Opinion | Nothing goes wrong to Trump’s White House

Bret Stephens: Gail, before starting, is there a journalist of another publication that you would like to invite to this conversation?

Gail Collins: Gee Bret, could you refer you to Jeff Goldberg, publisher of the Atlantic, who ended up accidentally included in a group chat among the best Trump officials who discuss plans classified for air attacks in Yemen?

Bret: The best journalistic scoop of the season and could not have been easier to get.

Gail: It seems to me that Goldberg has behaved in a very responsible way in a ruined situation that has again defined the total ineptitude of the administration-of the above. My initial reaction was to want to be able to fire them and buy a drink in Goldberg.

Bret: If President Trump were, well, someone else would have been the one to buy to Jeff to keep the military secrets of the nation for himself for all the time they needed to maintain – and therefore to expose the aids of the national security of Trump like the amateurs they are.

Gail: A new week, a new Dimwit collection …

Bret: Paging Tulsi Gabbard. And this says nothing about JD Vance, the vice -president whose comments on Signal’s chat suggest that he does not think that the president will take the implications of his foreign policy. What a shame Vance did not extend his visit to the weekend in Greenland for another, Oh, 45 months.

The other thing that is worth paying attention to, Gail is the republican response, especially in the Senate. Outside of the always courageous Alaskan Lisa Murkowski, I don’t see much more than Gop Dide Mormar. Imagine if the shoe had been on the other foot, and was the secretary of Joe Biden’s defense and the national security councilor who accidentally shared battle plans with, let’s say, Sean Hannity or Tucker Carlson.

Gail: Ah, Bret, every day I imagine the saga of shoes on the foot. Almost as much as I go back obsessively to the retired What-biden-Had-Solo …

Bret: I can’t say that we didn’t ask, week after month after year.

Gail: But enough. We are seeing trillion of reports from the meetings of the Town Hall held by members of the congress in which their outraged members complain of frozen programs at the behest of Elon Musk.

Musk, of course, is often evaluated the richest man in the world. More and more American are starting to ask themselves to trust their financial future to a boy who thinks that 20 million deaths are collecting social security.

You have always been a conservative without Leart’s expenses, right? Any hope that you can offer on this?

Bret: I suspect that one day the historians will remember the Department of Efficiency of the Government in the way we now remember the lobotomies. It seemed, for some at the moment, like a good idea.

Gail: Hey, perhaps future generations will look at the Trump administration as a lobotomy laboratory.

Bret: The problem is not that we should not reduce the expense or rethink the graphic of federal bureaucracy organizations or get rid of agencies or departments that could do more damage than benefit. For example, why should universities spend about a tenth of their budget on the government’s conformity costs instead of scholarships and new workshops?

The problem is that competence and execution count; That public input is important; that the Federal Government is not a technological society in which you can afford to move quickly and break things; And that you cannot afford to bring a hammer to a problem that requires a scalpel without seriously hurting the patient. As for Musk, I called it “The Donald of Silicon Valley“For years. I am happy that my liberal friends are finally reaching with me, even if he moved to Texas.

Gail: Happy to be in your company on this.

Bret: Another topic, Gail: the Wall Street Journal has a Worrying relationship Information on the ways in which the administration is coming after the mainstream press with legal causes and other acts of aggression, such as the start of the Associated Press from the oval office because it will not refer to the “Gulf of America”. This means that we will never be able to refer to the president as a Short -fingers vulgar? Or how Benito Milhous Caligula?

Gail: Well, it will never survive “short -like vulgar”. But we must give credit to the AP for saving the country from a possible frenzy of Renomine of Trump, in which California was baptized Donaldoria and Michigan has become Muskigan.

Bret: Hehehe.

Gail: We will be blocked with the Donald Per-Opet, I can’t imagine three and three more quarters. Is it too early to start imagining the presidency later? Some stars on the horizon dim?

Bret: What presidency later?

Not long ago, I would have joked about this, but on Sunday the president clarified that he was not “kidding” on a third term and that there were “methods” to keep him in the White House.

Methods.

Suppose for the moment that these methods fail. From a republican point of view, the immediate front-Runner would probably be JD Vance, perhaps with Donald Trump, Jr., as his racing partner. If anything, I think it is a greater danger for the future of the country than the current administration, since Vance has exposed himself as a militant isolationist and a far -right fanboy.

The most interesting question is on the democratic side. Do you think the party will try to rotate in the center or to snatch further on the left?

Gail: I suspect that we have several definitions of “center” and “left”. Each Democrat knows that the party must find a stimulating vision of the future and its goals to get there.

Mine would be higher taxes on the rich, to save us from what seems to now an explosion of future deficit and to finance services that are necessary such as health care for poor education and early childhood-fertile you see a clear vision of global warming and how to avoid transforming our pollution into a planetary disaster.

I also hope that the Democrats are cultivating a new harvest of future presidential candidates, preferably of a younger younger generation-as Michigan’s Gretchen Whitmer, who will end his second term in the mid-1950s when the Democrats begin to choose a candidate. Or Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut, who is 51 years old and a very strong anti-trump voice.

And you? I can already see you report a turn to the right.

Bret: I don’t expect no plausible democratic party to adopt my policy. But I would like the Democrats to actually win an election against the next candidate Trumpian, whether it is vans or someone else. And this will not happen unless the Democrats understand their past errors, such as a EXCEPTIONAL TIMES editorial On the weekend he clarified. The Democrats were wrong for immigration and urban disorder, they made too much to the left on cultural issues, they felt too comfortable in the ban on the country in an alphabet soup of various groups of victims, and almost colluded in denying the decline of Joe Biden. I would also like to see the Democrats who propose policies that help the people of the working class even if they upset powerful groups of democratic interest, as good people who allow parents to give up bankrupt public schools or at the end of all license requirements for professions as hairdressers.

Gail: Totally agree with you on the Times editorial. But very wary of voucher programs, many of whom seem to aim to support private religious schools. I am proud of the Catholic schools I have gone, to the end, but the maximum concern of the federal government should be the monitoring-and help-public schools that all serve, in particular the children of families and low-income neighborhoods.

We can take hair stylists later, but on the next presidential perspectives …

Bret: As for the candidate who can do it, I would take any democrat who, in his bones, feels more sympathy than weighing for Trump voters. Having someone who proved to be able to win in a state that votes Trump, such as Elissa Slotkin by Michigan or Josh Stein of the North Carolina or Ruben Gallego of Arizona, would be an advantage.

Gail: A Democrat who will be a serious candidate must reach Trump voters. At least the sensitive ones, that small but deeply significant piece capable of oscillating the vote of the electoral college.

Bret: If the progressive wing of the Democratic Party is ascending, there will be no achievement of those voters, at least not in ways that recognize how to satisfy their concerns. We will see.

Gail: At this moment the next biggie on the horizon is the house of representatives. Republicans have a five votes margin And any modest loss of illness or political rebellion could cost them a working majority.

I am not in love with the representative Elise Stefanik, the New York Republican that Trump was planning to make our United Nations ambassador, until he became clear that the move could cost him a place at home. But you have to feel a little sorry for her. More, at least, that for all the insiders of republican works that enthusiastically support the cutting crusade of the Trump-Mentre costs made pressure madly to make sure that none of the canceled works come from their districts.

Bret: Can I say something a little incendiary? Perhaps Trump could follow his non -appointment by Stefanik as Ambassador of the United Nations by completely withdrawing the United States from the United Nations. I wouldn’t mind completely.

Gail: I really can’t think of anything we need less in this moment of another example that the United States are impossible to work.

Bret: The United Nations building has an incredible view of the East River. It would be a great conversion of the condominium.

One last thing, Gail, because I don’t want to let the news of last week without taking note of an important object. I am not a fan of the anti-Israeli protests on university campus, too many of which virated in absolute anti-Semitism. And I think there should be quick and severe consequences for bad conduct, such as the construction socket, the bullying of other students or lie on forms of immigration. On the other hand, the right to speak freely is the most elementary right of all, which we should honor for citizens and non -citizens. If the administration cannot offer better reasons to arrest foreign students, I don’t like them On-edsthey should be freed. Something less is not American.