Stay Tuned with Preet: Trump’s Midterm Defeat & the Fight Ahead

Today, we’re bringing you a new episode of “Stay Tuned with Preet” from CAFE and the Vox Media Podcast Network. A panel joins Preet Bharara to break down the midterm election results: historian Joanne Freeman, The New Yorker staff writer Susan Glasser, and political commentator and author of the Substack publication “To the Contrary,” Charlie Sykes. They discuss what led to President Trump and the Republican Party’s sweeping defeat, what to expect from Trump in his final two years in office, how Democrats might wield their newfound power in Congress, and the implications for the 2028 presidential election. Show notes and a transcript of the episode are available on our website. Watch this episode on our Youtube channel. Shop Stay Tuned merch and featured books by our guests in our Amazon storefront. Have a question for Preet? Ask @PreetBharara on BlueSky, or Twitter with the hashtag #AskPreet. Email us at [email protected], or call 833-997-7338 to leave a voicemail. Stay Tuned with Preet is brought to you by CAFE and the Vox Media Podcast Network. Kara will be back on Friday with a special episode of “High Stakes” with Hillary Clinton. They’ll unpack what the midterm results mean for the country and for the Trump administration's next two years. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:12Kara Swisher?

  Hi, everyone. From New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network, this is On with Kara Swisher, and I'm Kara Swisher. Today, we're bringing you a new episode of Stay Tuned with Preet from Cafe Studios and the Vox Media Podcast Network. Host and former U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara sits down with a panel of experts to unpack Tuesday's election results and talk about what comes next. He's joined by Yale historian Joanne Freeman, New Yorker staff writer Susan Glasser, and author and political commentator Charlie Sykes. That's a great group. And tomorrow, Hillary Clinton and I will be back with a special episode of High Stakes to give our own hot takes on the midterm results, whatever they may be. We'll talk about what they mean for

• 0:54Kara Swisher?

  the country and for the Trump administration's last two years. But first, here's a new episode of Stay Tuned with Preet. Stick around.

• 1:15Kara Swisher?

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• 1:58Speaker 01

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• 3:06Speaker 03

  From Cafe and the Vox Media Podcast Network, welcome to Stay Tuned. I'm Preet Bharara.

• 3:16Speaker 04

  It was only ever going to be possible for red America to begin to fix what red America has wrought.

• 3:24Speaker 05

  I am going to be fascinated to see how far and fast JD tries to run away from Donald Trump and how far Donald Trump lets him run away.

• 3:33Speaker 06

  What are Democrats going to do with the power that they have? And how are they going to realize, whatever they do, they can't go back to what they had? They're going to have to address where we're going to be going forward.

• 3:50Speaker 03

  I'm Preet Bharara. The American people have spoken, delivering Democrats a sweeping victory in the 2026 midterm elections. But what comes next? Joining me to make sense of the results are historian Joanne Freeman, The New Yorker staff writer Susan Glasser, and Charlie Sykes, political commentator and author of the Substack publication To the Contrary. And by the way, folks, for a limited time, you can get 30% off our annual Substack membership at staytuned.substack.com. You'll get access to the Insider podcast I co-host with Joyce Vance, bonus conversations from Stay Tuned, and deeper analysis of the week's biggest legal headlines. Thank you for supporting our work.

• 4:32Speaker 03

  Charlie Sykes, Joanne Freeman, Susan Glasser, welcome back to the show.

• 4:37Speaker 06

  Happy to be here.

• 4:39Speaker 03

  Thanks for being here. I simply sent out a tweet this morning, which I don't do very often anymore, saying good morning, got a lot of good responses. Good morning. I guess it's afternoon here. There's a lot to talk about. I was going to make the old joke that there's rarely been an assemblage of such talent, with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson did a podcast.

• 5:01Speaker 06

  I knew you were going to Jefferson. I didn't see the podcast.

• 5:04Speaker 03

  I will not do that, because Joanne is tired of those Thomas Jefferson references. So why don't we be, Joanne, historian, why don't you put what happened yesterday and overnight into historical perspective? How big a deal is this? Is it comparable to any other change election? Would you call it a change election? A lot of compound questions here, but as the resident historian, what the hell is going on here?

• 5:30Speaker 06

  Okay, so a few things. On the things that echo throughout history level, midterm elections, which we normally, we don't pay so much attention normally to midterm elections. Often in the past, when there has been a little political creativity, it's been the midterm elections where that happens, because the presidency isn't involved. So like, the radical Republicans after the Civil War, they rise up in a midterm election and then they take over with Reconstruction. Or the Republican Party, 1858, and then by 1860,

• 6:09Speaker 06

  they have a president. So midterm elections tend to be moments where, actually, the Tea Party too comes up in a midterm election. So anyway, midterms are sort of politically creative moments, and then also, obviously, they tend to be a reaction against whoever is president. So that's all in play here. To me, one of the things that's distinctive about what just happened is that the actual process of democracy was on the table. Like the actual functioning of elections, the fact that the folks who have power right

• 6:45Speaker 06

  now aren't so keen on the institutions of democracy, and that the simple fact that Trump this morning said, yes, I will abide by the election, the fact that he said that, that he was asked that, and that he said that, shows you the degree to which this isn't a normal time. So as a historian, I don't like to say-

• 7:07Speaker 03

  Meaning, in his case, it's not normal because it's not abnormal?

• 7:10Speaker 06

  Well, there is that. Right. So we're shocked. It's like, wait, you're going to actually do what you're supposed to do? Be Democratic?

• 7:18Speaker 03

  Can I push back a moment on, so you think democracy was on the table, not just high prices?

• 7:24Speaker 06

  I do. I do. But I don't think in the way, I don't think Americans were like, oh, she'll support democracy. I think it was on the line because the fundamentals of it, the accountability of people who have office, the rule of law, free and fair elections, all of those things, which are the absolute foundations of any kind of small-deed democratic government, they were absolutely on the table, and the folks who have power were speeding up. They were revving their engines to begin eroding even more. So yeah, I do think democracy was on the table, but not as a talking point.

• 8:01Speaker 03

  Susan, I want to ask you, because when you arrived in the digital green room, you said you were just finishing your column, and I believe, I believe it is an accurate statement to say you giggled and said it was the most fun column, did you say ever or in a long time? And can you give us a preview of why it was so fun?

• 8:24Speaker 04

  Well, I don't know if fun is a word, but I will say that it flew off the keyboard, Preet. I mean, look, 10 years, 10 years. This is the election that actually didn't happen, even in 2018, even in 2020, when Donald Trump lost. In neither of those cases, for a variety of reasons we can talk about, was there such a sweeping, broad-based rejection of Donald Trump. And I think the thing that's been gathering all year, but to see it happen was so remarkable, because Donald Trump, unfortunately, was this creature, this really

• 9:07Speaker 04

  sort of monstrous attack on democracy that the Republican Party gave us. And, you know, I've watched the horror movies. Only the Republican Party, you know, could end this. And I'm not, you know, nobody gets props, because the shame of this is going to, you know, echo for a long time, and it's not over in some definitive sense. And I'm sure Democrats will make the mistake of interpreting it in an overly broad way and whatever. But okay, put aside the caveats, we're in a moment. It was only ever going to be possible for red America to begin to fix what red America has wrought. And Donald Trump couldn't challenge

• 9:51Speaker 04

  this election. I think Joanne is right to call attention to the fact that even he said, you know, he has to accept the results. But the reason he does is because even Donald Trump cannot say that Kansas and Texas and South Carolina and North Carolina and Ohio and Michigan and the states that voted for him, that they all conspired against him now. And, you know, so I think that is-

• 10:19Speaker 04

  Just, we've got to stop for a second. Again, like, I will talk caveats until I'm blue in the face and all the reasons why there's still a crisis in America. But yeah, it flew off the keyboard because this is a hell of a day. And it is one that we know is one for the history books.

• 10:36Speaker 06

  If I could just say one sentence, we the people, man. We the people.

• 10:42Speaker 03

  Yeah, but so can I ask Charlie, where were we the people in the last three elections? Where was your erstwhile party in the last three elections, Charlie?

• 10:51Speaker 05

  What an excellent question. Apparently, willing to sleepwalk through this disaster, but they woke up. Or I should say, Donald Trump managed to wake them up. I mean, the extraordinary thing about this, and by the way, Susan said it was easy. This morning, I was trying to figure out which storyline do we pick up on? Because there are just, there are just too many. But, you know, the basic line is that Donald Trump, this is all Donald Trump, and we can talk about gas prices, but it was Donald Trump who connected the dots between the economy, the corruption, the Epstein class, the unneeded wars, his complete insanity, the fact that his closing argument was to remind people about the reflecting pond.

• 11:34Speaker 05

  And it was in the red states that people said, okay, you know what? We're just sick of this show. This is not something that, you know, this is not, was not a revolution in Berkeley and, you know, in Burlington, Vermont. This was, this was in Kansas and South Carolina. I can't get over this. You know, the fact that we're even at this moment talking about Mississippi is an indication that this country really decided that they'd had enough of Trump. And maybe it was the cruelty, the brutality, the lies, all of it. And, you know, this was the moment that the voters said, we're done. Now, Republicans, of course, who remained, joined at the hip with Donald Trump, they went down with him.

• 12:16Speaker 05

  And this is a repudiation of Donald Trump, but Republicans have agency. And all of the Republicans from, you know, at every level, basically, no, they bought the ticket and last night, they took the ride all the way.

• 12:29Speaker 03

  And this is a jump ball for anyone. I feel like it's ordinarily the case that politicians blame the president when things are bad and they blame the president and they credit their own president when things are good. And there's not such a direct line between the president and the economy, the president and inflation, the president and, and gas prices. And this goes back and forth over time through election after election after election. Has there ever been a time, Charlie, you sort of made this point a second ago, where, where all of these ills and challenges and, and regressions are so clearly able to be traced back approximately to a single person, the President of the United States, on Epstein,

• 13:14Speaker 03

  on the war in Iran, on tariffs, when, when all the people around him and all the people on the other side of the aisle said, don't do it, he did it? Has there ever been a time when there was, when there was, you know, more cause to hold a chief executive responsible?

• 13:29Speaker 05

  No, I'm sure that Joanne will come up with a good historical analogy.

• 13:34Speaker 03

  But from a long time ago, probably.

• 13:36Speaker 05

  Right, right, from a long time. But, but I will say, the answer to your question is, I don't think so in terms, because Donald Trump is unlike any other president we've ever had. This is what we, we mean when we say this is not normal. Let's not become numb to all of this. And it's hard to remember a president, you know, singularly squandering his coalition as aggressively as Donald Trump did in such a short period of time. You look at the shift of young voters, of Hispanic voters, of black voters in every single category, but it was, it is that whole sort of cloud and cluster of things that all came together. It's not one thing. And it's only, it was Donald Trump who sucked all the oxygen out of our political world for the last 10 years.

• 14:21Speaker 05

  And Donald Trump who shaped all of this. And therefore, you know, again, gas prices, the price of eggs, yes, but I think that it is all the things that you just mentioned here. And I am struggling to come up with a president. I mean, you have Nixon who squandered his, his mandate with corruption, Lyndon Johnson with, with a war. But who put it all together as completely as Donald Trump did?

• 14:45Speaker 03

  Only he can do it.

• 14:46Speaker 06

  Only, well, only he can do it in the end, the poetic justice of that. I don't think there's an exact equivalent when it comes to someone sort of owning all of the, the bad that brings something down. I do think it's important to say, Trump's brand, so to speak, was absolute loyalty to him. It was all about him. Everything that he said, it's all me, it's all me. The last thing he did in front of the reflecting pool included, we're going to name it after me. And if you are going to make it so that the people you hire are hired because they're loyal to you, if you're firing people because they're not loyal enough to you, if you have

• 15:28Speaker 06

  made your party about you in that concrete way, I don't know how you make an electoral loss anything other than an absolute rejection of you. Now, you can look at people like, you know, Andrew Jackson is a, is a president who was divisive. He created the wing party because everyone hated him so much. But although he was a figure that sort of grabbed at people, this is distinctive, I think explicitly, because Trump, in every way possible, made it about him and nothing else.

• 16:02Speaker 03

  Susan, do you want, do you want, do you want to seize upon the metaphor? I'm going to let you use the metaphor. It just occurred to me, it's very obvious, that it's sort of fitting that the reflecting pool is the symbol for this gentleman, given the origin story of narcissus.

• 16:16Speaker 04

  Yeah, I use that in my column.

• 16:19Speaker 03

  Did you?

• 16:19Speaker 04

  I called him, I called him the narcissist of the National Mall.

• 16:23Speaker 05

  My senior thesis.

• 16:25Speaker 03

  Working here in real time.

• 16:27Speaker 06

  My college senior thesis was about this.

• 16:29Speaker 04

  There's no other way in which we can view this, except as this, you know, almost Greek kind of morality play about hubris and.

• 16:41Speaker 03

  Is it worthy of the Greeks?

• 16:44Speaker 04

  Well, it's, you know, high tragedy, low farce, right? They, they co-mingle in, in politics. And, you know, I mean, the speeded up nature of this reckoning is, is one that I think people are going to study for a long time because it does go so quickly from the high to the low. And again, there are echoes in, in the American past. You know, remember George H.W. Bush, who was, had, I think, the highest modern approval rating at the time of the first Gulf War, over 90% within two years. He had less than two years. He had lost reelection and become a single term president. But of course, he did not disgrace the office. And, you know, we've mentioned Nixon here.

• 17:29Speaker 04

  What's, what's particularly remarkable is that while the Watergate election defined repudiation for an entire generation, and it was the widest gap in the national popular vote for Democrats, you know, in fact, even wider than this one will turn out to be, which I think at around 13 points will be the biggest gap in the national vote since the 1976 election. However, I was just looking at this and, and made this point in the column as well. It is the biggest electoral victory for Democrats in an election like this since the two elections

• 18:10Speaker 04

  of midterm elections, 1946 and 1958, with the combined performance of a pickup of what could even be eight seats in the Senate and more than 35 seats in the House. So it's, it's, it's the across the board nature of it, it's the map of it, and it's the fact that these were his own voters that puts it so squarely on his own hubris and reckless narcissism. But I do, I wanted to, because I'm very curious what everybody has to say, and we're all going on a very little sleep. You know, you already see the war over how to interpret this beginning to unfold among Republicans.

• 18:51Speaker 04

  And I'm sure, you know, this conversation that we're having is their, is their nightmare that they're trying to sort of debunk, right? We're saying it's everything, it's not just the war, it's, it's everything, it's the corruption, it's the this. And so you see J.D. Vance, the sitting vice president, already on Wednesday morning, where we're having this conversation at midday on Wednesday, already coming out with a remarkable thing where he's saying it's the, it's, it's the Iran war, and that's just what it is. You saw Sean Hannity last night on Fox News saying that they're trying to narrow the scale of the disaster and then fight their own kind of internal bubble policy fights. And, you know, I think we have to really reject that.

• 19:35Speaker 03

  I'll be right back with my guests, Joanne Freeman, Susan Glasser, and Charlie Sykes, after this.

• 20:21Speaker 01

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• 21:50Speaker 03

  Can I ask a question about, you know, Donald Trump's mantra, his exception to the political, you know, laws of physics, which I think has by and large been true. And it's the famous saying, the famous phrase, when he said, I could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue, I wouldn't lose any support. And he was right. He was right for years and years and years. He said the things that he said about John McCain. He took certain actions with respect to his political adversaries. He embraced Putin. He did so many crazy things. Why did that principle expire?

• 22:28Speaker 05

  Okay, Charlie, Charlie wants to go. I know. I'm really glad you brought this up because, you know, basically Trump started off saying, I could shoot anybody in the middle of Fifth Avenue. And then as time went on, he said, you know, I could sexually molest anyone. I could rip anyone off. I could commit any crime in the middle of Fifth Avenue. And in Trump 2.0, I think he was even surprised at how much he was able to get away with. So he was testing a thesis that we were in a, not just a post-truth world, but a post shame world, a post morality world, that he could put up a candidate like Ken Paxton, and no one would care that that he had, he really believed that he had repealed the laws of political gravity. And so, you know,

• 23:12Speaker 05

  back to the Greek analogy, this is hubris, you know, he, he, you know, got away with an awful lot. And you're right. It seemed like, you know, he was right about all of those things. He was returned to the presidency. And then he just took it too far. And you know what I'm saying? That this was kind of a referendum on his calculation, his bet that he could do all this. Elon Musk was also making the calculation. And when there's so many, you know, that, that a massive amount of money could, you know, overcome all of these things, that the appeals, the, the, the naked racist appeals that worked in 2024 could work scare people about Somalians, do those things. They bet that. And if Ken Paxton would have won

• 23:54Speaker 05

  last night, we would be having a very different conversation. We would be living in a world in which a trillionaire can basically buy a seat using one of the most vile campaigns, electing one of the most vile and corrupt human beings. But that is not what happened. The American people did have their, their say, and they said, we're, we're done with that. So Donald Trump, the Donald Trump Elon Musk JD Vance theory of the case was radically rejected. And I am going to be fascinated to see how far and fast JD tries to run away from Donald Trump and how far Donald Trump lets him run away.

• 24:31Speaker 03

  So just two, two quick things. And Joanne, I want, I know you want to say something. When you said vile campaign, it, some people who are tuning in in the middle would be like, is Charlie talking about Vivek Ramaswamy? Is he talking about Ken? Like who, which one of the number of people is he talking about? Then second, the point about JD Vance, someone said the point that's, that's obvious, but hadn't really occurred to me in the way that it was expressed, is JD Vance can't even, even with a, with an enervated and weakened president, Donald Trump, he cannot, as a sitting vice president, criticize directly Donald Trump. And how do you get, how do you become the standard bearer for the Republican

• 25:11Speaker 03

  Party, given what happened in 2026? In 2028, if you are unable to rhetorically or otherwise distance yourself from this president, Joanne?

• 25:21Speaker 06

  I totally think that the idea that he, Trump and his minions were testing boundaries and seeing how far they could go. They were not held accountable for anything in Trump won. So why wouldn't they begin, including January 6th? So why wouldn't they begin by thinking they could keep pushing and keep pushing? But sort of with poetic justice, that fact, the fact that they were going more and more and more extreme, that it was more and more obvious that they thought they were violating all the rules. That's part of what woke, to use that word, woke some people up to what was happening and fueled some of the opposition in and of itself.

• 26:03Speaker 03

  So you want to take on the JD Vance question and how he achieved separation?

• 26:07Speaker 04

  Yeah. I mean, short answer, no, he can't. But slightly longer answer, it was always destined to end badly for this relationship. You know, I, and we still, you know, we're probably only seeing the beginning of the, the end of this particular relationship. It could play out in very spectacular ways, by the way. You know, I don't remember that, you know, the screenwriters aren't done with us yet. This season has, has a ways to run. And

• 26:34Speaker 03

  Can he fire JD? Can he fire JD? Can he, can he?

• 26:37Speaker 04

  He's a constitutional officer and he cannot fire JD Vance.

• 26:40Speaker 05

  He's the only one he can't.

• 26:42Speaker 04

  I'm not going to spoil things for you. But if you haven't seen the new season of The Diplomat, you know, it invites you to contemplate what happens when a vice president and a president profoundly disagree about matters of war and peace. And so, one thing is that you cannot fire a constitutional officer. You cannot fire the vice president who was elected by the American people and, you know, confirmed by the Electoral College. I mean, you're the lawyer. But I think more importantly, like Donald Trump was never going to sit by, whether it was going to end in a policy dispute or, you know, whatever. He's not somebody who was going

• 27:26Speaker 04

  to like, go along with his sort of constitutionally obligated obsolescence, right? That he wasn't going to be like, oh, well, yes, I'm so grateful to have this opportunity to, you know, hand off my legacy to JD Vance. You know, he's never done anything like that in his life. So I always knew they were destined for a falling out. I'm trying to parse because it's still new, this long little mini manifesto Vance has posted on X this morning. By the way, echoed by Donald Trump Jr., which is fascinating, another opponent of the Iran war. So you're seeing one faction inside Trump world that's decided that for political or personal or

• 28:07Speaker 04

  both reasons, they're willing to go public with it. I just, I just think that it may well be that Vance had, is already beginning to understand that he's not electable. And that he can't be, no, I mean, I, there's already been reports even before the election.

• 28:25Speaker 03

  Is he that self-aware? I don't know that he's that self-aware.

• 28:27Speaker 04

  I don't think he's self-aware. Did you guys see the picture of him in his Halloween costume? He's not self-aware. Okay. I think we can say that.

• 28:33Speaker 05

  No, he is not.

• 28:34Speaker 04

  Fairly.

• 28:35Speaker 03

  Is he aware that he's married to an immigrant? Does he?

• 28:38Speaker 04

  Again, I'm going to go with no. I'm going to go with no.

• 28:43Speaker 06

  I mean, would you say that in one way or another, this idea that it's all about the war, although in an obvious way that most people would argue, the war is about Trump. It was his. But in, in people making this argument that that's the reason, is that going to be grabbed at as a way to suggest it wasn't Trump? Trump said, put me on the ballot. And people said, yes, you're on the ballot.

• 29:09Speaker 05

  But it's not my guy.

• 29:10Speaker 06

  Goodbye.

• 29:10Speaker 04

  I think you're clarifying. I appreciate you saying that, Joanne, because I think I wasn't clear enough. I believe that is why, one of the reasons why Sean Hannity would never be saying this unless they think it's oddly exculpatory of Trump on the other matters, even though he himself did it. But yes.

• 29:28Speaker 05

  So who's, so who's the scapegoat? Does this mean that Hegseth is out? Are they going to blame Rubio? Because if it's not

• 29:35Speaker 03

  Some people are definitely going to be out, right, Charlie? Some is going to be out in the next several weeks, right?

• 29:39Speaker 05

  Yeah, I mean, Hegseth is dead man walking one way or another, although I've used that phrase for him before erroneously. But, you know, he's going to be impeached, you know, pretty much right away if he's not, if he's not fired. But this dynamic, you know, does mean that Donald Trump has to decide. And by the way, what an awkward thing for this to happen, because I have to tell you that in my deep cynicism, I was thinking that, you know, if in fact, this election turned out very badly for the Republicans, Donald Trump, who always wants to change the subject, who always wants a distraction, that number one on his bingo card would be restarting the war with Iran, right? Go back, begin the bombing again. Bibi wants him to do it. And now with his own administration cracking up

• 30:23Speaker 05

  over the war, this is just one more dog that he can't wag this week. So interesting moment.

• 30:31Speaker 03

  One last question on just how we got here. Is the camel and the straw analogy or metaphor not correct here? Because when you talk about, you know, one could construct the argument that there were all these things going on and that the Iran war was the straw that broke the camel's back. Does anybody want to take the position that there was a straw and it was Iran or something else? Or was it something more fundamentally, you know, sort of divided among equal causes?

• 30:56Speaker 04

  I mean, my take is that Donald Trump was always going to have a bad election. That it's very likely if it wasn't the Iran war, it would have been something else. Because there are so damn many things. And I do think that, you know, it's a question of what is our, you know, sort of bandwidth and focus on it. You know, let's talk about the fact that he literally changed America's side in the world in the few weeks before the election and abandoned Ukraine and openly embraced Vladimir Putin and his, you know, regime of death and terror in Russia. He's about to, you know, we'll see if it still happens, by the way.

• 31:36Speaker 04

  He's about to hold a summit of himself with Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin a couple of weeks from now.

• 31:43Speaker 03

  As one does.

• 31:44Speaker 04

  At his own resort in Florida. He's hosting the world's leaders and making bank on it. I mean, you know, they're, my point here, Preet, I don't know the answer and it's a sort of fascinating, you know, historical hypothetical. His, his numbers were already going down. There were already so many historical reasons to suggest they were going to have a bad night. Maybe it wouldn't have been an epic, one for the history books, bad night. But I suspect that it quite possibly could have been, depending on, you know, sort of what occupied our brain space of the other many, many, many scandals.

• 32:22Speaker 03

  There's one more thing I just want to, just before we leave this, because I think it's, it's important and it's, it's depending on your perspective and how cynical you are about politics and how hopeful you are and maybe what age you're at, because I'm older than I used to be. Is it, is any of this a repudiation, not just of Trump, but of, you know, a despondent kind of negative hateful politics? I mean, you have James Talarico, as someone pointed out today, when he gave his speech either this morning or last night. What did it say on the lectern? It said, "Love thy neighbor."

• 32:53Speaker 05

  Which is amazing.

• 32:54Speaker 03

  "Love thy neighbor." He's talking about love. Is Bobby Kennedy back? What's, what's, is it, is it, are we tired of this destructive politics and we want hopeful politics again?

• 33:04Speaker 06

  I, I mean, I think where I was headed a moment ago was a part of, there are many things, as Susan was saying, there are many things that could have pushed people in this direction. But it was the caliber of it. It was the fact that it wasn't just racism. It was celebratory racism, right? It was, it was things that normally are bad, sort of blatant, and they were happy about these things. And so I don't know if Americans explicitly thought, "We need good again." But I think they were longing for it, right? They were longing for something.

• 33:39Speaker 03

  Can you say that again? Can you say it like that again?

• 33:41Speaker 06

  Yes. "We need good again." I cannot escape voices. I'm always doing voices. But I, I don't know if that was conscious. But I very much think, you know, I do a lot of live streaming at night, 10 o'clock at night, a few thoughts for those who can't sleep, since I can't, on my YouTube channel. And what I see in the, I don't know, 1,000, 2,000 people who show up, they were scared, but they also just wanted to not be feeling horrible about everything. They just wanted humanity, empathy, like the things that were explicitly being attacked by the folks on the right.

• 34:23Speaker 06

  So they may not have been saying, "I vote for love thy neighbor." But I think that will and that desire was very strong in a lot of people.

• 34:32Speaker 05

  Look, this is a really good question, because I, I would admit that I was, I was driving back from the airport yesterday afternoon, and I think I heard Ken Burns on, with Nicole Wallace, and he was taking this very, very optimistic, you know, high-flying view of the, you know, that the American people will rise to the occasion and we're this good and decent people. And I'm sitting there going, maybe that's bullshit, you know? I've become, I know I've become a little cynical.

• 35:00Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 35:01Speaker 05

  The column I wrote the day after the 2024 election was, "This is us. This is us. We are, you know, we, the people, we have just chosen Donald Trump." But then, last night, as I was lying in bed, listening to James Talarico's speech, where he is talking, you know, about moving on to a different kind of politics, I really did think, and I'm, I, you know, I don't chuff the hopium, but I was thinking, this is what America wants. This is the healing moment. You know, we need repair and restoration and it's starting for this. And it felt like, like water being poured on parched sand. And I was thinking, you know what? If this resonates, and it obviously did resonate in Texas of all places, then, then there is actual hope.

• 35:45Speaker 05

  By the way, can I offer a really strained analogy to answer your question about the camel?

• 35:49Speaker 03

  Those are my favorite kinds.

• 35:50Speaker 05

  Okay, this, this, this one, this one is a reach and you can edit it out if it doesn't work. Because you asked, was the war the, the straw that broke the camel's back? I would offer a slightly different analogy. And please correct me if I'm not pronouncing this word, because, you know, I'm thinking of the fasces, the mound bundle of wooden rods that the Romans used. Then, of course, the word went on to be, you know, turned into fascist. Okay, there's the analogy. That they just put too many rods in. He just kept putting too much. He kept building that thing bigger and bigger, and it just became too much. And people decided, you know what?

• 36:33Speaker 05

  This fascism thing is not really what we signed up for in the first place.

• 36:37Speaker 04

  I just, I'll throw my analogy on, on the table here, because I actually failed to put it in my column. But it, it speaks to this question that you asked, Preet, and I, I feel like this is the question, which is, how do we reconcile that it's the same damn country that, and same part of the country that voted for him not once, but many times, knowing full well, frankly, all that, that we've learned the last couple of years? I didn't learn very much new about Donald Trump. You know, so how do we reconcile those two things? And especially because understandably, given the scale of this, I'm hearing a lot of almost sort of Barack Obama 2008, you know, kind of ebullience.

• 37:18Speaker 04

  And, you know, we have to reckon with a, a history where the country that elected Obama elected Trump. So here's my analogy. I think that you're right, whether it's the straw that broke the camel's back or too many rods in, in, in the fascist, because it was the, the scale and brazenness of it, you know, that, that after all, so much of our institutions had failed this, after so much of red America had, had enabled this and celebrated this, that only, you know, so belatedly, they would discover the actual cost of it and maybe in an overly selfish way. But I think of it as like our constitutional system, you know, had all of these checks

• 38:01Speaker 04

  and constraints that proved not to be strong enough to stop a rogue president like Donald Trump, including the one remedy of impeachment, which failed. And so to me, this is like red America pulling the emergency brake on the, on the train. I'm not sure what else we had left at our disposal. And I'm really glad that the emergency brake worked, but I don't want to overstate what it took to get us there.

• 38:28Speaker 03

  Joanne, your metaphor, please.

• 38:30Speaker 06

  No, I do not have a metaphor at all, but I do have a founder reference, right? So one of the reasons why that early generation was nervous about democracy and the founding folk were not, generally speaking, excited about mass democracy in the streets. And the constitution, they assumed, was, you know, grounded on the people. Democracy made them nervous because it was enormously responsive. It, it, you could, anyone could rise up from among the people and woo them and grab power. And so along the lines of what Susan was just saying, how do we reconcile people who were voting for Trump and now people who just did what they did?

• 39:12Speaker 06

  Part of the answer, according to the founding folk, would be, see, look how responsive people are. They're just responding to the moment. And yeah, in a whole bunch of ways, all of us have been talking about the extreme nature of even, not even all of Trump, but just the last two years. And people responded. The instability of that made the founders nervous, but the instability of that is a strength that we just experience.

• 39:43Speaker 03

  I'll be right back with my guests, Joanne Freeman, Susan Glasser and Charlie Sykes after this.

• 39:52Speaker 02

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• 41:53Speaker 03

  Why isn't the answer to all of these questions something less inspiring and more mundane, which is just, there's a pendulum and it swings, right? And Susan, you invoked Obama and I was gonna, you know, I was gonna echo that, that, harkening back. Because when we're sitting here and I blithely asked a question about hope and we're gonna have new policies. Well, we had an explicit campaign of hope. It wasn't 100 years ago. You know, we didn't need Joanne to reach back to the 1800s on that one. That was within, you know, even my memory, which is slipping in recent years.

• 42:33Speaker 03

  And we went from, so when we say, how could it be that the country elected Trump and then did what it did yesterday? You could expand that question, say, how did the country elect Barack Obama twice and then do that? And not only that, because we keep talking about the country and Charlie used the plural first person pronoun, we, you know, I didn't elect that guy. You didn't like that guy. Nobody on this panel elected that guy, but some subset of Americans elected that guy. And that subset of people has now shrunken to probably, you know, a floor. And there are people who voted, I think there have been journalists who've gone out and traced it.

• 43:13Speaker 03

  There are people who voted for Obama, Obama, Trump, Biden, Trump, and then did what they did yesterday in Texas and in other places.

• 43:23Speaker 05

  Wisconsin counties.

• 43:24Speaker 03

  And to me, that's the more bizarre question. And maybe the answer is, you know, most of America is not, you know, part of the punditry like we four are, whether we like that label or not.

• 43:36Speaker 06

  They're responsive. They're responding to what they are getting and acting, you know, with their votes for or against it. And we've seen, you know, the hope was extreme, right? The message of hope was sort of off the charts. What we just saw was extreme in the way in which the rule of law was being violated and corruption. When it's extreme like that, you're going to have a strong response. So I do think in part, maybe you could say there's some pendulum swinging, but I also think, and as a historian, I shouldn't say this, right? As a historian, I should say, well, there are uniform patterns. I think there were things that were distinctive about this moment and this election and even

• 44:18Speaker 06

  broader than that, this, the nature of partisan politics at this moment, because it actually wasn't about parties at this moment. I think in many ways, this wasn't, certainly as a historian, this was not a moment when I thought to myself, well, the pendulum is gonna swing. I spoke so often about contingency and how we didn't know what the hell was going to be coming next, because it was such a weird moment when things were happening that we didn't predict. Or you were seeing things and thinking, I don't know if I've seen this before, speaking about what people were responding to. In some of the marches, I saw people holding signs that just said empathy.

• 44:59Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 45:00Speaker 06

  You know, that kind of floored me.

• 45:03Speaker 03

  Susan, you want to jump in there for a second? Or Charlie, either one?

• 45:06Speaker 05

  Well, I'm getting the sense, Preet, that you're, you know, putting the American people on cross examination and that what you're doing is like, okay, you know, you're saying this today, but aren't you the same guy who, and let me show you the paper.

• 45:18Speaker 03

  Yeah, a little bit, a little bit, a little bit.

• 45:21Speaker 05

  You are doing this, which I think is legitimate. I mean, I have a hard time getting in the heads of some of these people.

• 45:28Speaker 03

  I'm just trying to understand.

• 45:30Speaker 05

  I worry that, you know, we talk about pendulum politics, but there's also a ratchet effect that every time you become coarser, more vulgar, more authoritarian, it's not that the pendulum is going to be able to swing back, you know, to normality or decency. Then we've lost so much in the last 10 years and this process of repair and restoration is going to be so, so difficult. But yeah, it's a, the American people, let's put it this way, there are many, you know, aspects of American democracy, the rest of the world, particularly in Europe, is looking at it going, you are not serious people. The world can no longer rely on the United States. We cannot have the fate of the world depend on a few swing voters in Michigan and Wisconsin every single two years.

• 46:15Speaker 03

  Well, now they got Texas. By the way, the metaphor doesn't have to be the pendulum. It could be the thermostat, right? It gets a little, you know, it's fuzzy logic. It gets too hot, it gets cooled down, it gets too cool, we heat it up. I don't know if any of that works. Susan's shaking her head.

• 46:28Speaker 04

  Well, I mean, look, I guess, again, what I would say is, let's not discard entirely the bad luck of Trump in 2016. I think it was a low probability event. And the reason I mention that is because, you know, this, his hardcore of support, more or less, has existed, you know, for quite a long time and is a very similar block of people. And we had McCarthyism and we had the people who supported Nixon until the very end. And, you know, we have had basically, you know, let's say a quarter of the country, a

• 47:10Speaker 04

  minimum, you know, maybe a quarter to a third of the country, who probably always would have been likely and more than willing at least to, you know, support a demagogue, a right wing demagogue with Trump's particular views. The shocker was not that. It was that a minoritarian president essentially could come to office, not once, but twice, and to govern as though he had some vast, you know, two thirds of the country mandate, when that wasn't the case. And, you know, we had a good run of luck and this is, you know, like the first time that it happened, that Joe McCarthy actually was not just a senator, but he became president.

• 47:54Speaker 04

  So I throw that out there as one thing to think about in this moment. But then your questions, Preet, are excellent questions. The American people, you know, should sit down for a cross examination here. And I do think that in the euphoria of the moment, I wonder how much people will be, you know, willing to sweep away the, I'm not just talking about the accountability for the sort of criming, you know, of, you know, Jared Kushner and whatever, but I mean the accountability for, you know, the Mike DeWines of the world and the, you know, the garden variety, non-MAGA Republican senators. I mean, you know, my husband's been like, you know, mad at me for saying this, but I'm

• 48:38Speaker 04

  gonna bring it up one final time here because I think it's emblematic. You know, Mike DeWine really gets me. You know, I was a young reporter for Roll Call. I covered his first statewide campaign. He's not a MAGA guy. He's, you know, was not gonna let his election be stolen. And this guy not only endorsed Donald Trump after January 6th, look at what he did, not only in 2024, when Donald Trump and J.D. Vance were, I mean, honestly, blood libeling the law abiding Haitians of his own state. He didn't do a damn thing. Not only that, Preet, not only that, but he endorsed Vivek Ramaswamy in this campaign.

• 49:22Speaker 04

  Okay, fine, you know, he's just a partisan hack, whatever. But when Vivek Ramaswamy ran that horrible, awful, terrible

• 49:31Speaker 04

  Disgusting vile ad. Okay, Mike DeWine gets credit from all the like good sensible people like us who say, oh, well, at least there's a Republican willing to criticize the ad and isn't that good? And then he was asked, and do you withdraw your endorsement? Oh, no, no, why would I do that? Okay, so that guy needs accountability. He's gonna lie to his grandchildren 10 years from now and pretend that he was never on board with this. And he is the reason, in my view, that we have been cursed with this horrible situation for 10 years. And I blame him as much as I blame the crooks and thieves and liars who are directly around Donald Trump.

• 50:10Speaker 06

  I want to offer a historian-esque version of what Susan just said, which I totally agree with. There is, to be overly general about it, you know, a block of bad, not even a block, a blob of bad that does the sorts of things that we just saw. And yes, McCarthyism is another example of that. Jim Crow is another example of that, right? Throughout American history, that's existed. The question is, what shifts people who are sort of in the middle to actually act and do something? And what's in my mind about McCarthyism is that this didn't change things, but it resonated. Have you no decency?

• 50:52Speaker 06

  That was a moment when suddenly morality was brought out in a way that put a light, shined a light on the immorality and the ugliness in the same way that the Ramaswamy ad did as well.

• 51:05Speaker 03

  You know, the funny thing about that is, I've thought about that. And people like us, I speak for myself, kept hoping and thinking and expecting there would be a have you no decency sir moment with Donald Trump. And the fever would break. And which is why this question of what it was, is it a straw? Is it a rod? You know, what it is, is important as, so let me pivot, because it's a more important question going forward, right? Because if life is a cycle, and if it's a pendulum, or if it's a thermostat, or whatever, then you have to think about how you're going to conduct yourself in the immediate future

• 51:49Speaker 03

  and in the intermediate future and in the long term. Because if one of your goals is, and I hope it is, that we don't have this crap come back again, you have to know what forces brought it about in the first place. So let me now ask the his team panel, what's the next couple of years going to look like? And then beyond, but let's start with the next couple of years. You know, somebody's going to have a gavel, wrote, and by the way, I think this is a product of Trumpism and, you know, simple speak and tough talk. I don't think a member of Congress who's about to have a gavel would have used this phrase, lawyer up. Lawyer up, folks. Now, that's justifiable. I think a lot of investigations have to happen.

• 52:33Speaker 03

  Who has a view on how that's going to unfold and how people are going to react?

• 52:37Speaker 06

  I have a historical reference.

• 52:38Speaker 03

  Well, why don't we start with the historical reference?

• 52:41Speaker 06

  I've been thinking about this, I've been thinking about the 1850s all the time, as one does when one is a historian. In the 1840s and 1830s, you had the Southerners being more and more and more blatant in their pro-slavery intimidation of the rest of the country. And in the mid 1850s, people, Northerners essentially began saying, we've had enough. And there were people running for office who positioned themselves as different kinds of Northerners. They actually came to Congress saying, we will fight slave power. We're going to practice a different kind of politics. We're not going to reach across the aisle.

• 53:25Speaker 06

  We're not going to compromise. We're going to fight slave power. And the Republican Party came about in a very quick way because the public responded to a different kind of politics and they elected different kinds of leaders. So as far as in a broad way, some of what we're going to see, I think some of what we saw in that election is some Democrats practicing a different tenor of politics that the public was really responding to. I don't know if all of the Democrats, I think some Democrats wanted to dismiss it as scary, scary socialism. But I think some of what we're seeing is a necessary shift in how you practice politics in this moment.

• 54:06Speaker 06

  And because of that, I don't think Congress, the sort of deadly in and out of Congress is necessarily going to feel the same going forward.

• 54:14Speaker 04

  I guess I can offer a modestly dissenting view, unfortunately. You know, I was really hoping to keep my caveats for, you know, tomorrow, making that a tomorrow problem.

• 54:27Speaker 03

  It's never gonna happen.

• 54:30Speaker 04

  But I will say this, I believe that there is a certain, you know, structure dictates outcome in politics as well as in, you know, many institutions. And the structure of our politics is such that Congress doesn't really function anymore the way that it even had much more power in some respects in the 19th century than it certainly has in the modern imperial presidency. Just to take one example that, you know, and again, this predates Donald Trump, by the way, he's preyed off of the weakness of this institution, as with many other things.

• 55:10Speaker 04

  You know, my son, who's 21 years old, has never been alive when the US Congress managed to pass all of its annual appropriations bills, which is like the one core function that is specifically, you know, written into the Constitution for it. And the nature of the excessive out of control fundraising that is required to be a national politician right now, courtesy of our broken Supreme Court, which again, also, you know, has been accelerated by Trump, but predates him. You know, I can sort of list all the other reasons why, structurally speaking, you know,

• 55:54Speaker 04

  the tone and tenor of our politics may have shifted in some important way last night. But, you know, let's sit down with Barack Obama and talk to him about what one can meaningfully do to change how Washington actually works. And I think the story of Obama's presidency, this incredibly preternaturally gifted politician is the story of understanding the limits of even what appeared to be a transformative election. And that's the way he himself spoke about it. I recall even after he won reelection in 2012, really in a very different kind of election than, you know, the one we all remember, 2008, really in some ways, 2012 was, you know,

• 56:39Speaker 04

  a much more real story about Washington and the limits of hope in our politics. So again, I hope to put that off till tomorrow, but.

• 56:50Speaker 06

  I agree. I agree with what you're saying. Just two sentences and then I'll stop. I agree with what you're saying, and I'm not saying structure doesn't matter. But what I am saying is, in this moment where things are so abnormal, that is the question, which is in what ways will structure allow for change or not? And I don't know the answer to that question yet.

• 57:15Speaker 03

  Charlie, what does accountability look like and what will it look like?

• 57:18Speaker 05

  Well, just to, you know, mention that I'm obsessed with the 1850s, but I remember, of course, that that ended with the American Civil War. You know, so hopefully we'll come up with a different solution to all of that. So if Jamie Raskin called you up, Preet, and said, hey, we need some advice on how to conduct some really, really, really aggressive investigations, you'd pick up the phone, right? Because this is the number one job.

• 57:43Speaker 03

  Call me, Jamie.

• 57:44Speaker 05

  Jamie, call me. Okay, this is a hard job for Congress because, you know, as Republicans found out in the 1990s, you cannot actually govern from Congress. The president still has tremendous authority. So they're going to have to be effective as well as performative. But they're not going to be able to pass any other signature legislation. They're not going to be able to get anything through the president's veto. So their main, the main priority is going to be accountability, is going to be this oversight responsibility. And the question is, can you become consumed with that? Do you get distracted? Do you go down too many rabbit holes? Are they going to try to impeach Trump again? Can they be effective in going after the Elon Musks of the world?

• 58:29Speaker 05

  What happens? And by the way, this is where we're in uncharted territory. You know, people keep saying, well, now the Democrats, you know, have the gavel, so they have subpoena power. Well, what if Trump basically says, we're going to ignore all the subpoenas? What are you going to do about it? My Justice Department is not going to enforce any of those subpoenas. Is Congress going to be willing to be aggressive and assert its inherent power to arrest and jail people? What are they going to do? So how do, you know, to what degree do you play hardball with somebody who clearly, number one, feels that they are personally above the law and is essentially promising that he will pardon any of the, you know, the members of the wretched hive of villainies surrounded himself with?

• 59:13Speaker 05

  So I do think that this is going to be a real test for Congress, which has been, you know, so lacking in any kind of effectiveness or order. How is it going to deal with this administration? I hope they have a plan. I hope they're prepared to push it through. I hope they don't overplay their hand, but I also hope that they don't squander the power they have right now. So, I mean, this is, this is going to be a really interesting test because, you know, my caveat is, this was a huge election. But if, number one, but is this going to be basically a fart in the wind if they do not actually, you know, put a break on the Trump administration and check the administration?

• 59:53Speaker 05

  Number two, set the Democrats on a path to win the 2028 presidential election? None of this matters. If MAGA wins in 2028, this will be a mere footnote, one of those false springs. So Democrats have a real challenge, and it is not going to be easy, considering the institutional restraints, as Susan mentioned.

• 1:00:15Speaker 03

  I just want to say, Charlie, congratulations and thank you for using a metaphor that finally is on my level. Farting in the wind.

• 1:00:24Speaker 05

  Good, thank you.

• 1:00:25Speaker 03

  You recovered from the very obscure rods.

• 1:00:28Speaker 05

  Good, thank you.

• 1:00:29Speaker 03

  With a fart in the wind. Thank you, thank you, thank you, Charlie. Final question, Jon Ossoff, is he going to be the next Democratic nominee?

• 1:00:36Speaker 04

  Listen to his speech. I don't know what the future holds, but I, you know, I thought it was, it was a great speech. James Talarico gave a great speech, but Jon Ossoff said the thing.

• 1:00:50Speaker 04

  I think that we wanted to hear both about what the election meant and also he called it the first light of dawn in the morning.

• 1:00:57Speaker 03

  Channeling Reagan.

• 1:00:59Speaker 06

  He, ooh, but he also stood up and projected defiance in a way that Democrats don't typically do.

• 1:01:07Speaker 03

  So I see a consensus for Jon Ossoff, Charlie.

• 1:01:10Speaker 06

  That matters.

• 1:01:11Speaker 05

  He's definitely the breakout star of 2028. And it was very important, by the way, that the Democrat was elected as governor of Georgia. I don't think he would have been able to run if he would have had to give up his Senate seat. So now that you have Lance Bottoms in the governor's race, that makes it more likely. However, my one caveat is this, I've talked to reporters who say that the Ossoff we see in these staged events is not quite the Ossoff they see in private in the Senate. So, you know, will, you know, you know, we've had a lot of candidates who look sort of great until the big spotlight goes on them. So there is that caveat that there are some skeptics out there, but I have to say that there's been no one who is as impressive as Ossoff was.

• 1:01:51Speaker 05

  And let's not take it for granted that they have, the Democrats have now turned Georgia

• 1:01:58Speaker 03

  Into a blue state.

• 1:01:59Speaker 05

  Into a blue state, which is amazing.

• 1:02:02Speaker 03

  And Texas is now a purple state or what?

• 1:02:05Speaker 05

  Well, I mean, Texas, we got to spend the entire time talking about Texas. It's not just that, by the way, that Talarico won, it's that every Republican all up and down the ballot was just wiped out.

• 1:02:15Speaker 03

  And one of the chambers of the legislature too, no?

• 1:02:19Speaker 05

  Well, one of my favorite lines was Donald Trump, you know, failed to have a regime change in Tehran, but he succeeded in having a regime change in Texas. Love that line.

• 1:02:28Speaker 03

  Final words, anyone? Historian, take us out.

• 1:02:32Speaker 06

  Historian, take us out. I guess in this moment, you know, we just had a moment where we, as a nation, demonstrated that democracy still functions despite all of the ways in which the structures and nature of democracy was being undermined. And as everyone has said here, the question now is, going forward, what are Democrats going to do with the power that they have? And how are they going to realize, whatever they do, they can't go back to what they had? They're going to have to address where we're going to be going forward.

• 1:03:07Speaker 03

  Thank you all for your wise words, Susan Glasser, Joanne Freeman, Charlie Sykes. Hopefully we can reconvene on another happy occasion. Thank you so much.

• 1:03:18Speaker 03

  My conversation with Joanne Freeman, Susan Glasser, and Charlie Sykes continues for members of the Insider community.

• 1:03:24Speaker 05

  The dynamic of right wing politics is the harder they push back at Donald Trump, the stronger his support gets.

• 1:03:30Speaker 03

  For a limited time, get 30% off our annual Substack membership at staytuned.substack.com. You'll get access to full episodes of the Insider podcast I co-host with Joyce Vance and more. Again, that's staytuned.substack.com for 30% off.

• 1:03:50Speaker 03

  Well, that's it for this episode of Stay Tuned. Thanks again to my guests, Joanne Freeman, Susan Glasser, and Charlie Sykes.

• 1:04:02Speaker 03

  If you like what we do, rate and review the show on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen. Every positive review helps new listeners find the show. Send me your questions about news, politics, and justice. You can reach me on Twitter or Blue Sky at Preet Bharara with the hashtag #AskPreet. You can also call and leave me a message at 833-997-7338. That's 833-99-PREET. Or you can send an email to [email protected]. Stay Tuned is now on Substack. Head to staytuned.substack.com to watch live streams, get updates about new podcast episodes, and more. That's staytuned.substack.com.

• 1:04:44Speaker 03

  Stay Tuned is presented by Cafe and the Vox Media Podcast Network. The executive producer is Tamara Sepper. The supervising producer is Jake Kaplan. The lead editorial producer is Gloria Teal. The editorial producer is Claudia Hernandez. The audio and video producer is Nat Weiner. The senior audio producer is Matthew Billy, and the marketing manager is Leanna Greenway. Our music is by Andrew Dost. I'm your host, Preet Bharara. As always, stay tuned.

• 1:05:26Speaker 06

  Thanks for listening to this special episode of Stay Tuned with Preet. We'll be back with a new episode of High Stakes tomorrow and a new episode of On with Kara Swisher on Monday.

• 1:05:42Speaker 02

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