Kicking and Screaming: WSJ’s Kim Strassel on the Media vs. Trump

a native of Oregon and a graduate of Princeton Kimberly's rustle of The Wall Street Journal writes the weekly column Potomac watch she is also the author of a number of books including most recently resistance at all costs how trump haters are breaking America Kim thanks for joining us hi Peter and welcome everyone to this special shelter at home edition of uncommon knowledge I'm at home in Palo Alto you're at home where I am currently at home in my home in Alaska I actually split my time between DC and Alaska but the kids are here and we decided if we were going to shelter in place it would be nicer up north so April still plenty of snow on the ground snow on the ground it was about 11 degrees last night but we're getting lots of daylight already so it's getting light before 6:00 and not getting dark until after 9:00 any bears coming out of hibernation I guess I'm running through all my Alaska cliches in my mind here okay next up is moose the moose are all out in force we have it it's still a little bit early but it's pretty soon they'll be out all right all right so we take me I'm in California you're in Washington and we take both our minds and put them in Washington two quotations the first is you in the Wall Street Journal on April 2nd so just a few days ago as we as we record this quote crises have a way of separating the leader like from the opportunistic the Trump administration spent this week distributing ventilators standing up small business loans dispatching hospital ships erecting alternate care facilities explaining virus modeling revamping regulations to keep truckers on the road and plastering the airwaves with information about hygiene and social distance in close quote that's quotation one here's quotation - this is Pete Waner in the Atlantic magazine on March 13 to quote Trump is fundamentally unfit for office for me Pete Waner writing that is the paramount consideration for electing a president because at some point a president will face an unexpected crisis the crisis has arrived in the form of the corona virus pandemic and it's hard to name a president who has been as overwhelmed by a crisis as the corona virus has overwhelmed Donald Trump Kim to just totally different views of reality here yeah so look first of all this is an unprecedented crisis as we have all talked about ceaselessly and it's hard for me to know that there would be any leader any person or any administration that would have been prepared for it or known exactly what to do so from my perspective I think the question is when you look at Donald Trump and by the way we all have different views of his leadership style but if you look at the actions and what has actually taken place the question is is a federal government providing some sort of guidance and is it providing the support it needs to the states and I think that as a general answer to that that has happened all right let me do this again to another pair of quotations same idea actually here's David Frum in the Atlantic April 7th just a couple days ago that the pandemic occurred is not Trump's fault the utter unpreparedness of the United States for a pandemic is Trump's fault and David went on at about 2,000 words length and the whole article was titled this is Trump's fault here's Holman Jenkins in the Wall Street Journal again April 7th same day same day there will be much to criticize about the Trump administration's response just as we can never forgive FDR's baiting of Japan with embargoes Kennedy's actions in the Bay of Pigs or Johnson's in the Tonkin Gulf mr. Trump is the worst president we've ever had just like some of the best presidents we've ever had so there's so here's that this distinction between Trump is singularly unsuited for office he is singularly at fault as opposed to Holman Jenkins who says wait a minute this is human affairs we all mess up over if the store of American history is the story of getting it wrong at first then pulling ourselves together and finally getting it right so where you're in the Holman camp on this one correct all right but I think that that's in part because look I'd be open to somebody making the argument that Donald Trump is singularly unsuited for this moment the problem is is that most of the people that are making that case including David Frum who you just quoted or including Pete Waner have been making the case that Donald Trump is singularly unsuited for office from before the time he was even elected so it becomes kind of difficult to separate out the uniqueness of their argument in this case versus their general view that the man should never have been elected at all that just I mean and that's that's I think and I've made this case many times that for the kind of Trump haters out there after a while your repetition begins to weaken your argument now holmen's point I think is very good are we making mistakes on a daily daily occurrence in the middle of this oh you bet you we are and one day there's gonna be a post-mortem that is gonna be really ugly but I would argue that that post mortem is going to be one that looks at a lot of mistakes that were made by a lot of administrations on the road to coronavirus you know whether it was prior administrations it didn't adequately restock her stockpiles whether it's health agencies that over 30 years have claimed to be preparing for pandemics and yet seem to have no plan when this came out sure this is gonna require complete retooling of the way we look at these things but to say that it's all incumbent upon one person is just ridiculous back to the coronavirus back to the substance of what we're dealing with right now is one more frankly one more Trump question we've got I quoted David Frum and Pete Waner of course as you know I could have quoted any number of dozens and dozens of people but David Frum and Pete Waner both worked in the administration of George W Bush three and a half years ago before Donald Trump three or four years ago before he declared his candidacy for president you and I would have thought of David Fromm and Pete Waner as broad speaking to put a crudely on our side limited government free markets Republican candidates overall tend to be better for that than Democratic candidates and now we have it reminds me again and again of the OJ Simpson trial where we had the jury and those of us watching on television looking at exactly the same set of facts and coming to utterly opposed conclusions what accounts for this I mean this but this has been happening again since a minute he wrote a whole book I wrote a whole hook on it and you know I make these examples it is astonishing to me and this is my favorite one that you continue to hear people say today that Donald Trump is some sort of autocrat or tyrant or a dictator in the making because I'm sorry when you stop back and you look at what his administration has actually done on a day-to-day basis and we forget the president's press moments forget the things he puts on Twitter look at what's happened at the cabinet level at the agency level one of the biggest deregulations in the history of the country if not the biggest a giant tax cut okay you can't become an autocrat by cutting the size of your government by a third okay I mean everything that they have done is designed to take power away from the federal government to devolve it out to the states to make things more free in the country but that's an example of what you're saying and so now we're getting it here in the context of the virus which is you know Donald Trump is suitably you know uniquely inept or uniquely unqualified for this moment I mean I guess a question I would have for a lot of these people is what exactly would they be doing differently at this moment and I think that guess it's a big questions about shutdown no shutdown but again is that on Donald Trump or on this kind of mass of so-called experts and health community which is all over the map itself on what the way is supposed to be forward all right the big takeaway here's Kim Strauss all on March 19th this is just great because I get I get to I get to ask you what you meant about this or that of course I read your column all the time now I get to talk to you about it that's bad though Pierre it means I wasn't clear enough the first time no I just asked you to elaborate here I'm quoting you here's the lesson of the virus so far relying solely on government bureaucracy is insane to the extent America is weathering this moment it is in norton enormous part thanks to the strength and Genuity and flexibility of our thriving competitive capitalist players close quote explain that well look to me whatever you criticism you want a level of the Trump administration the single most important thing they did at the very beginning was a philosophical decision which is that they were not going to attempt to deal with this on their own they were going to embrace the private sector and move forward in a public-private partnership in dealing with this brilliant because that is exactly the way forward in this country and it always has been federal government when do we ever expect the federal government to turn on a dime and handle a major project I mean you cannot reconcile that idea in your head with for instance the DMB okay which is what most of us think of in terms of government so you turn to act as you can and what's unique about this partnership is that you have players out there wanting to do stuff and then the government's role is to get out of their way right and so it was a CDC that completely messed up that original testing regimen it was we go into that a little bit because that that gets laid at Trump's that Trump gets blamed for that again and again and again that's still going on but just explain what actually happened with yeah so what happened is the CDC the the the World Health Organization had its own way of going forward with testing but lots of different countries over the time have always had different regimens testing regimens the CDC has traditionally and in this case it did it again decided it wanted to come up with its own testing regimen because it wanted to exert some quality control over that the problem was is that when all the scientists went and did it they must it didn't work and it delayed us for a couple of weeks they then turned to the private sector which got you know luckily we had some incredible actors out there who've been working on this already themselves and they were able to stand up an effective testing regimen in a little less than a week thank you private sector but you see that replicated whether it's on the ventilator front whether it's on personal protection equipment whether it's on the vaccines that are getting pushed forward I mean we have an amazing resource the United States and just one last thing on this it is astonishing to me even as we are watching this and also all of these corporations paying employees even though they've got no money coming in you know giving them leave like we hear these stories of small businesses bending over backwards to make sure they're not laying people off at the same time we have Bernie Sanders giving a farewell or drop out of the race speech this week in which he was unrelentingly horrid to the corporate community and suggested everything wrong in the United States is laid at its feet amazing Kim so big takeaway private sector is saving us amazing let's discuss a couple of threats to the private sector that the current crisis may be posing and one is in one way or another if it happens it'll happen in a subtle way it'll happen press conference by press conference probably a shift from decision-making by the democratically elected office holders to the unelected public health officials and so there have been moments when people have said in conversations I've overheard the Acting President of the United States is doctor pouchy Donald Trump's instincts were clearly against shutting down the economy but the experts talked him into it well actually by the way let's start with that with the threshold question are you satisfied that the public health experts did a serious and rigorous job of weighing the costs of shutting down the economy and throwing we now know today's figure is six point six million Americans out of work and all that all the pathologies that go with unemployment that they did a serious and adequate job of weighing those costs against the benefits of the lives they believed we could save by shutting down the economy did they do that right of course they didn't but you know what in fairness it's not their job to do that right I mean look public health officials exist to worry about public health and we have them and they're meant to be one part of a broader government in which the president is soliciting and getting the views of a whole range of different experts and that clearly didn't happen here and you know I blame a little bit the media I blame Democrats who immediately came out of the box with his mantra you need to listen to the scientists you need to listen to the scientists okay we do need to listen to the scientists but we also need to listen to the economists who are talking about what the balance of all of this will be in and and what they similar devastation by the way to health will be of people who are homeless who can't feed their kids who are having mental health issues because of all of this or the people right now I would give this all the people who aren't going in and getting mammograms or colonoscopies and we were potentially missing other cancers a few that are being delayed right none of this is necessarily good overall for health so yes we're making a dent on one type of fatality out there but at what cost every other way that's my one concern I think the other concern but I really have about this is when let's say you take the advice listen to the experts why these particular experts you know and I'm not again in any way diminishing doctor foul here dr. Burks or or any of the people that are working this accomplished people full of goodwill will stipulate that yeah but they it also happens for you they just happen to be there at this time it doesn't necessarily mean they are the most qualified people or there aren't other experts out there that are similarly like have a lot to supply here and maybe a different view and so I think the president's obligation really needs to be just step back and listen to everyone and then make the decisions so in questions of national security and I'm thinking this through a fumble because I'm the the thought is occurring to me if as I speak in questions of national security it's the job of the National Security Council to hold debates right and and if necessary to get the Secretary of Defense and the Secretary of State in the Situation Room to thrash it out in front of the president no such debates have been held among public health officials in the current crisis that's my fear right I mean you know we have guys right out there and you're John Ian's etus I think under his name the right way you know an amazing sort of look at the numbers sort of person and he's got a very different view of all of this I haven't really seen anything either by the way that suggests that that he isn't onto something or that his view isn't as valid as those that are being voiced in the White House so in my perfect world in the coming weeks we begin to have that debate within the White House the president would be soliciting the views of experts across the country and not just from the infectious disease area but from a wide range of health and public health disciplines because they would all have very different here's another threat to the private sector to the kind of vigorous private action that you champion from the current crisis now quoting William Galston in the Wall Street Journal I do is read The Wall Street Journal antic so here's Galston writing a couple of days ago quote no Senate Republican not one voted against the 2.2 trillion trillion dollar rescue bill an unprecedented expansion of government's cost and reach close quote and I recall the brief press conference that Majority Leader McConnell gave after they voted to move that 2.2 trillion package to the President's desk and Majority Leader McConnell was crowing that the Senate had gone from the bitterness of impeachment to the common cause of this rescuing the economy and of course you can get every senator to vote for giving away billions of other people's money this feels too good to those guys they're going to want to do it again is that not a danger it's a huge danger I mean as I pointed out in the in the aftermath of that vote you had all of these senators running around saying oh look a hundred billion dollars for hospitals and look we're sending this much money to individuals at home and breaking out all of these little categories what nobody was pointing out was a single biggest category in that bill six hundred billion if I recall from your column more than six hundred billion dollars went to government itself and by the way that's not even counting the money that also went to state governments as well too that's just the federal government's payday so you know they walked away with the biggest slice of this pie and you know that was partly Democrats demanding saying you know we knew where the money needed to go here look anybody did where did we need we were having a beginning of a liquidity crisis we needed money to get to corporations and to small businesses to thereby encourage them to keep their employees on the payroll and the spare us from having more people go to government for help that's a simple simple concept but Democrats the price of this was you know you got to give us money for the food stamps turbo-charged unemployment insurance you should see the money that just flew to every department in government and it was very funny we're not NASA God not now all under this sort of vague term like for the purpose of preparing and dealing with coronavirus NASA gets sixty million dollars you're like sixty million dollars but you're like why for what cause so in the end Democrats demanded it but Republicans willingly rolled over for it because they like big government too many of them and nobody wanted to seem to be the spoil sport at this spending sorry alright um the politics of it all this is it's may seem crass to say so in the middle of what still feels like a crisis but it is the fact that we have an election in seven months yes years William Galston again president Trump had planned to organize his campaign around two themes a strong economy and a critique of the Democratic Party for allegedly embracing socialism that gives away Galston allegedly anyway for allegedly creating socialism in today's radically transformed circumstances neither of those themes is likely to work the economy's in a recession and Republicans themselves just voted for this gigantic budget busting bill where did the politics of this shape out yeah well if you look at those two themes I think they're gonna obviously have to be modulated although I think that there is there are corollaries to them that you are likely to see the Trump administration adopt look with any luck we are going to come out of the other side of this at some point and the economy is going to start back up again everyone's having a debate are we going to have a u-shaped curve on the way back up a v-shaped curve the bigger point is is that we're going to have a chance to rebuild I think what you're going to see the Trump administration start to do is shift to arguing that you need a sort of conservative Trump like person in office to maintain that that we're at a risky time period Democrats have just demonstrated their own view of governance which is to just throw more money at it and bash on the private sector we especially right now cannot afford to have that happen we will not come out of this for a long time if they are elected to the presidency in November that's going to be one of their arguments compelling well I think it's gonna partly depend on look I mean it's just simply the case that the way people feel about their pocketbooks plays a great deal into an election so how bad is this how much is the response that we put out they're gonna stem the losses how quick is the recovery we just don't have the answers to that yet hmm the journalists the question of journalism I'll come back to the journalists and coronavirus in a moment but first here's something that nobody it just it just disappeared the story disappeared and you know where I'm going with a subsequent to the investigation of the FBI's requests to the FISA Court connected to the Russia matter the Department of Justice's Inspector General inspected more than two dozen other FBI wiretap applications the I G's office went in and essentially at random pulled together 29 that had nothing to do with a Russia matter just to see how the FBI was submitting these things and the IG s conclusion there were quote apparent errors or inadequately supported facts close quote in every single one and as they say the IG the Inspector General of the Department of Justice issued that report in late March as you and I speak this is 1012 days ago it got this biggest story in a few newspapers and it's gone what do you make of that well I would like to point out we at the editorial page The Wall Street Journal did a big editorial on it because always in all ways except the op-ed page go ahead no but because this is a huge deal right a hundred percent failure rate okay and it's important because it puts the lie to guys like Comey hoops for the past years have said oh you know what you can't bash on the FBI it's nothing but a bunch of people we are straight up you know these applications are the most serious things we do all the time you know when the results in December came out of the I geez Russia report he said well I guess we were a little sloppy well now we find out that apparently the FBI is general attitude is that they don't need to follow any of the rules and that we've got nobody watching the shop you know and if the IG randomly chose 29 applications and every one of them was violating what are known as the woods files procedures which are meant to be the central mechanism by which you keep the FBI on the straight and narrow and make sure these applications are what are known what that's supposed to be scrupulously accurate they don't care and then the other aspect of that idea reporters they also found out that the internal mechanisms that the FBI and Department of Justice are spent supposed to maintain to guarantee this are a joke nobody looks at the results of the reports that they do nobody goes back to the individuals who filed the applications and said hey you made errors what's up with this there's no consequences for anybody no accountability and and the media doesn't want to talk about this because it reminds them of the Russia story which was a humiliating experience for both them and the Democratic Party do they feel humiliated well they should they should feel humiliated because they got it a hundred percent wrong they put the country through torture for three years on the basis of their own hatred of a candidate not on the basis of any facts so a quick little summary the media got the Russia matter entirely wrong all these months later not a shred of evidence has turned up that now justice Cavanaugh was justly accused by Christine Blasi Ford not a shred of evidence of which I'm aware that that was anything other than a fabrication from beginning to end and what else and now we have the IG report making unambiguous that the FBI has been sloppy in one of its most solemn duties correct correct and the press has no interest in any of that well I think it's really wise though that you bring it up because it reminds us Peter I mean look the press does this all the time we are in the middle of the corona virus you know everything all day long 24 hours seven days a week but it that's going to fade and people are going to remember that there are other issues that do matter in in the running of a country and in elections and remember we still have the Durham report to come out at some point - that has not disappeared and and I keep reminding people as well that my belief my understanding is that he is very conscious of not wanting to go too far into an active election period with his results he wants to get that out so I'd wager that's still gonna come out sooner rather than later this spring summer at the latest I think so I would I would I would imagine he'd like to have it done before the conventions because that's is often viewed as an official starting gun for an election so there's a huge story coming of cacao on the corona virus itself journalism even on the corona virus I was thinking this over here can I just give you a couple of questions just questions off the top of my head so dr. Fowler has been saying that this thing is more lethal than the flu and it turns out as best I understand and I've talked to some physician friends here at Stanford he cannot know that he cannot know that the lethality rate is a ratio it's the number of people who died if I did buy something and you can't know that it's more lethal than the flu until you have much more widespread testing of people who are infected so there he is saying something that he can't know in front of a room full of reporters and no reporters respectful I mean I've lived I have to confess I have other things to do I haven't listened to every minute of those White House briefings but you know I dip in from time to time as you do and the tenor is aggressive toward the president aggressive toward pence and fawning toward dr. Algie and the public health professionals even when there's an effete question seems to me obvious respectful pertinent and unasked or this question of there's a new book out by a couple of Princeton economists you're a Princeton woman the deccan husband-and-wife team and they've done a study I haven't read the book but I read the review in The New Yorker and they asked what is the cause of these deaths of despair and it's not related to age and it's not related to race and it's not related to region it's a result of unemployment where people are unemployed they abuse alcohol they abuse drugs you get domestic violence and you get suicide well if serious economists such as those that Princeton are studying this matter and running studies and quantifying it why aren't we getting some modelling about the the likely health effects of throwing 7 million Americans out of work that at least parallels the modeling we're getting every hour it seems on the coronavirus now that's again that strikes me as pertinent respectful obvious and unasked what is going on with American journalism ya know every day I watch those and it's so frustrating to me because I wish I were there to get to raise my questions to ask of these people here's another one that I think falls into that same category but and you have probably noticed this as well but everyone seems to have a different term up there and and I mean above among the scientists about what it is exactly the endgame is here what are we trying to accomplish you know is it to slow the spread because that's very different from stopping the spread ok are we attempting to eliminate this all together and then trace any new little case of it and go out and extinguish that because if that's the case we're gonna be locked down for a very very long time and we won't have an economy at the end of it or if we're gonna slow the spread slow the curve lower the curve flatten whatever you want to call it let's be honest that if you were taking that approach a lot more people are still gonna get this just over a longer period of time in which case why aren't we opening up some of these lockers I mean I just think that there are some really fundamental questions that the scientific crew up there does not get asked so so ok I guess there's no surprise that Peter Robinson and chemist Rasul are in violent agreement but but there is the larger question is these guys have shut down the American he can't I don't know what stories you're hearing in Alaska but here I live in an older house we had some trouble with the kitchen and I had a plumber in the other day and it turns out that kitchen sinks are considered essential but he had three guys show up for work the same day it was a gas line that needed to be repaired and some bureaucrat in City Hall had decided to yank the permit because after all that was non-essential so three guys went home that day without getting paid this is happening over and over and over again a vast scale they have done something grave and shutting down the economy and they still can't explain to us quite what they think they're doing it for and I don't understand why journalists aren't on their feet asking ouchy to clear this up what what is what what is the failure of American journalism well would it doesn't seem as though bill Safire or Scotty Reston of the old days in the New York Times would have pushed these guys for answers well they would have asked the tough questions but they would have asked the tough questions of those who are actually driving this show which is what you're saying about the kind of public health officials who are standing up there on the stage look I mean this is one of the jokes of journalism these days is that they pretend to be tough by being mean to Donald Trump as if there is any effort involved in that whatsoever and and is doing so they kind of hide beneath this this lack of willingness or lack of bravery to ask some really hard questions also because they don't want anything the other promise they don't want anything to impede any narrative that looks as though it's bad for Donald Trump or that allows them to beat on Donald Trump so that's what happened with the Russia thing right I mean look it wouldn't have been very hard to unravel or even to just poke holes in the ludicrousness of the ideas that they were promoting right but it was so much more important to them that it be true in some way that they were willing to spend two and a half years making things up and that's what's weird at today too and unfortunately when you don't have a functioning press when you don't have a press it does its job it is bad for the country and so you know people love to pile on the press I feel find it more of a tragedy than I do anything else it's because it hurts all of us in the end hmm a few last questions Kim you're not only working at home but you've got three kids to keep an eye on at home so I won't thank you for your time how does this end we've even in New York which as it seems to be the hardest hit we the the the peak either has or has already taken place or appears to be taking place quite soon and a matter of days not weeks who gets to go back to work and when and who's going to decide all this that actually strikes me as a pretty complicated sequencing problem who gets to go first how do we sort this out right well also who do we convince to go first I think that that's an even bigger problem and it's why you know in some ways they're crazy mr. president I volunteer right now well but what I mean is from look we live in a federalist system and you know what everyone keeps asking that the president when he's going to open the economy it's not up to Donald Trump to open the economy okay every one of these governors and mayor's have made their own decisions and will continue to make their own decisions that being said I do think the federal government is going to play a crucial role in this regard it's gonna have to push people by putting out very clear guidance about what it suggests being done because it's gonna take a little bit of a prod to get some of these governors to agree to move you know there's look we're talking about politics in the end here okay I'm not in any way suggesting these officials don't care about the people in their state and their economies but right now it's safer to be in lockdown than not okay so from a political perspective right if you're a governor of a state do you really want to be the first one that says okay hey y'all go back to work and good luck and hope that works so you know especially when you have a federal government that again has not been clear to people about what the endgame is here you know if we're in a situation where we go back and it is expected that this is still gonna run through society people are still gonna be going to the hospital we're still gonna have outbreaks they need to start telling everybody that now and let people get their heads around it you know if the if we're gonna be in la-la land and pretend that the real goal here is to stamp this out people aren't gonna want to go back to work right right right the president tweeted I guess it was earlier this week that he expects the economy to rebound very quickly maybe even bounce back to a higher growth rate than we were enjoying earlier we were led a little over 2% when the crisis hit we've been at 3% a year before that I guess had six months before that I spoke last week though - Kevin wash former former member of the Fed - former Fed governor and Kevin said wrong wrong wrong I think it'll take longer than most believe again I don't think the economy can be turned on as quickly as it was turned off I think that's in general a great benefit of the American capitalist system people are thinking of this economy like a light switch we can turn it off and then we can switch it back on it's a living organism it has been very very badly wounded right and it will take time to heal so I said Kevin what do you mean weeks months and Kevin said quarters what do you think no I think that there's that's right I mean just like remember - well we talked about people going back to work reopening the economy you're talking about a million different sectors of economy some of which will be able to get back to work maybe relatively quickly maybe in some areas of manufacturing for instance there are gonna nonetheless be entire sectors of the economy and by the way not little ones either big ones Airlines you know you can't expect to have a healthy airline that depends on half of its income or more or from overseas travel which no one's going to be allowing anytime soon okay and then you you you reflect that from sector sector the hotel industry the cruise industry you know B and B's you know I just saw something the other day about some of the Airbnb you know and different kind of these groups that allow you to book in other people's homes who's gonna be using those so this is gonna be a slow rolling reopening and it you know it could be quite some time before where anything anywhere near back to normal and the politics of that are that's why I'm saying we have seven months seven months I spoke not I spoke earlier this morning to Senator Portman Rob Portman of Ohio Democrats likely who knows he said who knows but Democrats likely to keep the house because Republicans face so many more difficult seats in the Senate than do Democrats the Democrats need to flip four seats in the Senate and recapture the White House and the day after election day we will wake up in a different country seven months from now can you get that economy revving again ken yeah I think it's it's almost impossible just at this very moment to look forward and know how any of this is gonna play out politically it's it's very very difficult you know look but I will add one other factor in here that I think is notable because you mentioned it earlier about what the White House's original plan was going to be to talk about the economy and talk about socialists well I would point out that while Bernie Sanders did give a kind of concession speech this week and kind of dropped out he didn't really that was sort of fake news he says he's going to remain on the ballot on all continuing primary states and continue to collect as many delegates as he can and the purpose of this because we already have newspapers reporting it is that he is in negotiations creations with the Biden's camp about what aspects of his agenda Biden has to adopt before Bernie will allow his people to support by this isn't over at all this isn't over and he says he'll go to the convention so this is all about extracting pounds of policy flesh from Joe Biden and they've already put out their list of demands he needs to support Medicare for all he needs to support the green New Deal he needs to support a 50% reduction in prison populations he needs to support free college tuition a complete forgiveness of all student loan debt and it's well it's unlikely to see Biden doing all about he's gonna end up doing some of it and that is very dangerous for Joe Biden if you're trying to get independents disaffected Trump voters suburban housewives you know this is a point at which he's supposed to be pivoting back to the middle and Bernie made clear this week that his intention is to make sure there's no pivot and in fact that Joe Biden becomes just as unelectable as he was by the way did you see the Babylon be headline Sanders withdraws from race because goals of doubling federal spending and destroying capitalism already accomplished no I didn't I shouldn't laugh laugh or cry so I have I've got a closing question which I'm lovely closing question but I can't close just yet do you I don't know how to articulate this one but Donald Trump even people who like him can't stand him up to this point a lot of people the position of many people has been oh my goodness do we nevertheless on policy he's okay he's better than the alternatives the policy is okay and as long as we don't have to look at him it'll be all right is there some sense maybe in which for the first time the fate of the ordinary American is linked to that guy as we go through this there's some something this happens to some presidents but not all to some of course always to wartime presidents but you begin to feel I don't like him I don't but he's my guy he's the country's guy we need him to succeed is that sort of is there some sense in which there's a kind of deepening of support or beginning of some kind of attachment to him as a result of this crisis or am I just talking romantic not unquantifiable romantic nonsense no I mean look I think the phenomenon you described is one that you would expect to be seeing in a crowd in a crisis right I think that as with so many ID issues it comes down to Donald Trump and it's fundamentally gonna be up to Donald Trump in that regard as well to look I look for instance just my own view I look at these briefings and when I think they first started I thought they were a good idea it made the president look engaged and they had things you know as they have gone on and become a little bit more the Donald Trump show you know and and the drama of the fights with the reporters that's not what people want to be seeing right now okay you know they want him to get up there deliver the news send the message that they've got a handle on what's going on and then let the rest of the team talk and get on with it so I'm not quite sure he can help himself and you know the thing about Donald Trump is I don't everyone says it's about his ego and everything I think it's more Donald Trump you know he I think he thinks he's you know fully engaged in doing the right thing and being there for the American people and that sometimes a dividing line between what Trump wants for Trump and what Trump is trying to do for everyone else is is is very murky okay now we pull back from Donald Trump in the current crisis let's look let's expand our thinking raised our thinking from weeks and quarters even two years here's Kim Strauss on The Wall Street Journal on March 19th the nation's response to the crisis has been made possible quote by free-market policies that have under written three years of economic boom and put companies on a better footing to confront hard times if the US is to overcome this crisis and future ones we need more of these animal spirits not less that's the takeaway of this pandemic more animal spirits not less are you optimistic well look here's something that I hope our side as you were saying embraces we're talking right now about the threat of bigger government given all of the spending we're talking right now about the threat to the economy and our politics should certain you know socialist candidates win in November but what I see here is also an opportunity for people to realize the problems of government okay I mean no one we need to make sure no one forgets that the reason we're shutdown is because government shut us down all right and we need to take a look around I have been fascinated how many times over the last three weeks have we had a story about this or that agency dismantling a regulation so that something could proceed more quickly I think this is an opportunity for us to ask why they were there in the first place and are they really serving any purpose you know maybe we could come out of this with a healthier view of government and its problems and maybe even a smaller more streamlined one if we if we do things the right way Kym's Drossel don't stay in alaska too long Kimberly Strasse love The Wall Street Journal thank you thank you for uncommon knowledge the Hoover Institution and Fox Nation I'm Peter Robinson [Music] you

Channel: Hoover Institution

Views: 1,491,647

Rating: 4.6533136 out of 5

Keywords: President Trump, COVID-19, coronavirus, media

Id: JZzjKLuAU6w

Length: 46min 6sec (2766 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 14 2020