Transcript: Trump Rages Wildly after Poll Delivers Him Worst News Yet

You kind of got at this—this idea that, you know, the country’s not capable of generating a sufficiently powerful opposition to Trump. I think there’s a distinction here that we have to draw: on the one hand, whether there’s a strong enough opposition to Trump out in the country among the people; and on the other hand, whether our legal and political institutions can constrain a president who is determined to plunge us into authoritarian lawlessness.

And I think the second one is where the real problem is, right? Like, of course I would like the opposition to Trump to be at 80 percent. But it’s pretty damn high right now. And that doesn’t translate into checks on this president who, as you’ve said, has no regard for political legitimacy and is determined to plunge into lawlessness. I think that distinction’s important. And I really think that the weakness here is in our institutions and their inability to constrain a president. So let’s get to work on those if Democrats ever get power back.

Elrod: And this is why I said that despite my not putting a whole lot of stock in the polls when it comes to sort of resisting Trumpism, this is why I said Democrats do have to go ahead and be willing to be bold.

This is why you can’t sort of play around on the idea of whether you want to do something like abolish an agency that under this administration has become the most well-funded police force in the country and one of the 20 most well-funded—if it were a military—armies in the world. You simply have to gut that from the inside. You have to get rid of it entirely.

And if that’s not on the table, then you’re certainly not up for the institutional changes necessary. Because I do agree, our institutions have failed us, right? The Supreme Court has not constrained him. Congress has not constrained him. The DOJ under Biden did not constrain him. We saw failure after failure after failure at the institutional level.

But I think it’s any kind of horrible or worse with the people where I think, you know, we see a lot of opposition to Trump, but I think we’re going to see 40-something percent of the country is going to go out and vote for Republicans this November.

And that doesn’t send a message of mass rejection. That sends a message more of sort of thermostatic swinging. But that’s not compelling in a moral sense when you’re in an existential fight for your country.

Sargent: Right. I think there’s two levels to this. One is clearly a lot of this is thermostatic and in that sense, it’s definitely not that heartening. But on another level, there’s also a fundamental ideological and moral rejection of Trumpism that we’re seeing, I think, on the streets, which is a critical thing.

Look, I think here’s the bottom line, right? Okay, it would be great if Trump were polling at 80 percent underwater, right? But if he’s polling at 40 to 60, Democrats can win the House and possibly the Senate. And then in 2028, they have to win the White House, period.

So it’s really on Democrats to win these elections. And that is really the end of the story, I think, when it comes to how we get out of this.

And just one last thought, and I’ll let you close. If Democrats can win in 2028… look, Trump had two shots at this and he shouldn’t have had two shots, right? And Democrats failed by letting him get a second shot. But the good news is, Democrats may have two shots at really trying to cripple MAGA and this lawlessness. And hopefully they get it right if they get power back.

Elrod: Yeah. And I think this ties into what wasn’t maybe as explicit but it was there, the more hopeful aspect of the piece, actually, which is that if you lean into this reality, what you can accept is the opportunity for doing politics completely anew: that you have the chance to be bold, to build new institutions.

What Mark Carney laid out for the international community at Davos is the same thing we have to be thinking about domestically. We cannot be too timid to think about massive institutional reform, to fight big, to do interesting things, to understand that the previous institutional arrangements weren’t working, to understand frankly that the politics weren’t working, right? That the things that were happening even on the ground level in this country were producing a noxious kind of environment.

So I think that’s the thing that should hopefully, I think, unite maybe our two points of view and also come back to this idea of the need. And it’s not really just Democrats. It’s anybody who opposes what Trumpism should see this as a chance to think and do politics, like actually do politics in a way that really frankly maybe we haven’t done for a few decades.

And to me that’s exciting. You have the chance in this moment to embrace big thinking and action and it doesn’t even have to mean kind of political-spectrum-positioned stuff. It doesn’t have to be left or progressive. It just means big ideas, creativity, new thinking—not being tied to old institutions just because of status quo, because that’s gone. And if we accept that, then we can actually start working on making something that lasts longer and is better.

Sargent: Yep, I agree 100 percent. I think that really is the through line that unites us, folks. Make sure to check out Alan Elrod’s work at Liberal Currents. He’s one of the best political theorists writing today. Alan, you wanted to say something about one other project you’re doing. Just give us a little bit on that.

Elrod: Yeah, I run a little nonprofit. We’re called the Pulaski Institution. You can find it through my Bluesky. I’m at @aselrod on Bluesky, but you can also find us online at PulaskiInstitution.org.

And we are currently fundraising to do all kinds of things that we want to do that we can’t afford to do right now: research, conferences, events that’ll bring people together to try to solve the very problems we talked about today. So we really hope people will come check us out.

Sargent: Alan Elrod, it was terrific to talk to you, man. Great conversation. Thanks for coming on.

Elrod: Thanks for having me.