>> From WXXI News.

This is Connections.

I'm Evan Dawson.

Our connection this hour was made with the longest state of the Union address ever delivered by an American president.

President Trump spoke for nearly two hours last night, offering only about a minute on the subject of possible war with Iran, while spending a lot more time on issues like immigration, the economy and protecting elections.

We wanted to sit down and digest this state of the Union this hour.

And we've got guests from a range of political ideologies.

We do hope to have Republicans on the program tomorrow.

First, let me welcome Dr.

Lauren Hall back to the program.

Lauren is a professor of political science and associate dean at RIT.

She's an author.

She is of a number of things, books and and the Radical Moderates Guide to Life Substack, which we talk about quite often here.

Dr.

Hall, welcome back to the program.

>> Thanks for having me.

>> Evan.

And Nayeliz Santiago is the president of Monroe County Young Democrats.

Welcome to you.

Thanks for being here.

>> Glad to be back.

>> And just to be clear, in case listeners like to figure out, like, well, do you have two Democrats on the show today, Dr.

Hall, I knew more as a more in the libertarian leaning sort of side for years.

And I don't know what camp you want to put yourself in today.

>> I formally identify as politically homeless.

>> Politically homeless.

Okay.

or a radical moderate, as you write on your subject.

Okay.

So what stood out most to you in that state of the Union last night?

Did you get through the whole thing?

Did you watch it?

>> I did it was hard to get through the whole thing.

something that stood out to me.

two, two things really stood out was the.

He really, really missed the mark on addressing the affordability crisis.

to boast about the economy in this way, when people are not feeling any type of relief, rents to high utility bills are too high, people.

Groceries are expensive.

and so to say that this is a golden age and people, you know, are still living paycheck to paycheck and still struggling to make ends meet.

>> He said.

Basically, he.

>> Conquered the affordability.

>> Yeah.

And it's it's so far from the truth.

And so I think he he needs to be brought back to reality.

and then the second thing was he, you know, he did a lot of rage baiting with Democrats.

It was very it was very, very evident throughout his speech.

And he it was the our first priority is American citizens and not to protect and defend the Constitution, which is the oath that they all took.

But also, if that's your first priority and you've already killed two American citizens this year at the hands of Ice, you're already failing.

and so take a look at your tactics, your priorities, and let's get them straight.

>> To be clear, the way he framed it was, we will always serve America first, not illegal aliens.

>> Yes.

>> And then he asked.

>> To protect them.

>> He asked Congress to stand if they agreed.

And then he mocked Democrats for not standing.

So it was certainly a moment.

What I think is interesting now, Julie's and, you know, as president of the Monroe County Young Dems, I think you're very well versed in the different ways that that different generations are communicating.

And as I look at both the ratings for the speech and the ways that our attention spans are starting to lag, and it's been well documented adults of all ages, we're all struggling with attention spans because of technology.

A lot fewer people are going to watch this thing start to finish than they would have a generation ago or two generations ago.

However, this is also a white House that knows how to package things for different platforms.

Yes, and some of the moments that you describe there, we've got some clips we're going to listen to seem to me designed to be that minute long clip.

Yes, that are going to end up on these different platforms, making Democrats look anti-American, Anti-patriotic, et cetera.

that was that was the.

>> Goal and that was why it's his speech was rage bait.

It was clickbait.

I that is a way that Republicans message a lot is by making those clippable moments and built into speeches for that exact reason.

Like you said, it is clickbait.

and so that they can frame it the way that they want to without context, like the Trump administration loves to do.

They love to leave out the context of things.

and so that that's why they frame their speeches the way that they do.

>> Dr.

Hall, what stood out to you?

>> I think there's two things.

I mean, as a political scientist, I like to kind of zoom out and think about the broader context.

The first thing that struck me throughout the, throughout the speech was that the last year has just been a tremendous unforced error on Trump's part.

He started this administration with very high support for some of his key campaign goals, including immigration reform and fiscal responsibility.

And now his approval ratings are absolutely in the tank on both of those issues.

And it's largely a function of tactics.

So if he had formatted Doge in a different kind of way, if he had thought about Ice in any kind of responsible constitutional sense, he actually could have maintained the support of the American people throughout this first year.

And so what you actually see is this really fascinating sort of failure of leadership where he can't get out of his own way.

and I say this from the perspective of someone who thinks a lot about sort of conservative thought and the conservative movement, as you and I have talked about in the past.

And if I were a conservative voter, I would be furious right now looking at sort of how American sentiment has shifted away from these, these critical priorities.

>> You mean small C conservative.

>> Small C conservatives?

Yes.

>> Worried about budgets, fiscal responsibility, et cetera.

>> Right, right.

so I think that's the first thing that I noted is just that, you know, the the sort of tone was obviously at complete odds with his approval ratings.

The reality on the ground is that he has really sunk a lot of the support that he could have had, and that he did have when he first started.

the second thing, though, I think goes to this broader context of the state of the Union itself.

Right?

So thinking about the name of that speech, thinking about the goal, why this is a constitutionally mandated requirement of the president.

Right.

It's one of the few times that the president has to interact with Congress directly.

and one of the things that I think we we focus on in that speech typically is union.

If you look at Washington's original letter to Congress and, and the, the indicators there are as bad Americans have very low faith in democracy right now.

They have very low trust in elections.

They have very low trust in leadership on both sides of the aisles.

There are many, many folks who study comparative politics and democracies abroad who are looking at American indicators and seeing a democracy that's in danger of failing.

And so to me, there's this additional stressor that goes well beyond economic indicators, that goes to the actual health of our democracy.

And I think that, you know, in general, Trump's style is meant to exacerbate those problems, right?

The zero sum thinking that that that was just pointed out, right.

The tribalism, the sort of, negative attacks on the Democrats.

and so to me, I think I'm looking at it from those two perspectives.

Right.

This broad sort of loss of support that he could have had had his tactics been more in line with what Americans expect from a leader.

and then this, this second, much more broad concern about sort of the health of American democracy, which is which is very bad right now.

>> Yeah.

So I think we've got a number of clips I want to listen, Rob, I'm going to do my best to kind of be direct, because it may not go in the order that you have them.

I want to I want to listen to what Trump said about Democrats cheating.

There's a clip in which the president, by the way, the only president who has ever not consented to a peaceful transition of power is now warning that the only outcome that will be legitimate is his party winning.

And I want to listen to what he said about that last night.

>> Why would anybody not want voter I.D.?

One reason, because they want to cheat.

There's only one reason they make up all excuses.

They say it's racist.

They come up with things.

You almost say what imagination they have.

They want to cheat, they have cheated and their policy is so bad that the only way they can get elected is to cheat.

And we're going to stop it.

We have to stop it.

John.

>> At first I didn't know who the John was, and I think he's looking at John Roberts.

I think he's looking at the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, who was one of four of the nine justices who were sitting there.

We have to stop it, John.

So, Dr.

Hall, when you think about the midterms, anything that concerns you in that clip there?

>> Yeah, I mean, you know, we often talk about sort of the the core of liberal democracy.

And I'm using liberal in the very traditional, very big tent enlightenment tradition, use of the term liberal.

When we think about liberal democracy, the fundamental core of that is trust in the results of elections, right?

Whether those are representatives or direct elections, whatever kind of system you have.

and I was talking to political science scientist Lee Drutman the other day, and one of the things that he mentioned was, you know, we actually have.

So so in addition to having elected officials actively undermining trust in our electoral system we also have a system itself that's set up to create this kind of distrust via gerrymandering and the kind of primary, close primary system that we have, which means that when by the time candidates get to elections, they've been sort of brought in by a very, very tiny proportion of the American population, by the most extreme sides of both political parties.

And so I think that there's I'm obviously very worried.

I think the midterms will be a sort of will be a test of our democratic resolve.

I am hopeful on a couple counts.

One, one thing that I'm hopeful of is that we do have decentralized elections.

The states are in charge of the elections, and it's very, very hard in our system for a president to take control over over elections so that decentralization is a feature in this case and not a bug.

but I think there's, you know, I think there's a lot of reasons to be concerned.

The other piece of hope that I have, and we can talk about this a little bit more later, is that I think there are fractures in his base, and we can talk a little bit more about that.

But I think ahead of the midterms, there's going to be a lot of GOP members who are looking and want to be GOP members who are looking at this administration and thinking, maybe this guy is not the ticket that we thought he was.

>> Now, when you hear that clip about Democrats cheating, are you concerned about the midterms?

>> For me, it really as as she said it, he is sowing distrust already into into the 2026 midterms.

And that is a problem to to come from the white House and to also know that there are other federal officials who are caring, this carrying his water on this issue, is it is so irresponsible as elected officials and the fact that he is trying to take overstep his, his power as president in the federal power elections belong to the states.

They get to rule how those are rolled out.

and he needs to stay in his lane.

And the reason why, you know, if he is looking and referring to Chief Roberts, that's a problem.

You're hoping that they're going to do your bidding for you.

after they just rolled down his tariffs.

So my hope is that we can continue to combat his stolen election cheating allegations.

and people will really have faith in their local election systems and our, you know, our state board of elections.

New York has and even Monroe County has an incredible board of elections.

and so continue to have faith in them, continue to uplift the work that they do.

and the way that they keep our elections protected is important.

>> One thing that I think Trump has always done well is his political instincts on how to figure out where the wedges are, figure out where the vulnerabilities are.

He's got good instincts with that.

Not always, but but often he does.

And last night you heard it.

And I've got another clip I want to play, because you heard in that clip about the Democrats cheating the president talking about voter I.D.

Now, if you look at Gallup and Pew polling in the last year and a half on this, it's 83 and 84% of Americans.

It's one of the few issues where it's almost I mean, it's Trump last night said it was 89%.

But the numbers I have are 84 and 83.

Regardless, it is a huge number of Americans.

If you ask them, should we require voter I.D.?

I mean, the vast majority of Americans say, yes, Republicans, Democrats, independents and Trump not only knows that, but he had a little fun with juxtaposing that with something last night.

And I want to listen to what he said about voter I.D.

>> Should be an easy one.

And by the way, it's polling at 89%, including Democrats, 89%.

>> And even the new communist mayor of New York City.

I think he's a nice guy, actually speak to him a lot.

They had policy, but nice guy just said they want people to shovel snow.

They got hit hard, wants them to shovel snow.

But if you apply for that job, you need to show two original forms of I.D.

and a Social security card.

Yet they don't want identification for the greatest privilege of them all.

Voting in America.

>> Now again, that's good political instincts there.

And he understands where the polling is.

Dr.

Hall on the issue of requiring voter I.D.

I'm curious to know what you think of that.

And what do you make of the polling that's really strong on this?

>> Well, I think this is, you know, one of those areas where perception really matters.

And this will go back to to my concerns about sort of trust in elections, broadly speaking.

the research is very clear.

We have very, very low rates of fraud in elections.

I mean, it's almost nonexistent in the United States.

at the same time, if the perception is that voting fraud is high, you need to do something to address that perception.

And so, you know, one of the reasons and again, Trump is incorrect, that there's not only one reason why you would support voter I.D.

or not support voter I.D.

laws.

One of the main concerns about voter I.D.

laws is one of disenfranchisement.

It's very difficult for people in many communities to get access to IDs.

Not everybody has access to driver's licenses.

Not everyone drives.

Not everyone has access to passports.

Not everybody uses passports.

So I think there's, you know, part of it is that we don't have a national I.D.

system like many European countries.

And so we're in sort of a different space than a lot of other countries are when it comes to IDs.

but I do think that this is something that the Democrats have to take seriously.

If a large percentage of the American people are concerned about fraudulent elections, then Democrats have to really think about how to approach that problem.

And so maybe the solution is something like we have some sort of national I.D.

that is sort of administered at the local level.

and that, that then the, the actual local leaders work really hard to make sure that people can access it.

But I don't think that the Democrats can do what they've done in the past on a lot of these issues, which is just ignore voter sentiment, right?

Ignore voter perception.

So again, it's I think it's a complicated issue because research demonstrates the problem is not actually a real one.

But if the perception is that our elections are are under attack, then you do have to address that perception.

>> Okay.

Nayeliz Santiago, what do you think?

>> It's more complicated than just we need we need voter I.D.

so the one of the biggest issues or arguments with, with voter I.D.

is being able to access an I.D., right?

And so it's like she said, it's not everybody drives, not everybody uses a passport.

And if you get those things, you have to pay a passport these days.

Not cheap to even change your driver's license to a real I.D.

with the new changes to domestic flights.

Not cheap to get copies of your birth certificate.

It's $3,040.

And not everybody just has the extra income to do that.

And so creating barriers to for creating barriers to voting is it's it's not unless you solve the problems to get there.

It's not going to work and it is going to disenfranchize a lot of voters, especially poor voters.

and so if you know, there's the potential of making a national I.D.

that everybody can carry, okay.

But if they have to pay for it again, we're still running to the same issue.

So if they want to do this, you better make sure the IDs can be free.

>> But how did Trump do versus Biden on lower income voters?

I mean, he certainly improved a lot, much better.

I mean, a generation, generation and a half ago, this was flipped here.

The Democrats were supposed to be the party of the working class.

That's what they billed himself as.

They and now Republicans do better with union voters.

They did better with low income voters, especially rural low income voters.

So could could you argue that this policy that the president is pushing could actually injure the his own party in rural areas where there is a lot of poverty?

>> It could.

Yeah, absolutely.

>> Okay.

So for you, it's the principle of making sure that whatever is done is not going to disenfranchize.

>> Make it accessible.

That's always going to be I mean, if you if you look at the track record, Democrats have always taken the approach to make the ballot box more accessible.

Mail in voting here in New York State is a prime example.

The way that we've now moved from no excuse absentee voting.

That was huge post Covid.

it actually it helped us through Covid to to, to make those changes.

And so it is all about making sure that we are still moving in the direction of increasing access to the ballot for those that are eligible to vote.

I mean, not to mention when you register to vote, you do have to put down either your Social Security number or your driver's license number.

and so there is it's not like it's willy nilly like we like she said, there is there's not widespread voter fraud.

He's just loud.

And so it's catching a lot of attention.

But it doesn't make it true.

>> Okay.

And I think that both of you are analyzing the situation the same way.

Dr.

Hall is simply saying there's the concern for the Democratic Party.

If she were a Democrat, she'd be saying, we got to do a couple things at once here.

We got to diffuse the concern about this.

But we got to acknowledge that for the moment.

We got a huge majority of Americans who think this is real and what are we going to do?

And if we just say, it's not a problem, you could get crushed with that.

Are you worried about that?

>> not particularly.

I think that I mean, his, the save act that he's trying to implement is wrong in a number of ways.

the way that it would disenfranchize a lot of people including people who are married and changed their names.

that's been a huge one that has been a concern with with this bill being put forth.

And so there needs to be you can't just do it and say, all right, we're done.

We did it.

You have to look at the implications it's going to cause.

And also account for the unintended consequences.

And so making sure that things are kept up to date, it's going to be easy to change.

Change your your name on your form of I.D.

that you're going to submit if you get married.

Because also if you change it on your voter registration, they've got to match.

Otherwise you can't go and vote.

and so the way that this would be implemented needs to be fully thought out more than they have thought.

>> Okay, Lauren, anything you want to add there?

>> Yeah.

I mean, I'll just add to that, you know, the idea of having sort of a national I.D.

or requiring I.D.

for votes for a long time was sort of anathema to small c conservatives who view required IDs as a form of government tracking.

Right?

I mean, it makes it easy for the government to know where you are.

It makes it easy for the government to be able to sort of track your location, track the kinds of changes that that we were just talking about.

And the other piece of this that I just want to emphasize is, you know, to your point, it's not just about money, right?

It's also about time.

I had to change my driver's license when I got married.

I had to find my original birth certificate because for whatever reason, I didn't have it.

It was in Tennessee.

Shelby County in Tennessee required that I send a money order, right?

I couldn't there was nothing easy about this.

Like it wasn't available online.

There was.

It took hours.

And fortunately, I'm in a salaried position, which means that I can sort of do some of this from my desk.

But if you're working multiple jobs, right, it is going to hit low income people harder.

but I think it's, again, one of these ironies of the sort of fear that Republicans have of various kinds of, enfranchisement.

And we see this with gerrymandering.

We see this with with voter I.D.

actually go against a lot of the principles that they've held for decades.

So it is odd to me, right, again, to think about sort of how that's switching.

>> I would just offer that in the last decade or so, the American conservative movement, not individuals who would say, I'm a small C conservative, but conservatives in general are much more authoritarian.

Yes.

And so this does line up with what we've seen, the modern version of what it means to be a conservative in this country.

>> Yes.

Authoritarian centralized.

Right.

National.

there's been just a really a much more support for executive power.

You know, you and I have talked about a lot of this, but yeah, so there's been a huge shift in the conservative movement broadly.

>> So our guests also briefly mentioned tariffs and what the Supreme Court recently did.

Four of the nine justices were there.

And the president was sort of staring right through them when he was going off on tariffs.

But then he made a very I mean, a claim that is just impossible to understand.

I would love to.

Well, maybe tomorrow we can do this.

I would love to sit down with Trump voters and say, you really think tariffs are going to replace the income tax?

No more taxes, just tariffs.

Let's listen to what the president said about tariffs.

>> Not be necessary.

It's already time tested and approved.

And as time goes by I believe the tariffs paid for by foreign countries will like in the past, substantially replace the modern day system of income tax, taking a great financial burden off the people that I love.

>> They're not paid by foreign countries.

Number one, and I think by now the president knows that.

I think Howard Lutnick knows that despite what they say.

But then I want you to think about the two different goals that the president describes.

He says tariffs are going to bring a manufacturing revolution back to the United States.

They're going to force manufacturing back onshore, and they will forever replace the income tax.

If if one thing happens, the manufacturing revolution, that means we're not going to be collecting tariffs anymore.

But he's promising a future with no income tax anyway.

It's just baloney.

And I don't understand why we're actually this far along and pretending that those things are achievable.

But Dr.

Hall politics is interesting.

Theater.

Am I missing something there?

>> No.

You know, this is one of the areas that I think we're going to see.

Increasing fracturing of Trump's base.

There's an enormous amount of evidence from economics, including conservative economists, demonstrating that tariffs are ultimately taxes on consumers, on American consumers.

So what we're saying is that we're going to increase tariffs in order to somehow revolutionize manufacturing.

Right.

But we're actually pushing all of these costs on to American consumers while somehow bringing prices down.

That's literally not how economics works.

And so and but there's lots and lots of smart conservative economists out there.

And they know this as well as I do.

And so I think, you know, again, there's been a lot of pushback against his tariffs internally.

and I think a lot of people actually saw the Supreme Court decision as a gift.

Right.

He could have just backed off.

He could have said, well, the Supreme Court made this decision.

I wanted tariffs for the American people, but it looks like I'm not allowed to do that.

Instead, he's doubling down.

And so I think leading up to the midterms, you're going to see this issue become increasingly divisive among the GOP because they understand how economics works.

Right.

These are not dumb people.

you know, I think part of what it it appeals to in the base are folks who don't really understand how tariffs operate.

Right?

It's easy for people to hear, yes, the the foreign country is paying those taxes, but they're not.

and so and it really appeals to this kind of nativism that's part of his overall populist agenda.

Right.

Focusing on America first I'm going to prioritize American workers.

And so that kind of rhetoric is very powerful.

And it's very powerful among lower educated voters.

and folks from largely rural communities.

Right.

People who have been left out of a lot of the really dramatic economic growth.

>> Legitimately left.

>> Legitimately left out.

And by the way, I think this was a massive failure of the Democratic Party, too, right?

They ignored all those people who were legitimately left out, right?

They ignored male voters.

They ignored young male voters.

So this is not a like, you know, this is, in fact, an equal opportunity fail.

but I think this is an area that we're going to see increasing fracturing.

>> Nodules.

What do you think?

>> I. Him and his administration seems to be delusional when it comes to the topic of tariffs.

it is we do pay the price as consumers for the tariffs, and it's just it's not a feasible plan.

And and literally any sense of the way it is not feasible.

And to also he had mentioned, you know, balancing a budget, you're not going to be able to balance a budget if you implement a type of plan like that.

there will be no money.

and people are going to get sick and tired.

and so.

Well, it sounds good to bring manufacturing jobs back to the U.S.

and we would like to see it.

We don't have the infrastructure for that.

I mean, one of the biggest things that we've seen tariffs hit is textiles.

We don't have a lot of manufacturers of clothing or shoes here in the U.S.

and people can't walk around the street naked.

They have to wear clothes.

And so.

It is just his his view of tariffs and doubling down on it is so delusional and so out of touch.

and I don't know how they're going to find a way to spin this for the 2026 elections.

and I don't think that they can.

>> Well, I will say, if manufacturing came back in the numbers that the president is suggesting, I think that we'd have to acknowledge that and say, maybe this will bring back on again.

There's not any reason to believe right now that the revolution of manufacturing has relaunched.

And, you know, we're going back to the kinds of manufacturing we saw two generations ago.

There's not evidence of that.

But if there were okay, we'd acknowledge it.

But then you can't wipe out income taxes.

We don't have magic here.

There's not magic wands, so there's not enough money to Nodules Point.

And the president has overestimated how much came in in tariffs to begin with.

It was around 2 to 300 billion.

He's talked about 7 or 800 billion.

The deficit is like 1.5 trillion.

I mean it's not wiping out a deficit either.

So let's here's what we're going to do.

I've got some feedback from the audience.

I've got a couple more clips I want to listen to.

We're going to cover a number of other issues in our second half hour, after we take our only break here.

I want to talk just briefly.

We're going to listen to the only thing the president said about Iran.

We might be on the brink of a major war, and the president had the longest state of the Union ever and barely talked about it.

And so I just want to hear what he said about Iran.

And we're going to talk about some other issues that came up in the state of the Union.

Listeners at Connections at wxxi.org.

We'll take your emails and we'll continue in just a moment with Nayeliz Santiago, president of Monroe County Young Democrats, Dr.

Lauren Hall, who's a professor of political science and associate dean at RIT, author of the Radical Moderates Guide to Life Substack.

We'll be right back.

Coming up in our second hour, it's part of our ongoing series on Black History Month, highlighting local black leaders who might be under the radar, but doing a lot of work in this community that is making a big difference.

And Pastor Jerrard Brown sits down with us next hour.

The youngest ever senior pastor at Holy Trinity Baptist Church on North Street, and also someone who's worked with teen empowerment for years.

He says the pastor should be the homie.

We'll talk about it next hour.

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>> This is Connections.

I'm Evan Dawson on the subject of Iran, I am not going to be glib about this, but I'm going to observe something here.

I want to listen to what the president said about Iran last night.

Number one, back in the summer of last year, when the United States joined Israel in attacking Iranian nuclear facilities, the president used the phrase bombed their nuclear program back to the Stone age, said that they were back to zero, and then in the last couple of days, we have heard the administration and then the president last night say that Iran could be days away from intercontinental missiles that could reach the United States.

So I'm having a hard time understanding exactly what was accomplished last summer, where they see the program.

Now, if it could have reconstituted that quickly.

And the president also doesn't seem to think that he's got to make a case to Congress, because this falls outside the scope of of, I don't know, war, war, official war.

Let's listen to the only thing the president said about Iran in a two hour speech.

>> They've already developed missiles that can threaten Europe and our bases overseas, and they're working to build missiles that will soon reach the United States of America.

After midnight, hammer, they were warned to make no future attempts to rebuild their weapons program in a particular nuclear weapons.

Yet they continue starting it all over.

We wiped it out and they want to start all over again.

And at this moment, again pursuing their sinister ambitions, we are in negotiations with them.

They want to make a deal, but we haven't heard those secret words.

We will never have a nuclear weapon.

My preference?

>> My preference is to solve this problem through diplomacy.

But one thing is certain I will never allow the world's number one sponsor of terror, which they are by far to have a nuclear weapon.

Can't let that happen.

>> All right, so that's what the president said about Iran.

Again, I think this is a little bit like Venezuela in that I don't think a lot of people dispute the idea that the leadership of Iran, big problem.

However, a major war in the Middle East appears to be on the offing here in Nogales.

What did you hear there?

>> It was concerning to they had one message that they blew them back into the Stone age.

Now it's they're days away and also the not so thinly veiled threat of you won't have it.

And so during a time like this to put us into wars is scary.

and definitely raises a lot of concerns.

and how how this is going to go down.

You know, he says he wants to solve this by diplomacy.

Not all of his efforts have been successful.

and so there's a lot of fear here.

Nobody wants to go into a war right now.

>> Dr.

Hall.

>> Yeah.

I mean, again, just to go back to this idea that I think we're going to see increasing fragmentation in the GOP base, Trump has to walk a really tight line between the sort of hawks, the traditional hawks in the GOP base and the isolationism of his of his voter base.

And and he ran on an America First platform, right.

His goal was to stay out of foreign affairs.

Right.

We saw that he was not going to do that with Venezuela.

And now we're seeing that he's not going to do that with with Iran.

and look, there are actually very good reasons to I mean, Iran just slaughtered 30,000 of its own people over the course of a couple days.

Right.

There's deep, deep humanitarian violations happening in that country.

Yeah.

and so it's not to say that there should not be any kind of intervention.

I don't know.

I mean, certainly I don't think military intervention at this point and certainly not in the style that that Trump will likely move forward is, is what we're looking for.

but I think this is, again, one of these problems that he's going to have to confront over and over again in his presidency, which is that the base that elected him is very different from the kind of party support that he that he needs to move forward.

and I don't know how he's going to walk that line.

now, we saw actually, after Venezuela that, I mean, there there was increasing support for that mission after the fact among his base, in part because it was largely successful and it was limited.

So if he somehow pulls off a kind of limited strike against Iran that does not commit U.S.

troops on the ground, he'll come out of this a victor.

I don't know if he's capable of doing that.

And I don't know if, you know, again, the ripple effects in that region, I think are very, very serious.

It's a different situation than it is in Venezuela.

>> Yeah.

And I, I just want to push a little bit on your point on Venezuela, I take the point about the optics, the optics being no Americans were hurt in that raid.

Maduro is gone.

Maduro is obviously one of the terrible actors internationally.

There's no question about that.

This is a country of wonderful people who have been oppressed.

And so in the short term, it's easy to be like, hey, but Delcy Rodriguez is in charge, who was one of Maduro's chief operators still in charge.

A lot of the regime military still in charge, Venezuelans still are afraid to text each other what they really think of the ruling regime today.

They don't feel more free.

And Trump is talking about convening oil executives to talk about how to divide the oil.

When people are wondering, do we get like, elections?

I mean, what do we.

So taking out one ruler isn't as doesn't always simply lead to democracy.

Yay!

I mean, and I'm not.

Again, all this sounds sort of trite or glib, but it should be obvious that Iran is a very complicated.

And what comes, even if you decapitate.

I hate to use assassinate the leadership.

What fills the vacuum?

Totally unclear, right?

Isn't that fair?

>> Yes.

And the history of interventions demonstrates that it can go either way, right?

Yeah.

>> It's been often.

>> Very mixed.

Yes, yes.

I'll add to that.

Constitutionally, this is a mess, right?

I mean, this is again sort of a bipartisan failure over the last couple of decades.

Right?

But Congress has just ceded its war power to the president.

>> Well, under Mike Johnson, Congress has ceded just about everything.

>> Yes, yes, yes.

>> so I think that we're seeing, you know, again, the sort of the unitary executive, right, the sort of overwhelming, handoff of congressional power to the executive again, under both parties is really solidified in Trump.

And so he doesn't see any problem with just he makes the decision and he carries it out.

He doesn't need to talk to Congress.

He doesn't need to ask their opinion.

>> Doesn't need a declaration or an authorization for war.

Yeah.

I mean, it's going to be I don't know where this goes.

there's one other clip I want to play, and then we're going to open it up to listener feedback.

And I know our guests may want to make a few other points about the state of the Union that we're not going to cover in these clips, but to the point that was made earlier about the way that President Trump used these moments last night to kind of try to pin you called it rage baiting the Democrats, you know, pin them in, make them look bad, create these social media clips.

There was another issue that to this day, when you talk about what happened in the 2024 election, when you poll voters, the Trump, the Kamala's for they them, Trump is for you A.D.

is still one of the more powerful cultural ads ever made.

And it's about an issue that affects, again, not a whole lot of high percentage of population, but it is a huge cultural wedge issue.

And last night the president talked about miners.

He talked about the idea that people under the age of 18 would transition, transition medically, be encouraged or allowed or brought to do so by either schools.

In his words, doctors, et cetera., and then he turned it to Congress, and he used it as a moment to try to attack Democrats that Nigellus was talking about.

I want to listen to that moment.

>> But surely we can all agree no state can be allowed to rip children from their parents arms and transition them to a new gender against the parents will.

Who would believe that?

We've been talking about we must ban it and we must ban it immediately.

Look, nobody stands up.

These people are crazy.

I'm telling you, they're crazy.

Amazing gentlemen.

Boy oh boy.

We're lucky we have a country with people like this.

Democrats are destroying our country.

But we've stopped it just in the nick of time, didn't we?

>> So it is clear to see that is a moment that the white House knew it could get.

And it's going to be used on social.

What's also clear is that the president knows where he stands on this issue.

In the polling.

This is the latest Pew Research on trans rates.

56% of American adults express support for policies that protect trans people from discrimination at work, discrimination in housing and in public spaces.

So a good majority of American adults say trans people should be respected and protected legally.

However, here are the numbers on other issues related to trans.

The debate about the trans community.

Only 34% of Americans support trans boys, or men playing with trans girls or women in school sports, and 56% of Americans favor banning health care professionals from providing gender care related to transition for minors.

So surgeries again, we're talking about something that happens in the hundreds, maybe small thousands.

The New York Times reported on it recently, but it's not a huge number.

But it does happen.

And a majority of Americans don't want that to be allowed.

Europe has mostly moved away from that.

So the president knows where he is on that.

To say that we're going to rip kids from their parents arms is a dramatic overstatement.

But he also understands the polling, and he's almost daring the Democrats to kind of double down on this, because he feels like he won the last election on it.

So what do you want the Democrats to do on this?

>> I think that and, you know, an approach that has been taken is, well, first of all, trans rights are human rights.

No matter what.

and so they do deserve to live a life the same way that cis men and women and non-binary folks do.

when it comes to children, the first thought should be about the well-being of the child.

and one of the things that did pop into my mind when I heard that clip, was it reminded me of the conversion camps that were made that people would send their children to, who came out as gay that were extremely, extremely detrimental to their health and well-being and mental health.

we know that suicide rates amongst trans kids is too high.

I mean, one suicide is one too many.

and so when we talk about kids transitioning and what those conversations look like to their peers and to their parents, they may not always feel safe to have those conversations and come out publicly as they navigate a very complex feelings that they're going to have about this and what it looks like for them and how they want to live, and how they're going to express themselves and their identity.

And so you're either I mean, the approach that they're going to take is none at all.

And then the child's going to suffer because they could be going through their navigating the fluidity of their gender.

in that moment.

And so I think that we need to stop talking about everybody's feelings about it and refocus on what is going to be best for the child.

I think that a part of that is going back to the medical professionals.

I mean, kids aren't just transitioning on a whim.

It is.

They will see doctors, they will see therapists about it.

It is not just one day they wake up and they're like, I want to transition.

And two days later they're in the operating room.

Like, that's just not how it happens.

and so we really need to focus back on the child, what is best for them, how to help them navigate this transition in their lives, and also make sure that they have the support that they need, both medically and emotionally.

>> Dr.

Hall.

>> Yeah, you know, I think this is one of those issues politically where the the Democrats were sort of led by a, again, a small minority within within the party to take increasingly extreme positions that simply lost them.

The American population.

When it comes to how people think about these problems.

And I think you're the the evidence that you presented earlier from American polling demonstrates that Americans actually are pretty moderate on trans rights.

Right?

They have two issues that they're sticky on, which is minor transitions and sports, sports.

but everything else, they're, they're actually very supportive of trans rights, right, in employment and a range of other spaces.

but I think that Democrats really lost the narrative when the argument was sort of, well, you're all on the wrong side of history, so you should just, you know, trust us and follow along when the reality is that the political narrative actually was far more advanced.

It was far ahead of the actual medical narrative.

We did not have the research, and I think we're seeing this in Europe.

Right.

Europe is pulling back on a number of practices that used to be much more common over there.

So we need more research.

We need the medical profession to take itself seriously.

We need it to actually sort of idealize, I don't know what the medical profession has been has, has been sort of ideologically captured in a number of spaces.

And so I think it's actually time for the medical profession itself to sort of think deeply about what this means for trust in medicine.

And I'll just mention this, too, that this is part of a broader problem within sort of American American polarization, which is that there's extreme distrust among Americans for quote, unquote, elite institutions, whether that's the media, whether that's universities, whether that's medical research.

And we're seeing that distrust manifest in a number of different ways, but not all of that distrust is coming from nowhere.

Not all of that is manufactured by the GOP.

There are a number of ways in which elite institutions have lost the trust of the American people.

And so I think that this is an opportunity for the medical establishment to think deeply about how to think about research, think about, you know, different kinds of modalities.

I really love the adversarial collaboration model for research that that could be really transformative in medicine.

so I'll say this, that I, you know, I, I don't want the government ever involved in people's medical decision making.

That is a hard line that I draw.

but I also think that there's reasons why the American population has been really frustrated with the Democrats response on this issue.

>> Okay.

And briefly, to your point about comparing Europe to the United States, we have now seen a couple of major American medical associations in the last couple of months pull back on some of where they were in terms of endorsement of transition surgeries, et cetera.

So we are seeing a sort of a reevaluation in this country.

But I also am just hearing you say that you think the party was captured by a small number of people and felt led in that direction.

The president sees that and is exploiting that.

You're not a Democrat, but do you think Democrats can convince the American people that, look, we need dignity for everybody.

We need rights, protection for everybody, and we can hear you and moderate on this issue.

Or is it sort of all the way to the wall where they've been?

>> Well, I think I think the Democrats have to move away from the sort of extreme version of identity politics that says every identity group knows exactly what they need, and it's our job to give them exactly what they say that they need.

Right?

That's not how like that's not how life works.

That's not how the electoral system works.

And so when we say people need dignity we need to be this needs to be a point of political contestation.

People have to be able to have conversations about what that means in different kinds of contexts.

And I will say this from the from the perspective of the Academy, those are not conversations that people have been allowed to have.

These were not conversations that people could have honestly in the public sphere because they were terrified of losing their jobs or ending up on social media.

So this there's been a number of very difficult conversations that we have not had as a country, which has undermined the kinds of political agreement and consensus that we could have reached on some of these issues.

And I think, you know, even on abortion, even on trans rights, the majority of Americans take pretty moderate positions on all of these things.

But we are being actively pushed apart due to the kind of polarization that we're seeing primarily at the national level, into taking these these unnecessarily extreme positions that actually most people don't support on either side.

>> Nigel, is anything you want.

>> To add?

>> Yeah, I would push back on that a little bit.

about the the way that communities will express their needs and the way that the party, you know, in this example, the way that the, the Democratic Party just says, all right, we're going to take it and run with it.

because I've actually seen the opposite.

And I think that that is, a part of why we saw what we saw in 2024 is that we are not going to these communities and saying, what do you need?

How can we help?

That's not what we're doing.

Instead, I've seen and felt that we have actually taken the approach of, let me tell you what you need and I'll get it done for you and hope that it works out for the best.

And so and I mean, like, that is why there's been a shift in the approach that Democrats have been taking.

especially like locally, we've seen it more and, and on a state level is that we are going into the community taking the approach of meeting people where they're at and having those conversations of, what do you want to see?

What do you need?

Because that's how you deliver real results.

And also get in touch with the electorate and what it is that they're feeling.

>> You see your party making more efforts to actually be in touch with people.

>> Yes.

Locally we've seen, I mean, you know, locally Mcdc has launched caucuses.

and so being in immersed in, into our various communities, I'm a co-chair of our Hispanic caucus with President Melendez.

and so, you know, for us, it's about increasing access to the party.

Here's what we stand for.

Here are our values.

What how would you like to contribute?

How can we be more helpful?

How can we be more accessible?

What do you want to see?

What information are you lacking?

You know, taking that kind of approach.

And I think that that's really required, you know, more and more we're seeing people do town halls you know, political parties do town halls and political figures do town halls.

That's also important.

And I feel like that is because we haven't done the you told me what you needed.

Now I'll give it back to you.

It's because we've actually lacked that.

And so we are pivoting, to this to be more in touch.

>> We're down to our last 90s.

And if you've emailed the program and I've got a lot, tomorrow is going to be kind of a no, it's not an open phone today, but it's going to be a big open feedback day.

And we're going to continue discussion on state of the Union.

And we're going to grab your emails for that.

Dr.

Hall, I know you might want to respond to this.

And also, I know you also want to talk just a little bit about local government, local, and tell me what you want to leave us with there.

>> Yeah, I would just think, you know, I just wanted to add that I think Nogales point is, is very important.

I think treating any group as a monolith is really dangerous.

And that's what I think both parties are doing right now in a number of ways.

But I also wanted to point out that I think Nogales is exactly is doing exactly what we need to do.

Right.

Polarization is particularly toxic at the national level.

It's much less toxic at the local level.

Right?

Local politicians are actually able to work together on bipartisan solutions at the local level.

We need to work together locally and regionally.

We need to make Connections with each other across political lines.

Those conversations are much easier to have on local issues than they are on national issues.

>> Politics are local.

>> Exactly.

And so I think that when we're talking about how to think about the state of our union in terms of the health of American liberal democracy, the future of that is local.

It's not national.

And I think when we trust the national parties, both Democrats and Republicans, to do the right thing, we're looking in the wrong direction.

We need to look down.

>> It's a great place to leave it.

Although I wish we had two hours.

And again, listeners, if you have sent emails here, we just lost so much.

We didn't lose any time.

It was just this hour flew and we're talking about the state of the Union, the related issues.

We're going to do that again tomorrow.

So we're going to save your emails and we'll get some of your feedback on these various issues, some that we didn't even get to today with our guests.

Nayeliz Santiago, president of Monroe County Young Democrats, thank you for being here this hour.

>> So happy to be back here.

>> And Dr.

Lauren Hall, professor of political science and associate dean at RIT, the author of the Radical Moderates Guide to Life, Substack.

Let's talk again soon.

I, I got more notes here.

So this is always great.

Come back Lauren.

Thank you very much.

More Connections coming up in a moment.

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