The Washington Roundtable’s 2025 in Review

0:06Welcome to the political scene from The New Yorker, a weekly discussion about the big questions in American politics. I'm Susan Glasser, and I'm joined by my colleagues Evan Osnos and Jane Mayer. Hi, Evan. Good morning, guys. Hey, Jane. Hey, Susan. Great to be with you both.

0:25Well, here we are at the end of the year, and Donald Trump is in pitch mode. This week in Pennsylvania, he went back out on the road for the first time in a long time to give the first in a series of what his advisors claim will be campaign-style speeches meant to focus on affordability. But instead, and to almost no one's surprise, Trump went off script. For 97 minutes, he went on and on and on. He insisted that Americans were doing better than you have ever done before, said inflation, in fact, was no longer a problem, and called, as he has before, affordability a democratic hoax. He then went on to blame Joe Biden for the economy.

1:06Again, shocker there. Ranted against immigrants and insisted that no child needs 37 dolls, raising the question of what exactly Christmas was like in the Trump family household. The point is, and we know what the point is, it's just what we've come to expect from Donald Trump 10 years into this. Predictable chaos. But as we bring this first year of his second term to a close, I think a question is coming for all of us, which is, what do we do in a world where we're constantly shocked and never surprised? from the outrageous rhetoric in his speeches to the basic disregard for the rule of law, the breaking of institutional norms, rules, traditions.

1:54Donald Trump still manages to shock us, it seems to me, but he so rarely surprises us. Now, we thought we'd try to do something different for this year-end show, which is a prompt from Jane. Let's try to think about, were there moments where we were actually both shocked and surprised. What did stun us in a world that is just stunningly turned on its head overall? And let's sort of dig into our assumptions, our theory of the case about Donald Trump as we try to make sense of an almost unthinkable series of things, right? Like, if we looked back at ourselves a year ago, would we have said we were prepared and yet still stunned every day?

2:41But what do you Absolutely. I was trying to think where did I personally misjudge things just in order to learn from it and take note. And for me, anyway, the overall framework of what I think I misjudged was I did not see that Trump 2.0 would be so much more radical and so much more sweeping and successful in achieving what it was aiming for than Trump 1.0. I didn't think he had the ability to get what he wanted and deliver the blows that they've delivered to American norms, American ideals and values and to take apart so many achievements of previous decades in so little time. It's happened so fast.

3:30It is quite amazing that they were capable of this, I think. And so the second part of that is when I imagined that something like this would be attempted, I imagined there would be major pushback from the American public, from civil society, from all sectors. And it's not our culture to have an authoritarian kind of powerful, strong man. At least in my years of my life, I hadn't seen it. And I've seen it abroad and didn't think it would take here. I've been really surprised at how quickly the places that I thought would resist folded instead. And we can get into this in greater length, but tops on my list of surprises were the law firms that instead of upholding the rule of law when they were faced with a lawless executive order saying they weren't going to be allowed to set foot on federal property, including in the courts, they paid a chunk of change to Trump so that they could just stay in business.

4:32And those famous litigators didn't fight. And the universities also, the Ivy League schools that I hold in huge esteem, several of them, as we know, just folded. In both these sectors, and I'll move on here, but both these sectors, which are so important, academia and the law, there were people who did fight back and have. And we can talk about that later. I think that matters a lot also. You know, I think, Jane, you've identified what is the crucial dynamic, really, which is this idea that in a whole host of ways, this administration has kind of tumbled forward from one shocking thing to the next.

5:13And I think in the beginning, there was a way that people said, oh, you know, part of the reason why this is happening so fast and why institutions aren't responding is because of the shock and awe effect that people just sort of never imagined. As you were saying, you just sort of didn't imagine that the norms and the rules were as fragile as they proved to be. And let me just stipulate that there is some portion of our readers and listeners who will always say, and I think this is a bit of a pose, but saying like, well, you shouldn't be surprised. Like I always knew that these big institutions were villains.

5:46I always knew that the law was porous and fragile. And that's just like, frankly, you can't say that you're never surprised by any wrongdoing. That's not actually a sign of being urbane and sophisticated. That's like a kind of resignation and despair. So I actually think that surprise is important. It's important to be shocked. And I think that's one of the reasons why I think when you posed this idea, it was so, I think seems like such a natural way to try to explain this year to ourselves. I would call it the shock corollary rather than the surprise corollary, because I do think that for me is the thing that I've had to wrestle with.

6:24And I really like this exercise as part of that, because having spent all this time examining Trump's first term and interviewing him and people around him about what lessons they took, the thing that strikes me is that we actually did understand in a sort of on paper way what it was that the approach was going to be. You know, that Donald Trump took away from his first term that he was surrounded by too many faithless establishment type retainers who were constraining him and that he was going to prioritize loyalty, even to the extent of slavish loyalty on the part of his advisors, that as a result of that, he was going to be much more unhinged.

7:05I think that was a key part of the assumptions going into the second term. I think that it was also an important understanding that, you know, was certainly collectively held that vengeance and vindication were going to be at the core of what he was all about. He told us so himself. He was clearly radicalized by the experience of having been indicted multiple times. He already was inclined toward the weaponization of the justice system. So, you know, we had sort of a sense of the basis on which Trump 2.0 was going to exist. But that's where I come back to this category of what I would call almost the failure of imagination that one might understand that Donald Trump was going to dedicate himself to revenge and retribution and blowing up the institutions of Washington.

7:54And it's still a different thing than unleashing the world's richest man to destroy foreign aid for hundreds of thousands of poor people around the world. And so for me, I think there are different categories. One is like where can we isolate things that we just were wrong about, that we kind of made predictions and they just didn't work out the way that we thought. Then there's this bucket of there's just a lot of holy shit. You know, we never could have possibly dreamed of it. Iterations of what it means to unleash a shock and awe campaign on Washington. So, Jane, why don't we go back to this question of your list and what it was that really stunned you that if you, you know, were waking up on January 19th of this year, you would not have imagined was possible.

8:43Well, I certainly didn't think people would allow troops in the streets without more fightback. Here in Washington, it still shocks me to see troops in the street. I certainly didn't think the American public would be so quiet about the most epic level of corruption we've ever seen on the part of the Trump family and his allies. It's been just stunning and barely a peep out of people about this subject. There's just kind of resignation, as Evan has been saying. I, again, was shocked that nine major law firms have agreed to fork over almost a billion dollars worth of free legal services to Trump and the White House in exchange for just being able to keep doing their business.

9:33It's such an extortion racket, yet they went along with it. And I've been very surprised that the universities have handed over some of their academic freedom. Columbia, for instance, has allowed the Trump administration to impose monitors and tell them what kind of faculty to hire. So the weakness of institutions is what I hear is a theme of what you're saying. You know, in other words, it's about the resistance that didn't materialize for you that in some ways is your biggest bucket of concerns. It is. I mean, I am also surprised on some level. Others might debate this, but I think it's surprising, disappointing that the Republicans in Congress have completely given up on protecting their own separate branch of government.

10:21I didn't expect them to be courageous against Trump, but I would have thought that they would at least defend their own branch and their constitutional authority to be the branch that makes appropriations. and has the power of the purse. You know, the whole system of our government is designed to have matching ambition, as the founders said, and the branch is checking each other. And we've seen the congressional branch just completely bow down to the White House. And that's been an important part of how things have gotten this radical. Evan, I want to ask just what your thoughts on Jane's list, in particular, this question about expectations around the pushback.

11:04I mean, you know, for me, by the way, I do actually think that's where some of the real surprise comes in for me is that people, I think Democrats on some level actually didn't take their own rhetoric about an existential threat to our institutions seriously enough because they clearly weren't prepared for it when it happened. But I don't know. What do you think? What's noticeable to me is that what Jane has so well described is a failure of a whole host of elite institutions in one domain or another to have a forceful, organized response. response and that's an interesting juxtaposition from what is a bit of good news here that we need to and i think people deserve some which is that what you actually see is on the street level people are gathering their response you see it for instance in the in the ways that democrats performed in elections that we had this fall you've seen it in the form of the no kings day protests and i look we can poo-poo these things and say they're not meaningful they are meaningful And they're one of the ways that individuals out in the country are expressing their rage and their hostility and their fury at what's happening.

12:21And I think one of the things that draws my attention is I was shocked to return to our core idea today by the images of ICE pulling people out of cars, dragging people away, masked officers. I mean, this is it's hard to imagine a more un-American image than the one we've seen over and over again this year. And it's been striking that one of the responses at a time when major institutions have failed to curb that. You see people in New York, in Chicago, in neighborhoods organizing these volunteer patrols with whistles where they are signaling to people when ICE is in the area. They're signaling when there is somebody being arrested.

13:05And I think, you know, yeah, those are not turning the tide of this. But it's as long as we're writing the first draft of history, I think it's worth recognizing where individual citizens have stood up and institutions have not. I just want to say one thing, which is I was thinking about when you say individuals have stood up, and they have, and certain, you know, there are four law firms that are fighting back. Harvard did go to court and win against the Trump administration. But I think the signal failure that I hadn't recognized in our culture is that we are a culture of individualism. We have individuals who are doing acts of defiance, but we're not a collectivist culture.

13:46So we don't have the universities. I think the lesson I take is they should have worked together. The journalism profession should have stood together. And it finally learned that lesson a bit when everybody walked out of the Pentagon press corps and said, we're not going to bow to these rules. But I think that muscle is very weak in this country. Jane, I think that is really a key point because, you know, when I've talked with people in other countries that have experienced democratic rollbacks, that's the thing that they tell us. For example, in Poland, which had a decade of far right rule before essentially civil society came together.

14:26And that was the key was that people had to work across communities and outside of their individual silos. And it actually took a very long time for that to mobilize, even in Poland, a much smaller and more sort of homogenous society than the vast, you know, canvas upon which this one is operating. So I feel like that's a really important point on, you know, just to get specific on the journalists. Great example, right, is that Trump comes in and does something which, from my perspective, actually was kind of predictable. They moved to take more control over the White House press corps. They do it very quickly, although, again, the specific pretext is totally crazy and shocking, right?

15:04They say we're going to kick the Associated Press out of the White House press pool and take over the White House press pool because you won't call the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of Mexico. It's literally – this is a great example to me of like, yes, I was shocked by this. Was I shocked or surprised that Trump sought to take more control over the White House press? No, absolutely not. But again, the journalists and their institutions, most importantly, were not prepared. What did they do? They did nothing. And I can tell you that was much to the real dismay of the Associated Press, which is, again, the backbone of independent, nonpartisan journalism across this country.

15:41It's in newspapers, big and small radio stations. You're exposed to the neutral news gathering of the Associated Press wherever you are basically in this country and increasingly around the world. And, you know, their colleagues basically did nothing. I remember showing up to this court hearing in federal court because the White House Correspondents Association had asked people to turn out on behalf of the Associated Press. And, you know, there was basically almost no one there. All those familiar faces you see in the White House, they weren't there for their colleagues. And, you know, that fight, by the way, continues in federal court.

16:17But essentially, it's very likely or quite possible that Trump White House will win the idea that they can control who the president sees. And the result is we have people like Marjorie Taylor Greene's boyfriend in the press room saying, sir, how great were you today, sir? Did you expect to, you know, be such a peacemaker? Well, did you see, interestingly, that breaking news, he's now heading back to Georgia with Marjorie Taylor Greene, the liberal icon. Trapped between two loves. That right there has to be on your list. It is on the list of unexpected. Marjorie Taylor Greene becomes the, you know, warriorette of— Oh, my goodness.

16:56No, that was not on my playbook. We're going to take a quick break. When we come back, more surprises from 2025. The political scene will be back in just a moment.

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17:53That's all on the New Yorker Radio Hour, wherever you listen to podcasts.

18:06Susan, you know, here we are at the end of the first year. Trump's approval rating is in the pits. He is being particularly punished by people for his handling of the economy. I have to imagine this has come as a bit of a surprise to you now. Yeah, I think you're right, Evan, that this one is, you know, the facts always get in the way of a narrative, right? And the question is, can we pivot the narrative quickly enough to incorporate the data points, the facts? And the facts here are really interesting because for Donald Trump in his first term, the economy was always the strength, even when he was such a polarizing, divisive personality then and now.

18:45You know, that's been pretty consistent, how polarizing Trump has been and how low, generally speaking, his approval ratings are. But he always had this economy floating him, right? And he was, you know, it was never the greatest economy in the history of the world in the way that he used to say over and over and over again in the first term that it was. But basically, people, even independents who were maybe reluctant for other reasons to support Trump, that's the reason you could argue that he got back into office in 2024. He said, you know, I'm the economy guy and I'm going to deal with the Biden inflation.

19:16Well, here we are a year later. Inflation that he said was the worst inflation in the history of the world under Joe Biden at 3 % is now the same, more or less, 3%. And he says it doesn't even exist. And what are you talking about? And his poll numbers just this week, the Associated Press found a survey, his lowest ever number on that, only 31 % of Americans supporting Trump on the economy. That is even worse than the 36 % approval rating he has. Right now, Gallup has found that he has 60 % disapproval rating. Now, you know, normally a president like that would be perceived to be in deep, absolute political trouble.

19:55You'd see members of his party on Capitol Hill running away from him, bucking him on every kind of a vote. That's not happening yet. There are signs of the weakening of this hold between Trump and his party. But nonetheless, it's fascinating to me that he has such bad numbers. And yet he's still the model of the party has shifted to be this basically personalist cult. To that point, actually, I mean, this is something that I wonder if we can try to square the circle on something. Jane, you mentioned before that it's been shocking that people are not more outraged, vocal about his personal corruption.

20:29I mean, like, it's easy to forget these moments now. But remember the time that they auctioned off dinner with the president at one of his golf clubs to, like, crypto people? And yet, at the same time, we're seeing this deep agitation about affordability, which is a euphemism for inequality in my mind. How is it that people can be on the one hand incredibly frustrated by their inability to participate in this economy and this country as fully as they want and at the same time just kind of shrug at the fact that this guy is by one measure, you know, Trump organization's gone from whatever it was,$50 million to more than$800 million.

21:03I mean, I think one reason is that no one in the opposition has turned it into an issue where there would be consequences for Trump. I think, you know, maybe this is what he's really worried about if they lose the House. There's no call to investigate it, to impeach him, to, I mean, there actually is the House. People are beginning to talk about impeachment, but it's not a serious thing. But you raised impeachment, though, and it is important to point out that one of the big lessons of Trump 1.0 after two impeachments was essentially that that constitutional tool of accountability for a president is a dead letter right now in our politics.

21:41And then number two, you have a Trump-appointed majority on the Supreme Court that has given Donald Trump immunity. The president can literally do basically any terrible thing you could imagine and not face consequences for it. And so you have the one-two punch of both the courts and the Congress not operating in full as the separate branches that they're imagined to me. Absolutely. I mean, immunity leads to impunity. And you've got... You sound like one of those, you know, I don't know, maybe you should run for Senate. You know, that's a pretty good... No, what I was thinking of before was just that the theory of what the country is feeling is the Tony Soprano theory, which is, what are you going to do?

22:25What are you going to do about this? I mean, it's just like people don't know what they can do. They need to be shown a course of action, I think. But the courts are really, I gather from what you're saying, among the surprises for you, Susan, and I'm curious if it's true of Avento, is how the Supreme Court has failed to check Trump. Is that right? Well, you know, it's interesting, Jane. That is on my list, actually. And you know the subject much better than I do. And I was sort of kicking myself, certainly after that immunity decision, which wasn't this year, it was last year. But I feel like, for me, one of the kind of things that was genuinely surprising as well as stunning is the Supreme Court and in particular John Roberts, who maybe it was always wrong, maybe it's changed.

23:12But there certainly was a view that he was at heart kind of an establishment guy that certainly he projects, you know, a sort of calm rationality. He's not a Scalia. He's not a fire breathing movement, blow it up conservative. And yet I think his record, you know, I think about this all the time, to be honest, like, you know, that he clearly has a sort of visceral dislike for the populist MAGA Trump blow it up approach to politics. But I imagine him looking in the mirror in the morning and being like, I'm the guy who gave us Donald Trump. I don't know, Evan, what do you think? One of the themes that comes through is that, to use your good words, Susan, what can bring accountability or what can contain Trump?

24:00And the answer is the voter. That's what we're discovering. It's not the courts that are going to be able to do it. It's clearly not the Supreme Court. And in a curious way, you know, we just got this little indication in the last couple of days of this, that Indiana state legislature, of all places, basically said no to Trump's effort to try to force them into this redistricting plan, which would have advantaged Republicans. And so here you had Republicans in Indiana, you know, they'd been subjected to the same usual pressure things, you know, people calling in death threats and ordering pizzas to their houses, all of the stuff that we think of as the very standard Trump 2.0 playbook.

24:38And it was Republicans who said, no, we're not going to do that. We don't think that this is right for us and right for our state. So that perhaps in its own little way, a little indicator of how the weakened Trump that we see now here at the end of 2025 faces a different political terrain than he did when he took office in January. All right, well, we're going to take a quick break. And when we come back, a little bit more lightning round of our list of real stunners of Trump's return to office. The political scene will be back in just a moment.

25:22Hi, I'm David Remnick, editor of The New Yorker. At this year's Academy Awards, Timothee Chalamet and Tiana Taylor aren't the only major nominees. The New Yorker will be there too with two nominated short films, which you can watch at newyorker.com slash video. Two People Exchanging Saliva was executive produced by Julianne Moore and Isabelle Huppert, and it's set in a dystopian Paris where kissing is illegal. Our animated short film Retirement Plan follows a man as he dreams about all the things he's going to do when he's done working. You can enjoy both of those films and our full library of acclaimed short films at newyorker.com slash video.

26:17Okay, Evan, I want to stick with you. We got to go through our list here because there's a lot of crazy stuff. Am I allowed to say, yes, there's a lot of crazy shit in the immortal words of George W. Bush at Donald Trump's first term inauguration? There's a lot of weird shit here. So I want to know what else is on your list of stunners, actual stunners. I have to say, I don't think that there were all that many people who predicted that he would actually pardon the 1 ,500 rioters who tried to overturn the election and that they would actually go ahead with pardons for these people. But I'm going to go with the fact that I have to confess I will make a heartfelt admission of guilt.

27:00I did not predict Venezuela. That was not one that, you know, our friends in the foreign policy and national security establishment had gamed out. What did you think, Susan? Was that something you were prepared for? No, you know, actually, I'm totally agreeing with you on Venezuela in particular, by the way, because actually he had these kind of regime change Venezuela people on his staff the first term and he didn't agree with them. John Bolton would have been delighted back in the first term when he was the national security advisor. And he and Mike Pompeo and others actually were pushing various regime change scenarios on Trump in the first term.