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Lisa Lerer
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The FRONTLINE Interviews
Lisa Lerer
The New York Times
Lisa Lerer is a national political correspondent for The New York Times, which she joined in 2018. Lerer previously wrote about politics for the Associated Press and is the co-author of The Fall of Roe: The Rise of a New America.
The following interview was conducted by the Kirk Documentary Group’s Mike Wiser for FRONTLINE on November 18, 2024. It has been edited for clarity and length.
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How Trump’s Life Story Led to His 2024 Victory
I'm going to go back to January 2021, but let me just start with where we'll start the film, which is sort of a cold open, which is, he wins the election.He's sworn in for a second term as president.How remarkable is that in Donald Trump's life story that here he is again?
It's unbelievably remarkable.This is something that's fairly—it's something we haven't seen in American life for 130 years or so, a former president coming back and winning a second term after being rejected by the voters.So it's extraordinary in the scope of American history.I think it's particularly extraordinary for Donald Trump.This is not someone who was a professional politician his whole life.He was a real estate guy in New York.He was a reality TV show star.And he became president the first time in this surprise win, and now here he is, and he's back.Especially after a series of things that happened in the interregnum that seemed—that I think the expectation was that they would be disqualifying for a future in American public office, and it turns out they weren't.
As I said, we won't talk to you about his life story, but his whole life story is about his dad and winners and losers and feeling rejected.What does it mean, do you think, from what you know about Donald Trump, to him to have this victory, to be taking the oath of office again?
… I think it's not just a validation; it's a restitution in some ways.He never believed that he lost the previous election in 2020.He always believed that was stolen from him.And now here he is, and he's back.And he's going to be back in office and, in his view, reinstated as president.
Trump After the 2020 Election Loss
So let's go back to Jan. 21, 2021.Where was he at that moment in his life as he's left Washington and is in Mar-a-Lago?
Well, I think he is coming off—he's in the middle of the COVID pandemic, which he was panned for his response at the time.People thought he had failed to really help the country get through that.He had been rejected by the voters.He had sort of left Washington a little bit—it wasn't clear what the future would hold for him.It wasn't clear if the party—there was a sense that the party was going to move beyond Trumpism, which had really remade the Republican Party into something else.It wouldn't be what it was before, of course, but it would be something new, something that moved beyond him.
And I think he headed to Mar-a-Lago with a sense that this was sort of the end—whilehe believed the election was stolen, that this could be the end of his political story.He was cast out of Washington.His family was cast out of their position in New York society.There wasn't really a question that they would be coming back here.New York had sort of rejected them.And that's how he sort of had headed down there.
It's hard to remember now how the consensus in Washington was that he was done—prominent Republicans, donors, the media.[President Joe] Biden wasn't going to talk about him.What does he do in response to that exile?
… He leaves Washington in total disgrace.He had sort of led in a way or rallied his forces to do this unprecedented thing in American life, which is storm the [U.S.] Capitol.And this was something that a lot of the nation, at the time, watched in shock.People remembered watching that footage and seeing that happen, and it was shocking to see people storm into the Capitol gates.This wasn't something, an image that we were accustomed to seeing in America.This felt like something that you'd see in somewhere else in the world with a less stable democracy.
So he leaves Washington.Even members of his own party had turned against him.So he leaves Washington really in disgrace, and he flies back to Mar-a-Lago, being cast out of not only his home in New York, the liberal city, which had of course sort of rejected him and rejected his family, but also really the Republican Party, which was eager at that point and thought they saw an opportunity to turn the page from Trumpism.
I think the old guard was hoping to reclaim some of their values.They knew the party wasn't the same as it had been before Trump, but they were hoping to sort of reinstate what had long been these conservative tenets, these principles of Republicanism, like hawkish foreign policy or fiscal responsibility, things that were really jettisoned during Trump's term in office, and sort of move to this new era where some of those old values could be preserved. That left Trump in the dustbin of history.But that, of course, is not what happens.
Is there something about Trump?Because we'll have, in the film, told the story of his bankruptcies and coming back from them and his comeback from <i>Access Hollywood</i>.Is there something about who Donald Trump is in that moment that allows him to start this remarkable return to the White House?
Yeah. Look, I think Donald Trump is someone who has defied all our norms.He has transformed what we have thought is acceptable in politics: <i>Access Hollywood</i>, the tape that would have easily ended the career of almost any other politician, but it didn't end his career.His bankruptcies—those kinds of bankruptcies have certainly ended the careers of businessmen who were far more solvent than Donald Trump.But they didn't end his career.He is a master of reinvention, and he's really a master of getting people behind him.
And I think what he knew he had was, and what he's always believed in, was this movement behind him.And he began to sort of lean into them.He's never been someone—at least in his political career, he's someone who's always believed in the power and force of his base rather than feeling this need to, like, expand his coalition.
So what he does during this period is he leans in hard to those people.He distills down to just his most trusted loyalists, people who really he feels are with him.And he starts just hammering, hammering, hammering away at this idea that the election was stolen and builds—really resurrects his political movement out of that, what is effectively a lie.
… One of the turning points that some people point to is the raid of Mar-a-Lago—
Can you help me understand what happens that day and as we look back, how he used that, … even just where it fit into the campaign, because it's not just the raid.There's all of these cases, criminal cases against him.
… He starts facing a series of criminal inquiries in four different states, so he's fighting across four different court cases on very different—on a host of matters.And there's a sense, again, that this is not something that's survivable.We've never had an ex-president investigated in this way of so many criminal counts, dozens and dozens of criminal counts.
And I think what he realizes is that the way out of this is politics, that the only way this is—that this next election—he, of course, says he's running again fairly quickly—and that this next race for the presidency is not only a race for the future of the country and the future of his movement, but whether he remains a free man.
It is an amazing moment.He comes out of the courtroom of New York, and I think he says the voters are going to render the ultimate verdict.… What is Trump bringing to it when he comes out before the cameras and he says something like the ultimate verdict is going to be rendered by the voters?
… He makes himself as a symbol of what his—you know, a symbol of what the voters want, that he becomes someone who's saying, “I'm fighting not for me, but for you, and my punishment is your punishment, and my vindication is your vindication,” of his movement and of his supporters—who are already people who feel aggrieved by what they see as sort of an elite establishment that's left them behind.They're people who feel that they can't get ahead, whether that's economically, that the culture has turned against them, that they're looked down upon culturally in some ways.
So he sort of channels that grievance, which has always been the center of his political appeal, into his own cases.And he makes it about his fight is their fight, which is an extraordinary transference of the criminal inquiries that he faces.
I guess the image of that is that mug shot which you see on T-shirts and signs.
Yeah, it's really an extraordinary thing that his mug shot goes viral as the image of what—of this movement that he's fighting for.Like, he's fighting for his own innocence.He's fighting to avoid extraordinary criminal penalties and to avoid jail time, the possibility of jail time.But he takes that mug shot, and he turns it into an emblem of that, you know, the "they," this mysterious "they"—the elite media and universities and Democrats and government is trying to put you in jail, his supporters, rather than him, which is, in fact, what the court is prosecuting.
How Trump Won Over the Republican Party
He does have other people who run against him in the primaries, and he has to win the primaries while all this is going on.Do you think that that's how he manages to win?
Well, here was this theory, right, in the primaries that, you know, I think a lot of Republicans saw him– there was a fair number of Republicans early on who said Donald Trump is an electoral loser for us, for our party, and they were looking at the previous elections, which is Donald Trump and his people he had endorsed have lost or underperformed effectively in every election from 2016 on.So in the 2018 midterms and special elections, certainly in the 2020 presidential race, there was a series of defeats that some Republicans attributed to Trumpism effectively.
So I think there was a sense that if they could consolidate the parts of the party that had some questions about Donald Trump, either they had some still lingering concerns—they didn't like what happened on Jan. 6; they never really liked his style; they thought it was divisive—they were interested in turning the page to someone new.Donald Trump, of course, would be the second oldest president in American history after Biden, the man he was expected to run against.
So there was this thinking that if those people, those Republican primary voters, who had either opposed Trump or had concerns about him, could be consolidated behind one candidate, that they could defeat him for once and for all in the ballot box and get a different nominee, and the party could move beyond Trump.But of course, that's not what happens.
Why?
Well, I think he had this really strong hold on about 40% of the party, plus or minus, depending, of course, on the state and the primary electorate and all of that.And that hold was so strong that these are people who are going to show up for him.And they did.Of course, you know, in the Iowa primary, it was freezing.I remember being in the hotel at Iowa, and I couldn't go out.It was so cold.The highways were frozen over, it was like a historic cold, and they turned out for him.He not only had 40% of the party; he had the hearts and minds and the fierce loyalty of 40% of the party.And that other 60% never found someone that they all could consolidate behind.
And I also think with every conviction, with every court case that came out, he grew stronger, that there was a sense among rank-and-file Republicans that he was being persecuted or punished.They really dismissed a lot of these cases as sort of ginned-up things that weren't—part of that was because the weakest case, what people thought was the weakest case came first in New York City with Alvin Bragg.But there was—you know, with every one of these things, he raised more money.He had these financial boosts, and he really consolidated his support.
So what you would expect to happen—yet again, Trump defies what we expect, right?What you would expect is, if you have a presidential candidate who is facing criminal convictions, you would expect their support to drop.But that's not what happened at all.His support only grew.
The Assassination Attempt
… Once he's secured the nomination and he's going up against Biden and then the assassination attempt and he rises from it, and it becomes another iconic image.
Yeah. And I think it plays into this idea that he has worked—he worked to cultivate in this interregnum period between what will be his two terms, that he is persecuted in some way, that he's saying things that the mainstream doesn't want you to know or the liberal establishment doesn't want you to know, right?That first they're trying to get him in the courts, and now they're trying to actually shoot him, right?So it sort of all ends up fueling the argument that he laid the ground to make when he returned to Mar-a-Lago back in 2021, that he is fighting not just for his own freedom, but for all his supporters and to free them from this—he's representing their grievances and what they see as an unfair sort of economic and cultural country that's tilting away from them in some ways.
He gets up after being shot and he puts his fist in the air, and he says, “Fight, fight, fight.”
He knows a moment, yes.
Tell me about that, how he knows a moment and just the importance of that image.
I think he's someone that understands.He was on television for a long time.He understands the power of a moment and the power of a medium and how something can be taken and sort of transformed into this moment of resistance in some ways.And that's what his supporters really see they're doing.They see this—especially coming out of COVID, right, which is I think something we don't always talk enough about in this election, there was this sense that the government had gotten too involved in their lives—the mask mandates and the vaccine mandates and that they were being oppressed by this Biden administration.
And so Trump standing up there and holding his fist and saying, “Fight, fight, fight,” really plays into that very idea, this sense that they are resisting some kind of government overreach and oppression that's governing everything from their health care to what they can say to how their businesses can operate.So he's really playing in some ways into these—well, he's not directly talking about immigration or the economy.It's playing into, if not like the central issues, but the central thematic sentiment of his campaign.
The Influence of Elon Musk
Elon Musk was probably always going to get involved in the campaign, but he gets publicly involved right after the assassination attempt.And there are other people who come out and say he looked strong in that moment.Was that a sort of a tipping point?
Oh, that's a good question.I mean, I don't know.Like, we don't see the numbers move after that point.It's not like all of a sudden there's this groundswell.Who knows if the polls were—but they were not terrible, right?But there's not this groundswell of support to him after that.But I think it—what he needed to do was get everyone in his base to turn out and expand a little bit.And he was able to do that.
And so I think what it does—like this was always a campaign that really played to the base.… He never tried to moderate at all.It was striking to me how little he reached out to [former South Carolina Gov.] Nikki Haley's supporters.Traditionally you have a primary against someone, it's contentious, and then the nominee brings the party together and welcomes those people into the tent.And Trump really never did that.He saw his expansion as happening with new voters, with people who maybe hadn't voted before.And so he had always leaned so hard, this whole campaign was really predicated—their path to victory was really predicated on expanding their base and strengthening their base.
And I think what that image did, while we didn't see a major shift in the polls at that time, it certainly reasserted his hold and strengthened his support among people who were already inclined to vote for him and needed to turn out for him to win.
Trump Takes on Harris
… Do you know how he responds or the campaign responds to the moment where the person that they think that they're running against, who they think that they've humiliated drops out, and he's suddenly running against Kamala Harris?
Well, he has a lot of trouble adjusting at first, right?And you see it.Trump is coming out and he's talking about how it's unconstitutional—which, of course, is not true—for the Democrats to replace Biden.He almost seems like he misses Biden at some point.And they try to effectively run the same playbook against her that they had against him: that she's weak, that she's unfit, that she's being controlled by other people, maybe.And at first it doesn't hit right away.Democrats are so overjoyed, and there's such a pent-up release of anxiety for Democrats who were so worried about whether Biden could really bring this thing home that I think that party just has a lot of energy behind it, and Trump is really struggling with how to attack her.
He certainly doesn't know how to deal with her race or her gender.We see that really quickly when he speaks before a group of Black journalists and he sort of questions her racial identity, which lands fairly flat, not only in the room but a bit more broadly.I think he's rebuked for that.
And he really seems like he misses Biden in a way, that they had prepared to run against this guy, and they were also prepared for a race that was far less competitive.Before Biden dropped out, people in Trump's orbit were almost gleeful at the prospect of expanding the map into places that we generally don't think of as competitive states anymore, like Virginia, that lean Democratic.
So this was a big adjustment, and it took a little time.
It's sort of remarkable when you look back at what we were talking about during that fall and what he was doing because it did look like suddenly he's got a new opponent.A lot of people feel like he lost the debate.There's a lot of questions about how long he's going on.Help me understand that period.Was there a sense of crisis?Was that from the media looking at it?Was there a sense of crisis inside the campaign in that period going into the fall?
Was there a sense of crisis?… I think there was a sense that this was going to be a really tough race.There was certainly concern about his debate performance.… I think in that period, it seemed like she was ascendant.She was coming off this really strong debate performance.No one had really known how well she would do.She wasn't someone for all—for being the vice president, she actually wasn't someone that was known particularly well.And Trump was spending a lot of time going off on what seemed like these tangents, really, when he had such a short period.This was a 107-day race.And so he really had to spend—every day he wasn't defining her was a day that he was effectively losing.And he wasn't defining her.He was sort of meandering around different things.
There was one point at which he said he was the king of IVF.1He was talking about all these different issues that weren't really defining her.And she—and he, of course, had seemed really weak in that debate performance.And I think there was a sense that this was a—we were seeing it a little in the polls—she seemed to get a bump, and there was a sense that she was headed towards, if not a victory—it was going to be hard fought, but eventually headed towards a victory.
They also—they didn't have any money, right?Their money, they were lagging way behind financially while Harris' campaign was just raising money in extraordinary sums, like very, very fast in ways we hadn't seen before.And so there was a sense that Trump could lose for sure.
What's remarkable about that period, and might be informative about his presidency, is the way that he reacts to that moment that maybe his own campaign advisers see as a sense of crisis— because it doesn't seem like he does—that they don't turn the ship around 180 degrees or pull the alarm.How does he react to that sense among even some of his own supporters?
He does what he always does, right?He leans into his base.He doesn't moderate.He doesn't do outreach.He doesn't, as I said, he doesn't reach out to these Nikki Haley supporters.He leans into his base.He embraces his message.And he does what Trump has always done, right, which is sort of, I guess, believe that he can change the landscape in some ways, that he can defy expectations.
Does that tell you something about him, about who he is as a politician, as a leader?That he doesn't seem to adjust or apologize?
No, he doesn't adjust.He never apologizes.What does that tell us about how he is a leader?I think he sees apologizing as a weakness, and he believes in always projecting strength.
And what does it tell you about America, that it worked?Why did it work?We've just said all of the things that she seemed to be having strength and he is—I don't even think you could say he's doubling down.He's continuing what he had been doing, appealing to his base and maybe expanding to these young men, as you said.It's ultimately going to be successful.
Why does it work?Well, I don't think there's one answer to that, right?I think it works for a bunch of different reasons.I think the Biden team had failed to sort of understand and recognize and address the economic difficulty that people were facing, not only because prices had gone up because inflation—they kind of kept saying, “Well, inflation is slowing.”And that's true; inflation had fallen back down, but the prices didn't go down, so in terms of how people felt, the economy felt hard.Things cost more than people were making.And you add in the cost of child care and elder care and all these other things, and I think they never adequately addressed that for people.
I think they failed—he understands things about media, and he always has, and a way to dominate media.We saw that in the first—in '16, where he sort of got all this airtime on cable news that effectively allowed him to spread his message.And this time around, he went a different route.He understood where his voters were, that they were listening to these podcasts and they were on social media, and he was able to sort of get those people, because he's always understood that, about how to sort of work the refs and work the media and find his supporters.So I think that contributed to it.
And in some ways, I think Democrats hadn't really reckoned with how Trump had really transformed our politics.He has moved the country on certain issues.Immigration is really the most illustrative example.Democrats moved to where he is in some ways on immigration.They took a more—they turned on immigration some.They took a … more oppositional stance to immigration.And that sort of shows how Trump had changed the foundation of our politics in some ways.
So in some ways, he had shifted the playing field in ways they hadn't realized, both through the media and also on some key issues.
It's really interesting.It's interesting, too, what you said about the podcasts, because I was just thinking as you were saying it, he knew the tabloid media in the '80s.He figured out reality TV in the 2000s.He's a 78-year-old man who yet still gets something about, there's podcasts going on.He still is adjusting—
Yeah, he's able to adjust and to—he understands, or at least is open to the idea when it's brought to him, of where his supporters are and where—what the front edge is of reaching people.
It's a real political skill.
Yes, it's a real political skill.
Well, let me ask one more thing.What is he promising?There's another part of his message which is becoming increasingly relevant as he's running, which is that he's been prosecuted, and there's a sense of “I'm going to get back.”
Yeah, retribution.
Trump’s Appeal to Voters
Help me understand what he's telling voters as he's running.
That's one of the biggest questions, right?… He's being really clear that he is going to go after his political opponents, right?And that includes a broad swath of people.And what I thought was one of the most remarkable things in the final stages of this campaign is Democrats broached this line they had never broached before with him.They had run and won basically every election since 2016 by rallying their base against Trump.The most powerful motivator in the Democratic Party for so long had been Donald Trump and opposition to him.But in this race, they breached this line that they had never crossed, which is to call him a fascist.And they had never really done that.In terms of elected politicians, certainly Democratic grassroots, people like that had done it, but not someone who was running for president.And Harris does it.2
And he doesn't defend himself, and he doesn't say, “No, no, I'm not a fascist.”In fact, he leans in and embraces more his promises of political retribution.He's talking more and more about the “enemy within.”
And some of the moments that I thought were the most remarkable in this final stage is he does a couple of interviews on Fox News and with podcast hosts, and those people say to him, “Oh, you don't really mean this, right?”The questioners who are conservative, of course, say, “Maybe you can explain what you mean by the ‘enemy within.’You don't really mean you're going to go after your political opponents.”And he says, Trump says, “No, no, I do.In fact, I mean Adam Schiff and Nancy Pelosi.”3
So he is really explicit about his promises of retribution, and she is really explicit with the American public about explaining what this is and what it would look like.And in the end, America decides that they vote for them anyhow, that they're OK with this in some form.
It's amazing, if you think about his biography, and you said this before, but he managed to merge … the attacks on him and make it feel like the attacks on his supporters in the sense that if he's getting retribution, he's sort of doing it on behalf of his base.
Right. His retribution is their retribution in some ways, is how he's sort of projecting it.Whether people go along with that, if he pursues these plans in office, remains to be seen, of course.There is a question of whether voters quite knew what he was signing up for.You know, it's interesting.When you would go and talk to Trump voters, they would sometimes say, “Well, he doesn't really mean that.He's not really going to weaponize the Department of Justice.He's not really going to deport 19 million people.”And in some ways, that's another one of his strengths, is that he can say these things and people really don't believe it.
And this is something we saw in his first term.After he won in '16, there were a number of focus groups that they had with supporters where they asked them, “Do you think,” they asked the supporters, “do you think Trump is going to overturn Roe?Do you think he's going to defund Planned Parenthood?”And in these focus groups, the Trump supporters said, “No, no, he's not going to do that.You know, he's not even opposed to abortion rights.”And of course he did appoint the justices who did exactly that, which we know broad swaths of the majority of the public didn't like at all.
And I think there's that—there has been in this election a little bit of that same sense, where you talk to Trump supporters, and they just don't believe that he is going to follow through on these plans.They think it's being blown out of proportion by the media or by the Democrats.And now I guess we'll see depending what this incoming Trump administration does.And we'll see how voters react if those things become real.
So that brings us back to where we started, which is, he does get that reelection and this time a win in the popular vote.As you say, he's sort of said explicitly what he's going to do.I mean, what does that victory mean to him?Does he see it as a personal vindication, as a mandate?
Yes.I think they see it—he sees it as a personal vindication and a mandate, that they see this as a bigger win than last time, than in '16, that voters wanted this.And you can see that he feels liberated to basically put in only his staunchest supporters.We see with the picks that are emerging for his Cabinet that these are people who, under a traditional, what we assume about these positions, are fairly unqualified for these roles, and in fact, in some cases, have ethical conflicts that would disqualify them for the positions they've been put in.But what they are—what they have been is fiercely loyal to Donald Trump.
And so he feels empowered to do that, not to bow to anything: any force in Washington or any force in the Republican Party.And in fact, he's entering a Washington that's really different than the one he entered in 2016.His opponents in the Republican Party are largely, they've retired.Some of them have become Democrats.Some of them, like John McCain, who famously voted down his efforts to gut Obamacare, are dead.So he doesn't have the same level of opposition within his own party.
He also has a much friendlier Supreme Court, thanks to the appointments he made in the first term.So he feels—and of course, he has the House and the Senate and control of those places—sohe feels a lot more emboldened and a lot [less] restrained, and the political dynamics are such that he probably is right to feel that way.
A Second Trump Term
Do those appointments, or those nominations, tell us something about what he is prioritizing in his second term?
I think what he's prioritizing is loyalty to Trump, to himself and to his movement.
What are the implications of that compared to his first term in the way that this—what we're going to be coming into, and the film will air the day after the inauguration?What does it tell us about what to expect?
I think this is going to be a lot of upheaval.Even more—I think people remember the first term as a very chaotic period, and now I think he's coming in, and he feels stronger; he feels more emboldened.He's particularly invested in those who are most loyal to him and to his movement.And so I think that's going to add up to an administration that's willing to push the bounds on a lot of what we thought was sort of unmovable in Washington.
… One of the things you said was that the Democrats didn't realize that he had changed politics.So let me ask you a question for the end of the film, because here's a guy who walks in the political stage in, say, 2012 and wins in 2016 and in some ways shadows Biden throughout those four years, who comes back, who now is looking at another four years.What imprint has he left on American politics, you know?Is this the age of Donald Trump?
I think he's completely upended American politics.… For almost a decade, Donald Trump has been the sun, and the rest of the American political system has revolved around him.Even Biden, in some ways, right?He established such a grip on the Republican Party and then transformed the Democratic Party in some ways, because they've been remade by their reaction to Trump.And we saw that happen, particularly in 2020 when they were responding, I think, at how he was handling the pandemic, which might have been a bit of an overreach that they paid for potentially in this past election in '24.
So he's really upended so much about American politics.He's certainly remade the Republican Party.I mean, the party, the Republican Party now looks very little—looks completely different than it did before he came into office or before he sort of rode down that golden escalator in 2015.Their values are different; their ideology in some ways is different; the issues they take up are different, that they focus on.
I think he's done the same for the Democrats.He's upended that party, and now they're deep in the wilderness, having lost to him.They need to find a whole new generation of leaders and figure out what it is that they are and what they stand for.That's really an open question, how Democrats will respond to this administration.It's not going to look like it did in 2016, their version of opposition.I think they're really demoralized.Democratic voters are exhausted.
And I think he's really changed what we thought as infallible norms in American politics.If you think about how people talk, even just the language they use, you know, not only the threats that we were talking about earlier, but just the profanity.I mean, before Donald Trump, it was considered—you really couldn't swear when you were running for president in the same way, and now, you see that across the board.You couldn't attack the media.Certainly people argued with the media, but this open assault on the media, really from both parties, that's something new since Donald Trump came on the political scene.So he has completely remade American politics.
And also what—I think what voters see as survivable, like what voters will accept in terms of a personal scandal, an affair or paying for some kind of corruption with special interests or something like that, I think he's really bent the norms of what—he's really transformed what voters will accept in their candidates.And they'll accept a lot more now.
It's hard to predict what will happen, and I won't ask you to predict the future because every moment is not what we would expect.But what is the challenge that he's going to face, now that he has won this victory, that he's coming into the presidency a second time?What do you think is the question about his second term?
Well, he has to govern, and governing is hard even if you control both the House and the Senate.I think he made a lot of promises to people.They're going to want to see prices go down.They're going to want to see some action on immigration, which is an issue that has bedeviled every president for decades at this point.I think people are expecting him to deliver on some of these promises, and that's going to be hard.
They want him to cut government spending.It's not as easy as Elon Musk thinks it might be, right, to just sort of slash big cuts out of the government without people feeling negative impacts in their own lives.So I think what's going to be hard for him is actually governing, delivering on some of these things.
And there's a question of whether people really want the kind of vision that some of his allies are pushing for.Like, how far do they want the country to go when it comes to political retribution or deporting millions of people or taking steps to further limit abortion rights?It's not clear that people necessarily want these things and voted for these things.So that's also going to be a challenge, what the American public will accept.
… In some of the cases what he's up against, too, to accomplish things is his own style, is his own way of operating, is who he is.
Oh, you mean because he'll turn people off?
I mean, he's Donald Trump.He responded to COVID in a certain way, and he responded to the crisis of the election in a certain way.I guess this will be the test.
This will be a test.Oh, and foreign policy, right?He promised to end all these foreign wars in a month or whatever, end all these foreign wars very quickly.And that's not so easy.The Middle East is another issue that's sort of bedeviled every president for decades.These are really thorny, intractable problems abroad that he's promised to solve right away.
And the question is whether he can push these foreign leaders into what he wants, and it's not so clear that his style will wear as well on them.
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