A veteran reporter says Trump’s second term is even worse than it looks
Veteran political reporter Asawin Suebsaeng takes us inside the Trump administration.
I think most reasonable, informed people are pretty worried about how things are going with Trump as president. It's not looking great for us right now. According to a veteran political journalist I spoke with recently, we should probably be even more worried than we have been.
Asawin Suebsaeng is a political reporter who works for Zeteo. He's been covering politics for over a decade, and he produces some of the most revealing scoops about the Trump administration. He says things have changed since he was covering Trump's first term—and not for the better.
"Not just illegality... but the tolerance for scandal within the second Trump administration is somehow markedly greater than it was during the first four years," Suebsaeng says. "And I am not someone who looks through rose-colored glasses [regarding] the first Trump presidency."
Suebsaeng says the first Trump administration was a "ridiculously corrupt, scandal-plagued, violent" place, but things are even worse now. There are fewer leaks than there used to be, but he worries about what he does know about what's happening behind closed doors.
"It was one of the most batshit eras of modern American politics or world history," Suebsaeng says. "Now, they're working towards the rapid consolidation, expansion and perversion of presidential power in the most rapaciously right-wing, blood-lusting [way] they can possibly get away with—within, at least, the four years they have right now. That is the mission statement."
In terms of where the power lies, Suebsaeng says you can blame everything on Trump. He says people like White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller may be crafting the policies and handling many of the finer details, but all roads lead back to Trump.
"There's this sort of comforting fiction that... Trump is just doing his thing and other people are actually pulling the levers and creating the mechanisms for Republican political power underneath it," Suebsaeng says.
"I get why that's kind of comforting, because Trump is such a grotesque force that you don't really want to believe that he's commanding all of this stuff... but it is a direct expression of what Donald Trump wants to do," Suebsaeng says. "This Trumpist far-right authoritarian administration is, at its core, an expression of his desire to punish his enemies, both big and small."
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Trump has faced several setbacks in court in recent months, and he's clearly been distracted by the war in Iran and, for whatever reason, his renovation projects around the White House. However, Suebsaeng says that shouldn't lead anyone to believe that this administration has lost its drive to accomplish its overarching goals.
"Yes, certain things are falling apart. Yes, they're encountering political resistance, especially from ordinary people on the ground. Yes, certain things are getting tied up in the courts here and there, but that can only take you so far," Suebsaeng says. "Boy, have they had a lot of wins, and they're going to keep trucking for the next two and a half years or more."
That said, we also shouldn't always fall for the bravado, Suebsaeng says. While members of this administration might act like they're not worried about Democrats taking one or both chambers of Congress in November or whatever else might happen in the future, he says they are quite worried about certain things.
"However they want to portray the Democrats, as weak or irrelevant, which in many respects they objectively are, they do understand that political gravity does exist for everybody and everything," Suebsaeng says. "Don't let them fool you with whatever they say publicly. Yes, they are afraid of jail. Yes, they are afraid of potential investigations, including at the state and local level. Yes, they are afraid of expensive subpoenas from Capitol Hill probes."
They're also worried about what could happen with the war in Iran, Suebsaeng says. Some officials think the war could continue to erode Trump's popularity, which might hamper their ability to accomplish anything and harm other Republicans.
"They really do think—and the Iran war upped their paranoia and anxiety about this—that there is a very good chance that if or when the Democrats gain power again, they are coming for them," Suebsaeng says. "That is why, as we reported last year, Trump has already discussed the idea of preemptive federal pardons."
Even if some Democrats want to be cautious, Suebsaeng says he doesn't think Democratic voters will allow that. He says left-leaning voters appear to be "fucking livid," as they should be, and he thinks they will be demanding accountability.
It can be easy to look at what's going on and think that maybe the tide is turning and Trump's attempts at consolidating authoritarianism will fail miserably. That could end up being the case. However, as Suebsaeng notes, these people are not going to go away quietly, and they are determined to finish the job they started.
