Ashley Parker
Appearances
Pod Save America
Trump's "Liberation Day" Crashes the Stock Market
Yeah. And I mean, I'm embarrassed to admit it, but I sort of and I in my slight defense, I had my pregnancy loss in my DNC before Roe was overturned. So the ignorance is like slightly more acceptable. But I write about this, but I show up for my DNC. And I'm signing forms, you know, in all sort of the typical medical forms.
Pod Save America
Trump's "Liberation Day" Crashes the Stock Market
And one of the forms says, you know, I understand that I'm having an abortion and I accept all the risks associated with an abortion. So I literally, I literally called the nurse over and I was like, she's going to be so embarrassed. I'm like, ma'am, you gave me the wrong form. This is the abortion form, but I'm here for the miscarriage. And like, she got this very like kind, sad look on her face.
Pod Save America
Trump's "Liberation Day" Crashes the Stock Market
Mm-hmm. And she was like, you experienced pregnancy loss, but what you're technically having is an abortion. And I was just, I mean, again, it sounds dumb, but I was just floored. And then afterwards, I remember my mom, when I was traveling for work, when I was pregnant again, she was asking me, she was worried if I was going to go, like if I was going to have to travel to a red state.
Pod Save America
Trump's "Liberation Day" Crashes the Stock Market
I was like... I cover Trump, so he does a lot of rallies in these states with his base. And I thought it was she was worried about masking and COVID, because obviously getting COVID is bad if you're pregnant. But she was worried that because I had had pregnancy loss and because I was pregnant, what if, God forbid, I had some sort of complication?
Pod Save America
Trump's "Liberation Day" Crashes the Stock Market
She didn't want me to be in a state where I might not be able to get the medical care I needed. Yeah. which again is just a crazy thing to think about when you're doing your job or for any women when you're going through life, right? Like, can I get the life-saving help I may need?
Pod Save America
Trump's "Liberation Day" Crashes the Stock Market
Right. And again, one of the reasons I wrote this essay is because – and there's nothing wrong with this, but like especially social media is often – It's like performative life, and there's nothing wrong with that. I love seeing when people have healthy babies, and I love seeing when people have beautiful weddings, and I love seeing nice vacations or tragedy moons.
Pod Save America
Trump's "Liberation Day" Crashes the Stock Market
But it's one thing to post beautiful pictures from – Hawaii or of your new baby. And very few people are like, I know what's going to be an Instagram, a great Instagram post, my sixth DNC. I'm going to, you know, I'm going to do like a selfie from the table with the ID. And it's just not out there. So it creates this sense, like you see all these things.
Pod Save America
Trump's "Liberation Day" Crashes the Stock Market
gender reveals and baby bumps and baby moons and happy families. And I'm so glad for that. But you just don't see the other side as much. And I thought it was important.
Radio Atlantic
Trump Is Enjoying Himself
Nun, ich denke, dass er über die vier Jahre in der Wildnis überkommen hat, hat ihn überwunden. Ich meine, die Attitüde, mit der er zurückgezogen hat, The White House is so different from the attitude which he arrived in 2017 after the first win.
Radio Atlantic
Trump Is Enjoying Himself
I remember interviewing him in December of 2016 and there was a clear sense and he was trying to figure out how to go forward, but he was still sort of in shell shock. He didn't know who he was going to hire. He didn't really know how to run the government. He didn't know much about governing or policy or political theory. And then he kind of stumbled around for years trying to figure that out.
Radio Atlantic
Trump Is Enjoying Himself
And he had his own party didn't really like him, a lot of leaders. He comes through this process using those four years fighting his way back die Republikanische Partei endlich aufzunehmen, endlich den Kongress aufzunehmen. Ich meine, er hat eine Hand in fast jeder ihrer Kampagnen an diesem Punkt.
Radio Atlantic
Trump Is Enjoying Himself
Ich meine, er endorseert sie, er spricht mit ihnen und er versteht wirklich, wie die föderale Regierung funktioniert und wie er es anders machen wollte. Ich meine, er hat es am Ende der Kampagne schon erwähnt, quasi diese göttliche Intervention mit dem Versuch, zu töten. Er fühlt, als wäre er bereit für diesen Moment und kommt ohne Reservationen rein.
Radio Atlantic
Trump Is Enjoying Himself
He's saying that his first term and the four years before he came back to office have been consumed by him playing defense, by him being attacked by his rivals, he thinks unfairly, and that he now feels free of that. And he can finally do the job he wants to do and sort of be the president he always wanted to be.
Radio Atlantic
Trump Is Enjoying Himself
When we spoke to him in the Oval Office, he said, when I fired James Comey, the FBI Director, when he first came in the first term, it was like throwing a rock into a hornet's nest. And his point was, like, that was a surprise. I didn't realize what I was going to unleash. He comes into office now, he knows all the threats that face him. So he goes after the law firms.
Radio Atlantic
Trump Is Enjoying Himself
Er sagt, wenn du auf meiner Seite Pro-Mono-Arbeit machst, wirst du nicht gegen mich arbeiten können. Er geht in die FBI, stellt einen Handtipp-Mann ein, der ein Kindertagesbuch über ihn geschrieben hat. Ich meine, er ist so devotiert, dass es keine Frage gibt. Er beginnt öffentlich zu deklarieren, dass er der Hauptverwaltungschef des Landes ist, obwohl das der Titel des Staatsanwaltes ist.
Radio Atlantic
Trump Is Enjoying Himself
Es ist noch auf der Webseite des Bundesverwaltungsgerichts. Hauptverwaltungschef des Staatsanwaltes. Er sagt, nein, das bin ich. Everyone knows it. He's been coming after media organizations very aggressively. They were his opposition before. He's trying to undercut them from the start. That's just all knowledge he lacked in 2017 and 2018.
Radio Atlantic
Trump Is Enjoying Himself
He's coming in now and keeping everybody on defense from the start.
Radio Atlantic
Trump Is Enjoying Himself
One of the things that a couple of your advisors have told us is that you're having a lot of fun this time.
Radio Atlantic
Trump Is Enjoying Himself
That actually came out of interviews we had done with advisors to him before, who had been saying that this is in the first months of the administration. People would say to us, you can't believe how much fun we're having. There's no bad days here. It's just great. Sunshine all the time. Sunshine all the time. And how much fun he is having. And they talked about how, I mean, he still does this.
Radio Atlantic
Trump Is Enjoying Himself
He will have the press in for more than an hour a day routinely, you know, three events, 35 minutes of questions, two times, another spray somewhere else. And he just sits in the Oval Office and takes questions. And not even if news is happening till everyone's tired. He does it every day because he's really enjoying it.
Radio Atlantic
Trump Is Enjoying Himself
Ich denke, es gibt viel mehr, ich weiß nicht, ob das das richtige Wort ist, wie Adventurismus. Wie weit er geht, wie jede Woche jetzt. Seine Vorsitzenden müssen neue Geschäftsordnungen aufnehmen, um ihn zu signen, neue Dinge, um ihn nachzusehen, neue Krusade zu starten. Weißt du, was er mit Tarifen gemacht hat, war im Grunde zu sagen, sag dem ganzen Welt, ihr müsst alle mit mir negotieren.
Radio Atlantic
Trump Is Enjoying Himself
Da ist ein Appetit hier. Ich glaube, das ist wirklich, was es bedeutet. Es gibt einen konstanten Appetit für mehr und mehr und mehr, was ist... Really in contrast to Biden, definitely, you know, who is at the end of his term, the aperture had been narrowed so small that what he was actually doing was was was was very controlled and very tight.
Radio Atlantic
Trump Is Enjoying Himself
Die Wochen 2017 waren die Wochen der Frauenmarsche, der massiven Events auf dem Mall, der Überraschung über die muslimische Bannung. Es gab eine lineare Qualität dazu, die für eine Überraschung ermöglicht hat, für eine Resistenz, eine populäre Resistenz zu passieren, für die Demokraten, um herauszufinden, was ihre Botschaft war. That hasn't happened this time. There have been sporadic protests.
Radio Atlantic
Trump Is Enjoying Himself
It's hard to keep track of all the court cases any given day. You know, the immigration stuff, the Doge stuff, you know, all the dismantling of federal agencies. Like, we're living in a time where years are happening in weeks, right? In terms of, you know, like the normal lifespan of... Michael, in your phone call, you asked him about deportations. Let's listen to that exchange.
Radio Atlantic
Trump Is Enjoying Himself
I think, a couple of things to say. That answer is consistent with what he has done, which is to basically say, it's like the I just work here defense. You know, that he is, when you point out specific legal cases, bizarre arguments his government is making, specific errors his government has made, specific harm that has happened, hat er sich sofort von dem entfernt.
Radio Atlantic
Trump Is Enjoying Himself
Ich habe viele Arten von Menschen. Ich mache das nicht. Andere Menschen machen das. Wir haben in unserem Interview im Oval Office zurück in diese Linie der Befragung geraten.
Radio Atlantic
Trump Is Enjoying Himself
And going back to the 2016 campaign, he has been consistent in this. When you bring up real harm his policies do or have the potential to do, Rather than defend against that, he will often say, well, you have to compare it to all the other harm that's being done in the world. And so he's able to sort of dismiss those concerns and abstract them.
Radio Atlantic
Trump Is Enjoying Himself
And in talking about immigration and these court cases, he often goes back to the idea that, well, millions of people came to the United States. under Biden before and they weren't getting detailed hearings as they came in the government, that was a wrong. So if we're kicking them out and they're not getting detailed hearings going out, why is that so bad?
Radio Atlantic
Trump Is Enjoying Himself
And we should say there that the Supreme Court seems to disagree with him.
Radio Atlantic
Trump Is Enjoying Himself
I mean, in the case that is now still in the courts about the Salvadoran man who was deported back to El Salvador despite a court order saying he should not be deported back to El Salvador, the Supreme Court has basically ruled that the government has to facilitate his return, that court orders matter, that you can't just make mistakes and say, oops.
Radio Atlantic
Trump Is Enjoying Himself
I don't think we're yet at the constitutional crisis point. What he is doing is, the Supreme Court ruled, sent it back to the lower court, and he's now fighting in the lower court. And that is eventually going to go back to the Supreme Court. And the Supreme Court almost certainly will have more specific instructions.
Radio Atlantic
Trump Is Enjoying Himself
The Supreme Court's ruling in that case was basically to ask the lower court to give instructions on how to resolve this. And now that's where the fight is. There could come a point where there's an explicit clear order from the Supreme Court and Trump and his government does something that he says he won't do and then will be in that moment.
Radio Atlantic
Trump Is Enjoying Himself
In that initial phone interview, he even went so far as an aside to talk about how much he likes the Democrats on the Supreme Court and how he sees them at events and how he respects them. It was sort of an unrequested moment of praise. So I think he's definitely working the refs there.
Radio Atlantic
Trump Is Enjoying Himself
So I think that the strictest definition of a constitutional crisis would be defying the Supreme Court, the executive branch, the legislative branch, defying the Supreme Court. Was ich glaube, kann gesagt werden, ist, dass die Gerichte viel schneller gehen als die Exekutiven.
Radio Atlantic
Trump Is Enjoying Himself
Wir befinden uns also in einem Moment in der Geschichte, in dem so viel passiert ist, dass es noch nicht so gut gefunden werden kann, dass es illegal ist. Von der Zerstörung von USAID bis zu den Ordnungen des Pentagon über transgendere Truppen. All diese Dinge sind in den Gerichten gerade. Und es kann zwei, drei Jahre dauern, bis das das Supreme Court erreicht.
Radio Atlantic
Trump Is Enjoying Himself
Das System selbst ist also nicht super effizient. And so it could be that in three years we look back on this year and say, well, 10 of the things he was doing were unconstitutional and illegal.
Radio Atlantic
Trump Is Enjoying Himself
From the very beginning of this, from the first phone call, from the first proposal we sent to his staff, the first conversations we had, this has been for him a negotiation, right? It's a transaction. Okay, what are they trying to do? Could I benefit from it? Is it going to hurt me? I think it is a window into... Das ist die Geschichte von Donald Trump.
Radio Atlantic
Trump Is Enjoying Himself
I think he wanted to... He wanted to charm him and win him over.
Radio Atlantic
Trump Is Enjoying Himself
And the takeaway is not that he really truly is a charming gentleman, even though he can be a charming gentleman, or that he's really a raving madman you see at rallies or an anti-democratic authoritarian. It's that he's willing to use all of those tools throughout his life. And you just have to understand that about him.
Radio Atlantic
Trump Is Enjoying Himself
So the story is that we talked to some of his advisors. His advisors say... Yes, this sounds like a great idea. We should keep talking. We'll get a request to the president. We kind of write a formal request after some more conversations. It's delivered to the president. The president comes back and says to Stafford, tells Ashley, yes, we're doing it. We can probably have a photo.
Radio Atlantic
Trump Is Enjoying Himself
We might get a tour of the residence. Maybe go to the Lincoln Bedroom. Und dann warten wir ein paar Wochen und es wird prognostiziert. Es wird in einem größeren Meeting im White House diskutiert. Und dann, am Nachmittag, nachdem es im White House diskutiert wurde, wird Ashley in den letzten Minuten angerufen und gesagt, dass er eine echte Sozialität ausüben will.
Radio Atlantic
Trump Is Enjoying Himself
Und dann schauen wir auf unsere Telefonnummern und er ruft uns Namen an und sagt, dass er sich nicht mit uns besitzen wird, dass er uns nicht vertrauen kann, usw. usw. Was uns dann ermöglicht, andere Möglichkeiten zu suchen, um seine Aufmerksamkeit zu bekommen.
Radio Atlantic
Trump Is Enjoying Himself
Oh, I know who you are, Michael. I know who you are. You never write good about me, Michael.
Radio Atlantic
Trump Is Enjoying Himself
You know, what's interesting about that is he didn't say who he was. He didn't really make much sound initially. So I assumed it was a staffer picking up the phone on his behalf, which is why I was so confused initially. And I had to wait for a tone of his voice to come through before I realized. But yes, that is under this current president the way things work. I mean, we...
Radio Atlantic
Trump Is Enjoying Himself
We write about in the story that, you know, lots of people have that phone number. And he talks with lots of people and he's very proud of the people he talks to privately. And the White House does not control this. The White House had no idea we were calling that day. You know, he was not prepped for it.
Radio Atlantic
Trump Is Enjoying Himself
You know, one of the staffers said that during the call there was somebody else in the room and they got a text saying, oh, by the way, you should know he's on the phone right now with a reporter. And so they sort of find out as we're doing the conversation.
Radio Atlantic
Trump Is Enjoying Himself
Is that... No, I have like a little office, like a COVID office upstairs in my house. I had to tell my kids to be quiet and tell my wife to be quiet. It was a Saturday morning.