transcript

Speaker 1:
[00:00] Today's show is brought to you by Vanguard, to all the financial advisors out there whose job is to help your clients keep more of what they earn. Vanguard is here to help you with that. Vanguard is slashing fees again, this time for more than 50 of its funds. That's on top of big fee cuts they gave last year to investors in 87 of their funds. In an increasingly high priced world, Vanguard is staying true to excellence without expense. Not only do your clients keep more of what they invest, they get sophisticated, active and indexed bond funds at industry leading low costs. And a fixed income team obsessed with consistent outperformance. Low fees give Vanguard skilled bond managers more freedom to maneuver as they pursue outperformance. And low fees help you deliver greater value as an advisor. Top performance shouldn't come at a higher cost. Go see the record for yourself at vanguard.com/impact. All investing is subject to risk. Vanguard Marketing Corporation distributor.

Speaker 2:
[01:05] Support comes from the Venda Museum in Culver City with Anton Roland Laub Mobile Churches in Ceaușescu's Bucharest, April 25th. This exhibition examines cultural erasure and survival through Laub's photos and archival material. More at vendamuseum.org.

Speaker 3:
[01:21] Hello, Jonathan Friedland here, host of The Guardian's Politics Weekly America podcast. Each week, I invite experts to help analyze the biggest headlines in American politics. Whether it's the latest scandal from the White House or the next election you need to know everything about, we'll bring you up to date on all things Washington and beyond. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 4:
[01:51] Welcome to Left, Right & Center. I'm McKay Coppins, in for David Greene. There's an arms race going on across the country to win control of Congress, and battle lines have been drawn and then redrawn. The main weapon of choice is gerrymandering. Democrats won the latest fight on Tuesday in Virginia by passing a referendum for new maps that could flip as many as four seats away from Republicans. The state's Democratic Governor, Abigail Spanberger, celebrated saying the aggressive measure was necessary to counter Republican-led gerrymandering in other states. Here she is on MSNOW.

Speaker 5:
[02:27] Virginians understood that it all began when President Trump said that he was entitled to additional congressional seats and when Republican legislature after Republican legislature obliged him.

Speaker 4:
[02:38] But President Trump called the vote rigged in a truth social post and Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson lashed out at the move too.

Speaker 1:
[02:46] It's a hyper partisan gerrymandering boondoggle.

Speaker 4:
[02:50] Virginia is one of eight states where redistricting fights are taking place. Some to favor Democrats, others to favor Republicans. We'll talk about this strategy, whether it's fair and how it factors into the already tight midterms. Let's bring in our Left, Right and Center panel. We have on the left Liz Bruenig back with us. She's a staff writer at The Atlantic and Sarah Isgur, senior editor at The Dispatch. Sarah is an ABC News legal analyst, host of the Advisory Opinions Podcast and author of Last Branch Standing. She was also spokesperson at the Department of Justice during President Trump's first term. Hello.

Speaker 6:
[03:28] Hello. Thanks for having me.

Speaker 4:
[03:29] Sarah, I want to start with you. I live in Virginia, as do you. I'll admit that I was pretty torn about how to vote on this latest referendum. On the one hand, I think gerrymandering is bad, regardless of which party is doing it. I don't think it's particularly fair for a state as closely as divided as Virginia, which Kamala Harris won in 2024 with less than 52% of the vote, I think, to have a congressional delegation with 10 Democrats and one Republican, which is what it looks like it's going to happen. On the other hand, Republicans did start this fight, this cycle, and given how Trump has wielded his executive power, I think there's a pretty dire need for a Congress that will provide some oversight. So I'm curious, Sarah, what is your initial reaction to this vote and kind of the Democrats' case for what they did here?

Speaker 7:
[04:24] So I'm not real keen on the like, you know, they did it so we're going to do it worse arguments. Like, I don't accept that from my children, so I'm not going to accept it from a political party. I get why people like it. I do. But the idea that like, we need fair maps and the only way to get fair maps is to draw unfair maps to counter their unfair maps. It's childish. And it also, I think, highlights how nationalized our politics has become, right? They're not arguing that these are fair maps for Virginia. They're arguing you need unfair maps for Virginia because of a national map drawing problem. And it means our Congress people don't really represent their constituents with local problems. God forbid we're even talking about legislation, we're not. We're simply talking about which team, red or blue, is going to nationally control the House of Representatives. The great irony being like, what exactly are they going to do with this power? Again, none of us believe they're going to legislate with it. So again, I guess it comes down to this like, well, it's all just about red team win, blue team win. If they do it, we do it back, but harder because that's what makes it fair because we're the good guys. I mean, this is the argument for Republicans wanting to get rid of the filibuster right now. Well, Democrats will get rid of the filibuster as soon as they get power, so we should get rid of the filibuster first, not because we want to, but to preempt them doing it. If we follow all of this logic to its conclusion, we don't really have a functioning government anymore, so I'm against it. That being said, from a real politics standpoint, I'm not saying I don't get it. Yep, Texas started it, which we really mean Trump started it because Texas actually said no to Trump several times. Trump pressured Texas into doing it. They did it. Then California answered. Now Virginia has answered. I'm not blaming Democrats for starting this by any means, but it's a little hard to be the party that says, we're the adults, we're not like Donald Trump, but we have to do exactly what Donald Trump's doing in order to beat Donald Trump. At what point are you just the same?

Speaker 4:
[06:36] Liz, what do you think?

Speaker 6:
[06:38] A lot of that sounded very right to me. I think these efforts to redistrict are in some sense part of this doom loop that Sarah was mentioning of retaliation between the two parties. But I also think that the GOP in a lot of ways is losing the public right now, because of the war in Iran, because of grocery prices. I think there's some real anxiety among Republicans, even in red states, about whether or not they're going to be able to secure power for their party on the state level and as Sarah was saying federally. I think these laws are among other things, and this has been said many times about redistricting, but they are efforts on some level to break up the collective power of people of color. They break up these black communities, Latino communities into five different sections where the people who are part of these communities now represent a minority in their districts. That really challenges the degree to which they're able to assert their votes, their power. I think this is dangerous. I think the fact that there's no end in sight, as Sarah says, is really damaging to our democracy.

Speaker 4:
[07:50] Yeah, I mean, I hate the precedent it sets, and I totally agree with both of you that it's a self-perpetuating thing, right? When one party does it and then the other party responds, you ask the question, well, where does it end? Does every single state with a supermajority in their state legislature or control by one party or the other just end up radically gerrymandering the entire state? That's not good, obviously, and I think we all agree on that. In Virginia's case, I will say it's temporary. It'll expire in 2030. But Sarah, to your point, you said Republicans did start this, Trump really started it. But on top of states like Virginia trying to counteract that, Texas' primaries show that those new districts it created might not even be safely read, right? And I think in the wake of what Virginia has done, you've actually seen some Republicans and conservatives start to speak out against this strategy. And say, look, this is backfiring, we never should have started this. Is there a real scenario where in the end, Republicans ended up kind of killing themselves with what they thought was like ruthless hardball tactics?

Speaker 7:
[09:02] I've been saying this from day one, and I don't know why no one seems to understand math in political operative world right now. So here's how math works. In order to squeeze out five more seats in Texas or five more seats in Virginia, you actually have to make your party's seats more competitive. So if you have a wave election of anything over, let's call it three to four points, sort of across the country, the sea level will rise above the closer districts that you have built. So we are expecting a blue wave this time, which means that any districts that Republicans made that are slightly more competitive in order to make those districts means that they will get swamped by the rising water of a Democratic wave and vice versa. If we experienced, you know, if a Democrat won the presidency in 2028, and then the 2030 midterms, we would expect a red wave. And it means that the Virginia seats will get swamped. And in fact, Republicans will win more of those seats. So it is sort of ironic that maybe the parties did exactly what I wanted them to, which is to make more competitive seats that will make it harder for their incumbents to win. But there is something so perfectly Donald Trump's second administration about crowing how you're gonna destroy your enemies. There's nothing they can possibly do to respond. And in the end, you lose more seats than you started with. Well done, everyone. You really nailed it.

Speaker 4:
[10:38] You know, Florida lawmakers are calling a special session next week to redraw their own district lines to favor Republicans. Democratic Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries issued a warning about this. Let's listen to that.

Speaker 8:
[10:50] Our message to Florida Republicans is F around and find out. If they go down the road of a dissentish dummymander, the Florida Republicans are gonna find themselves in the same situation as Texas Republicans.

Speaker 4:
[11:04] You know, what he means is that this is gonna backfire for Florida just like it did in Texas. Liz, are Democrats able to say this and kind of try to maintain the moral high ground on the gerrymandering debate while also doing what they're doing in Virginia and California and other states? I mean, is there, are there any first principles here or are we just in a full on kind of war for power?

Speaker 6:
[11:29] I think that it's closer to a full on war for power. And I think that because everyone involved in this situation believes or at least purports to believe that they're doing what they're doing in self-defense, that they're the one who is actually oppressed and being violated by the other party. And so they're doing what they have to do to defend themselves against those efforts. Both sides believe this.

Speaker 7:
[11:54] Can I just sorority snap this idea? I mean, Liz is just so right about this. Here's my sorority snaps. There. Yeah, I don't know if you can hear them. Thank you so much. But this idea of perpetual victimhood on both sides, that we're the victims and they're winning all the time, is a really weird thing in our politics right now.

Speaker 6:
[12:11] Absolutely. And I think that people like to characterize what they're doing as self-defense when they're trying to really get away with something. Because the things that you can do in self-defense, there's a much more permissible range of actions you can do in self-defense than you can justify doing offensively. So I think this sort of loop of I'm doing this to defend myself, I'm doing this to defend myself, is leading to some really bad places. And like you say, I mean, it makes it very hard to occupy that moral high ground.

Speaker 4:
[12:44] So in an ideal world, district maps would be drawn to reflect the communities and not to advantage one party or the other. Sarah, is there a good role model state or role model process for how districts should be drawn fairly?

Speaker 7:
[13:02] Oh, there was. It was the state of Virginia. So Virginia several years ago actually moved to a commission that would draw their districts and they would be compact. They would try to represent actual communities. They wouldn't be drawn on a partisan basis. Other states have done this as well. I will tell you, it feels a little like rank choice voting. It's like this idea of a silver bullet to fix our politics that when actually put into practice is maybe morally better but not actually fixing the problem. Here we see it, the second that one side wants to rearm, the commission goes away. Maybe what was the point of the commission in the first place if it doesn't actually have the power and legitimacy to sustain itself through any partisan challenge. Unfortunately, again, we've seen with rank choice voting or these other commissions, the voters are the problem, not the process. It turns out, voting is actually a fine process. The primaries are a fine process if you're willing to show up and actually vote in them. The problem is us. The call is coming from inside the house. We do not hold these representatives accountable to actually do legislation because we don't want someone who compromises or someone who sees nuance in the situation. We instead keep voting for the person who says the craziest stuff on their Instagram story and are like, yeah, that felt good. And you're right, the other side is evil. And that's what creates the victimhood that Liz is talking about, which I really think just explains so much of our politics. No matter how much one side actually is doing quite well, they think they're losing. They think the other side is trying to destroy their way of life. And as long as you believe that as a voter, you won't vote rationally because it's an existential threat. You may disagree with the party on their exact proposal on immigration. But if the other side is going to take away your home, your church, and your children, you're not going to vote on that piece of legislation. You're going to think those people are evil and vote against them rather than really voting for your own team. So gerrymandering is but one symptom of this idea of existential threats. And it's not that I like my team, but I'm so... I've been trained to be so scared of the other team, I must punish them and defeat them.

Speaker 4:
[15:24] Before we finish here, I'm curious to hear from both of you on this. Where do you see the state of play in November? Like how much will redistricting actually be a factor in which party ultimately controls Congress?

Speaker 7:
[15:38] Oh, Democrats will control Congress. We're not really in a question over who's going to win that in November barring some massive geopolitical change that Black Swan event. The question is how many seats Democrats will control because part of the other issue is we've had these very close races every single midterm and general election now for more than a decade. If Democrats can actually get a large majority in the House, that would be a shift in the political moment.

Speaker 4:
[16:11] That's my sense too and Liz, it brings me back to this thing that you said earlier about all the existing political laws of gravity would suggest that Democrats are going to win this cycle. The war in Iran, the economy, affordability issues, the Republicans are not doing well politically. Trump is not doing well politically and I wonder if Democrats are going to regret adopting these hardball tactics when they probably would have gotten control of the House one way or the other.

Speaker 6:
[16:44] Yeah, I think that's a real possibility and I think it's a live possibility because these redistricting efforts are, like Sarah said, probably going to not really be necessary for a democratic wave here. But what they will do is create grounds for, for example, Trump to complain that these are rigged, that these were redistricted unfairly, to steal seats from republicans, and that they're illegitimate results.

Speaker 4:
[17:10] Here at Left, Right and Center, we're all about engaging with each other across the aisle and across the kitchen table. Have something to say about the week's topic? Well, now you can join Left, Right and Center's community conversation on Substack. Sign up for a weekly inbox reminder to hone up on the show and get to debating. Join in on the latest discussion at kcrwlrc.substack.com. Again, that's kcrwlrc.substack.com. I'll be back with Liz Bruenig and Sarah Isgur to talk about Iran and Vice President Vance's performance on the world stage. You're listening to Left, Right and Center.

Speaker 1:
[17:52] Starting something new isn't just hard, it is unsettling in a way that creeps in right before you hit publish. I remember those moments clearly, sitting there thinking, is this really the right move? What if no one listens? What if this just doesn't work? When I was launching new podcasts and even stepping into new business ideas, I didn't have it all mapped out. Most of the time, I was just figuring it out as I went, carrying that quiet doubt alongside the excitement. But here's the thing, pushing through that uncertainty, choosing to take the leap anyway, that ended up being one of the best decisions I have made. Because on the other side of that fear is momentum, growth, and the chance to build something real. It also helps when you have a partner like Shopify on your side. Get the word out like you have a marketing team behind you. Easily create email and social media campaigns wherever your customers are scrolling or strolling. Best yet, Shopify is your commerce expert with world-class expertise in everything from managing inventory to international shipping to processing returns and beyond. What if people haven't heard about my brand? Well Shopify helps you find your customers with easy-to-run email and social media campaigns. And what if I get stuck? Shopify is always around to share advice with their award-winning 24-7 customer service. It's time to turn those what-ifs into with Shopify today. Sign up for your $1 per month trial today at shopify.com/lrc. Go to shopify.com/lrc. That's shopify.com/lrc. You know, this time of year always makes me rethink what is in my closet. I'm trying to keep fewer things, but better ones. Pieces that are well made and easy to wear all the time. That's why I keep coming back to Quince. The fabrics feel elevated. The fits are thoughtful and the pricing actually makes sense. Quince makes high quality everyday essentials using premium materials like 100% European linen and their insanely soft flow knit active wear fabric. Their men's linen pants and shirts are lightweight, breathable and comfortable. Basically the perfect layer for springtime. The pants, which I have been wearing, strike this balance between laid back and refined. So you look put together without trying too hard. I wear them out to restaurants or just taking a long walk on the beach. And their flow knit active wear, it's moisture wicking, it's anti odor and soft enough that you'll actually want to wear it all day long. The best part here is that their prices are 50 to 60% less than similar brands. How? Well, Quince works directly with ethical factories and cuts out the middlemen. So, you're paying for quality, not brand markup. Everything is designed to last and make getting dressed easy. I have been loving their t-shirts. I have a button up sweater polo, also golf pants, which are what I've been wearing, just taking walks or going to restaurants. And they've really become my go to. They're breathable, they're comfortable, and they truly look way more polished than I ever expected. So, you can refresh your wardrobe as well with Quince. Go to quince.com/lrc for free shipping and 365-day returns. Now available in Canada as well. Go to quince.com/lrc for free shipping and 365-day returns. quince.com/lrc.

Speaker 4:
[21:30] Back again with Left, Right and Center. I'm McKay Coppins and for David Greene, we're joined by Liz Bruenig. She's a staff writer at The Atlantic and Sarah Isger, lawyer, editor at The Dispatch, and former spokesperson at the DOJ under President Trump. Let's turn to the Iran War, which started eight weeks ago. It's a war that President Trump first vowed would last for only four or five weeks. In his efforts to bring it to an end, we've gotten a pretty clear look at his negotiating style on the world stage, as well as at Vice President JD. Vance's role in it. I want to take a step back and analyze how these two men have managed this war and what effect it's having on America's global standing. Before the war, Trump was very critical of the 2015 Iran deal that President Obama brokered. He bragged that he could get a much better deal. As things stand now, that's looking less and less likely. What has Trump gotten right? And what has he gotten wrong in his approach to Iran? Sarah, start us off.

Speaker 7:
[22:36] Oh, gosh, this feels unfair. Okay. What has he gotten right? Iran is a bad actor that has been funding terrorism and aiming to kill Americans for my entire lifetime. Every president has dealt with this as an intractable problem and tried to make incremental moves one way or the other. Incremental moves are all well and good until Iran gets a nuclear weapon, and then you're in really big trouble. I think if you ask the smartest people in the room today, what they'll say, which is not very comforting, is we missed our opportunity in the early 80s when the regime was young, and now we're not quite sure what the right move would even look like today. So Donald Trump recognized the problem. That's a good thing. This isn't my personality, but he did something about the problem, and sometimes doing something is better than just doing nothing and letting the problem continue to sort of fester and build towards an inevitable, totally intractable problem, like Iran actually has a nuclear weapon. I want to give some credit to that idea, at least. On the other hand, of course, Donald Trump is very bad at understanding the concept that other people don't think like he does. This is something we talk about in American foreign policy all the time. The mirror problem, the idea that your enemy has the same priorities and rationalizations and reality that you do, that's not always true, and it's certainly not true in Iran. That's been part of the problem with the Iran problem this whole time. Donald Trump is really bad at understanding how the other people on the chessboard will move. I mean, this is the gerrymandering problem we've just been talking about, right? They thought if they gerrymander Texas, what, the enemy doesn't get a vote? That's really Defense 101 stuff there. I think that is the heart of the issue. They just lacked the imagination for what Iran would do, which is why every other president hadn't actually done this. It's not like the idea of attacking Iran hadn't come up in every single meeting with every single administration this whole time. It's just no one else could figure out the second and third order moves once Iran did their thing. Donald Trump didn't think of it or didn't care.

Speaker 4:
[25:06] Yeah, you really get this sense with Trump that after the operation in Venezuela, where they were able to go in there and arrest Maduro and get him out, and it was this brilliant operation, it was so efficient, he got this idea that he could go around the world and solve every problem just as efficiently. As it turns out, toppling an entrenched regime in Iran is a lot more complicated than arresting a single guy in Venezuela, right? Liz, I'm curious what you think. Has anything surprised you about how things have played out so far? Is there anything that the Trump administration is doing that you think could lead somewhere good or are you just kind of universally opposed to this whole thing?

Speaker 6:
[25:49] To be honest with you, I think the whole thing is damned and misbegotten, and I think it's doomed. I'm not sure that it will actually result in conditions that are more favorable to the United States or more favorable to Israel, which is a big part of what's driving this war. I think that it has led to real tangible drawbacks for Americans already. It's taking money out of people's pockets at the gas pump, and you can say that the United States shouldn't be so reliant on that kind of energy. But for the moment, we are. And so even if this kind of leads to hastening of efforts to move towards more renewable energy sources, that still seems like it's going to be quite traumatic if we have to rapidly adapt to that reality, even if it might be a good adaptation. And I think that Sarah is quite right and that Trump doesn't, he's not really capable of predicting how other people will react to what he does. And I think he's surrounded by people like Stephen Miller, who are telling him, look, we have the best military in the world. We have the mightiest fighting force there is. We can do anything we want. There's only power. But in reality, other people have power too. And there are some types of power that you can't just militarily overwhelm without huge expense. And so they're having this sort of intractable problem with the Strait of Hormuz right now, which like Sarah was saying, I think anybody could have predicted except Trump. And I don't see that bottleneck in this process as easing up anytime soon, because Iran doesn't really have any incentives to let it go.

Speaker 4:
[27:34] Let me press you on one point you just made. You said you think that this will not end well for Israel, which obviously an ally of the US that has been pressuring America to do this for a while. Why do you think that is? You could make the argument that if nothing else, the US military has dramatically diminished Iran's military capabilities that makes Israel safer. What's the counter to that?

Speaker 6:
[28:01] I think the counter to that is it introduces massive regional instability. The situation in Gaza had already stirred up a lot of anti-Israel animus in the region that I think has always been there maybe in more or less latent ways. But it's at a fever pitch right now. And I think Israel, like you said, pressuring the United States into this war in Iran has been understood by people in the region as Israel instigating this conflict. And so even if the United States manages to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, take our ball and go home, Israel is still situated in that region where they're going to be dealing with extreme levels of anger and isolation. I can see that requiring even more military support from the United States, which mires us in more ongoing endless conflict. And the nuclear threat to Israel might be fairly reduced. But that doesn't mean that they're actually safer. They're safer from one kind of violence. But there are many other types of violence that people in that area are still capable of.

Speaker 4:
[29:10] You're listening to Left, Right and Center from KCRW. We're talking with Sarah Isgur and Liz Bruenig. You know, during the ceasefire negotiations with Iran, Vice President Vance has been a key representative for the White House. He's also someone who reportedly opposed this war in the first place. But he's come up short so far in his assignment to end it. Here he is speaking to reporters on April 11th after the first round of peace talks.

Speaker 9:
[29:36] We've had a number of substantive discussions with the Iranians. That's the good news. The bad news is that we have not reached an agreement. And I think that's bad news for Iran much more than it's bad news for the United States of America.

Speaker 4:
[29:48] Sarah, there's a certain diplomatic logic to the kind of good cop bad cop routine that Trump and Vance seem to be trying to pull off here, right? Trump is out there embracing the madman theory. He's making incendiary threats on social media, while Vance, whose skepticism of the war has been widely documented in the press, is sent to find a peace deal. Do you think there's a chance that this strategy could work?

Speaker 7:
[30:13] Sure. Yeah, I mean, look, Donald Trump has been more successful in the foreign policy realm than I think a lot of his critics are willing to give him credit for. I don't think he's been as successful as his supporters want to believe either. But like most things in politics, it has not been all good or all bad. Sometimes his madman strategy really has made a positive difference in shaking up some otherwise stagnant problems. To go back to what I was saying before about how sometimes action is better than inaction, it's a little bit like poker. If you just keep putting in only the anti, eventually you drain your pot and you sort of die with a whimper instead of a bang. Sometimes you got to go all in. What I think hasn't worked here is that they haven't really gone all in either. We are depleting munitions that are very important to America's general deterrence regime and that take a really long time to build. At the same time, we haven't gone all in. To Liz's point, the regime has been deteriorated, maybe substantially so, a little hard to say. Maybe we have put them off from developing a nuclear weapon by some real amount of time, but we have not prevented it. And to me, the going all in version of this is actual regime collapse, which has not happened and does not look like the administration will now even push for that anymore. We don't hear that they will fully prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon anymore. All we hear about is a delay in the timeline, but we were told that six months ago with Midnight Hammer. So this is the problem with not telling us what the war was about and what our actual metrics of success are. That when we sue for peace, we don't know what our metrics of success are because we don't know what this was all about.

Speaker 4:
[32:10] Liz, I think you could make the case that this is a moment when Trump could really use a foreign policy heavyweight as his number two. You look at the last several decades, Obama had Joe Biden, George W. Bush had Dick Cheney, Reagan had George HW. Bush. Whatever you thought of these men and their policies, these were people who knew world leaders by name, who had spent decades dealing with national security and foreign policy issues. JD. Vance had been in the Senate for like 18 months when he joined Trump's ticket. He has virtually no experience on the world stage. Do you think that his inexperience is being exposed here? I mean, sending him into this setting where he is basically tasked with coming up with a deal that will end the war, return stability to the Middle East, and let America leave this whole situation with at least an ostensible win. It's a pretty tall order for somebody who has such little experience.

Speaker 6:
[33:08] It absolutely is. And I've been wondering to myself why he has put Vance in this position. And another thing that he's done recently that seems to have really weakened Vance, and like you said, exposed him to a great deal of criticism that is pretty deleterious for his career was attacking the Pope at a time when JD. Vance is planning to release his running for president book on his conversion. And, you know, interestingly enough, I did hear Anthony Scaramucci. I've not heard that name in a long time, but I did see.

Speaker 7:
[33:41] This war has been several Scaramucci's now, far more Scaramucci's than we were initially told.

Speaker 6:
[33:49] And he had an interesting argument, I thought, which is that Trump doesn't really want a successor. Trump is in it for Trump. He wants his administration to have been a success because of him, not because of any of his second in commands. And he isn't really interested in letting JD. Vance have the spotlight or demonstrate his acumen to set him up for a better chance at winning the presidency. I think Trump only thinks in terms of his own credit, receiving credit for things is very important to Trump. And he's interested in his own ability to present himself as being the ultimate deal maker. But as you said, I think he's put JD. Vance in a really impossible situation, both because he's inexperienced and because this is just a very, very complicated diplomatic situation. And it was probably naive to send JD. Vance to Pakistan for peace talks, hoping that he would come away with something favorable to the United States.

Speaker 7:
[34:52] By the way, I want to take this one step further than Liz was just taking it. It's not just that Donald Trump doesn't necessarily want to set Vance up for success in winning the nomination. That would make him a lame duck. All of the things Liz said, I think, are true. But let me take again that logic to its conclusion. Trump might actually be better off in Trump's mind if Vance or any Republican loses in 2028, because it would prove that only he can win, only he can do this sort of thing. His legacy, unlike past presidents, isn't the continuation of his policies or proof of his political legacy. The only proof is Donald Trump alone can solve it. And so Vance being the nominee and losing in 2028 might actually be a preference for Donald Trump.

Speaker 4:
[35:42] So do you think, Sarah, that Trump is actively sabotaging Vance's political future on purpose or subconsciously?

Speaker 7:
[35:50] This is why we have seen Vance play a very delicate game to make sure that he never makes Donald Trump look like a lame duck. As soon as that happens and Donald Trump feels like he is being treated as a lame duck by Republican senators, for instance, Republican leaders in the country, he will ensure that a potential heir, namely JD. Vance, is put back in his place. So everyone is sort of walking on these eggshells, making sure that Donald Trump doesn't feel that way because they do want a Republican to win the presidency in 2028, obviously. They would like to maintain control of the Senate here in the midterm elections. Donald Trump? Not so much.

Speaker 4:
[36:31] This brings us back to the ongoing feud with the Pope that Liz alluded to, which you really can't see any political rationale for that, though it certainly does not help JD. Vance as he's trying to set himself up for a presidential campaign and a book tour where he writes about his conversion to Catholicism. Liz, let's give you the last word here. You've written very thoughtfully about faith and theology. Usually when a Pope speaks out against a war, which is what modern popes are prone to do, American presidents respond, if they respond at all, by showing respect for the Pope and then kind of politely ignoring his council. In this case, Trump has been dragging out this feud. And, you know, there's new polling by Reuters and Ipsos that shows that more of the public sides with the Pope than with the president in this debate. But Trump's standing among Christians has been pretty durable at the polls. Do you see any signs of that support eroding?

Speaker 6:
[37:27] So very soft signs. And I mean, I'm pretty jaded about that. I think for a lot of Americans, and this includes a lot of Christians, their politics come first over their religious views. And I think Christians who support Trump have done an especially good job of convincing themselves that though Donald Trump is not himself a Christian in reality, he is a vehicle for Christian ambitions. And I think it's really hard to maintain that view when you have the most visible Christian leader in the world criticizing Trump and then being, as you point out, attacked in return. I think Leo's remarks were very restrained, very delicate, very general. There are a lot of conflicts in the world right now. It wasn't only saying that war is bad in this particular circumstance, but Trump took it to that personal place. I think if you did see even minor swings away from Trump style politics, for example, I'm thinking of the Senate race in Texas. If you just saw a 2% change, Tlerico could win. You could have a statewide victory for Democrats in Texas for the first in decades. And I think the conflict that Trump has struck up with Christianity, essentially, could be the kind of thing that produces that kind of shift.

Speaker 4:
[38:51] I've been talking with Sarah Isgur and Liz Bruenig. We'll be back with a trillion dollar fight in the Maha Coalition. You're listening to Left, Right & Center.

Speaker 1:
[39:05] In addition to hosting this show, I am also a small business owner. It is an understatement to say, managing business finances can get complicated. It's not the work you love, but it's the work that keeps everything going. That's part of why Found caught my attention. It brings together your business checking, your bookkeeping, invoicing and taxes all in one place. So instead of juggling a handful of different tools, you've got a clear picture of where your business stands. And it handles a lot of the tedious stuff automatically. Tracking expenses, helping you set aside money for taxes, things that can easily slip through the cracks when you're busy running a business. Honestly, if you've ever tried to piece all of this together yourself, you know how much time it takes. This just simplifies it. Take back control of your business today. Open a Found account for free at found.com. That's found.com. Found is a financial technology company, not a bank. Banking services are provided by Lead Bank member FDIC. Join the hundreds of thousands who've already streamlined their finances with Found. This show is supported by Human Rights Watch. There are more displaced people in the world than at any time since World War II. The Great Unrooting is a limited series that tells this epic story through the eyes of a young man from Myanmar. Where do you go when you have to flee? What do you take with you? What if they don't want you when you get there? It's a story of flight and survival, of climate change and social media, of borders and passports and hope. The Great Unrooting from Human Rights Watch, wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 4:
[40:40] Back again with Left, Right & Center. I'm your host, McKay Coppins, and for David Greene. We're here with Sarah Isger, Senior Editor at The Dispatch, and we're joined by Liz Bruenig. She's a staff writer at The Atlantic. Starting next week, Congress takes on a massive trillion dollar piece of legislation with huge stakes for our food supply and ultimately your grocery bill. We're talking about the farm bill, of course. It's a sprawling, complicated package that covers the cost of fertilizer, investment in conservation, SNAP benefits, and more. It's also causing a fight within the Trump coalition, specifically antagonizing followers of MAHA, the Make America Healthy Again movement. That's because the bill does things like support large-scale industrial farming that MAHA does not like. MAHA is all about fewer pesticides and the food supply, better access to fresh vegetables. I want to talk about this tension, but I also think the farm bill is just one of those topics that's hard to talk about in an interesting way, but it's so important to so many people. Liz, maybe we can start with you. Is there anything in this bill that the left and right should be able to agree on?

Speaker 6:
[41:53] Oh, man, that's such a good question. I mean, it's a big bill. It is a missed opportunity, perhaps for RFK Jr. to do what he said he was going to do, fix our food systems that are, he believes, poisoning Americans and destroying our health. But he's staying on the sidelines, of course, even though, as you were saying, the bill favors big ag and pesticides over soil health and small farmers. That's something that if Republicans wanted to take seriously, that chunk of their platform, you could see some collaboration across the aisle. But there are so many other things in the farm bill that I think Democrats rightly take issue with that I'm not really confident about bipartisan support here.

Speaker 4:
[42:42] Yeah, Sarah, I always love when a big bill like this comes up and there's signs of an inter-coalitional drama and then members of the opposing party immediately try to latch onto it and exacerbate those tensions. Last month, for example, you had Massachusetts Democrat Jim McGovern trying to drive a wedge between Republicans and MAHA by saying this during a committee hearing.

Speaker 10:
[43:06] Your farm bill empowers big ag and enables them to keep dumping toxins in our food. Your farm bill tells local farmers to get big or get out. Your farm bill makes food less healthy and more expensive. In short, your farm bill is a betrayal of MAHA.

Speaker 4:
[43:20] The thing is, the MAHA movement has always fit kind of uncomfortably in the Trump coalition. So, do you think that these efforts are going to work? Is this tension real?

Speaker 7:
[43:32] So this is like a political science fun, interesting experiment. As we've seen the two parties realign really quickly for American politics since 2016, the Republican Party is in this uneasy problem. First of all, the parties have shifted far more around education. And so where the Democratic Party used to have both of the extremes, the very highly educated and the very blue collar, now it's more the Republican Party is sort of lower college educated and under, and the Democratic Party is college educated and over. It's made the Democratic Party more wealthy, less racially diverse, and vice versa for the Republican Party, less wealthy, more racially diverse. Fun, interesting times for political scientists. But now you get to the weird part of coalitions that the Republican Party isn't quite sure that it has or how big it is, and the sort of lagging indicator politicians. About half of the Republicans in the House of Representatives were elected before 2016. So they represent the former Republican Party, even though they are still wearing red jerseys. They've never had a Mahav coalition. That's not what got them into office. They've been incumbents since then. They don't know these people. They don't actually speak their language. So it's happened so quickly that you see both parties unaware of who their voters are and making odd strategic decisions if they were completely rational actors, or they don't believe that these coalitions will hold after Donald Trump. Again, neither party. The farm bill is such a perfect distillation of this political science drama that's playing out with the realignment. I, for one, am like making popcorn and just enjoying the show.

Speaker 4:
[45:19] Well, it's actually a really interesting point that the weirdness of the Trump coalition has always in a lot of ways been so specific to him, and he has dominated Republican politics for over a decade now, right?

Speaker 7:
[45:33] Wild. How time has flown.

Speaker 4:
[45:35] Well, this is a question that we constantly are coming back to is, what elements of this political realignment will outlast Trump? Liz, I'm curious, you look at Maha and it's stereotypically lefty. It's crunchy and environmentally focused. I wonder if Democrats see an opportunity here to capitalize, to draw some of those voters back into their fold, or at least to kind of cause them to fall out of love with the Trump era GOP.

Speaker 6:
[46:07] Yeah, I mean, I would hope to see that. But some part of me thinks that the Maha people, the Americans who are really concerned about food systems in particular, pesticides, endocrine disruptors and so on, there are a lot of people who are concerned with that. But the people who are concerned with that, who have been attracted to RFK have been changed in a lot of ways from their maybe original state as having these complaints about food and diet. And now there are people who have a lot of different complaints about the way that we eat and the way that we live in the United States. And in particular, I'm thinking about vaccines. The degree to which the Maha people have gathered around anti-vaccine thought makes me think that will be very difficult for Democrats to win back. I mean, they would have to essentially break them of this intellectual habit they've gotten into. And so I think that could prove very challenging.

Speaker 4:
[47:06] I remember Liz, our colleague at The Atlantic, Nicholas Florco, wrote a piece right after RFK was nominated to be HHS secretary, arguing that if he really cared about the Maha cause, Donald Trump would have made RFK Jr. the agriculture secretary, where he could have had real influence on these big issues surrounding industrial farming and seed oils and processed foods and all of that. And of course, he didn't appoint him to that position because that would have massively pissed off the agricultural community, which is an important part of Trump's coalition as well. And so we're in this situation, we are where we are. But Sarah, if Democrats can't win back these Maha people, if they really are established in their new political home, the GOP, do you imagine them siphoning off power from Big Ag? I mean, it would be really bizarre to me as somebody who's covered Republican politics for a long time as a reporter, who has gone to so many of these kind of cattle call events hosted by Big Ag groups where every Republican presidential candidate takes turns kind of sucking up to Big Ag. To see them suddenly in rooms where they're trying to win over crunchy granola moms who are skeptical of vaccines and seed oils, it would be a real shift in Republican politics.

Speaker 7:
[48:37] Absolutely. My prediction is, yes, that's exactly what you'll see. Here's why. Candidates now have more money than they actually need to win these elections. Money is no longer a predictor of who will win in any statewide race and it's far less of a predictor at a congressional level as well. The only place where it's really a predictor is like city council races, state-ledged races where nobody has any name ID, and so the money helps you buy a few ads. At the federal level, congressional, Senate, and presidential, the money is not a meaningful predictor because there's so much money. Why does this matter to the conversation we're having? What Big Ag was able to do in a previous iteration of our politics, they were donors, they had lobbyists. But the only way that matters is if you can actually threaten a member with a primary or with a defeat in the general election. I believe their power to do that is massively dwindling at the same time that these candidates are far more concerned about being primaried from their right or their left, if you're in the Democratic Party, and that is driven by small-dollar donations. And guess who's like the best at small-dollar stuff? These very movements that are like maha is a great example of one, but there's lots of them. They are small but very loud. The left has the groups as they call them. This is one of the groups on the right, if you will, that is really going to be able to threaten these guys with viable primary challenges. All of the incumbent protections that these members had built in through campaign finance reform, for instance, in 2002, where it was really hard to primary someone because you had a donor list, you were an incumbent, has evaporated. Groups like maha become very, very powerful compared to the entrenched groups that have all the lobbyists and all the large dollar donors. That's just dwindled so much.

Speaker 4:
[50:37] Liz, I don't want to leave this conversation before we talk for a minute about SNAP benefits. This bill would preserve the 20% funding cut in SNAP benefits the Republicans wrote into the big, beautiful bill last year. Democrats have said they're going to fight to restore that funding. How much should they prioritize that particular policy?

Speaker 6:
[51:00] Hugely, I think. SNAP is incredibly important. It feeds lots and lots of people, including lots and lots of children. Cutting these benefits during a period of really high grocery prices, it just doesn't sound like fiscal responsibility to me. It just sounds like, if not cruelty, then a sort of reckless indifference to the safety, to the health, to the well-being of huge numbers of Americans. And so I understand Republicans in a lot of cases are insensitive to that. But I think Democrats should really be prioritizing it. And I would encourage Democrats to produce stories and images about how things change for poor families when SNAP benefits are cut, because I imagine they change pretty deleteriously. And I think presenting those stories to voters, it could potentially be a real help to Democrats.

Speaker 4:
[51:56] We here at KCRW want to hear from you. Have questions you'd like to hear answered on the show? Record a voice memo around 30 seconds or so and send it to us at lrc at kcrw.org. Drop your first name, where you're calling from, and your question to potentially hear your question on the show. We are going to have to leave it there. We have reached that time once again for our famed Left, Right and Center rants and raves featuring pet peeves and projects from across the political spectrum. Liz Bruenig, let's start with you. What did we not get to today?

Speaker 6:
[52:30] I have to provide a simple rave. I am a simple kind of gal. In very dark times, and I feel that we are living in very dark times where following the news is something between disappointing and a little anxiety inducing, the fact that it warmed up in New England for even three days massively reset my mood and helped me lean in to the fact that things are going to work out in some respect or another maybe that as a country we could possibly still fix our government maybe in the coming months. That's probably too much to hope for. But those are kind of the thoughts you start having when it's time to dine outside.

Speaker 4:
[53:15] I say this as somebody who grew up in Massachusetts, the like traumatized abused children aspect of living in New England, such that you are like so grateful for three days of warmth. It's really something to behold. But I'm right there with you. I'm glad that you're getting some good weather, Liz. Sarah, what about you?

Speaker 7:
[53:35] I would like to give a shout out to my body's immune system. I've been on the road for two weeks, been a lot of new people shaking hands. It's been losing my voice. It's been so much fun. But also I can feel that the germs are there and they are fighting a war inside my body to make me sick. My body is like, no, not yet, not till we're done with this book tour. And guess what? We made the New York Times bestseller list. Thanks, by the way, in large part to Left, Right & Center listeners. I am in San Francisco where we had so many Left, Right & Center folks come out to this book event that I had. And it was incredible. You guys are amazing. You are the reason that it made the New York Times bestseller list. I'm so grateful. And I will be on the ground next week eating Sudafed like they are Tic Tacs. But for now, holding strong, hold the wall, body. We're almost there.

Speaker 4:
[54:36] First of all, congratulations on the bestseller list. I'm glad that your body's barely holding out. I have been there as well and wish you all the best. For my rant, I'm going to talk about a television show that has tormented me for years. It is called Secret Lives of Mormon Wives. I don't know if either of you have watched this show. Have, do, Liz and Sarah, do either of you watch the show?

Speaker 7:
[55:01] I'm aware of the show.

Speaker 4:
[55:02] Okay. I don't watch it. I've seen clips. I know people who watch it obsessively. And look, I have no hate. It's not my genre. But when the show first blew up, I would periodically get approached by editors or bookers to write about it or talk about it, comment on it, because I am one of the relatively few Mormons who works in the national media. And the question was always like, what does this show say about Mormonism? What are the big important issues that it surfaces? And my thing was always that the people featured on this show are so laughably divorced from anything approaching a normal Mormon experience. Oh, yeah. It's not really worth taking too seriously. Big time. It's a show about like a microscopic sub-genre of Swinger adjacent Utah TikTokers. And that's fine. It's just, you know, I have nothing to do with that. Now, Hulu has announced a spinoff series called Secret Lives of Mormon Wives Orange County with a new cast of women who are mostly not even Mormon and never were. So please stop getting information about Mormonism from this show. Or at the very least, please stop asking me about it. I have not watched it. I don't plan to watch it. The end.

Speaker 7:
[56:16] Just ask McKay about gambling. That's what he's really an expert at.

Speaker 4:
[56:23] That is all we have time for today. Thank you to Sarah Isgur and Liz Bruenig. Left Right and Center is produced by Leo Duran. Our executive producer is Arnie Seipel. The show is recorded and mixed by Nick Lamponi. Todd M. Simon composed our theme music. Left Right and Center is a co-production of KCRW and Fearless Media were distributed by PRX. I'm McKay Coppins. Thanks for joining us. Tune in next week for more Left Right and Center.

Speaker 11:
[57:03] Download and subscribe at kcrw.com/lrc, the KCRW app or wherever you find podcasts. Left, Right and Center is produced and distributed by KCRW.

Speaker 2:
[57:19] Support comes from the Venda Museum in Culver City with Anton Roland Laub, Mobile Churches in Ceaușescu's Bucharest, April 25th. This exhibition examines cultural erasure and survival through Laub's photos and archival material. More at vendamuseum.org.

Speaker 6:
[57:37] From PRX.