So That's What 'Make America Great Again' Means

The Ezra Klein Show

New York Times Opinion

Society & Culture, Government, News

4.6 • 11K Ratings

🗓️ 22 January 2025

⏱️ 48 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

There’s a quieter transition happening beneath the pageantry of this week’s inaugural events — a transition not of power per se but of the rules around how power in Washington works. And the new rules look very different from the old ones. In this conversation, I’m joined by Aaron Retica, an editor at large for New York Times Opinion (and my column editor), to discuss what President Trump’s inaugural address and first round of executive orders signal about the administration to come. We talk about the end of birthright citizenship and the renegotiation of American belonging, why Trump is so fixated on Greenland and the Panama Canal, his retro-futurist vision of American power, the unsettling arrival of a new tech oligarchy and more. Mentioned: “What’s Wrong with Donald Trump?” by Ezra Klein “Democrats Are Losing the War for Attention. Badly.” by The Ezra Klein Show, with Chris Hayes Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected]. You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs. This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Claire Gordon. Fact-checking by Kate Sinclair. Mixing by Isaac Jones, with Efim Shapiro and Aman Sahota. Our supervising editor is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Rollin Hu, Elias Isquith, Kristin Lin and Jack McCordick. Original music by Pat McCusker. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser.

Transcript

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0:00.0	From New York Times opinion, this is the Ezra Klein Show. I feel like I've been watching two different presidential transitions take place.
0:36.8	There's been the official one with all of its pomp and its pageantry, the one we call
0:41.3	the peaceful transition of power.
0:43.5	I watched Vice President Kamala Harris preside over the certification of the election she lost.
0:49.8	I watched President Joe Biden welcome his successor, President Donald Trump, back to the White House.
0:55.9	I watched every living former president assemble under the Capitol Ritanda to honor Trump's second inauguration.
1:03.6	What a difference to four years ago when a mob stormed the Capitol, when Trump sought to abandon the election results, and upon failing, did not attend
1:11.9	Joe Biden's inauguration. This transition, the official transition of presidential power, this
1:17.5	transition has been orderly. But there's been this other transition happening to, a transition
1:23.8	not of power, but of political system, A transition in the rules and expectations of power.
1:30.6	I understood Joe Biden's pardon of Hunter Biden.
1:34.1	Hunter had become a particular fixation of the Trumpist right,
1:37.7	and the idea that they would unleash their revenge on him individually seemed all too real.
1:43.2	Joe Biden has already lost two children. Others may disagree.
1:47.8	I had trouble begrudging him his refusal to potentially lose a third. But then came so many more
1:54.1	pardons, culminating in pardons of Anthony Fauci and much of Biden's family. And it wasn't just
2:00.0	pardons. There was the refusal to enforce a ban on
2:02.5	TikTok that Biden himself had signed into law, Biden's bill. And alongside that came this bizarre decision
2:11.1	to announce that the Equal Rights Amendment was now ratified as Virginia had accepted it in 2020,
2:19.5	becoming the 38th state to do so.
2:26.7	But that wasn't true. It wasn't ratified. Congress had set a deadline of 1982 for ratification.
2:32.8	The opinion of Joe Biden's own Justice Department is that Virginia's late act is meaningless.
	...

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