Trump’s party now

Editor's note: The following text is a transcript of a podcast story. To listen to the story, click on the arrow beneath the headline above.

NICK EICHER, HOST: It’s Wednesday, the 20th of May. Glad to have you along for today’s edition of The World and Everything in It. 

Good morning, I’m Nick Eicher

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: And I’m Lindsay Mast.

First up: Washington Wednesday, and a full plate of politics today. Joining us is Hunter Baker, political scientist and commentator for WORLD Opinions. 

Good morning, Hunter.

HUNTER BAKER: Good morning.

MAST: Hunter, Republicans were watching my home state of Kentucky closely last night as Congressman Thomas Massie faced perhaps the most serious political challenge of his career, no doubt about that now. But things just went from bad to worse for him after repeated clashes with President Trump, and that comes just days after Senator Bill Cassidy lost his Republican primary in Louisiana following years of tension with Trump after Cassidy’s impeachment vote back in 2021. 

So, what do you say, Hunter, with Massie out, what larger story are we watching inside the Republican Party right now?

BAKER: If we were to go back, I don’t know, 20 years, 25 years, one of the things that we would see Republicans saying over and over again would be "the Republican Party is a big tent, it’s a big tent party." And the reason that that would be said is because of the understanding that politics is fundamentally about addition, not subtraction. Typically, you want as many allies, as many friends, as many fellow travelers as you can accumulate, and that’s how you build a really big party and win victories. 

But the other thing you can do is you can have a smaller party with greater intensity, and it seems like that has been the choice that Donald Trump has made over and over again. There’s also, of course, the fact that he does not take slights or challenges. You know, it’s a little bit like a prison yard, the idea that allowing someone to challenge you successfully means that you might die in your sleep, and so you’ve got to take out your enemies, you’ve got to show ’em who’s the boss, and Donald Trump is doing that, and he’s doing it well into his second term.

EICHER: Well, Hunter, it’s interesting you should say that because I want to take a turn from the election results themselves to how the campaign was fought. The one thing I did not expect in the race in Kentucky is that the argument was not Trump versus anti-Trump. Massie was very anti-Trump, but in the campaign he was not. It was a fight over who represents the truest version of Trumpism. 

Is that what you mean by this prison yard thing, or is that different?

BAKER: I think that that is a big part of what I mean. I mean, Trump has transformed the party, there’s no question about that. I can remember in 2016 when he first sort of announced himself, and I thought that he might be kind of a novelty candidate, somebody who would be a celebrity, who would make some noise, but ultimately who would not matter, you know? The real politicians would assert themselves and somebody serious would be elected, and it didn’t work out that way at all.

He went from being somebody who was a primetime TV star on NBC with Celebrity Apprentice, and of course, his long history of developing prime real estate, to being not only the Republican nominee but improbably the President of the United States. 

And he has chosen not just to sort of be happy that he got the job, but instead to go for a long-term play. He is trying to transform the GOP in an enduring fashion such that people don’t just sort of outlast him and then take the GOP back to its truer self or something like that, but instead that it will be a Trump party henceforth. And he’s taking steps to ensure that.

MAST: Hunter, when you step back, does this kind of politics energize voters, or is it the sort of thing that eventually exhausts them?

BAKER: It’s a really good question, and I think it just kind of matters who you are. I can remember teaching community college American government years ago, and I would sometimes despair over how hard it was to get young people interested in politics, in the civics of their own country. Well, that is much less of a problem now. I mean, when Donald Trump is president, I think a lot of people are paying attention who didn’t pay attention before. So, in that sense, he energizes voters.

Now, if you’re sort of a connoisseur of politics and maybe you’re looking for a better label or a better year, it can exhaust you, but there’s no doubt that there are a lot of people who are energized right and left.

EICHER: I wonder, with the decision yesterday of the President, Hunter, to back Attorney General Ken Paxton in Texas over the incumbent Senator John Cornyn, I wonder what the practical meaning of “all politics is local” is anymore? It seems that more and more the races are national in character. 

And so with so much on the line in the fall, why would the president want to go with the more difficult-to-elect Ken Paxton over the safe, you-know-he’s-going-to-be-reelected, John Cornyn? Why?

BAKER: You’re exactly right that politics have become not terribly local, certainly when we’re talking about Congress and the midterms, and that instead we’re seeing race after race become nationalized, and in particular Texas. I mean, Texas is kind of the golden prize, the brass ring that the Democrats are always hoping that they can grab. It’s a state that they used to win, they used to always win Texas, you know? Every now and then you might get a Republican governor or something like that, but after George W. Bush, Texas became a solid Republican state.

And so you’re right, you would ask the question, why not Cornyn? Cornyn has never lost a race before and it seems like he would just roll on to victory. And all I can conclude is that the philosophy that Donald Trump has that is stronger than any other, stronger than any agenda he has, is loyalty to Donald Trump. And he perceives that John Cornyn has been less loyal to him than Ken Paxton.

In fact, Tim Scott, senator from South Carolina, apparently he called Trump 30 minutes before this endorsement and tried to talk him out of it...

EICHER: Really?

BAKER: Yes, that was reported—and apparently failed, and basically Trump just concluded that Ken Paxton was the guy who has his back, and that’s who he’s for.

MAST: Hunter, Democrats are increasingly talking openly about structural issues, things like changes to the electoral college, expansion of the Supreme Court, and statehood for Washington, D.C. and Puerto Rico. 

Conservatives hear that rhetoric and argue the debate is shifting from winning elections under the rules to rewriting the rules themselves. So here’s my question: Are both parties increasingly treating institutions not as neutral frameworks but as instruments of political survival?

BAKER: There’s no doubt about that. You know, you listed off a few things. Of course there has been the talk about getting rid of the electoral college, well, you’d have to change the Constitution first, and that’s a pretty big lift. Expansion of the Supreme Court, that would be easier, because the Constitution does not require nine. There have been fewer, for example, in the past, as opposed to more.

The one that really riles me up is when we talk about statehood for Washington, D.C. I mean, you cannot, you cannot make the seat of government a state. You just can’t do that! And to me it just betrays this incredible sort of unawareness of the fundamental issues that sort of exist in constructing a national government, the idea that you would do that. Puerto Rico is a little bit of a different story, but yes, everybody, this is the postmodern problem.

When you think about postmodernism, it’s the idea that there really is no capital-T Truth, but instead it just kind of comes down to power and narratives that are in a competition with each other, and I think that both sides are sort of embracing the idea that power is what ultimately matters.

Yes, are Republicans sometimes guilty of this? I would certainly argue that Mitch McConnell stretched things a little bit when Justice Scalia died in the final year of President Obama’s term. You could have had a pretty good procedural expectation that President Obama would have the opportunity to make that appointment, and that was held up, but the Democrats are now turning that particular procedural move into a potential excuse for absolutely packing the court. 

In fact, they refer to what McConnell did as packing the court. It’s not that.

EICHER: No.

BAKER: He wasn’t adding to the number of the court, right? He was basically saying this election is about this seat, and whoever wins this election is going to get the seat. But the discussion of court packing has become extremely common, and I think that it may turn into a fight in the future.

EICHER: Alright, Hunter, one lighter subplot, because this has been heavy stuff. We’re talking about civics, we’re talking about the Constitution, but now we need to talk about the briefing room at the White House. 

Vice President Vance got his turn as the spokesman for the President at the briefing podium while Karoline Leavitt is on maternity leave. Conservatives immediately started to compare the performance of the Vice President to Marco Rubio’s recent appearance behind the podium. 

So what do you think, are we quietly watching an early audition for the post-Trump generation of Republican leadership, and do you think—this is the question—do you think that Trump enjoys running a real version of The Apprentice from the Oval Office?

BAKER: I have to say that I think that Karoline Leavitt’s maternity leave has been one of the greatest things to happen in American politics in my lifetime. You know, this situation where we get to have Marco Rubio running that briefing, and then JD Vance doing it, is just really interesting. 

You get to watch these two individuals kind of displaying the skills and the intelligence that they have, and Marco Rubio was really amazing, and he was helped by the fact that it was primarily about foreign affairs with which he is, you know, constantly involved as Secretary of State. 

But I thought that JD Vance looked pretty good. It reminded me of his debate with Tim Walz. And JD Vance, even though he’s famous as the Hillbilly Elegy author, and so you think of him as this sort of rural country guy, he is highly intelligent, he has that Ivy League education at law school, and a lot of experience, and you know, he comes across as a guy who knows what he’s talking about.

EICHER: All right, Hunter Baker is provost at North Greenville University, in addition to all of the above accomplishments. 

Hunter, thank you. We’ll see you next week.

BAKER: Thank you.

WORLD Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of WORLD Radio programming is the audio record.