Trump, Vance, and the New Right at the RNC 

On Thursday evening, Donald Trump formally accepted the Republican Party’s nomination for president of the United States. As he accepted the nomination, the crowd erupted in chants of “Trump, Trump, Trump!” This week on Deconstructed, Ryan Grim speaks to Emily Jashinsky, his co-host on “Counter Points,” on Thursday afternoon, before Trump’s acceptance speech. Jashinsky joins from the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. They discuss Trump’s vice presidential pick, J.D. Vance; the “New Right” taking hold of the Republican Party; and what the New Right’s vision is for the country, from tariffs to immigration, and LGBTQ+ rights, foreign policy, and education policy.

Transcript

Ryan Grim: I’m Ryan Grim. Welcome back to Deconstructed.

First thing: a programming note. As you guys may have heard, I am no longer with The Intercept, but I’m still obviously hosting Deconstructed, which is made possible in part by a grant from The Intercept. So, thank you to them for that.

I am now over with Jeremy Scahill at the news organization that we founded called Drop Site News. Check it out: dropsitenews.com.

On today’s program, I’m joined by my Counterpoints cohost, Emily Jashinsky, who is now a correspondent over at UnHerd. Emily is joining us from Milwaukee, where she’s been covering the Republican National Convention.

Emily, thanks so much for joining me here on Deconstructed.

Emily Jashinsky: I’m excited to be here. I’m a fan and a listener of the podcast myself. So, thanks for having me, Ryan.

RG: Amazing, thank you for that.

So, for people who don’t watch the show and don’t know the shtick of it, it’s that one of the hosts is left wing, one of the hosts is right wing. And we debate and argue, every now and then but, in general, we kind of each give our perspectives on a particular Issue of the day, and then we move on to the next news item, without doing the “Crossfire” choke-each-other style.

And the reason I wanted to bring Emily on today was for her take on not just how the RNC is unfolding, but also to educate us about this new populist right. Which I think a lot of people in the progressive space have not invested much energy trying to understand because, for a very long time, there’s been a sense that it’s mostly fake, and why bother studying something if it’s just some propaganda aimed at gullible workers, and not actually a kind of structural change going on with it inside the Republican Party.

I don’t agree with that, I think it does represent something serious going on. I think it’s part of the political and economic realignment that we’ve talked about on this show over the last many years at this point. And so, I think it is actually worth understanding, and nobody better to talk about it than Emily, who’s been kind of a part of that whatever you want to call it — movement, tendency, element — of the party for this long. To have J.D. Vance now elevated to vice president, to me, really puts an exclamation mark on the growth of that faction within the Republican Party.

So, first of all, Emily, what would you call it? What is the name that people who are of the J.D. Vance variety prefer to call themselves? Or are there multiple names, and we could pick from a couple?

EJ: Well, as we’re recording this, there was a new name, a powerful suggestion for a new name actually floated this morning by Sohrab Ahmari, who has been at the center of the discourse over what the new right is, [and/or] if there needs to be a new right, ever since he wrote a viral article against David French, who was, at the time, a National Review columnist, and has since been elevated to New York Times columnist. And Sohrab said, “It’s not the new right; it’s the new center.”

And I find that very interesting, because the new right, I think, comes with a lot of cultural baggage; and I say that as somebody who’s probably part of the cultural baggage, who is staunchly antiabortion, and has deeply held conservative religious beliefs. And I think New Right has come with that. And J.D. Vance is a convert to Catholicism, like a lot of intellectuals in the right wing space are. He’s a student of René Girard, who is Peter Thiel’s favorite philosopher, and is big in those venture capitalist Silicon Valley circles.

So, what we saw from J.D. Vance at the convention, I think Sohrab accurately describes as a new center, as opposed to a new right, because when you attach Trump to the new right, I think you lose some of the cultural baggage. And the new right that just convened at the National Conservatism Conference a week before the Republican National Convention kicked off should consider that, I think. And I also think the left should consider that, because all of this undermining of Project 2025 and J.D. Vance — I shouldn’t say undermining, I should say fearmongering about it — is missing. That there are some genuinely interesting shifts on labor and on trade in these spaces. But perhaps it’s incumbent on Republicans and new right movement people to figure out how to deal with that cultural baggage.

RG: From a marketing perspective, trying to claim the center is actually quite smart. I mean, most people out there who are not politics junkies tend to think of themselves as in the center. Whether they are or not, they kind of think, well, my views are the sensible ones. That’s why they hold those views, because they believe they are sensible. And the directions of left and right almost by their nature are self-marginalizing. So, that that is kind of an interesting attempt to gather people around this new center idea.

But what is the new center? What would you say are the things that characterize it, and how does it rank its hierarchy of issues that it cares about?

EJ: That reminds me; one thing I like about what we get to do, Ryan, is that, right before I started taping with you, I was interviewing Kevin Roberts, who is the president of the Heritage Foundation, a friend of J.D. Vance’s, asking him about Project 2025. And I asked him about Sohrab Amari referring to the new center instead of the new right, and he said, basically, I don’t like labels. Kevin Roberts is somebody who has spoken at NatCon and said, I’m not inviting you into the conservative movement, I’m here as the conservative movement to tell you, you are the conservative movement.

I think he and J.D. Vance — now that J.D. Vance is kind of firmly ensconced in Trump world — would describe it mostly in terms of populist economics, but would also probably bring into it the parents’ right kind of movement that sprung up after COVID. You know, you should have the right to know what’s being taught in classrooms. They probably wouldn’t frame it in the terms of, like — You hear a lot about pornography, and you hear a lot about LGBT issues. They would probably say parental rights. Glenn Youngkin is being feted here at the RNC, everyone’s very excited about that.

So, I think that’s how they would attach cultural issues to the suite of economic issues. For example, the 10 percent tariff — Or, I’m sorry, the hundred percent tariff, right? What’s Trump on now? I was just reading his interview with Bloomberg. But they would talk about protectionism, vis-à-vis China, they would talk about industrial policy when it comes to chips manufacturing, when it comes to the defense industry. They would talk about ending forever wars; foreign policy is a huge component of the new right. There are basically no supporters of the Iraq war left anywhere. Even in the Republican Party, I went back and looked at the speeches from the 2004 Republican convention just last night. It was all about the Iraq war.

RG: Oh, that whole thing was organized around “stay the course.” That was Bush’s entire argument, stay the course.

So, where did the cultural issues that Republicans were rising on the last 10-20 years fit in? Whether it’s trans issues, briefly you had this little kind of reactionary move against marriage equality. Did those take something of a backseat there, despite the fact that Vance himself is a Catholic convert who has some pretty strong personal views on abortion? Where do they fit in? Is it more, is it more of an economic trade and foreign policy type of tendency, or is it married to the cultural stuff? How do we think about that?

Do they want to put it in the backseat? Is it leading? Like, what is the positioning there?

EJ: I think that is the question that bubbled to the surface in the proverbial smoke-filled backrooms this week, when Donald Trump just went for it, went full-send and picked J.D. Vance as his running mate. And Vance wasn’t someone who was at the top of the list; a lot of people expected Tim Scott or Doug Burgum, Marco Rubio was on the short list.

But when he went with J.D. Vance, I think right now, as Trump is trying to figure out post-assassination attempt how to be a unifier — we’ve heard the word “unity” all the time at the RNC— what does that look like? Is that new center or new right? And that’s why abortion has basically been absent from this RNC. The trans issue has been front and center at the RNC, because Republicans feel like that is a real winning issue now, but you haven’t heard a lot about pornography in schools, you haven’t heard a lot about marriage, you haven’t heard a lot about some of those red meat issues that, even as they fell out of fashion with the broader public, were still very much in vogue with the Republican party. The other huge component we’re leaving out is immigration. That’s big.

And so, right now, I think, as we are speaking, people in the Republican party and the Trump circles are trying to figure out how to sell J.D. Vance’s populism — and Trump’s populism, honestly — as a unifying centrist message. And, obviously, there are some pretty clear ways to do that, there’s a lot of consensus on immigration, but being directionally opposed to the Biden immigration policy does not make you in favor of J.D. Vance’s immigration policy as it has been articulated, or Trump’s in the past.

So that, I think, is literally in the process. The sausage is being made right now, as we’re speaking.

RG: And how do unions fit into this? Because my read of how this unfolded is, in the beginning, you had the new right. Pro-worker, but with a lot of almost anti-union elements. And they would be anti-union and say that it was because the right to work; pro worker, but anti-union? It feels like over time they are now becoming a little bit more explicitly pro-union.

And you had Sean O’Brien showing up at the RNC this week. How was he received? And what is the posture of this new right towards organized labor now?

EJ: He was received uncontroversially, which is fascinating. You’ve been covering this longer than I have, you remember the Tea Party years, the scourge of big labor union bosses telling you, the working man, what to do. That was utterly unsympathetic to anybody that might have needed the support of big labor or organized labor, period, and intentionally so. It was a public relations message that we are against the Democratic-aligned big labor bosses, union bosses. It’s just a complete 180.

And what’s been on my mind all week as I’m watching Sean O’Brien get applause here railing against corporations is: what does this look like in 2028? What does this look like at the RNC in 2032?

And J.D. Vance in his speech last night — I don’t know if you caught this line — he said something like, we stand with workers, pro-union or anti-union, whether they’re in a union or not. And that was interesting to me, because I don’t think you would have heard J.D. Vance say that a month or two ago. I think that was something that, when Trump basically gave Rupert Murdoch the finger by not going with Doug Burgum — and not just Rupert Murdoch, a lot of corporate people wanted him to pick Doug Burgum — maybe it was like a conciliatory gesture. Maybe when J.D. Vance said that this is a party of, quote, “big tent,” which is a word that new right people detest.

RG: Hmm. Why is that?

EJ: Because it signifies to them that 2012 Republican autopsy that Reince Priebus and others put together that said, we need to moderate on immigration, we need to moderate on LGBT issues. And that was four years before Trump came along [who] everyone said proved that totally wrong, at least in the short term. You know, he didn’t win the popular vote, he won the electoral college, and then he lost both in 2020, so I don’t know how legitimate that argument is, but the new right absolutely hates it.

And so, for J.D. Vance to drop that so casually in the speech, and make a gesture towards union workers and non-union workers, it just seems to me, like— And I’ve heard some concern among people in these circles, people who know J.D. Vance, that the Trump team will kind of coopt him directionally towards wherever Trump wants him to be, and will block out any new right people that want to be in those circles, making decisions and helping him.

RG: Now, before J.D. Vance was in the Senate — because he was elected in 2022, if I’m remembering correctly — the American Rescue Plan was passed in 2021, and that included, basically, a bailout for the Teamsters. It’s complicated, but basically 300,000 Teamsters retirees had their pensions saved by the American Rescue Plan. And every Republican voted against it and every Democrat voted for it, which has Democrats even angrier that Sean O’Brien would then, the next election, show up at the Republican convention.

But that’s why a lot of Democrats still hope that the Teamsters will actually in the end endorse, because 300,000 of their members are deeply grateful for that bailout, which Republicans at the time were calling, big labor bailout.

How angry would Trump be, how angry would the J.D. Vance wing be if Teamsters in the end do endorse Democrats? So, in other words, how comfy is this relationship at this point?

EJ: This is such a better question for you but, from my perspective at least, this week felt like a test run. Let’s see how Sean O’Brien is received at the RNC, let’s see how J.D. Vance is received overall as the nominee. And Trump is all about relationships. If you come to the RNC physically and speak, that means you probably also schmoozed a little bit with Trump, and the Trump insiders, and Trump world. So, if Sean O’Brien and the Teamsters were to then turn around and endorse the Democrats, because maybe Biden’s not on the ballot by the time that happens, I think Trump would be furious. I think it would inspire a flurry of True Social posts about “dopey Sean O’Brien,” or “bald Sean,” or whatever he ends up calling him.

And that’s where this whole relationship, this whole, quote, “realignment”, I really feel could blow up. And then you watch where J.D. Vance goes from there if his boss is super anti-union. I would think J.D. Vance would still be making overtures — whether it’s publicly or privately — to organized labor, because he’s smart enough to know politically that it’s been beneficial for him to make those overtures to regular workers. And so, he would want to continue doing that.

He’s a smart guy, he’s politically really smart. A lot of those new right candidates lost their races when they ran for House and Senate. He won. Blake Masters lost. Blake Masters will probably win a congressional seat, but he lost his Senate race, and J.D. Vance won.

So, I just think  there’s so many early conclusions. That the Republican Party is now the party of the working class, and the Republican Party is now the party of organized labor. It’s like, this could blow up. With a bad relationship with Trump, he could suddenly turn on big labor, and everyone else is just waiting to take their cues from him

RG: And Trump still has enormous number of oligarchs in his ear. Trump is susceptible to pressure, whoever talked to him last, what have you. So much depends on who Trump picks as chief of staff. In a Trump presidency — let’s assume, for the sake of this question, that he wins — so much depends on who he picks as chief of staff, and how he staffs up and approaches things in the beginning.

What’s your sense of what the Trump circle is now? And where on the base scale or on the J.D. Vance scale his inner circle is? How solidified is it, how fluid is it? Like, what’s your read of that world, that has now had eight or nine years to kind of develop an ecosystem that was nascent when it first shocked everybody, including himself, by winning?

EJ: I mean, there was nothing, and you remember this. There was a Heritage Foundation that was raking in money from big tech alongside the American Enterprise Institute, alongside this suite of Koch-Brothers-funded thinktanks that were staunchly anti-labor, and had been the backbone of the Tea Party movement. So, there really was absolutely nothing.

And now, what’s sprung up are groups like American Compass and a couple of others. But what’s interesting about those groups — and this is what’s fascinating about Trump in general — is that it’s a mix, ideologically, because the primary litmus test ideologically is whether you’re on board with Donald Trump. And that sounds like a line that is kind of tired, like “elite media spaces,” but there’s actually some truth to it.

Like, they’re doing this vetting process for personnel in a potential Trump administration, and their litmus test is loyalty to Donald Trump himself. Nobody’s looking for what maybe you said about policy five years ago. You could be Anthony Scaramucci, you could be — Let’s take our favorite example: Stephanie Ruhle. If you had been nice to Donald Trump and said good things about him, you could have those politics. You can be Art Laffer or Larry Kudlow and have Donald Trump’s ear in the same way that J.D. Vance does, in the same way that people in those circles — Marco Rubio. You know, it’s just really a mix, because the primary litmus test is loyalty to Donald Trump.

Now, people who have loyalty to Donald Trump tend to be those people that are also on board with the new right policy agenda. You know, Peter Navarro, Bob Lighthizer, people who are sort of, quote, “based on trade,” protectionist on trade. Obviously, you’re not going to see John Bolton in another Trump administration, but you might see Mike Pompeo, who is here at the RNC this week, talking about how Trump will ultimately control J.D. Vance; I think is a quote, I’m paraphrasing a quote he gave to RealClearPolitics. But it’s just about loyalty to Trump.

And Trump is floating, what, Jamie Dimon as his treasury secretary? It’s about him. And so, that tends to be more new right than not but, also, a lot of the really powerful people in his ear — to your point, Ryan — are oligarchs, or oligarch-adjacent.

RG: What do these new right people think about Democrats? I saw this kind of funny quote from J.D. Vance recently where he said, “The only part of the Democratic coalition I have any patience for is the Bernie bros,” [or] something along those lines.

Why is that? How do they view the Democrats or the progressive coalition broadly?

EJ: There’s been an interesting rehabilitation of Chomsky.

RG: Like, on the right in general?

EJ: Yeah, and writers in that space. And even — You know Glenn Greenwald well. Glenn is very popular, and I’m sure he lost some people and subscribers and stuff when the Israel issue came to a head, and I’m sure other people can speak to that as well. But he’s saying things that are going over very well with a lot of people on the right, because they found, in the Bernie bros, kindred spirits, when it comes to how elites are screwing everyday Americans.

And there’s also something, I think, psychological, and I don’t know if you’ve seen this around Washington, but the right has always felt ostracized from circles of culture; so, art circles, entertainment circles, that kind of world. And anytime they get attention from, say, a Russell Brand, psychologically, there’s something about being included, and suddenly feeling like you’re at the cool kids’ table when you hang out in those spaces. That’s also weirdly powerful. I don’t know if that makes sense, but it’s there.

Bernie had a lot of support from Hollywood, actually — so did Hillary, obviously — but Bernie’s kind of cool, and there’s something about being on the left that’s generally been seen by our culture as being cool. There’s no, like, left-wing Patrick Bateman character. It’s, like, cool, but not really.

RG: Yes. Whenever you see the acts at the RNC versus the acts at the DNC, the Spotify plays are going to be orders of magnitude different, for sure.

EJ: Yeah. Lee Greenwood is here. So.

RG: Yes, I’m sure Kid Rock is holding it down.

EJ: There’s a rumor that Jason Aldean is coming, and that’s someone who’s actually a pretty big superstar.

RG: Yeah, there you go.

EJ: But, other than that, yeah. No.

RG: Doing better.

So, you also did a couple of interviews — I mean, you’ve been doing endless interviews, but you sent us a couple. So, let’s roll a few of these. You sent us three folks at the RNC that you spoke to, representative of different views. Let’s play these, then I want to get your assessment of them.

Emily Jashinsky: All right. So, what’s it like here so far? 

RNC Attendee 1: The energy down here is just amazing. It’s so awesome to be a part of this event. 

Emily Jashinsky: Some reporting is that not everyone is excited about the J.D. Vance pick, but you feel good about it.

RNC Attendee 2: I do. I think J.D. represents the future of the party, and Trump has great policies that represent the working man, and J.D. Vance is going to continue those, and help to put those into place once Donald Trump wins the White House.

Emily Jashinsky: What are you hoping to hear from J.D. Vance?

RNC Attendee 3: I’m hoping that he talks a lot about families, and getting back to being able to support a family off of one income. Encouraging people to protect their kids. Talking about what this next administration and their legacy is going to be when it comes to fighting it back against this corrupted, progressive, woke culture that we find ourselves in. America is not a great place to raise children, and I would know; I have seven kids myself, right?

RG: So, Emily, a lot of upbeat-ness, it feels like? Like, people are feeling pretty good Wednesday night at the RNC, and maybe some of the other nights as well. I’m trying to think. The crowd seemed playful, in a way. I had never seen Republicans before — Like, Republicans are not known for their senses of humor, and they’re chanting kind of funny stuff, like “J.D.’s mom, J.D.’s mom.”

I think at one point J.D. Vance said that they were a great crowd, and they started chanting, “Yes, we are,” which is kind of cute and funny. I’m like, all right, that’s cringe, a little bit, but it’s authentic. It’s like there’s something real about it that is different than the kind of staged — It’s like a playfulness that you wouldn’t expect.

So, where is this happiness coming from? Is it the situation they find themselves in, where they’re like, man, if we can just get Joe Biden to hold on to this nomination and get our man through without getting shot it’s in the bag? What’s your sense of where the unusual lightness is coming from?

EJ: Well, I think it’s exactly what you just said. There’s so much confidence after Trump survived an assassination attempt, got up off the stage, raised his fist, implored them to fight, fight, fight, and was back at it the next day. That has been Galvanizing.

And so, I think he has raised his status to mythical. And it may have already been there, but it’s on another level. Like, there’s levels of mythical gods; he’s got to be at the highest. I don’t know how it can get much higher than that at this point.

And the split screen with Democrats panicking over Joe Biden is just so powerful, you know? And they’re making all of their arguments against Biden, by the way. Tim Carney described that as like a ghost, or they’re arguing against a ghost all week? Because pretty soon, maybe by the time this airs, Joe Biden will be off the ticket. But, yeah. I think it’s that.

RG: That has me worried in some ways, and I think there’s a chance by the time we post this episode — it’s now Thursday afternoon — that he might be off the ticket. You know, they’re floating that he might be off by this weekend. I don’t think that Trump is as much of a lock as he seems to think he is. The J.D. Vance pick suggested some extreme confidence, like you said, the body language and the joy in Milwaukee suggests they’re spiking the football.

But there’s this Eagles player DeSean Jackson. People can go Google “DeSean Jackson fumble.” He did this in college, and then he did it again as a pro. About to score a touchdown, clear in front of everybody, he spiked it at the two-yard line, but you have to go all the way into the end zone. Now, there was video, and it was fair. It’s like, DeSean, you didn’t cross the goal line, so you lose the ball, and the other team recovered it. It won’t be that clean if Democrats beat Republicans on election day.

And so, I’m curious, from your perspective, imagine a world in which Democrats do come back from this, and do legitimately beat Republicans on election day, how will the Republican base metabolize that? If 2020 broke their brains, and there wasn’t actually evidence of ballots in the rivers in Pennsylvania swinging the election or whatever. This time, I feel like they will just not be able to handle that. Or am I not giving them enough credit?

What happens if Democrats come back and win? Is the country just going to lose its mind?

EJ: While you’re on the topic, I heard a guy come up and introduce himself to Mike Lindell, of My Pillow fame, and Mike Lindell asked him where he’s from, and he said he was from Venezuela, but Mike Lindell heard “Pennsylvania.” And when it was clarified that he was from Venezuela, Mike Lindell immediately launched into, well, you guys had the experience with the voting machines first, so you must really know.

So, there’s still those hangers-on.

RG: For our lawyers: Mike Lindell’s claim is false, etc., etc., etc. Go ahead.

EJ: Yes. Yes. But, actually, the point that you just made with the disclaimer, I think if Democrats pull this off, which I still think is a really good chance — our cohost Krystal Ball made this point when we were talking recently — that the polls haven’t moved all that much since the assassination attempt. Like they’ve been bad for Biden after the debate, they’ve been catastrophic for Biden after the debate, but when you replace him with someone else, it’s not an abject disaster. It’s nothing that Democrats can’t bounce back from, if you suddenly see the media rehabilitating Kamala Harris reputation. Because there are now fully on the Dem Flight 93 existential election bandwagon with a lot of the donors, which is why they’re comfortable, I think, going after Biden post-debate.

So, I think the way Republicans would react to it is potentially with civil unrest. I keep feeling like we’re sleepwalking into an extended period of civil unrest. It might not look like one January 6, but it might look like a bunch of smaller January 6ths at state court houses. There’s just no faith in the integrity of elections anymore, and that’s really, really, really dangerous. It’s something we took for granted. It’s a seed that was planted with the left in 2000. So, it is bipartisan.

I’m sure Ryan, that you still talk to people on the left — like, on the left-left — people who listen to this podcast who, after 2000, just felt as though these elections were being decided by oligarchs, essentially. And when you start to have a chunk of people on a bipartisan basis thinking those things, if Donald Trump loses, I don’t see the right metabolizing it. Like, the people on January 6 were everyday Americans, normal Americans — I talked to a lot of them there. They were just there because they really didn’t have any faith, sincerely. So, I don’t see how you bounce back from that super-easily if Trump loses.

RG: The one saving grace for Democrats might be — I’m curious for your take on this — that my sense on the right is that there’s so much paranoia about the feds that they’re pretty much incapable of organizing mass rallies of any substantial number of people, because anybody who organizes it immediately gets accused of being a fed and setting a trap for people.

And I think the prison sentences — whatever you want to say about them — that were doled out had a significant deterrent effect, because now people understand, like, oh, I could actually do years in prison if things go south at this demonstration that I’m going to. This is not a value judgment at all, just a statement of fact.

Am I right that the ability of the right to organize in the streets in the way that they so effectively did on January 6 and previous to that, bringing numbers of people out in the streets that were making the left quite jealous, has that been kind of stripped naked by the paranoia that is shot through? And the paranoia doesn’t have to be necessarily unfounded. Like, there are a bunch of FBI people and others.

EJ: I was going to say, I agree and I disagree. I agree in the sense that it is genuinely different because there were— I mean, to your point, there turned out to be a whole lot of feds in groups like the Proud Boys, and the Oath Keepers, and the Gretchen Whitmer plot, which, I mean, that actually is a real thing that happened.

And so, on the one hand, I think those groups in particular, some of the actual organized fringe groups — and Proud Boys and Oath Keepers were absolutely still fringe on the right, even if Marjorie Taylor Greene is not, those groups really are still relegated to the fringe — I think those groups are absolutely hampered in their ability to organize. Having covered January 6, I think it still would have happened without any organization on the behalf of those people, because what I saw was just unadulterated rage from normal people. I saw school moms jumping over barricades without being goaded into it. In fact, I saw them goading other people into it. You know, PTA moms, basically. And so, on the one hand, yes. I think the organized coalitions actually have really been hampered in their ability to organize.

On the other hand, I think that there’s such personal affection and loyalty to Donald Trump with so many average Americans that there’s still significant risk of things like that happening. Because they would be spontaneous, honestly.

RG: So, last thing then. A lot of progressives are deeply concerned that — and you’ll hear [it] from Democrats — if Trump wins in 2024, that’s the last election. What is the most serious thing that, from your perspective, Republicans will try to do to lock in power, in ways that they failed to do in 2020? Like, what lessons did they learn, and what are they going to do differently this time? And what should progressives be scared about? And what do you think is overblown that they shouldn’t be scared about?

And, obviously, nobody’s going to believe you because, you know, you’re in there. But I’m curious for your sense of that, where the real threats are and what the completely overblown ones are.

EJ: Actually, I’ve never had that question posed that way. Like, I’ve never thought of it myself. What is something that would, A, just personally be most terrifying about a potential Trump return.

My answer to that would be, first of all, his personal beefs know no bounds, and I think that’s always frightening. Because it ends up going into foreign policy. We’ve had the madman theory tested successfully in the United States, at least arguably, with foreign policies of respective madmen who have had some successes. You know, we haven’t gotten into nuclear war yet, but we’re not even a century into that experiment. So, that’s one thing that personally has always bothered me a lot about Donald Trump, and I think I speak on behalf of millions of people when I say that.

But in terms of an actual threat to the progressive movement, the gutting of the administrative state will happen immediately. It may have court battles, but it will happen right away. Trump told, I think, Bret Baier that he wouldn’t be a dictator, except for on, quote, “Day one.”

RG: Yeah. And you hear that a lot. What do you think he meant by that?

EJ: He meant firing of a vast swath of the administrative state. Like, thousands of people, tens of thousands of people. And the mounting consensus in new right circles that actually are working to staff his administration at places like the Heritage Foundation, and American Moment, and those groups, is that the single impediment to any other policy goal is personnel. And so, you can’t do anything else without Schedule F, and however else it’s supplemented. I think Stephen Miller and Russ Vogt have ideas for that, the Center for Renewing America and America First Legal. But that is the thing.

If you go to Conservative Partnership Institute, you talk to those people, it is the administrative state. The sense is, you can’t do anything else until — you can’t do foreign policy, let alone immigration policy, let alone anything else — unless you take care of the vast administrative state. Otherwise, all of your policy preferences will be undermined by the bureaucrats who slow-walk them. And so, I think that is the top day-one priority, and they won’t even be able to work on other things, is how they see it, until that is accomplished.

So, yeah, I think that’s tens of thousands of jobs and decades of regulatory muscle memory on the line.

RG: Yeah. Makes me think of that Chinese proverb that doubles as a curse: “may you live in interesting times.” And we sure do. It’s going to get interesting, no doubt about it.

EJ: It really is.

RG: We’ll be here to cover it. Emily, thank you so much for joining us. Enjoy the rest of your time in Milwaukee. I’ll see you soon.

Oh, by the way, if you want to catch our show, breakingpoints.com is where you can go to subscribe to that, to get it in your inbox, or you can just find it on the Breaking Points YouTube channel.

But, Emily, thanks again so much, and see you soon.

EJ: Thanks, Ryan. See you soon.

RG: Deconstructed is a production of Drop Site. This program was supported by a grant from The Intercept. This episode was produced by Laura Flynn. This episode was transcribed by Leonardo Faierman. Our theme music was composed by Bart Warshaw. And I’m Ryan Grim, reporter at Drop Site.

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