Somehow, Trump 1.0 Returned... The Ever-Shifting Midterm Winds (with Michael Cohen)

To date, Trump 2.0 has been defined by everybody appearing to be on the same page and by a sense that the administration kept moving its priorities forward. You might not have liked what those priorities were, but the priorities did get done. The one big beautiful bill was described as an administration’s worth of priorities getting done too soon, and it seems like that might have been prophetic. Trump 1.0 returns when internal fights spill into public view, aides leak against one another, major spectacles vanish with nothing much changing, and the president treats factional drama as fuel rather than a problem to solve. Go back to the beginning of 2025, when Trump 2.0 very much was aligned. The coalition was locked in. The administration had momentum. USAID dismantled in a split second. The one big beautiful bill pushed over the finish line in record time. Again, the point isn’t that these were good things that happened. It’s that they kept happening. But no momentum is made to last forever. Maybe the coalition was always doomed to splinter. The cracks began to show as people were fired, as Kristi Noem and Pam Bondi went down for various different ICE shootings and Epstein, accelerating distrust and leaving Dan Bongino back on the radio airwaves. Either way, the drama that Trump 2.0 kept outside the tent has now fully moved back within it. How do we know? Because they’re telling us. Politics Politics Politics is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Take the address that happened last Thursday night. We knew officials were fighting over how much information the president should share when he was speaking to America. Acting DNI Bill Pulte pushed for a more aggressive version, but senior White House aides intervened. Separate reports said the speech might have claimed that Georgia’s two Democratic senators were elected illegitimately because they both came in during the 2020 runoff. The final address didn’t go that far, meaning somebody pulled something back — or at least that’s what the reports would lead us to believe, which means somebody inside the administration is telling a reporter. The 24-minute speech eventually focused more on election interference and intelligence findings as a way to get to the idea that the Save America Act should be passed. But even that’s telling, because the speech was quickly swallowed by the news cycle. That’s another hallmark of Trump 1.0: a lot of sound and fury signifying nothing, or at least nothing that’s remembered more than 48 hours later. The biggest Trump 1.0 tell is Iran. From the very beginning, the administration has said the Iran strategy has two hands. Marco Rubio and Pete Hegseth are the closed fist, the violence that will come down on the regime, while J.D. Vance, Jared Kushner, and Steve Witkoff are the open hand of diplomacy. If you want to make a deal on our terms, we’re always welcome. In the meantime, we’ll punch you in the face. Trump has actively encouraged a rivalry between Vance and Rubio, asking people all the time who they think should be the next president. And now the proxies of both men are in out-and-out war online. Alex Bruesewitz is on the J.D. Vance side, making it a priority to talk about how much foreign influence, including Israel, is affecting the discourse. Meanwhile, Israel hawks, including Mark Levin and Ben Shapiro, are attacking Vance, saying he’s surrendering to Qatar and he’s mostly a socialist. The damage is falling most heavily on Vance because he’s become the face of diplomacy. If the memorandum of understanding had worked, he would’ve gotten the credit. Since there’s now a lot of violence happening in that region again, he gets the blame. Instead of all of this being part of one big rolling ball that is the Trump administration, we now have winners and losers, which means people inside that sphere are playing the game. Very Trump 1.0. The reason this happens in both instances is, well, Big Chungus. Trump 2.0’s advantage was that the drama stayed outside the tent and the team inside was united. Now we’re getting a clearer view of exactly what the war behind closed doors looks like, and in my opinion, it goes hand in hand with priorities not being enacted. You hear a lot about the Save America Act, but it’s stalled and doesn’t have the votes to become law. Iran is different because the consequences are immediate. Trump has to show that either pressure or diplomacy can produce a successful end state. If neither path works, he’ll have made a very big bet without a clear conclusion, and he’ll have to define a win for himself even if it’s not very clear to the American people. We might already be in the lame-duck phase for Donald Trump, which may make all of these problems worse. Chapters 00:00:00 - Intro 00:03:44 - Trump 1.0 00:11:36 - Darlene Graham 00:16:05 - Reconciliation, Again, Again 00:19:38 - Andy Burnham 00:25:03 - Interview with Michael Cohen 01:13:55 - Wrap-up This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.politicspoliticspolitics.com/subscribe