hour with them. We were all stuck in an airport together. How long ago? he's just a delightful man i mean he was you know yeah we kind of you know i said hello and he sort of yeah i recognize yeah i read your stuff you know but then we just started talking like a couple of older guys about our health and our weight and you know airplanes and he he introduced me to his wife

and i still remember the thing that really touched me he asked um his wife to come over and he put his armor and he said this is my michel my my michel and it was very touching and you know apparently he was just like that with everybody. He was just a beloved guy. And Trump's post not only took this kind of grisly delight in Reiner's death, but it implied that he had a coming. That if you don't like Donald Trump and this is the way you die, well, you know, that's how it goes. You kind of brought it on yourself because of Trump derangement or because of your political opposition. I mean, he's not, there is a part of Donald Trump that is simply not, I shouldn't say, part. He is not a normal human being. There's something very wrong with him mentally and emotionally.

And I think he's so, such a disturbed person that there's a part of me that can't even hold him completely morally culpable for any of this because he is so, you know, clearly disturbed. But the people around him, the people who enable him, the people who work for him, the people who defend this kind of stuff are really, I think, the, the, much more morally hideous than Trump himself, because they know better. They know how wrong this is. You remember, though, of course, not necessarily by firsthand experience, but you no doubt studied and looked into at the time the Army McCarthy hearings in the 1950s in your country.

And that famous expression by Joseph Welch in front of Congress, where after everything Joe McCarthy has done to the country, he looks at him and says, sir, have you no sense of decency? At long last. Yeah. At long last, have you no D.C. Who is the person in the United States that can say that to Donald Trump? 70% of us, at least I would say here in the United States, half of us, 60% say it regularly. But Donald Trump has coarsened our national life to the point.

And Donald Trump didn't do it alone. I mean, America, public life in America has become a lot. more course over the last 50 years just by its very nature. And I think some of the same thing has happened in Canada and other countries. But he has really flooded us with terrible offensive things to the point where we just kind of, we're just overwhelmed. We kind of shrug and say, well, it's Donald Trump. What are you going to do? That's how he, even, you know, his support of, oh, that's how he talks. And I think he has really, and again, his enablers have really made sure to help make this happen.

He's worn down our ability to be disgusted and shocked and horrified. You know, it's kind of like, I suppose, the way people once talked about movies and television, at the first time somebody said, you know, son of a bitch on television or something, that's, oh, you know, this is a terrible thing. And by, you know, by the 21st century, you know, people are swearing freely and we just go, well, you know, it's just TV. What are you going to do? But Donald Trump has done that to our political life.

and he's done it in record time. He's taken us from, you know, I mean, I'm speaking of old enough, I can remember that, you know, there were people that didn't want to vote for Al Gore because they were disgusted with Bill Clinton. That seems quaint now, you know, that seems almost, you know, Victorian in its quaintness that, you know, Bill Clinton, you know, you kind of soiled the office, we can't have that, you know, we need, And, of course, George W. Bush campaigned on decency in the White House and all that. That's all gone. I mean, Donald Trump really, I mean, he's turned the White House into a physically turned

it into a cheap-looking motel and really degraded our public life. I think we can go back to 1939 and gone with the wind when this first became an issue that I was aware of. And Red Butler looked at Scarlet O'Haron and said, frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn. And the use of the word damn in motion. pictures caused quite a foo for a back in the day. Let me get you to focus now on a confederacy of toddlers, which was the piece you wrote for the Atlantic.

The Trump administration is a regime of troubled children, you wrote. And here I'm going to do one excerpt from your piece, and then we'll come back with some questions. The United States, you write, is now a nation run by public servants who behave no better than internet trolls, deflecting criticism with crassness and obscenity. the White House Press Secretary answers a question from a member of the free press, a serious question about who planned a meeting between the American and Russian presidents by saying, your mom did.

The Secretary of Defense cancels DEI and other policies by saying, we are done with that shit. The vice president calls an interlocutor on social media a dipshit. The president of the United States during mass protests against his policies responds by posting an AI-generated video of himself flying a jet fighter over his fellow citizens and dumping feces on their heads. These are not the actions of mature adults.

They are examples of crude people displaying their incompetence as they flail about in jobs, including the presidency, for which they are not qualified. Now this, you know, I presume, I presume there must have been a last straw that got you to write this column, because that kind of behavior is certainly not new for either this or the previous Trump

administration. So was there, in fact, a last draw that put you over the edge? Yeah, I think the Caroline Levitt, your mom, you know, and let me, for, you know, you and I've known each other for a long time, Steve, you know my background. I'm a come from a working class family in New England. When I'm off screen, I swear like a sailor. You know, this is not some like upper class delicacy on my part. I can swear a blue streak with the best of them. But there is something about public deportment that's important. And when this 27-year-old press secretary answers a question from a veteran journalist by seeing your mom, I thought, first of all, this is an important question. There's an important question about foreign policy.

It suggested to me that she didn't really know the answer and didn't care. That's one thing that strikes me about this whole administration. They simply don't care. They don't think they're there to govern the country or serve the American people. They think they're there to have a good time and, you know, get even with all the people that they don't like. But also, I guess I got mad thinking, I was a government, as you know, I've taught for years at the U.S. Naval War College. I was a Department of Defense employee. I was a public employee, paid with taxpayer dollars, and I did my job and took it seriously.

And there was part of me that said, you're being paid with our money. You're a press secretary. You're paid to answer questions from the press about important issues to inform the American people. On what planet do you think it's okay to answer this by sounding like a sophomore in high school, and a dim software, not to insult high school kids, a dim rude sophomore in high school. Um, and so, you know, that, that had just piled up. I, I actually wrote another piece, um, kind of a companion piece to it called politicians aren't cool enough to swear this much. Um, because that's become a thing now, you know, to, to go out there any, and this is a bipartisan problem, you know, that politicians routinely go on television now and say, well, I thought that was bullshit. Um, you know, and this, you know, they, they use a lot of profanity. I thought, you know, I remember the day when a politician using profanity on camera, you know, would have been an apology and, you know, America's children and people watching TV and all that stuff. And we just do it all the time now. And, you know, I'm guilty. I've done it a few, not on national

television, but more than a few podcasts. I've been on that have, you know, become rated R because of language. But I'm sorry, I expect more from the press secretary to the president. of the United States. I expect more than this from the Secretary of Defense. I expect more from U.S. senators. I used to work for one. I could not imagine my my boss, the late John Hines, Pennsylvania, walking out and saying, you know, I saw this bill. I think it's bullshit. I just can't. There was a time where people thought they respected the public more and they respected themselves more. And they respected their professionalism more. Why do they do it then? it works and because they think it's cool. Now, sometimes it misfires. Every time J.D. Vance,

who is, you know, just the squarest, stiffest, you know, I mean, you know, the kid always picked last for softball or something. He just comes across as this kind of wants to be one of the cool kids. And every time he tries to sound edgy, when he says, I don't, someone asked him, do you think what Pete, I think people said, what Pete Higgseth is doing is a war crime. And he said, I don't give a shit what you call it. And it just sounds stiff and forced and silly. Trying too hard to sound cool. He's trying too hard.

Exactly. You know, it's that, it's like I said, it's the, it's the kid who can't get into the, can't sit with the cool kids trying to sound edgy. But I think other people do it because they think it sounds authentic. And frankly, that's one of the lessons of Trump. One of the things that I found very striking early on when Trump started to run, there was a focus group up in New Hampshire. And I never, I used to live in New Hampshire. I never forgot this because I, you know, I'm pretty familiar with the New Hampshire area. And, um, a focus group person said, he's, I, I like him. He's one of us. He's just like us. And I thought, this multi-billionaire,

multi-million billionaire from New York City is nothing like you. He's completely unlike anyone in New Hampshire. He would never set foot in New Hampshire if he didn't have to. He doesn't want to meet any of you. This is not a guy who wants to, you know, have a coffee, you know, with a bunch of you in Nashua or Laconia, you know, or Lebanon, New Hampshire. They, he doesn't, he's, he can't, you know, Howard Stern actually said this at one point. He hates you. And, and, but I thought, if you speak rudely and crudely and coarsely enough, you can mimic that sense that people, you know, have the, oh, he sounds like a jerk. He's just like me. Unfortunately, they may be right. If you watch the shows, Stephen Miller is one of the regular Trump advisors who shows up a lot.

And you say he uses, quote, Adolf Hitler like rhetoric, which is particularly offensive, given that he is Jewish. What kind of rhetoric are you talking about? Well, he and Trump and others talk about other people as scum, as vermin, as non-human beings. and he's again he's like one of these people that seems to delight in it um you know i i consider myself an immigration hawk um i think if you're not here in the united states legally you shouldn't be able to stay here but that doesn't mean that i think it's a great idea to take people to take children and put them in cages and split up families just to you know impose misery on them and and um miller has this very sadistic streak you know all of them

When I wrote a confederacy of toddlers, I kind of struggled with how I wanted to say this because, you know, toddlers can also be innocent and loving and fun. But they, you know, children also can be really mean and brutal. But all of these people seem to have a resentment, a burning sense of resentment that always comes from some kind of what I call their villain origin story. You know, there's this moment where they were humiliated in high school. school or in college or they were denied a job or they were kicked out of the mainstream media. There's a few people I know that took their shot at going on places like CNN or other places and flamed out. And you can see where they turn and become angry. And so now I'm going to be just, you know, extremely cruel and angry. And it's really, I don't want to draw, overdraw the

comparison to, you know, Hitler or Nazis. There is an anger in them that says, we are elitist, too. We just think that we ought to be the new elites. And part of the way they do that is by appealing to the lowest, most violent sentiment in America as a way of lifting them beyond their own childishness and incompetence into jobs for which they are not qualified in which they should not be holding. As you look at the political landscape in the United States right now, Are there any pro-Trumpers that you can see who would acknowledge that this stuff goes too far? Well, I think, I think especially after the Rob Reiner moment, yeah, you're starting to see that. And you're starting to see Republicans in Congress and in the states saying, you know, enough's enough.

Because the deal with Donald Trump that these people made was, we get it that you're ignorant and crude and, and. cruel, but as long as you deliver things we want, you know, as long as you get even with people we don't like, because that's a big part of Trumpism, right, that you hate, he hates the people we hate, and as long as you deliver on things that we want, lower taxes and goodies, you know, for favored groups and so on. What was really interesting was seeing what happened in Indiana when the president tried to pressure these state legislatures. legislators in the Midwest and said, do what I want you to do, mess with your state's districts, create new congressional districts, writings for you Canadians, create new districts, and change your

electoral map to benefit me. And, you know, people, America is a federal state. I mean, we are much like Canada, right? I mean, we have, we, we are different people from one end of the contrary to the other. And you really saw people in Indiana, including a majority of Indiana's Republicans in the Senate, in the state Senate in Indiana saying, you know, I voted for this guy, but I didn't vote for him to come here to Indiana and push me around and tell me what to do. And not just push me around, but to call my constituents who I live next to. Because remember, this is an important thing about state government here. You know, these state senators, they don't all live in Indianapolis all day and, you know, never have to, they live cheek

by jowl with their constituents and Trump was firing them up so badly that these people were calling them and making death threats and threatened to kill their state legislators. And I think, you know, there were people that finally said, you know, I've put up with the stuff for these years, I've put up with the kind of person he is for all these years, I haven't gotten the things I wanted from him. And he's telling my constituents to kill me, or he's demonizing me, I should say, he's demonizing me to the point where people in my state are calling me and threatening to kill me. And yeah, I think that did go too far.

And I think it is going too far. I think he does not have the same grip. The president does not have the same grip he had even six months ago. I think the wheels are really coming off of this White House. How do you see that manifesting itself? Because his polling numbers are never particularly robust. he certainly never gets close to 50% support in the country. I mean, beyond some of the response we saw to the Rob Reiner comments, which were disgraceful,

beyond that, Marjorie Taylor Green, I guess, dropped out. And he seems to have taken that on pretty hard and come away, I don't know, relatively unscathed. He's still the president. She's going away. What makes you think that this is actually having a dent or an impact on him? Well, first of all, those polling numbers, I mean, when a president's at 36%, that's in a country that's basically a 50-50 split country. I mean, presidents worry when they're getting, you know, into the high 40s, Trump's at 36%. That's, you know, for people that have been worried that Trump is making a dash to authoritarianism, and I am one of them who I've been worrying for a long time, you have to have the support of a lot of people to do that.

You have to have at least support of the majority of the people in the country to pull off moves like that. So that's an important change right there, especially among independence and unaffiliated voters. I mean, his numbers have dropped from super high to just very high in the Republican Party, but he's lost a lot of other people. You're also seeing it in things like he tried to strong arm in the House into not releasing the Jeffrey Epstein files. And the House, Republicans in the House, enough Republicans in the House said, we're just not taking orders from you about this anymore. You've campaigned on this. You said you're going to do it. Now we're going to do it.

And that is a big change. I mean, there was a day when Donald Trump could say, here's what I want. And the Republicans in the House would say, yes, sir, well, fine. I mean, it's important to point out in a separated system like ours, unlike Canada, or, you know, prime minister, it's a parliamentary system. These members of the House have their own mandate. They run independently of the president. And yet, they had stopped acting like an independent branch of government. And I think some of them now are stepping forward and saying, you know, there's going to be a day when you're not here.

And I think maybe that's why I think the wheels are coming up, because Trump always governed with this kind of sense of unstoppable and inevitability, you know, that he was just in charge and he could make anything happen. And that's drifted away from him. So he's been losing more and more fights. He lost the Epstein fight in the house, redistricting fights. He had clobbered in off-year elections here in places like Virginia, New Jersey. And, you know, his ability to simply kind of do the Jedi mind trick and wave his hand and say, do as I say, that has really dribbled away from him very quickly. and I don't think it's over. I'll add one more thing, Steve.

I think the fact that Republicans are openly talking about how badly they think they're going to get clobbered in the midterm elections, which anything, you know, two weeks is a lifetime, so we're talking about almost a year from now, tells me that, you know, there were people, so I'm ride or die with Donald Trump, and then because they never really thought the political die part would ever happen. but one of the reasons I think Marjorie Taylor Green, for example, and I don't have any inside knowledge about this, but one of the reasons I think she quit is it's not fun to be in the minority. That's always the canary in the coal mine. When you see members of the majority

coming to a midterm election and quitting, it's because they don't want to be the minority, because it's not fun to be the minority party in the U.S. Congress. You don't really have a lot of power anymore. And I think Trump is panicking because when the Democrats, if and when the Democrats retake the House, they're going to, they can open investigations, they can start issuing subpoenas, they can have committee hearings. I mean, if the Republicans win, if the Democrats win the House in 2026, Donald Trump's presidency is effectively over. Hmm. So is he, well, you're right. We're 10 months away from, 11 months away from knowing how those are going to turn out, those midterm elections. But if, if they don't retain the House, do you think

Donald Trump is a lame duck with two years left in his term? I think he's a lame duck now. How come? I think his ability to get things that he wants is already out of his grasp. You know, look at the difference between now and, say, eight months ago. Elon Musk has been ridden out of town on a rail. His name is not spoken anymore in the White House or around Washington. in all the plans for these massive, you know, cuts, yeah, that Trump and Doge and Elon Musk did a lot of

damage, but I can tell you from friends, I know working in the government, everything is now paralyzed as people are sort of sweeping up all the broken glass now that that circus has left town. You've got Susie Wiles giving an interview to giving 11 interviews on the record. Vanity Fair. Incredible. Fair, basically, you know, outing most of her colleagues as the frauds and charlatans that they are, you know, this is, I would say this is probably the worst two weeks Donald Trump's ever had in public life. And I just think he's, I mean, look, he was a lame duck when he came in because no matter what he says, he's not going to run for a third term. At the very least, his health would not allow it, I don't think.

So, you know, any president in their second term is pretty much a lame duck in the American system. But I think, yeah, if he loses the, if the Democrats take the House, there's even been talk of the Senate being in play. I'm a little more skeptical about that. The Senate, because it's long structural explanation, but that we don't need to go into. I think it's a lot tougher for the Democrats to recapture the Senate right now. But I think if, you know, the Senate stays on that kind of 50-50 knife edge and the Democrats take the House, yeah, he's, his last two years will be fighting off investigations and committee hearings and subpoenas while the Democrats actually start trying to pass bills. I think the other thing that's going to happen here is the Republicans have not extended health care subsidies. And I don't think anybody in the Republican Party is ready for the shock that.

that's going to create come January. When people's health premiums start to go up a lot. When they start getting the bill, a lot of Republicans, a lot of conservatives, I was one of them. I was not in favor of creating a new big entitlement back 11 years ago, but it's worked out. It's expensive, but I think, you know, it's now woven into American life. I think it's important. I know people that benefit from it.

I'm originally from Massachusetts where the forerunner of Obamacare under Mitt Romney was actually a pilot program. And I think, you know, it just has to, it's just, it's just here. It's, and it's a good thing. I've changed my mind on it. But when people get that bill and when they get that sticker shock in another couple of months, they're going to look for somebody to blame. And there's only one party that's in charge of everything right now. True enough. Well, let me ask you a follow up about that one part.

because there's something both fascinating and frightening in terms of a debate happening inside the Republican Party right now, and that is as it relates to the Middle East. There is a wing of the party that is incredibly supportive of Israel. I guess they tend to be made up mostly of evangelical Christians. There is another wing of the Republican Party that is just virulently anti-Semitic and can't stand Jews or Israel. Who is winning that struggle for the heart of the Republican Party? Wow, that's a great question, and I wish I knew the answer to it. One thing I think is important to clarify, yeah, evangelicals have a lot, American evangelicals have a lot of affection for Israel, but not because they are pro-Israeli, as much as they are

that they think Israel is an important piece of the puzzle that leads to the end times. Yeah. Right? I mean, they're not really like, I'm pro-Israel because it's the only democracy in the Middle East, and I care about their values, and I, you know, respect Judaism. it's for everything to play out, you know, for the second coming of Jesus Christ, Israelis have to be there and exist. Jews have to move back to Israel.

And yes. Jews have to go to Israel, right. So, you know, that's not the best reason in the world to be pro-Israeli. But the Israelis will take it right now. They don't have too many friends left. Right. And so, but the other problem is that you have the Republican Party now, and I've been actually working on this, trying to write something about this, which has these kind of aimless and sort

of reflexively bigoted young men. for whom anti-Semitism is just a whole part of a whole basket of bigotry, you know, that's part of their racism and white supremacy. And it's not even that well thought out. It's just a reflex at this point. And the Republican Party has become their home because the Republican Party has become nativist, has become a completely nativist party, which for somebody my age, I became a Republican at the end of the 70, I turned 18 in 1978, I could vote in 1980, you know, to an immigrant

friendly, Ronald Reagan's last public statement in office was about the importance of immigrants. This was the guy who amnestyed three million illegal immigrants in the United States in 1986. But I think that the Republican Party now has become this sort of dour, resentful, nativist party that thinks that, you know, the foreigners are taking all our jobs. Again, kind of, and so Jews just get lumped into that, that, you know, this is all being done by Jews, right? Why are foreigners taking our jobs? Because rich Jews, this is kind of a replay of the 19th, Germany in the 30s, right?

Rich Jews are oppressing good white Christian males in America, and that's why I can't get a job. But I think it's, I don't know who's winning that argument because the Republican foreign policy establishment is still reason, and I say the establishment kind of buried in places like the State Department, even like Marco Rubio, they're pro-Israel because it makes to them strategic sense. And because of this values, democracy and so on. Benjamin Netanyahu has made that a lot harder, made that argument a lot harder to make. But that's not really the argument the Republicans are having. So I just don't know who comes out of this because the anti-Semitism of the American right is kind of this malformed or formless kind of bigotry and hatred that's just part of a whole basket of that stuff. And it just doesn't, I don't know where it goes, to be honest. I've often wondered what side of that debate within the Republican Party Donald Trump himself is on.

And I've asked this question of many people in the Canadian Jewish community, some of whom say things like, well, look, he's got Jewish grandchildren. He's obviously not anti-Semitic, to which other people say, oh, no, in his heart, he looks at Jews the same way. I mean, as you just put it, Tom, he looks at Jews, he looks at foreigners, he looks at, you know, people from what he called shithole countries, and he thinks they're all just cut from the same cloth. do you have a good sense in your own mind about what side of the debate Trump is on? I think Donald Trump, when I think of Donald Trump, I think of if he weren't, if he didn't have as much money as he does, he'd be the old guy. He's Archie Bunker, if people remember that reference. He'd be the old guy sitting at the back of the bar in some saloon in Queens with a shot in a beer talking about everybody except himself in the worst possible terms.

you know, the Irish are drunks, blacks are lazy, he said, Trump said one time, you know, when I see somebody handling my money, I want to see the yarmicas on them, you know, I want to see the guys with the yarmacas. Because, of course, being basically stupid and bigoted, you know, again, you know, Jews are good with money, Italians are criminals, Irish or, you know, drunk. I mean, He's just that kind of mid-century American know-nothing who sits there at the end of the bar and says, you know what they ought to do? I had an uncle who was always that. You know what they ought to do?

And you never knew who they was. It was always not him. They ought to do this. They ought to do that. And that's Donald Trump. And the only difference between him and the guy at the end of the bar, you know, drinking a shot of cheap whiskey and a beer chaser is Donald Trump's a billionaire. And he has a remarkable sense for marketing. That I will give him. The man has a genius for marketing and for selling to people that are

he is, he has an unerring instinct for finding the suckers in American life who will buy that message. So I just don't know. You know, I'm sure you've seen the same thing, Steve, where you have a friend who's really bigoted, right? And then you say, and yet, you know, your best friend is, you know, Jorge, right? Your co-worker from the Dominion, and he says, oh, well, he's okay. You know, my dad was a bigot. My dad was born in 1918, was a classic kind of old school American, you know, working class, white guy bigot. And if you ask him, he had nothing good to say about most races in the world, except people that he knew. Oh, he's okay. Yeah, that guy, I know him. So I think that's probably Trump.

And this is just reflex for him. I don't want to judge. I don't know how he feels about having Jewish grandchildren or Jewish relatives. I just don't know any of them. But I think the way he talks about all groups is that basically anybody who's not Donald Trump, because remember, he says point blank in public, he talks about genetic lines. So he clearly thinks that people from Germany, Scandinavia, Northern Europe, that's is preferred turf, and everybody else seems to be trash.

I want to know how we can or how we should react to all of this in terms of, I mean, you and I both seem to agree, this behavior by this president is not presidential. It's not a partisan comment to say that. It's just to say that there has been a level of sort of disgraceness demonstrated that is not consistent with the high office that he represents. Michelle Obama famously said, you know, when they go low, we go high. And Trump won again. So that's clearly not the way to go. How do you tackle this kind of stuff? I wrote something a little while ago that I said, look, it's really hard, and this is my

advice to everyone, not just Democrats. It's really hard not to want to, well, the way I put it in the piece was it may seem emotionally satisfying to trade groin punches. But people have to resist that temptation. And I think especially for people who argue that this kind of behavior should be driven out of our public life, they have to be the responsible adults. They have to model the behavior they want to see in other people. Governor California disagrees with you. He's trading punch for punch. And I said in the piece that, you know, it was funny at first. And I think it, um, he really kind of pressed a raw nerve with Maga World because they didn't like looking into that mirror, you know, they, I mean, the title of the article that I wrote about this was

Maga World is so close to getting it, right? You know, Newsom imitates Trump. And they say, that's unprofessional. And your wife should step in. Dana Perino of all people on Fox News and his wife should stop him. This is embarrassing and it's terrible. You know, millions, I think millions of us sat back and said, Dana, you're just so close to getting it. It's just, you're almost there. But I think that's run its course. And you notice that Newsom does it less. And I think now, you know, it's one thing to be combative the way, say, Governor Pritzker of Illinois is, right? He steps forward and he says, not going to put up with this, going to fight him, fine.

But to trade insults and to, you know, I mean, what do you say when the press secretary says your mom? You say, no, your mom. You have to do, I think it was the reporter involved was Sir Shadde. from Huff Post, and he said, do you feel better now? Let me just ask the question again now, plan the meeting. And then, you know, he just kept asking. And I think that's how people who care about democracy and decorum have to respond to this. They have to model that behavior.

They also have to turn to people in their lives. And I've had to do this with people I care about and love, where I've said to them, you know, you know you're wrong. You know that this isn't appropriate. you know that you're putting up with something that you would never accept from anybody else. I mean, Trump, I said to one of my friends, after Trump called a reporter Piggy, I turned to one of my friends. And he said, well, what's a big reporter? And, you know, and I said, what if that reporter was your wife or your sister or your daughter?

You know, I know, I know, I was talking to a guy. And I said, I know you. And I said, I know anybody talked to your wife like that. end up on the floor. You know, why would you, and it's interesting to see, I think, the cognitive dissonance, but you can't just say, yeah, well, Trump's a pig too, or, you know, I've long argued. Stop with the funny nicknames. Stop with the jokes.

Stop with the, you know, memes. This country, every country is a serious country. The United States in particular is a nuclear armed superpower that leads the most powerful military alliance in American in world history, you're going to have to act like adults, going to have to be grownups. And it's not fun to be the adults. It's not satisfying. But that's how we're going to have to approach it. You've been very generous with your time. So let me give you a couple of more questions. Sure. And that is, I want to take a much bigger picture look right now, which is to say that one of the things we've learned over the last year with

Trump in presidency number two. And then, of course, his four years in presidency number one, is that just because you can do something doesn't mean you should do something. But those guardrails basically have been obliterated now. And I guess the question I want your expertise on is do you think now that he has obliterated them, they are gone for good? Or could somebody win an election promising to rebuild Democratic guardrails and trying to perhaps bring a sense of normalcy back to public discourse? Is that even thinkable right now? I think it is. And I think it is. I hope I'm not just being overly optimistic or Pollyanna-ish. I mean, remember, there was a time just before the American Civil War

where one senator cained, almost cained another one to death on the floor of the U.S. Senate. You know, we've managed to overcome that. You know, there was, there's always been a lot of bad blood and a lot of bad feeling at various times in American history. When I was, as you know, before I became a writer, I was a professor. And I had a lot of young students and they'd say, this is terrible. It's the worst thing I've ever seen. I said, you know, you say that because you didn't live through 1968.

I was a little boy. I was eight years old. But between 1963 and 1970, the United States endured a wave of political assassinations, including a president, a senator, and a civil rights leader. Tens of thousands of deaths in a foreign war that nobody, wanted to be drafted for anymore. Complete halt to the prosperity that people had known after World War II, a near-death election where Richard Nixon was the moderate alternative to George Wallace, you know, who himself was almost assassinated, who then in 1972 was shot and paralyzed.

So, yeah, you know, if we could come back from the late 60s and early 70s to become what we were in the 1980s and 1990s, yeah, I think this is overcomable. Some of it is demographic. I mean, some of Donald Trump's voters are older, and I say this with no rancor, I just turned 65. I'm now officially Medicare age in the United States. Welcome to the club. Well, as I was just in London, and in the Churchill war rooms, they pointed out that the war broke out, that Churchill was called into the prime minister's job at 1940 at 65 years old. So I took a picture with that side to say, I got, I still got a lot of good road ahead of me. But I think, you know, some of this will die out with older Americans who just are angry about change and demographic change and a lot of racial anxiety about a lot of things.

And so, yeah, I think we I think we can overcome it, but it's going to take a collective effort to stop delighting in coarseness and violence and hate. And maybe we can. I mean, the other thing I wanted to point out about the late 1960s and early 70s, America was suffering through a wave of what was then left-wing terrorism, bombings and, you know, bombings on college campuses and post offices and attacks on public buildings that. we're really scaring people. And again, that was a, that was a demographic kind of boomer bulge that passed out of that group as people were arrested and, you know, left movements and aged and became grownups. So I think it's possible to happen, but it's not going to be easy. It's not going to happen overnight just by electing a new government. You make me almost optimistic in the way you describe that. And you and I are the same age. So we do have.

some memory of the 1960s and 70s and how that eventually did after a considerable violence work itself out different problems were created but but those kinds of problems thankfully not repeated through the 70s and 80s so okay maybe there is some room for optimism however I hate to leave it on a note there was a however lurking in that yes I'm afraid so because I do need you know when sometimes I discuss these issues with my fellow Canadians and they want to blame everything on Donald Trump, I do have to remind them that, I don't know, was it 70 million Americans voted for Donald Trump? There are tens of millions of Americans. And in fact, I hate to say it, there are large numbers of Canadians, certainly not the majority, not even close to the

majority, but I bet a decent chunk who have no problem with what Donald Trump is doing. And they don't object to his language. And the disgraceful things that he does, you know, they get They say the same thing. They dismiss with the back of the hand saying, oh, it's just Trump being Trump. They don't seem to feel it the same way that you and I do. How do we personally deal with the fact that this man is enabled by such a huge chunk of the American public who don't find anything wrong with what he's doing? And in fact, for many of them, they like it. Yeah, but I'm going to argue a little bit with the premise of your statement, Steve, because I think

there are millions of people who like it. Again, there's this book I wrote called Our Own Worst Enemy talks about resentment and how many Americans are driven by this kind of itching, writhing sense of resentment where they just want to get even with people because they're just unhappy about their own lives. But I think when you look at the vote for Donald Trump, it's not people who like it. there's a big chunk of that vote that isn't really about people who like it that they that they again it's almost like a reflex well like i have a friend who said well i voted for him because i just think the economy's better under republicans i said that's not true um you know i'm a former

republican i'm i know a lot about what the record what the republican record looks like and i'll defend some of it but not all of it especially not that argument um other people who say, well, I'm against abortion. I've known very good people who say, I hate Donald Trump, but I want anti-abortion judges because abortion is the most important thing in my life. You get single-issue voters who will make decisions that they just don't see the downstream effects of. The other thing that's really surprising, I think, to most people is, and I'm really glad you brought up Canadians, by the way, because I've been to Canada many times over the past 10 years, And when every time Canadian said, well, you know, we're not like that.

I kind of raised my eyebrows and say, oh, there's more than a few of you. Some of you are, yep. Some of you are, yeah. And I'm just surprised, though, at how many Americans simply say, well, I don't know about any of that stuff. I don't really pay attention. I went, you know, I walked in and it was the black lady from California or this guy I've seen on television for 15 years. and you know what could go wrong what's the big deal and then they tune out again one of the reasons that I used to live tweet Donald Trump's statements and one of the reasons that I write and try

and just push my stuff to friends and relatives is because they tune out and I think coming full circle back to where we started this is why the Rob Reiner thing was interesting it broke through that bubble. There are people who have never paid attention to Donald Trump who saw that and said, wait a minute, you know, as if that's the first terrible thing he ever did. It wasn't, but it was the first terrible thing they really paid attention to. So, you know, but the fact the matter is, yeah, there's always, in every country, in every democracy, there is a particular group of people who will vote to ed democracy. And they will vote to get even with other people. and they will vote to hurt other people.

And it used to be that the American system weeded out those choices. How do I put that? I mean, the parties weeded out those choices. That's why George Wallace couldn't run as a Democrat or a Republican. In 1990, when George H.W. Bush pointed at the Klansman, David Duke in Louisiana and said, that guy's not a Republican. I'm the leader of this party, and I'm telling you, that's not a Republican. Republican. I think what happened is that we've become, although Americans will say,

Americans will bristle at this. I'll say nobody listens to us. We're not democratic enough. Donald Trump is a triumph of populist democracy. Donald Trump is what happens when people just vote without really, you know, thinking too deeply about it. So I, you know, I don't know how you get around that the collapse of the Republican Party as a gatekeeper within its own party, I think is one of the scary stories in this, because I was arguing years ago that Donald Trump's not a Republican. He shouldn't be allowed on the debate stage. Other Republicans shouldn't have to stand there and debate him. He shouldn't get any money from the RNC.

But a lot of Republicans said, yeah, but he'll win and power is power. And we like power. And a bunch of us that never would have been allowed inside Washington are going to have great jobs. Hopefully, there will be a reckoning afterwards politically, a political reckoning where those people are, you know, sent back outside of the Beltway and sent back to, you know, have to go and work real jobs instead of being the Secretary of Defense or the White House press spokes. Tom, it's always so good of you to spend so much time with us, both on my previous show on TVO and on this one now, the Paken podcast. We are happy to recommend that if people like your stuff, they ought to

subscribe to the Atlantic, where they can read you. It's just been a joy talking with you again, and we're so glad to have you here. Thanks so much. I really appreciate it, Steve. And Merry Christmas. Thank you. And to you, and to everybody, we certainly love it when you subscribe to the Paken podcast. So as the kids say, like, subscribe, and all that other good stuff. Peace and love, everybody. Thank you.