Greg Sargent: This is The Daily Blast from The New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR network. I’m your host, Greg Sargent.
Today, we’re talking about this with Mona Charen of The Bulwark, who has a new piece arguing that the Democratic Party is already failing to function as a serious loyal opposition to Trump, something that includes going soft on Musk himself. Mona also has a new podcast coming out called The Mona Charen Show. Hey, thanks for coming on.
Sargent: Steve Bannon gave this interview to an Italian newspaper in which he said, “I will have Elon Musk run out of here by Inauguration Day. He will not have a pass to the White House ... He is a truly evil guy, a very bad guy.” Bannon even says it’s his personal vendetta to take this guy down. Before we get into the guts of this dispute, what do you think of this, Mona?
Sargent: Just to clarify for listeners, that is something else that Bannon said in this interview. He decried the white South Africans, [saying] they’re real racists. Why are we letting the worst racists in human history, or something like that, dictate policy in the United States? Let’s talk a little bit about the real root of the feud between Musk and Bannon. Musk wants more high-skilled visas for tech workers, and Bannon, along with Stephen Miller, oppose this. They see big tech as part of a globalist plot to replace American workers, etc.
Charen: Sure. Well ... Maybe you’re giving them a little too much credit, Greg. The great replacement theory is not exactly something that deserves respect, but you’re right that it is something that motivates a lot of MAGA supporters. They do believe that there is a plot to supplant the current population with immigrants, and they’re opposed to basically all immigration. Not just unskilled, but all immigration.
Look, the MAGA movement is an emotional impulse. It doesn’t have intellectual coherence. And for people who are opposed to it, now is an opportunity to look at those fissures and exploit them, absolutely, to highlight the fact that these are internal conflicts on their side. By all means, Democrats should be denouncing Musk. One of the things that Bannon points out—again, I can’t believe that he’s the one who’s doing this, and the Democrats have been so quiet about it—is in addition to all of his other sins, Musk is incredibly closely entwined with China. And Bannon is pointing that out. He says he never criticize the CCP, absolutely true. And here’s another fissure. The fact is that people imagine that Trump is going to be this really tough-on-China guy, and he’s going to bring these jobs back and punish the Chinese. Well, if his co-president is somebody who is entwined with the Chinese economy and whose money depends upon it as it does in Musk’s case, that’s another fissure that should be exploited.
Charen: Absolutely. And again, I do think that the Democratic Party ... Look, I spent most of my career as a Republican before it became MAGA. There are a lot of areas where Democrats need to rethink. I think they need to be more tough on crime. I think they need to leave the wokeness behind, be less beholden to what everybody calls the groups, who are advocates for particular constituencies who have outsized influence on Democratic politics. So I’m for all that, and I think that would be great and healthy, but let’s not take our eyes off the ball at the same time.
Sargent: Absolutely. You make a related point in your piece that I want to get at. In fact, Musk is increasingly allied with rising global authoritarian and fascist movements, despite Bannon painting him as some turncoat when it comes to authoritarianism and MAGA fascism or whatever. And even though Musk is allied with all these fascist movements abroad, Democrats haven’t called him out for it in any significant way. Why not put pressure on Trump to repudiate Musk’s endorsement of far-right leaders in Europe, for instance?
In any event, that is where Democrats need to find their voice and just say, This is repelling, it’s un-American. We fought the Nazis, thank you very much. That’s not our team. And further, wherever there are governments in Europe that are Putin-friendly, the Democrats should be highlighting the ties between those governments and MAGA people, specifically Viktor Orbán. It’s a target-rich environment.
Charen: For one thing, the urge to take it lightly and laugh is very understandable. I’ve done it myself [with] the idea of we’re going to annex Canada ... This is candidate who ran on no foreign wars. The minute he gets elected, he starts saber-rattling not against our enemies, mind you, and we have plenty of those, but against our friends, against our allies. He’s threatening Panama, Canada, Denmark, which owns Greenland. The theory is that we have too many friends in the world and we need to make enemies out of them.
Sargent: Right. To get at your point in your piece, there’s really an opening to peel off that chunk of voters who just said to themselves, OK, well, Trump is crazy and all, and he tried to overthrow the government by force, but never mind. We need a strong man, at least to the degree that he’ll control prices and control the border. There’s an opening here to grab at those voters who don’t really share in the MAGA authoritarian worldview and probably didn’t know what they were signing up for.
Yes, the Democrats lost the Senate, but they reduced their margin in the House. The Republicans lost seats in the House. It was very, very narrow. And a lot of Americans were ... If you believe the exit polls, I think they’re mostly right, it was just an anti-incumbent reaction. They were saying, I don’t like that the prices are so high, and I am distressed about interest rates, so throw the bums out. It’s very important that Democrats not overread the results of 2024. Bear in mind there are a lot of voters who were voting on pocketbook issues like inflation, and they’re going to be up for grabs the next time. Start thinking about that.
Charen: Well, they are in danger of overreading this election as well, and going too far. Most victors do overread. In 2020, Joe Biden, who also won a very narrow victory, decided that he was the second coming of FDR. And that’s a common mistake. But in the case of Trump, it is more than he has these plans for domestic policy that are unappealing. He has a view of the world that is truly scary because he believes in spheres of influence, that Putin should be allowed to do what he wants in his sphere of influence and we should be allowed to do what we want in our sphere of influence, and we should behave like the neighborhood bully.
Sargent: And Democrats aren’t traumatizing those stakes to the degree that they should be.
Sargent: A hundred percent agree. Mona Charen, thanks so much for the very cheery thoughts this morning.
Sargent: You’ve been listening to The Daily Blast with me, your host, Greg Sargent. The Daily Blast is a New Republic podcast and is produced by Riley Fessler and the DSR Network.
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