Analyzing the Trump Presidency: State of Play, February 2, 2026

 

Host: Vinay Kolhatkar. Guests: Ed Mazlish, Ruth Papazian, David Harriman, Roger Bissell

The Savvy Street Show, February 2, 2026

For those who prefer to watch the video, it is here.

Editor’s Note: The Savvy Street Show’s AI-generated transcripts are edited for removal of repetitions and pause terms, and for grammar and clarity. Explanatory references are added in parentheses. Material edits are advised to the reader as edits [in square brackets].

 

Keywords: Trump presidency, ICE raids, protests, deportations, foreign policy, Ukraine, Iran, Maduro, Greenland, 2028 election candidates.

The panelists discuss the implications of recent events, the motivations behind protests, and the potential candidates for the 2028 presidential elections.

Summary: The conversation delves into the current political landscape in the U.S., focusing on the Trump presidency, legal obligations of state and federal law enforcement, the nature of protests, historical deportation practices, foreign policy challenges, and predictions for future elections. The panelists discuss the implications of recent events, the motivations behind protests, and the potential candidates for the 2028 presidential elections, providing insights into the evolving political dynamics.

Takeaways:

1. There is no legal requirement for state police to support federal agents.
2. Protests are often funded by nonprofit organizations with specific agendas.
3. Obama’s deportation policies were more aggressive than commonly perceived.
4. The current protests may be strategically aimed at provoking violence.
5. The U.S. has a moral right to intervene in foreign conflicts like Iran.
6. Trump’s foreign policy is characterized by an “America First” approach and may be characterized as “Jacksonian.”
7. JD Vance is currently seen as a strong candidate for the Republican nomination.
8. The political climate may lead to increased domestic unrest.
9. Concerns about a potential communist uprising are prevalent among some commentators.

Sound Bites

1. “Obama was called the Deporter-in-Chief.”
2. “We have the right to intervene in Iran.”
3. “The Democrats need more Fettermans.”

Vinay Kolhatkar

Hello and good evening again. We are back with Savvy Street’s U.S. presidential panel, and we are just looking at the static picture at the close of one year of the Trump 2.0 presidency.

Joining me again is Ed Mazlish. He runs a podcast which combines conservatism with libertarianism. He was a delegate for Ted Cruz in 2016. Welcome to the show, Ed.

 

Ed Mazlish

Thanks. You can tell them the name of the podcast, too. It’s the Conservatarian Exchange on the Liberty Block.

 

Vinay Kolhatkar

And we have Ruth Papazian, a political consultant who helps unseat leftist Democrats with centrist ones. Welcome to the show, Ruth.

 

Ruth Papazian

Thank you.

 

Vinay Kolhatkar

And we have David Harriman who was the editor of The Journals of Ayn Rand, and he’s also a physicist and philosopher. Welcome to the show, David.

 

David Harriman

Thanks for having me on.

 

Vinay Kolhatkar

And last but not the least, my usual co-host, Roger Bissell, musician, philosopher, and writer. Welcome to the show, Roger.

 

Roger Bissell

Thanks, Vinay. Good to be here.

 

Vinay Kolhatkar

Today we’re going to start with an unpleasant topic: ICE doing some raids, lots of people getting in the way, and most recently two people killed within a few days of each other in Minneapolis. I will start with Ed who is an attorney. Is there a requirement at law for state police to support federal agents such as ICE? And if there is, does Trump therefore have a legal basis for commencing insurrection proceedings against Minnesota and, in fact, Minneapolis?

 

Ed Mazlish

Not only is there no legal requirement that local police support federal law officers, the law is the other way. There’s something called the anti-commandeering doctrine, which says that the federal government can’t force states and localities to enforce federal law. However, there is a duty for the state and local officials to not interfere with federal law.

There’s an obligation to prevent the assaults that are taking place on federal law enforcement.

Also, I would say, derivatively, there’s an obligation to prevent the assaults that are taking place on federal law enforcement. We saw the Pretti video where he spit on law enforcement officers. We’ve seen lots of other videos where local residents are taunting ICE officers and threatening them. That is not lawful protest. The local officials have an obligation to protect the federal enforcement officers when they’re just doing their job.

As far as the Insurrection Act is concerned, the president can’t just invoke it willy-nilly. There’s a long procedure that has to be followed, where he’s able to demonstrate that he’s invoking military action as a last resort. But ultimately, he just needs to be able to make that showing and to issue a dispersal order, which he hasn’t done yet. Unfortunately, based on what came out over the weekend, Trump [posted on] Truth Social that he’s instructing Kristi Noem and Department of Homeland Security, essentially, to stand down, so I don’t think that Trump is going to be sending in the military. I don’t think that he’s going to be invoking the Insurrection Act. We can talk about why later, if you’d like, but it seems pretty clear to me that he’s going to be pivoting towards Iran and other options. But I think that the predicate had been laid. He could have invoked it, but he’s choosing not to.

 

Vinay Kolhatkar

Okay, so did Obama just get a favor during his [presidential] years with local enforcement, that they weren’t obligated to help him, but they did? Did Barack Obama get a favor from the local enforcement, apparently helping him get the deportees out?

 

Ed Mazlish

Well, they may have helped them get some deportees out, but you have to remember that Obama sued the state of Arizona because the state of Arizona was attempting to enforce federal law and Obama said, no, don’t. Arizona countered by saying, you’re not enforcing the law, and the Supreme Court said, that’s too bad, that’s Congress’s job, if Congress wants to impeach him or Congress wants to have oversight in that area. But it’s not a state responsibility, and it’s not proper for a state to do it. To the extent that Obama and some of the local localities worked together, that’s okay. There’s nothing unconstitutional about that. But if one party doesn’t want to work with the other, there’s no requirement that they have to.

 

Vinay Kolhatkar

Okay. [Turning to] David, we never saw, at least not in the media, the kind of protests that we’re seeing now. It’s unprecedented. There was an allegation that [they are] being funded by some NGOs. Is it NGO-funded and professionally managed, or just a bunch of ragtag bullies trying to come there and interfere?

 

David Harriman

I see a lot of similarity between this and the George Floyd protests. It’s the same playbook. They are funded by nonprofits, and we know some of those nonprofits: Open Society run by George Soros, Tides Foundation which is connected with Soros also. I think a lot of these protesters are being paid. They’re organized. They know exactly what they’re supposed to do. They’re getting all the useful idiots to go along with them. It’s the Democratic playbook. I’m surprised to some extent that they can get away with it.

The Democrats don’t care at all about people raped and murdered all across the country, not only by illegals but by the people they let out of prison all the time or won’t prosecute.

It seems so incredibly hypocritical and disingenuous. The Democrats don’t care at all about people raped and murdered all across the country, not only by illegals but by the people they let out of prison all the time or won’t prosecute. I’ll never get the image out of my head of that guy who was arrested 70 times, killing that young woman on that subway in New York, just standing up and yelling some racial slur at her and then stabbing her to death. He had been arrested 70 times, and they let him go every time, basically Soros-appointed judges. The same people appoint those prosecutors and judges as fund these riots. So, if you don’t care about tens of thousands of people being raped and murdered and drugged, children sold into sex slavery, basically—if you don’t care about any of that, and you do care about this guy, Pretti, who provokes officers for a week, spits on them, kicks out their taillights, that’s who you choose to care about? It’s atrocious.

 

Vinay Kolhatkar

Roger, this isn’t the first president to try and deport illegals. So, what happened under previous presidents? It just wasn’t in international news all the time. How did that go below the radar?

 

Roger Bissell

Well, Barack Hussein Obama was called “the Deporter-in-Chief.” He kicked out almost 3 million illegals, and so far, Trump has only kicked out about 2 million. I think George W. Bush had the same number approximately, and Joe Biden about half a million. Obama said, “We’re deporting criminals, not families.” Well, that was a prevarication. That was a lie. 70% of them were not a national security threat. Compare that to Trump’s figure of approximately 80% that don’t have a criminal record. Trump’s record is only 15% worse than Obama’s. That hardly makes him a fascist monster. Plus, Obama put kids in cages down on the border, and supposedly that didn’t even exist until Trump came in. But lo and behold, the footage was there, and it was impossible to argue with.

So, how did Obama not get blasted for crimes against humanity? Because if Trump’s guilty, so was Obama. Well, he had a lot of support. Chat GPT tried really hard to convince me about this, and I’m not buying it, but he had a lot of support and trust from the Progressives and the Latinos. They gave them a pass thinking, well, there might be reform if we just play along. Also, the Dems did not want mass, violent protests, because that would have helped the GOP in the midterms and in 2016. So, Obama was low key and he was reluctant: “I don’t really want to do this,” and Trump [is] saying, “This is a battle, this is war,” and it’s like a big spectacle.

Well, that’s part of it. But another part of it is just pure politics, like Clinton was given a pass by the media and the feminists for all the abuse of women that he did, while Trump was tagged as being a rapist and a misogynist. The stuff that they tried to accuse Clinton of was just brushed away, whereas Trump was hauled through court. [Similarly,] Obama was their guy, so they just explained away or ignored what he did, [while] Trump was Hitler and his law enforcement people were brutal thugs. So, a lot of this is just political animosity. It’s just really bad-rhetoric politics.

Journalists and demonstrators cannot disrupt a religious service any more than a priest and a choir can go over to a TV station and disrupt a news broadcast.

What’s a better approach? Very simply, keep the border closed, and use Tom Homan’s formula: deport the worst of the worst. Everybody else, penalize them by requiring double the time required to become a naturalized citizen. or let them self-deport and come in and do it the right way. But also, the Supreme Court needs to correctly interpret the 14th amendment and shut down birthright citizenship. That was not what the Congress intended in 1866. [Here are links to a couple of talks on that by Tom Woods, who is with the Mises Institute: (Birthright Citizenship—Trump is Right) (The Truth about American History: An Austro-Jeffersonian Perspective. 4. The Fourteenth Amendment)]

I also just want to say something really quick about Don Lemon getting arrested after that disruption at the Catholic church in Minneapolis. I’m hearing prominent libertarians say, “Now they’re arresting journalists,” as if it’s Nazi Germany all over again, and it’s violating the freedom of the press. Well, a church is open to the public, but it’s being open is a privilege, not a right or an entitlement. It’s private property. If you’re asked to leave, you have to leave, or you can be arrested. Journalists and demonstrators cannot disrupt a religious service any more than a priest and a choir can go over to a TV station and disrupt a news broadcast. It’s as simple as that. It goes both ways. The whole First Amendment is an interlocking set of rights, and you cannot deprive somebody else of their rights by exercising yours, and that’s just what Don Lemon and that bunch of hooligans did. Somehow this escapes the best and the brightest of the libertarian movement. I’m through with these people.

 

Vinay Kolhatkar

Yes, that is very, very sad.

 

Ruth Papazian

Breaking news, breaking news.

 

Vinay Kolhatkar

Unfortunately, the news down on the ground a week ago wasn’t good. Two deaths, Good and Pretti. Two agents in the latter affair have been stood down. Ruth, do you think that’s a concession that something did go wrong?

 

Ruth Papazian

Well, before I answer your question, I just want to note that there might be other deaths, and the reason is that it serves the cause. These are martyrs to the cause. I think everybody remembers that iconic image of a young girl kneeling before the body of a dead student at Kent State, and that was one of the images that turned the public against the Vietnam War. These deaths and these images are very powerful. It’s part of the playbook. They are trying to provoke situations where there will be [more] deaths, in my opinion.

Now, to answer your question, yes, the two agents involved in the shooting were put on leave, but that’s usual procedure when you’re investigating an officer-involved shooting, so there’s nothing special there. The determination of whether either the Pretti or the Good shootings were justifiable is going to be based on the totality of the circumstances.

Now, both incidents were very different. In the Renee Good incident, she refused orders to exit her vehicle, which is a violation of law. Instead, she gunned the engine trying to escape, and she hit an ICE agent with her car, causing injuries that required hospitalization. As it happened, this particular agent six months earlier had been dragged by a protester’s car the length of a football field and was hospitalized for a prolonged period because of those injuries. It is quite reasonable to assume that when he saw Good aim her car straight at him, he was in fear of his life. So, I think in this particular case, the shooting will be deemed justified.

The Alex Pretti incident was different in that the scene was even more chaotic, and the protesters were blowing whistles that were loud enough to disorient the ICE and border patrol agents, and loud enough actually to cause hearing damage. Some doctors who I’m friends with on Facebook have said that blowing these whistles in their faces like that is actually a form of physical assault. Now, Pretti was licensed to carry a gun in Minnesota, but he was carrying illegally that day for a variety of reasons. He didn’t have his license and permit on him. He was armed at a protest, which is also against state law. And he did not inform the officers that he had a gun, which is a violation of the law in addition to being incredibly stupid. There were many, many videos that came out, shot by protesters. Some of them were clearly altered, but none of them showed what had happened because when all the action was taking place, there were bodies on top of Pretti, there were shadows, you couldn’t really see anything. At some point, Pretti’s gun was removed from his waistband holster. At just about that exact moment, another officer shouted, “He’s got a gun.” One second after that, Pretti was fatally shot. Now, officers are trained to shoot when they hear the word “gun,” so the only way we will know if this was a justifiable shooting is by looking at the bodycam footage from the ICE agents involved in the scuffle with Pretti. It’s very murky right now.

 

Vinay Kolhatkar

Yes, it probably will be judged by a hopefully impartial jury. You know, it’ll probably go to court. We shall see.

Okay, let’s turn over to foreign policy, which has been no less controversial. We can start with Iran, the favorite enemy of many institutions, including the Ayn Rand Institute, and, realistically, including Israel. Now, Ayn Rand always said that free nations, and she classified semi-free as free nations, have a moral right to invade and free the oppressed country, but not a duty. So, we are at a very difficult stage, David, with this US armada sitting there in the Middle East. The question is, should the US intervene [in Iran]?

 

David Harriman

I say, absolutely, yes. I think the only controversy here is: Why didn’t we do it 40 years ago? They’ve killed Americans. They’ve said over and over again, we’re the great Satan. They would love to annihilate us. They are going to annihilate Israel. They were probably 80–90% of their way toward nuclear bombs. They had the material; it was 60% enriched. They only have one nuclear power plant in the entire country, and nuclear power doesn’t require more than 6% enrichment. They’re over 60%. The only possible reason for that is building bombs. We’ve known they had those nuclear facilities for a very long time. Trump finally had the courage to hit them.

Now, the only thing I say about this is that I do regard this as Trump’s single biggest mistake that I can see, assuming there isn’t information out there that I don’t know about. After that [proxy] war with Israel and we took out the nuclear facilities, there was a perfect opportunity to take out the Ayatollah and his government, and why Trump chose not to do that, I still don’t fully understand. It should have been done at that point. The only thing I can think of is that he thought it would look better if the people of Iran rose up and overthrew the Ayatollah’s government. That would have been great, except [the Iranian people] didn’t have any weapons. And despite the fact that most of [Iran’s] missile defense system was knocked out, they still had machine guns [while] the protesting crowd [was] completely without arms. So, what happened? 3,000 protesters got killed. I don’t think those people had to get killed. I think we could have just taken out the government earlier. Yes, to the question, of course we have the right to do that, and we should do it.

 

Vinay Kolhatkar

Okay, I’ll turn to the never-ending Ukraine war. Roger, Trump says he’s this time very, very close. We’ve heard that before. Have you got any hope about the Ukraine war ending in any shape or form?

 

Roger Bissell

Hope springs eternally, Vinay. When Trump ran for reelection, he bragged at least 50 times that he was going to negotiate peace in Ukraine very quickly, or even in 24 hours. He said “24 hours” many times, while we’re still waiting. But I do think the war will end this year. And the one big reason is that this kind of foreign policy victory would help him and the GOP a lot for keeping control of Congress. If they don’t, then they’re going to have a lot of trouble going on. So, how to end it? Well, I think that if the U S and NATO could come up with the right security guarantees and Ukraine gave up the regions that Putin is sitting on, then it could be over quickly. But I emphatically would think it’s a bad idea to give into the war hawks and give more money or weapons or troops to Ukraine. Ukraine’s not part of NATO. It’s not our ally, and Biden and NATO have a large part of the blame for that war breaking out in the first place.

While we’re on the subject of Ukraine and security, I’ve got an idea. It’s a big idea. I should probably send it into the Wall Street Journal or something. Anyway, I think it would help finesse both the Ukraine and the Greenland situation. The whole function of NATO was to protect the North Atlantic nations against Russia, and that means to defend ourselves against attack, not to pile up mutually assured destruction, which is what we had for many years. It does not mean destabilizing Russia’s own security with more troops and missiles. But the US and NATO, by reneging on a bunch of understandings that various presidents had with Russia, they’ve basically broken the situation as much as we broke Iraq when we invaded it. We were not attacked by Iraq. But the responsibility for a peaceful solution shouldn’t just be our burden. The sticking point through the whole 60, 70 years of NATO has been to get the other NATO countries—and this would include Denmark, which has Greenland in the palm of their hand—to not just pony up money to support NATO, but to do what’s necessary.

So, here’s the idea, really quickly: Put Russia, Ukraine, and Greenland together in a cage. Number one, both Russia and Ukraine have to bend: a security agreement between NATO, the US, Ukraine, and Russia that demilitarizes the Donbas and allows shared commercial access for both sides to the rare earth minerals there and—Denmark, are you listening?—in Greenland. Number two, this part requires both Denmark and Russia to bend, and some of you aren’t going to like this: an agreement to share the Golden Dome technology with Russia, allowing us to put it in Greenland, and [allowing] Russia to put it in [one of] their Arctic islands. [Ruth: I don’t like it.] That’s it. That’s mutually assured defense rather than mutually assured destruction. That’s all I have.

 

Vinay Kolhatkar

Yes, very, very interesting. Before I turn to you, Ruth, now that Greenland’s been mentioned, there have been people trying to classify Trump’s foreign policy into one of these four schools of foreign policy. He’s clearly not one of the first two. The first is the Jeffersonian [school]. Ron Paul and the libertarians love it—isolationism, it’s not our problem, et cetera. The opposite of that is the Wilsonians, who think it’s our moral duty to go in and help install democracy and peace and progressive institutions. The two other schools are a little less well known. The Hamiltonian ones like to use business as a kind of mercantile strategy combined with national security, and the Jacksonians are pure national security.

Now, I think Trump is pure national security, and he just uses business like in Venezuela or elsewhere where he has to. But I do think his move on Greenland was crazy. Why suddenly announce I’m going to take it and be so blunt, like an abusive bully. when Marco Rubio could have been in discussions behind doors for a year or so and a deal might have been done? Do you agree or disagree?

 

Ruth Papazian

Okay, I want to attack the tariff side of this first, and I’m going to start by saying that I am and always will be anti-war unless there is a foreign enemy on our shores, in our streets, directly threatening me, my neighbors, and my country. World War II was the last war this country fought to win, and since then, warmongers have led us into unwinnable conflicts that made them a lot of money, but cost the lives, limbs, and futures of generations of our young men and women. Personally, I can’t even imagine what it’s like for a veteran of the Afghan war who lost one or more limbs to see his sacrifice completely negated when Biden turned the country over to people he had been fighting just a few years earlier. That sickened me.

Whether it’s by sanctions, tariffs, diplomatic means, I support Trump’s efforts to coerce bad actors into giving up activities that are dangerous to the US and to the world at large.

Now, having said that, whether it’s by sanctions, tariffs, diplomatic means, I support Trump’s efforts to coerce bad actors into giving up activities that are dangerous to the US and to the world at large. I do prefer weaponizing the tariffs to boots on the ground. As to Trump’s demeanor and Greenland, I think his demeanor is irrelevant. When he started all his bluff and bluster, the NATO nations threatened to disband the alliance if Trump succeeded in invading and acquiring Greenland. But they were just bluffing because NATO was up to its neck in the Ukraine war, and without its backing, Ukraine is toast, so they can’t disband. NATO did not hold the cards, so Trump left the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos with an outline of a deal, which means the deal is going to happen and the rest is just details.

Trump does want to build the Golden Dome missile defense shield in Greenland, and that’s the perfect spot for it because it will be able to deflect missiles from China and Russia if you use the Great Circle navigation system to calculate the shortest distance between two points on the surface of the earth. That’s why Greenland is the ideal spot for this. From Greenland, the Golden Dome can intercept any missile aimed at Alaska, Eastern Canada, Greenland itself, Scandinavia, and none of these missiles will come anywhere near the United States.

If I were going to sum up what Trump’s foreign policy is, think about it: Protecting our borders, our sovereignty, our citizens—these are the basic functions of government. It’s existential, and Trump is taking this sacred principle and making it the core of both his foreign and domestic policy, and to me, that is what every president should have done.

 

Vinay Kolhatkar

Thank you. Now, there was one more, not a war, but an action, anyway, where federal agents essentially kidnapped President Maduro, brought him into the US, and I believe the [Venezuelan] vice president became the president. I believe she’s cooperating with the Trump-Rubio plan, but they still regard Maduro as their rightful president. He’s going to appear before a court of law. What if the court acquits him, Ed? Does he just go back and become president again?

 

Ed Mazlish

If Maduro gets acquitted? I don’t think that’s a possibility. and that’s not because I’ve seen any of the evidence. In federal court, the US government has an extremely high conviction rate. The feds don’t usually prosecute unless they have the goods on you. I have not seen the evidence. I have not seen the indictment. I would bet dollars to doughnuts that this is a show trial, and even if a jury decides to acquit him, I do not see the Trump administration turning him free. My guess is they would turn him over to the Department of War and have him treated as a prisoner of war or something along the lines of what the military can do. I’m not an expert on that or even knowledgeable about that, but that would be my guess. That’s really all I can say about that. I just don’t see any real possibility that he’s going to be released. I don’t see him going back to Venezuela and becoming president again.

As far as some of the other comments that have been stated, David says that Trump’s biggest mistake is Iran. I think that Iran is a mistake, but I think that he’s working on that right now. I think that his biggest mistake is surrendering in Minneapolis and saying that he’s not going to put down this communist insurgency. Ruth mentioned that she’s against war unless it’s on our shores. This is a war that’s on our shores, and he is letting it fester. I am completely perplexed. He went through this in 2020, and he knows what they’re doing. It’s not like he doesn’t have personal knowledge of what he’s up against and what they’re trying to do.

Vinay, you mentioned that Trump is Jacksonian. I think that he’s got elements of Jacksonianism, but I think he also has a lot of Hamiltonianism in him, in the sense that for Trump, 80 to 90% of his foreign policy and even domestic policy is Calvin Coolidge’s, “The business of America is business.” He thinks everything is a deal, everything is economics. He believes that everybody wants to get rich the way he does. I think that he finds it inconceivable that anybody could be motivated by the desire to kill rather than the desire to make money, and that leads him to some head-scratching ideas such as Hamas and Qatar and Saudi Arabia might be able to create a Riviera on the Mediterranean. I think that it leads him to believe that the mullahs might be able to make a deal. I don’t think that the world works that way, and I don’t think Trump sees that. I think it’s a benevolent American sense of life, that he thinks everybody just wants to make money the way he does, but there are people out there that just want to destroy. I think that’s what’s going on in Minneapolis, and that he’s not willing to put it down just means that that’s a cancer that’s going to fester.

 

David Harriman

Yes, I agree. It upset me the way he didn’t finish things in the Middle East the way I thought he should have, but Ed, what you just said, I agree with.

 

Vinay Kolhatkar

Yes. I do, too. The leftist professors have called him a combination of Jacksonian and Hamiltonian, but the other side says he’s Hamiltonian because he does use business as a weapon rather than in a mercantile way.

But the most distinguishing characteristic of Trump, at least [according to] the legacy media, is not his patriotism. It is his image as a belligerent bully, and he gets called Hitler and fascist and all that. So, I’ll turn to Roger. Are there any actions of Trump that have caused you a lot of angst? And if so, why?

 

Roger Bissell

Well, how many of you know about the Greek play Lysistrata? A guy named Aristophanes wrote this a long time ago. One big negative aspect of Trump’s persona is what I call the Lysistrata Effect. In the play, the Greek women said, no more sex if you guys don’t end the war between Athens and Sparta, right? Now, I know men, colleagues and friends, men who abandoned Trump because their wives anguished about how he reminded them of their abusive ex-husband, etc., etc., whether or not he did.

 

David Harriman

And Clinton didn’t.

 

Roger Bissell

Right. Well, the feminists loved him. He was the first feminist president. Anyway, there was a big slide of male voters towards the GOP in 2024, so apparently the swing voters that were left after the Lysistratas had their way, they were married to women who actually saw clearly that Trump was the lesser of the two evils.

There’s another problem in the comments he makes, that “loose lips sink ships.” I think Trump has given the leftists way too much ammunition with his careless comments. Years ago, he said that if he shot somebody in Times Square, he wouldn’t lose any support. Wow. I mean, that is one of the most asinine . . . and he said it like, oh well, we’re just having a chat here. Yes, and your enemies take it and run with it! Now every person who gets shot or injured by a federal agent, well, that just proves that we’re living in the new Hitler Germany and his people are just following orders like the Nazis, so next thing you know, they’re going to put gays in concentration camps. I’m not making this up. There were some libertarians not too long ago who were saying that Trump is going to put journalists and gays in concentration camps.

This is not anything new though, because back when Mitt Romney ran against Obama in 2012, Biden was trying to stir up the Blacks and said, “He’s gonna put y’all back in chains.” Obama actually backed Biden on that, and that’s pretty rich coming from the guy who put kids in cages on the border. So, I think a lot of this is just cynical leftists who throw anything they can, hoping something’s going to stick. That’s what they always do. They even put Hitler mustaches on pictures of George Bush for Pete’s sake.

What really matters, though, is not what Trump says or what people think he’s going to do, but what he really does, and I think what he’s doing, he’s doing pretty well—like the tax cuts, the deregulations, closing the border, cutting off funds to woke programs and sanctuary cities, cutting waste and fraud, all of that. I don’t like some of his proposals like subsidies and regulations to help first time homeowners. I don’t like some of the arguments he gives for policies I do like, like retaliatory tariffs. But he’s really kept the leftists off balance and really unhinged, and to me, this is really entertaining and it couldn’t happen to a nicer bunch.

 

Vinay Kolhatkar

Ruth, what do you think? Is this image that Trump has, deliberate, or it’s just [that] he can’t help himself?

 

Ruth Papazian

Well, as far as his image, I don’t know if Ed will agree with me, but we’re both from the Bronx, and to those of us who are from the outer boroughs of New York City, Trump is not rude or belligerent. He’s just a typical New Yorker. There’s nothing different about him than most New Yorkers as far as his attitude goes. But now he’s the president, so that changes things. Now, previous presidents, both Democrats and Republicans, were globalist pushovers, and nobody ever believed them when they said things like, “everything is on the table,” “nothing is off the table,” etc. None of these folks believed that. But when Trump says it, people start quaking in their boots because they believe it, okay?

Now, this is a very different take than maybe what you were expecting, but I think that what is unique about Trump is that he has mastered Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals, and he applies them not only in the political realm, but also in negotiations. If you understand this, everything he does makes sense.

For example, Rule one is power. Power is not only what you have, but what the enemy thinks you have.

Rule five, ridicule is man’s most potent weapon. It’s almost impossible to counter-attack ridicule. You remember this from 2016, “Low-Energy Jeb,” and all these nicknames that he had for people. They stuck, and all of a sudden, Jeb, who supposedly the frontrunner going in, just got more and more diminished, to the point where nobody was voting for him in the primaries.

Rule seven, a tactic that drags on too long becomes a drag. That’s why Trump is constantly switching things up. I mean, they call him a “taco,” and they say he never follows through, or he changes his mind, or he’s all over the place, whatever. No, he is interjecting chaos in the situation by constantly changing tactics.

Rule eight is: keep the pressure on. And he does that.

Rule nine, the threat is usually more terrifying than the thing itself. Especially if you believe that Trump will carry through on the threat, it is very terrifying.

And then Rule 12 is: the price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative.

So, over and over again, in various situations, we see Trump cycle through the rules until he gets to Rule 12 and to the constructive alternative.

 

Vinay Kolhatkar

Okay. It’s interesting. Ed, most recently Trump was going against the Fed chairman, Jerome Powell, and now he has announced Kevin Warsh [as the new Fed chair to succeed Powell], which is a surprise to me. Warsh is an inflation hawk. I thought Trump wanted to get rates reduced rather than increased, but really the evil is the existence of the central bank, and it seems to me he doesn’t really understand real economics. Do you agree or disagree?

 

Ed Mazlish

I’m not sure where you’re going with the question, but I do think he understands economics. He shows his understanding of economics when it comes to tariffs, and in the sense that, as Hayek said, a good economist has to be more than an economist. If you just look at tariffs from an economic point of view, they may be bad, but if you look at them from a larger, meta view of how they impact the world culturally, how they impact our national defense, how they impact the society as a whole, I think that historically tariffs are the sign of a rising power, not of a falling power.

But getting back to the Fed, yes, the existence of the Fed is a problem. Trump is being butchered for threatening Fed independence, but I think that an independent central bank is the perfect embodiment of Progressivism, and I think it should be attacked. Maybe Trump doesn’t attack it for the right reasons, but I think that rule by experts is antithetical to a free society. I get the danger of politicizing money decisions, but that’s just an argument for privatizing money. It’s not an argument for having experts become autocrats in a Fed temple where they get to make monetary policy without really telling us what they’re doing and without any real oversight or any real political accountability. So, yes, Trump wants to attack Fed independence.

You also asked, do I think he understands economics? I don’t think that Trump is right about lower interest rates right now, but given his success in other areas, including the tariff issue, I’d be willing to give him the chance on it. I hope that answers your question.

 

Vinay Kolhatkar

Yes, we’re all in agreement. It’s not the Fed’s independence that’s crucial. It’s the Fed’s existence. So, in trying to understand Trump, we came to a view of him being Jacksonian or Jacksonian-Hamiltonian in his foreign policy. But David, do you perceive any underlying policy in Trump that guides his principles and guides his actions, or does he just want to be unpredictable?

 

David Harriman

Well, yes, he’s been accused of being purely pragmatic and not really philosophic at all. I think you have to take into account the context here. When was the last time we actually had a president that was guided by an overall idea that he thought was morally right and he had a passion for? I would say Reagan. Reagan was confined basically to seeing the Soviet Union as the Evil Empire, and I think his main mission was to destroy it. That’s a good mission, but I think actually it was somewhat narrow in its overall view of the world. There were many other dangers besides the Soviet Union.

I think Trump actually sees the Big Picture better than Reagan did, and he is 100% America First, as he says he is, and as I think Reagan was trying to be. But no president that we’ve had since then has cared about anything except money, power. Where was Clinton’s philosophy? Where was Bush’s philosophy? I think Bush was horrible. Where was Obama’s philosophy? Biden wasn’t even conscious, so he couldn’t have a philosophy. But when Trump says America First, he means it, and that does encapsulate his philosophy. You see it in all his policies. His pro-energy policy—the first thing he did when he got into office was repeal all the regulations and laws against energy production. That is as good an America First policy as you can get. National security—his foreign policy may not be right in all cases, and sometimes I wish he would go further, but it’s all motivated by that same America First policy. The same thing with law and order, illegal immigration, you can go on and on.

I think [Trump] sees more dangers in the world than past presidents have. He sees them coming from many different sources, from the international monetary situation, from China, even from NATO. He’s playing all those negotiations at the same time. He’s taking on a much more complex job than past presidents have.

 

Vinay Kolhatkar

Yes, I agree. He has many more enemies to worry about than Reagan. Reagan made a mistake in arming the Afghans just because they were enemies of the Soviet Union, because he didn’t see the problem going out 20 years.

 

David Harriman

Yes, he gave Osama bin Laden a lot of Stinger missiles. I applaud him for going after the Soviet Union as hard as he did, but he missed some other problems around the world.

 

Vinay Kolhatkar

He did.

Anyway, let’s now turn to a look at the future. Perhaps it is a little rosier, or maybe not. Ruth is the consultant on the Democrat side, so I’ll pick her [opinion] first. There’s talk of Newsom, AOC, Pritzker, Whitmer, Shapiro, Harris, Buttigieg, and a few others I don’t know of. Who would you pick as the three front runners on the Democratic side for the 2028 primaries?

 

Ruth Papazian

Well, at this point, I think it’s too soon to say who it will be in 2028, but it’s not too soon to say who it won’t be, so that’s how I’m going to attack this question.

I think James Carville was right, that nobody’s interested in Harris running again. She lost spectacularly. Trump won a landslide in the Electoral College. He won all seven swing states, including Nevada, which no Republican had won since George W. Bush in 2004, and he also won the popular vote, again for the first time since W. Given how much money that Kamala’s campaign spent on stupid stuff, like nearly a million dollars with her face on the sphere in Las Vegas for a week, donors don’t want to know from her. So, she’s done.

Buttigieg—he has almost zero support among black voters, and that makes him a non-starter in the Democratic primaries.

Now, AOC looks like a frontrunner on paper—female, Latina, young, charismatic—but I’m not sure that 2028 is going to be the year that she’s going to run. She does have a Kamala problem. She’s been the butt of jokes since she got elected, and most voters don’t take her seriously. She needs some gravitas to launch a presidential bid, and I think that will happen in 2032, and it will be from her perch in the US Senate. I predict that she will take a page from Obama’s playbook and run for Schumer’s seat in 2028 and then for president after serving a partial term.

As far as Shapiro, unfortunately, he still has “a Jewish problem.” The Far-Left calls him “Genocide Josh” because of his support of Israel. And frankly, Pritzker has the same problem. He punches hard against anti-Semitism. So, unless the Democratic party is able to tamp down the shocking level of anti-Semitism among its base, I can’t see Shapiro or Pritzker winning the primaries.

But I’m going to leave you with a wild card: Fetterman is going to beat AOC in 2032 to become the party’s presidential nominee. Making that prediction now.

 

Ed Mazlish

So, you’re predicting that Fetterman is still going to be a Democrat in ‘32?

 

Ruth Papazian

Yes, he will be. Actually, I think it’s vitally important that he stays a Democrat. Anybody can become a Republican. If the Democrats are going to be led out of the wilderness, and if they’re going to take back their party from the socialists, we need more Fettermans. I mean, if they join the Republican party, what’s that going to get them? They’ll probably start losing elections, too.

 

Vinay Kolhatkar

Which will be welcome. Let’s turn to Ed and the Republican side. JD Vance is obviously the frontrunner. The Israel-US alliance doesn’t like him. They would, I guess, prefer Rubio or maybe even Cruz. Is there any chance Cruz or Ramaswamy will throw their hat in the ring, or is it just JD Vance versus Marco Rubio? And who do you think will be the nominee?

 

Ed Mazlish

Before I answer that question, I just want to throw one word at Ruth: Bernie. Bernie. He’s going to be the nominee. He’s got strikes against him, but he embodies everything that the Democrats want to be. [Vinay: He’s still alive.] [Ruth: Isn’t he in his 80s?] [Vinay: Yes, he’s already 84.] I know he’s old, but he’s still sharp, and if he wants it, I think he can have it.

As far as the Republican side, yes, think JD Vance is not just the frontrunner, but I don’t see anybody really unseating him. I think it’s a race for who’s going to be his VP.

Do I think Ramaswamy is going to run again? No, because he’s either going to win the governor’s race in Ohio and stay as governor of Ohio, or he’s going to lose and not be viable.

Is Cruz going to run? That’s a little bit of a tough call. I suspect he probably will.

On the other hand, I think the field is going to be cleared for JD. DeSantis could run too, but I just don’t see anybody [else] trying to get [to the top spot] . . . unless JD Vance has some kind of falling out with Trump, I think that he’s going to have Trump’s backing, and I don’t think anybody is going to cross Trump. I think Cruz, of all of them, wants to, but I think he’s smart enough to know that he’s not going to win that battle.

As I said, I think it’s a race for vice president, and I’m not predicting this is going to happen, but I think the dark horse candidate is Donald Trump Jr. I think that there’s a real possibility that he’s going to be the vice-presidential nominee. That would assure all the Trump support stays with JD. It would fire up the MAGA base. I don’t know how it’ll be accepted by the rest of the Republicans.

 

Ruth Papazian

Ed, what about Eric Trump? He’s the one with the brains.

 

Ed Mazlish

First of all, I think he’s going to continue running the businesses. Second, he doesn’t really speak on politics the way Don Jr. does. This wouldn’t be a wild card, but I think that JD likes DeSantis, but Trump doesn’t. So, I think that depending upon how the dynamics go, JD might want to pick DeSantis, but I don’t know how Trump would deal with that. Who else is available?

 

Ruth Papazian

You don’t think JD/Rubio?

 

Vinay Kolhatkar

Marco Rubio, yes.

 

Ed Mazlish

Rubio has said he doesn’t want to run. Maybe he would. I wouldn’t rule it out. I wouldn’t say that it’s not possible. But I don’t know. I guess it depends on how they get along, too. I don’t know what kind of dynamic they have together. To me, I’ll always remember Rubio as part of the Gang of Seven, and as good a job as he’s doing as secretary of state, I’ll never fully trust him. I’d rather that JD look somewhere else. But if he chooses Rubio, I’ll support them. I can’t really think of anybody else that is particularly viable.

 

Vinay Kolhatkar

David, there have been so-called libertarians—Dave Smith, Tucker Carlson—who have gone into those crazy, absurd, anti-Israel conspiracy theories. And JD Vance did drop the ball once on the whole Israel issue, which I think Rubio never has. Are you concerned that JD won’t be as good as Trump, at least in respect of Israel or elsewhere? Or would you support him?

 

David Harriman

Well, my estimation of Vance has actually gone down over the last year, and my judgment of Rubio has gone up. I don’t know what the Gang of Seven is that Ed was referring to, so I might have to investigate that.

 

Ed Mazlish

That was the group of senators that tried to put together an amnesty plan under Obama.

 

Ruth Papazian

Uh-oh!

 

David Harriman

Oh. Well, it’s hard for me to believe it would have been unvetted. I know the kind of background Rubio comes from. He’s Cuban American, Miami. My wife came actually from that community. Back in the old days, that Miami Cuban community voted 90% Republican because they associated the Democrats with the communism that they had escaped in Cuba. The more I hear Rubio talk now, the more he seems very principled and strong, unrelenting in his pursuit of that same America First program that Trump has, whereas Vance—there’s part of me that thinks that I can’t trust him. I feel the same way about DeSantis, by the way. There’s something slightly phony and insincere about those two. Most Republicans have that. I don’t entirely trust them. But Rubio is sounding strong to me now. Maybe he doesn’t have a chance. I know, Ed, you didn’t even mention him among the people who you thought had a chance, but if he ran, I would vote for him.

 

Vinay Kolhatkar

Okay, one [other] factor—there is Elon Musk, who I think is still behind Vance. But if he puts his billions behind somebody else, then that somebody else suddenly becomes less of a dark horse. Roger, your predictions for 2026: midterms, wars, whatever you want . . .

 

Roger Bissell

Sure, the crystal ball, here we go. As I said before, I think there’s going to be peace in Ukraine, and the redistricting is going to help the GOP also. The economy is going to keep getting better. I think prices are going to stabilize. In the fall, watch gasoline prices, interest rates, like for home purchases. Also, I’ve heard just in the last two days that because of deportation and sealing the border, rental rates are going down because there are vacancies, and unemployment is going to go down too, because we’ll have to start employing US citizens more. All of this points to affordability becoming less of an issue. I think the GOP is going to hold the Congress in November. I certainly hope they do.

That’s the good news, but I think we’re all pretty much worried about the Minnesota factor or whatever you want to call it. I think that the domestic scene might get really dangerous. There’s such a high level of hysterical rhetoric and violence right now from the Left, and I think it’s going to get to the level of actual insurrection, if it isn’t there technically already. That might lead to martial law. Trump might actually try to take care of it that way in the cities and states, you know the ones I mean, the bluest of the blue, all those people.

I remember back in the Sixties and Seventies that Allen Drury had a [series] of novels [starting with] Advise and Consent, and they were so realistic. I thought at that time, a lot of us thought, there might be a breakdown of the United States and a leftist or communist takeover. That didn’t happen, but maybe Kent State kind of walked it back from that and everybody simmered down. But now we’ve got another, I’m going to call it what it is: a communist uprising. They always told us in school that socialism is evolutionary Marxism and communism is revolutionary Marxism. Well, we’re right at the door of that right now, and I hope it’s not going to take a police state to nip it in the bud.

 

Vinay Kolhatkar

Okay, lovely. We’re just over an hour, and I want to thank all of you for coming here. Thank you also to all the listeners and viewers. Keep tuning in to stay savvy, and good night and good luck.