Maggie Haberman
Appearances
The Daily
Ring-Kissing, Lawsuits and a Looming Shutdown
So this is like the purest form of delight Trump could have, is all of these wealthiest people in the world, Bezos, Elon Musk, a bunch of tech leaders, coming and seeking his favor. And it's not just tech leaders, Michael. You know, he had Justin Trudeau troop down to Mar-a-Lago, only to be called a governor by Trump, who was describing Canada as the 51st state.
The Daily
Ring-Kissing, Lawsuits and a Looming Shutdown
This is different than what Trump's 2016 inauguration and lead up in his transition was like. Trump was also facing an investigation at the time into whether his campaign had ties to Russians. And Russia had, according to the intelligence community, meddled in the 2016 election to try to hurt Hillary Clinton. And so all of that made a different atmosphere.
The Daily
Ring-Kissing, Lawsuits and a Looming Shutdown
But Trump likes nothing more than a convert. And all of these tech leaders are showing that they have seen the value and wisdom of what he – has been saying. And Michael, his 2016 win was entirely unexpected and it was also pretty close. Right. This was pretty decisive. And it's really hard for people to keep describing him as a fluke. He's not the interregnum. Joe Biden was.
The Daily
Ring-Kissing, Lawsuits and a Looming Shutdown
It is a fact. Donald Trump is a very transactional person. He's pretty open about that fact. He's what people in New York used to call a deals guy. So that is how he views the world. On the part of some people who are reaching out to him, there is clearly a fear that he is going to use what levers of power he has to try to enforce – against them.
The Daily
Ring-Kissing, Lawsuits and a Looming Shutdown
But there is a belief that it is more helpful to them to have a relationship with him than not. And it's not an entirely new attitude, Michael. There were actually a lot of people who had that attitude in the first term. The difference between Trump 1 and Trump 2 is that some of the—and I noticed this in just talking to voters, frankly—some of the stigma of backing Trump
The Daily
Ring-Kissing, Lawsuits and a Looming Shutdown
has abated a bit, the social stigma. And so I think that a lot of these CEOs who were concerned about backlash from their consumers are far less worried now.
The Daily
Ring-Kissing, Lawsuits and a Looming Shutdown
I think Andrew is correct about the complexities here. This was a case where George Stephanopoulos on ABC News in a segment with Nancy Mace, who is a congresswoman and a sexual assault survivor. Stephanopoulos in his segment said multiple times that Trump had been found liable for rape by a jury. This was after Trump was found guilty. liable for sexual abuse in a civil suit.
The Daily
Ring-Kissing, Lawsuits and a Looming Shutdown
E. Jean Carroll, a New York writer, had accused him of rape decades earlier, but the jury did not find him liable for rape. They did for sexual abuse. The Trump team asked for a correction. They didn't get a correction. And then they filed suit in Florida. And so the Trump case, which was filed with a judge who was allowing it to move forward,
The Daily
Ring-Kissing, Lawsuits and a Looming Shutdown
alleged that Trump had suffered damage to his reputation from the statements that Stephanopoulos had made and that Stephanopoulos had gotten it wrong.
The Daily
Ring-Kissing, Lawsuits and a Looming Shutdown
Protection against libel when it involves a public figure. That's what we're talking about.
The Daily
Ring-Kissing, Lawsuits and a Looming Shutdown
Certainly the earliest days, Michael, of the pre-second Trump term have been really solid for him. It's about as good as it could have been. You know, at the same time, he is coming in when there are various crises across the world and consumer prices are still high. And so he faces a lot of challenges and he has made a number of significant promises that he is going to have to
The Daily
Ring-Kissing, Lawsuits and a Looming Shutdown
eventually make good on in order for voters to feel as if things are moving along but for now yes this is what he always thought it was going to be in 2016 when he won and it never was and that's very clear in almost all of his actions right now katie when it comes to congress i mean he has to feel very good about his ability to command obedience
The Daily
Ring-Kissing, Lawsuits and a Looming Shutdown
Donald Trump does not need goosing or juicing to be against this particular bill, at least publicly. The question is not which one of them got the other riled up. They clearly got each other riled up. The question is, what did Trump actually know about what was in this bill before this all started? There are things in this bill that he wasn't going to like.
The Daily
Ring-Kissing, Lawsuits and a Looming Shutdown
And that, I think, should have been pretty clear to Mike Johnson. So... Elon Musk and Donald Trump were going to, I think, both arrive at this place pretty naturally. This is not one following the other.
The Daily
Ring-Kissing, Lawsuits and a Looming Shutdown
And now Trump is very dramatically taking the lead and gave a bunch of interviews to television reporters on Thursday morning saying various versions of why this bill shouldn't exist and why maybe Mike Johnson shouldn't be the speaker if he can't push through what Trump wants.
The Daily
Ring-Kissing, Lawsuits and a Looming Shutdown
Right. I mean, look, I think it is true that he, that is what he thinks. Whether he's right or not, Michael, I mean, you know, Trump forced a shutdown when he was president. And he was pretty surprised that he ended up getting blame for it. But Trump doesn't suffer a ton of durable blame. I think that most voters are fairly tuned out right now.
The Daily
Ring-Kissing, Lawsuits and a Looming Shutdown
If there's a shutdown and people are not getting paid, they are going to blame Trump. In part, they'll blame President Biden-ish, but really they're going to blame House Republicans because that's who's going to take the fault. And Trump will just point it back to them. I don't think it's going to have a meaningful difference.
The Daily
Ring-Kissing, Lawsuits and a Looming Shutdown
I don't think it's helpful, though, for Republicans who are entering with unified control, Congress, Senate, the White House, just as they did in 2017, to begin this way with this kind of chaos. Is there a world in which...
The Daily
Ring-Kissing, Lawsuits and a Looming Shutdown
We are going to get to a point where Trump has been doing a lot of promises made, promises kept. But the promises made, promises kept so far are about the kinds of appointees he wants to make or his vows of trying to curtail the media and so forth and so on. Those are not things that impact voters' daily lives.
The Daily
Ring-Kissing, Lawsuits and a Looming Shutdown
And to Katie's point, once we start getting to whether people's daily lives are impacted positively or not by him, that's what his presidency will ride or die on.