Donald Trump has enormous power over the Republican Party. Although he has not been president for the last four years, he still intervened in American foreign policy and made decisions, for example, on aid to Ukraine, describes Peter Baker, an elite journalist of The New York Times, in an interview for Aktuálně.cz. According to him, it is not at all certain whether a second lost election would deprive him of this aura of power.
For The New York Times, you described how for the past four years Donald Trump has acted as a “shadow president” and met with foreign leaders and influenced American foreign policy. Is it really that unusual for influential politicians to meet with leaders of other countries?
It is not unusual for former presidents to speak with foreign leaders. But it is unusual for them to act as if they are helping to determine foreign policy. Even before the election campaign, foreign leaders considered Trump a force to be reckoned with in American politics. And for good reason. They knew that if Trump made some explosive statement on social media, it could affect Republicans in the House of Representatives and possibly the Senate.
The clearest example, of course, is aid to Ukraine, which had broad bipartisan support but Trump said he didn’t want them to approve. The Republican leadership of the House of Representatives thus delayed any vote on aid for months because of Trump’s position, even though there was a strong majority of Republicans in favor of it. And so you saw leaders like Polish President Andrzej Duda and then-British Foreign Secretary David Cameron go to the ex-president at his Mar-a-Lago resort to plead with him to let the vote go ahead.
And that is very unusual in American politics. We have never seen a former president play an active role in foreign policy effectively outside of office.
But isn’t it common for former politicians to intervene in political events?
This is completely normal. Trump is still the dominant force in the Republican Party. But in his case, it’s to the point that Republicans are afraid to take a stand that he doesn’t approve of, because then he’ll come after them. And if he goes after them, they could have an opponent in the primary, lose money or face protests from Trump supporters. He has power over his party like no former president I’ve ever seen.
Peter Baker works for The New York Times as chief correspondent for the current administration of the US president. He joined the newspaper in 2008 after twenty years of work for The Washington Post. He has covered the last five presidents, starting with Bill Clinton in 1996, through George W. Bush, Barack Obama, Donald Trump, and now Joe Biden.
He also spent four years with his wife, fellow journalist Susan Glasser, as a correspondent for The Washington Post in Moscow, tracking the rise of Vladimir Putin. From there, he covered the first months of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. He briefly worked as a senior reporter for the Jerusalem editorial office of The New York Times.
He has written seven books, the latest of which is The Divider: Trump in the White House, 2017-2021.
Photo: Peter Baker
Will he have power here even if he loses the November presidential election?
Part of it depends on how it turns out. If he loses by a large margin, which doesn’t seem likely at this point, Republicans would have more incentive to part ways with him. In American politics, usually after you lose, your influence diminishes because you are considered a loser. Trump lost in 2020, but he maintained his influence in part by spreading lies about the last election and pretending he didn’t lose it. If he loses for the second time in a row, then Republicans can say, OK, we have to move on to a new leader. But that is not at all certain. He is still an influential figure. Even if he loses next month, he still has a lot of supporters who may still be important in the Republican Party.
Would Trump even admit defeat this time?
I don’t think he would take it well this time either. We expect up to 70 days of uncertainty and confusion before the inauguration. At this point, no one is assuming that it ends on Election Day. But this time Trump is not the president, he has no access to the Justice Department or the military. And his ability to successfully overturn an election he lost will be significantly less than last time. It’s harder to imagine how he’ll manage to change the outcome if he loses. But that doesn’t mean it can’t do a lot of damage. Just the fact that he will protest and say that the election was stolen, which he has been doing since 2020, is harmful to a functioning democracy.
If, on the other hand, he were to win, do we know what to expect from his second mandate?
We can assume that everything will be stronger than last time. All the things that people thought happened last time will be multiplied, like on steroids, because he learned to use power in a way he didn’t know last time. The people surrounding him the first time around were typical Republicans, military veterans, people who were part of the system and therefore either inhibited Trump’s most extreme expressions or blocked him in some way. None of these people will be here anymore.
In our book The Divider, which my wife and I wrote, we quote a national security adviser who has been in the Oval Office with Trump many times. And this national security official compared him to the velociraptor dinosaur from the movie Jurassic Park. In it there is a scene where the children run away from the dinosaur into the kitchen. They close the door behind them and think they are safe. But the velociraptor learned how to open the door handle. The aide meant that Trump had learned to use the levers of power. His second term will thus be much less restrained than his first.
Especially in the final weeks before the election, Trump often behaves increasingly erratic and erratic in public. Is he fit to rule?
The voters will decide that. He certainly doesn’t have the same physical issues as President Joe Biden. Biden looked old, frail, and had trouble walking across the stage without looking like he was shuffling. In the presidential debate in June, we saw his most extreme version – confused sentences, unfinished thoughts. Trump is different. It is obvious that he still has some energy, that even at 78 he seems energetic.
But when you actually watch his speeches at rallies, and I spent a lot of time doing that recently for an article, you see someone whose speeches are now much longer, darker, less coherent and more focused on negativity, also less focused, less disciplined. It’s hard to say if it’s due to age, but it’s clear that there’s been some change in him over the last eight or nine years that he’s been on the political scene. And one can imagine that it will continue to change.
There are more and more reports of Trump’s misbehavior as president. For example, that he sent to Russian President Vladimir Putin during the pandemic tests for covid, which were in short supply at the time. Can this still influence voters?
His most ardent supporters see any criticism of Trump as illegitimate, fabricated by Democrats or the liberal media. When they hear that he has done something wrong, or that he has been accused or found guilty a total of four times, they dismiss all these things as part of a conspiracy against him.
They listen to Trump. His explanation is that everyone is after him, that he is being persecuted, and his most ardent supporters agree. No matter what you tell them, they’re not going to sit back and say “dude, you’re right”. The New York billionaire, who travels in limousines and gold-plated jets and owns golf resorts, is hardly a man of the people, but he has actually tapped into resistance to elites, resistance to change, resistance to diversity and demographic change, and resistance to globalism. All of this has existed in America for a long time.
What about Kamala Harris? She does not have that much political experience, and many voters fear that they know too little about her. Is she ready to become president?
Yes. A lot of presidents haven’t had a lot of political experience in Washington. Most of our recent presidents have been governors – Ronald Reagan, Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush. Harris has the advantage of having spent at least four years as vice president on foreign policy alongside Biden. He is far more qualified today than Trump was when he first took office.
As a president, she would face various problems and pitfalls, like any president. Nothing prepares you for this position because it is a unique job. But being vice president gives you a front row seat to understand how the presidency works.
Did Harris have a chance to get more involved in governing given Biden’s advanced age and the fact that Biden doesn’t seem to be able to handle all of his responsibilities?
I don’t think Harris is a secret puppeteer. Biden is certainly older. That’s clear. But he’s still the president. He is still the one who decides. Most people who deal with him regularly will tell you that even though he gets names mixed up and is sometimes a little tired, he still understands the issues and makes rational decisions.
What legacy will Biden leave behind?
His legacy depends on how the election turns out. There is much to be said about his presidency, the laws he passed, the way the country got out of the pandemic, and the economic problems he inherited.
If Harris loses, people will say it was because Biden resisted calls for too long to step down from the presidential race and let the next generation take over. They will blame him for allowing Trump to return to office. If, on the other hand, Harris wins, then Biden will be able to claim that he not only managed to push through this or that policy, but that he helped install the first black woman, or the first of any color, to the position of American president, and that he helped keep Trump out of office.
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