(17:54 min)
JOE KERNEN: Entitlements ever be on your plate?
PRESIDENT TRUMP: At some point they will be. We have tremendous growth. We’re going to have tremendous growth. This next year I– it’ll be toward the end of the year. The growth is going to be incredible. And at the right time, we will take a look at that. You know, that’s actually the easiest of all things, if you look, cause it’s such a–
JOE KERNEN: If you’re willing–
PRESIDENT TRUMP: –big percentage.
JOE KERNEN: —to do some of the things that you said you wouldn’t do in the past, though, in terms of Medicare–
PRESIDENT TRUMP: Well, we’re going– we’re going look. We also have– assets that we’ve never had. I mean we’ve never had growth like this. We never had a consumer that was taking in, through– different means, over $10,000 a family. We never had the kind of– the kind of things that we have. Look, our country is the hottest in the world. We have the hottest economy in the world. We have the best unemployment numbers we’ve ever had. African American, Asian American. Hispanics are doing so incredibly. Best they’ve ever done. Black. Best they’ve ever done. African American. The numbers are incredible. The poverty numbers. The unemployment and the employment. There’s– there is a difference, actually. But the unemployment and employment numbers for African Americans are the best we’ve ever had. You know, we just– came up with a chart, and it was a very important to number to me. African American youth has the highest, by far, unemployment. The best unemployment numbers that they’ve ever had. And the best employment numbers. Right now we have almost 160 million people working in the United States, and we’ve never even been close to that, Joe.
America’s Great Divide: David Axelrod Interview | FRONTLINE
David Axelrod is a political consultant who served as chief strategist for Barack Obama’s presidential campaigns and later as a senior adviser in the Obama administration.Axelrod’s candid, full interview was conducted with FRONTLINE during the making of the two-part January 2020 documentary series “America’s Great Divide: From Obama to Trump.”
Watch Part One here: https://youtu.be/SnMBYMOTwEs
And Part Two here: https://youtu.be/l5vyDPN19ww
Ronan Farrow interview on Weinstein, Trump & US foreign policy | Unfiltered with James O’Brien #33
Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Ronan Farrow normally asks the questions, but this time he’s in the hot seat.
In this sharp and incisive interview with James O’Brien, Ronan takes us through his prodigious childhood, working in the Obama administration at 21, then going on to forge a career in journalism, most famously as one of the reporters who broke the Harvey Weinstein scandal, and now training his eye on the decline of American global influence, both under Trump and before.
Applying Malcolm Gladwell’s Taxonomy to the Unfolding Political Drama
A regular commenter brought the clip above to my attention. In it the Canadian journalist Malcolm Gladwell distinguishes among four categories of crime fiction. It’s short and I encourage you to watch it but here’s an even briefer summary.
In “Westerns” there is no law and the protagonist imposes law on a lawless territory.
In “Northerns” there is a flawless legal system in place which is effective in enforcing the law.
In “Easterns” the legal system is corrupt; it must be fixed from the inside.
In “Southerns” not just the legal system but everything is thoroughly corrupt—it must be fixed from outside.
I would point out that this taxonomy doesn’t just apply to crime fiction but to sci-fi in the movies and television and even medical dramas. Star Trek is a Northern. Star Wars is an Eastern. Serenity is a Western. There are even a few isolated Southerns (Riddick).
It occurred to me that it is productive to look at the way that different groups view the political drama that has been unfolding since 2016 using Gladwell’s prism. Democrats tend to look at the last nearly three years as a Northern. The system is working well to rid itself of a criminal. The Republicans, not terribly surprisingly, see it as a Southern—a man comes from outside to fix a thoroughly corrupted system.