NPR’s Steve Inskeep asks Jonah Goldberg, editor-in-chief of The Dispatch, about whether President Trump’s political controversies are interfering with his legislative agenda.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Jonah Goldberg joins us next. He is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and a regular guest here. Jonah, good morning.
JONAH GOLDBERG: Hey. It’s great to be here.
INSKEEP: What is the president doing that’s giving him extra trouble in Congress?
GOLDBERG: Well, I mean, first of all, he’s being Trump. And we are in the, I don’t know – what is this? – the tenth year of the Trump era.
INSKEEP: It depends on when you start. From the escalator, maybe 11.
GOLDBERG: Yeah.
INSKEEP: But go on, go on.
GOLDBERG: And so I think the act, in some ways, is getting old. But I think the broader picture is that what Trump has been doing, which is bedeviling a lot of Republicans, who, again, are just getting a little tired with all this, is he’s personalizing the GOP’s best issues. So that the valence of those issues – I don’t know, you can call it patriotism with the 250th anniversary, immigration, national security, the economy. Trump is making them all about him, making it very difficult for Republicans to talk about those things without having to defend a very unpopular president. And that’s bedeviling a lot of these guys.
Also, just as a practical matter, nine Senate Republicans – that’s almost, what, just shy of 20% of the Republican caucus? – are not returning. And so those are a lot of people who’ve got nothing to lose by trying to reclaim some of their integrity and some of their independence and get a little vengeance for some of the things that Trump has done, like ousting John Cornyn and – what’s his name? – Kennedy in Louisiana.
INSKEEP: Yeah.
GOLDBERG: Popular members of the Senate caucus. So he’s buying a lot of enemies and liberating a lot of those enemies to do what they want to do to get payback. And it’s…
INSKEEP: Cassidy, I guess we should note, in Louisiana.
GOLDBERG: Cassidy, yeah. Right.
INSKEEP: And, of course, when we said nine are not returning, these are people who either are retiring, often under pressure from the president and his supporters, or who’ve lost primaries, often after an endorsement of Trump of their opponents. All of that said, Jonah, many Republicans still avoid saying much about the president. You heard that quote from Tom Cotton essentially declining to talk about Bill Pulte, the national – the intelligence director who doesn’t seem to have qualifications. Is their political reality ultimately the same – if you’re a Republican, you’ve got to be with Trump?
GOLDBERG: Once you get past primary deadlines, a lot of people get a little more spine. It’s like stem cell therapy. Once you get past the primary deadline, you can regrow some tissue. But it’s absolutely true, Trump has always cared more about being the indisputable, unopposed, total ruler of a smaller GOP than merely one player among many in a bigger GOP. Better to rule in hell than serve in heaven. And that’s always been his attitude. And he’s been remarkably successful at it. So, look, I mean, I wouldn’t go around praising the courage of a lot of Senate Republicans or House Republicans these days. But there’s been markedly less cowardice, and that’s progress.
INSKEEP: I want to ask about a couple of the issues you raised that you said Trump personalized. A simple one which we’ve discussed this week on the program is the Fourth of July, the 250th anniversary of the country, which is becoming much more of a Trump rally. In fact, the president has explicitly said, I’ll replace this concert with a Trump rally. We could go on about that. But you mentioned another one, immigration, which is Trump’s signature issue.
You’re right that it has been a very good issue for Republicans and it’s getting less popular now. I want to ask about an interesting development, which has been apparent for quite some time but has gotten headlines recently. And that is that the president is not only targeting people without legal status who committed crimes, and not only targeting people without legal status, but even canceling legal status and targeting people in the United States legally. Why do you think the president is doing that?
GOLDBERG: I am a harsh and severe critic of the if-only-the-czar-knew defenses of Donald Trump. So I’m perfectly happy to place the responsibility at his feet for this. But I also suspect that this is driven, the energy behind it is driven, by people like Stephen Miller and others within the administration who realize the clock is running out on their ability to do the mass deportation that they want to do. If they lose the House, they’re going to be distracted by investigations. If they lose the Senate, you could even see a successful impeachment.
And so I think that this is them seeing the sand going out of the hourglass and trying to create – the strategy has always been to make immigration so – the fight against immigration so ugly, so chaotic, so unpleasant that it discourages people from moving here in the first place and it discourages a lot of people from staying here. And that’s sort of been the feature of it. The ugliness was the point for Miller and a lot of these guys, and I think they’re doubling down on it.
INSKEEP: Jonah Goldberg, always a pleasure talking with you. Thank you.
GOLDBERG: Great to be here.
INSKEEP: He is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch.
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