From CAFE and the Vox Media Podcast Network, this is Stay Tuned In Brief. I’m Preet Bharara. It’s now been two weeks, otherwise known as a lifetime, since President Trump’s second inauguration. I’m joined by Washington Post columnist Catherine Rampell and The Atlantic staff writer Mark Leibovich to talk about some of the biggest stories from the week. Mark and Catherine, welcome back to the show. It’s good to have you on together.

Great to join you.

Good to be here, Preet.

So it’s like been a week since the first week. I think the second week has been about as busy news-wise as the first week, if not more so. So one thing that I want to mention is the tragic loss of life at the Washington National Airport earlier this week. 67 people lost their lives. Tragic event, I’m told the worst airline accident domestically on a commercial airline in 16 years. Did either of you catch Donald Trump’s press conference about that and see his explanations for why that happened?

The FAA is actively recruiting workers who suffer severe intellectual disabilities, psychiatric problems, and other mental and physical conditions under a diversity and inclusion hiring initiative spelled out on the agency’s website. Can you imagine?

I caught enough of it to know the gist. I mean, to me, we haven’t had, as you mentioned, a commercial jet crash like this in many, many years. I mean, there’s a pretty straightforward response to it. It’s not just a political response. I mean, you offer condolences. You try to heal. You do what a compassionate human being does. It’s not particularly political, but that’s what politicians do of both parties.

Donald Trump’s response, which is in keeping with what he demonstrated over and over again during his first term and has in his public life recently, which is to immediately go to blame, make it a divisive issue, blame DEI. I mean, it just struck me as not surprising, but at the same time, a reminder of the kind of normal that happens in the course of what should be a pretty straightforward tragedy in our society.

What’s interesting, Catherine, I want to get your take on this, is the first three or four minutes was quite somber and hit the right tone and pitch. Clearly, somebody had written a proper level of condolence for him to deliver. It was very presidential, and then that prepared statement ended, and the rest began. Catherine, did you have a reaction?

Yeah. I mean, more or less comparable to what Mark just laid out. I think my greater concern in the long run is not only this was really callous and kind of gross and tone-deaf and everything like that, but if we do want to prevent tragedies like this in the future, it would be useful to have a real investigation into what went wrong here. And based on Trump’s remarks yesterday, I’m not so confident that there’s motivation within the administration to actually determine what went wrong.

One of the patterns that we’ve seen repeatedly with Trump, both when he was president before, when he was running in the campaign, and even insofar as his, what feels like an eternity of a second term so far, is that the people around him are motivated to sort of backfill the evidence and assumptions necessary to reconstruct the conclusion he’s already come to. Right? He’s done this with economics, among other things.

And so, if he has already diagnosed the problem as being about DEI, there’s going to be huge incentive for his underlings to come up with evidence that it was about DEI, however bogus that might be. And again, besides how sad and frustrating that is in the moment, it also precludes the ability to fix whatever problems really exist.

So we’re all in agreement. Fact-based, evidence-based pronouncements make more sense now. I wonder from each of you if you believe that Donald Trump had a win of a substantial nature this week when he tied the immigration issue to the tariff issue in threatening substantial tariffs against Colombia. So maybe, Catherine, you can edify us on this. He made a threat. Lots of people complained and said, “It was extraordinary. It was crazy. What the hell is he doing?” And Colombia immediately backed down from its position. Isn’t that a win for Trump? What do I have wrong?

That is not how I would characterize what happened here.

Okay. How would you characterize it?

So we sent lots of commercial flights with deportees to Colombia without issue prior to Trump taking office. Happened all the time. Nobody noticed under President Biden. It was only when Trump decided to insult our allies by putting people on a military jet, which, by the way, not just Colombia, but other countries did not want in their airspace, because it was an insult. It was like-

Wait. But to be clear, Catherine, the military jets are much cheaper than the commercial jets. No?

No. It’s the opposite. But yes, thank you for pointing that out.

Oh, it’s the opposite.

Yes. Besides the fact that this was a totally inefficient use of resources, it’s diplomatically idiotic. And this has been characterized as some sort of win for Trump, but I think we’re basically back to the status quo here. We’re just going to resume what things were like before Trump became president, which is we are going to have more flights or the same number, whatever. We’re going to continue having flights of deportees going into Colombia.

Now, allegedly, the Colombian president allowed the military jets to come in. I’m a little dubious about whether they’re going to continue sending people on military jets, precisely because they are much more expensive, and I think it was really just for the initial photo ops. So I don’t understand this narrative that there was some victory here. We’re back to where we were. It’s like the arsonist is really proud of putting out the fire.

Well, but isn’t it part of it that Trump wanted a thing to go his way, and it went his way, and that’s one definition of victory from the Trump folks?

What problem did it solve?

I don’t know that it solved a problem. I don’t know that it solved a problem.

I mean, it solved a problem he created.

But the Trump people would say… Look, I’m playing the Trump foil, which is not my favorite thing to do, but isn’t it possibly true… And Catherine, you talked about the madman theory of foreign policy. Mark, I wonder what you think. They would say it has made it more likely that next time there’s an impasse with some other country, whether an ally or an adversary, Trump’s strong will and immediate threat that caused the Colombian president to do an about-face will cause the next impasse to go Trump’s way as well. That would be the argument. Fair or not?

But my point is, Colombia didn’t actually cave. I think this was a face-saving measure. We’re back to where we were before, essentially. There was no real concession from Colombia. I think-

All right. So then I’m going to blame the media and, in that regard, specifically my guest, Mark Leibovich. If there was no victory, why does it feel like a victory on the airwaves, Mark?

Because the media says it is, and I blame them too, and I’m above it all. I would say this.

Self-hating Mark Leibovich.

That contains multitudes. We could spend some time on that.

Good.

Catherine is right in what she says, but what I think I would object… Not object to, but this is not about solving a problem at all. I mean, we talk about things like face. We talk about, quote, unquote, “wins,” whatever the media deems a win or Donald Trump deems a win. This is purely, in the shallowest sense of the word, a symbolic presidency.

There is the impression being left that a president of a country has caved to Donald Trump, just like the impression being left by, say, a media company settling with Donald Trump for what is otherwise a frivolous libel suit. I mean, it is him basically using whatever brute force is at his disposal to expose a witness.

Yeah, but that’s a win.

It is a win. That is-

In connection with the conflict with ABC News, Trump got the win. Correct?

That is how it’s perceived. That is how Trump perceives it. It’s sort of end of story.

Is that how you perceive it? Is that how you perceive it?

Yeah.

I do.

Largely. Yeah.

I don’t think George won, much as I like him.

Yeah. I mean, ABC is out, whatever it is, 15, $16 million. So I would say that that was not a win. That was a loss. They lost that money as well as a little bit of dignity there.

All right. How about on another thing with respect to which there was an about-face? Because we’re going to be doing a lot of this. Looking at what happened and then trying to discuss what really happened, and then also, at the same time, discuss the perception of what happened, and all those things matter. Some people might say the perception matters more than the reality.

So on the halting of federal funds, there was a memo. There was an executive order. There was a lot of confusion about healthcare funds and healthcare costs being paid, then there was a rescission of the rescission. Catherine, can you explain what went on, and then we can discuss the perception of what went on?

I’m not sure anybody-

Because that looks like a loss for me.

Yeah. I was actually surprised that the administration backed down as quickly as it did in rescinding that memo.

Right. But can you just still take it from the top? What was the thing they sought to do?

Sure. So this memo went out on Monday, I believe, of this week in which OMB basically said, “We are stopping all payments for almost everything.” And there were carve-outs specifically for Social Security and Medicare, and then there was some vague language about something like in accordance with all applicable laws, but it wasn’t clear that any of it was legal.

There are circumstances, as I understand it, and Preet, you may know better, under which the president can temporarily pause certain kinds of discretionary spending, but they’re really constrained circumstances, and they’re laid out in the Budget and Impoundment Act, and you have to provide some documentation, like how much are you pausing spending, and for what reasons? And there are only certain narrow reasons. They didn’t do any of that. They basically just said, “We’re stopping all spending.”

Then there was a lot of confusion about, “Well, does that apply to Medicaid?” which is not discretionary, but it’s also not specifically exempted. And in Medicaid, obviously, lots of people rely on Medicaid not only to, whatever, refill a prescription, but if you have a surgery scheduled, that the ability to continue with something more critical like that is at risk, because the doctor doesn’t know if he’s going to get paid.

So in any event, when journalists first asked the press secretary, like, “Is Medicaid part of this?” she could not answer. Eventually, the White House came back and said, “No, Medicaid is not affected.” But meanwhile, despite her saying that, Medicaid directors all over the country could not actually access the software, the portal to get in, and then there were lots of other things that were unambiguously supposed to be affected, all sorts of food assistance. Meals on Wheels became sort of the poster child for all of this.

But also, the administration didn’t understand that Meals on Wheels would be affected by their own order based on the way it was characterized. So anyway, there’s tons of chaos in a very short period of time. Nobody knows if they’re going to be able to pay their bills. If you’re a child care provider and you rely on some federal funds or even state block grants, unclear if you’re going to get paid, and tons of pushback.

Well, I should clarify, pushback from the people who are worried about getting their bills paid, not so much from Republicans in Congress. The House chair of the Appropriations Committee said something to the effect of, “Well, it’s not so bad, because when we pass appropriations bills, they’re not law,” which is, I’m pretty sure, not the case.

But more broadly, obviously, Congress is supposed to be in charge of the power of the purse under the Constitution. So there were legal questions here, other questions about who it’s going to hurt and how much. Then very soon after that, the administration said, “Never mind,” or a judge paused it, by the way. The administration said, “Never mind. We’re rescinding that memo.” But it’s not really clear what the status is now, because the NSF-

Are the payments happening?

Some are. Some are not. So, for example, the NSF, the National Science Foundation, has not been paying the salaries of postdocs who are working in research labs around the country, and various other grants and things like that have also been paused. So maybe Meals on Wheels is okay, but lots of other things aren’t, and I think we don’t have a lot of transparency into what’s going on. Mark may be in the same position that I am where I’m just like, I have this sort of phone tree going where I’m just trying to ask people, “Wait. So did your project get interrupted or what?”

Well, why is it so confusing and difficult? And by the way, Mark, given the chaos, and people were fond of saying the last time out, “The cruelty is the point.” I think you’ve said this, but some have certainly said, “Maybe the chaos is the point.” Is there a political cost to be paid for this kind of chaos when it comes to money in people’s pockets?

I mean, it could. I think one of the reasons they probably paused it is maybe Republicans on the Hill weren’t speaking up about this, but I’m almost certain that they had some visibility on whatever these Medicare or Medicaid payments, Meals on Wheels program, something, affecting a lot of his voters, because clearly, it did.

I mean, if you look at the profile of people who voted for Trump and what kind of assistance they relied on, clearly, a lot of Trump voters were getting hurt. And you’d see little trickles of press accounts coming in saying, “So-and-so voted for Donald Trump,” but never in a million years expected the neighbor to be supported or something like… I mean, there’s a whole genre of stories that we have begun to see and we will continue to see here. But I also think if you take a… Again, very shallow. This is my role here. So Catherine does the substance. I do the, at least, shallow-style-

You do the shallow end?

… read of this, which is fine. I’m totally comfortable in this role. But no, I mean, most supporters out there of Donald Trump, the Republican base, would say, “Oh, look, he’s shaking things up. Chaos.” This is to the degree to which they pay attention to the details here. So the degree to which, say, Fox News is going to break down the substance of what we’re talking about here, they’re not going to get a lot except for the perception of, “Oh, yeah. Donald Trump’s shaking this up. Look at all the postdocs or people in the media or people who live in Washington, D.C., or New York or wherever who are shaken up over this.” So to me, I mean, he would probably see that is consistent with his mission.

I think the real question is, since we… I don’t entirely understand why they backtracked, at least in part, so quickly. And if it is about fear of political blowback, how does that affect a lot of the rest of their agenda? So this year, there’s going to be a huge food fight over the tax system, because a large portion of the Trump 2017 tax cuts are expiring. And to date, Republicans in Congress have indicated that they’re going to pay for that in part by cutting a lot of these safety net services we’re talking about, whether it’s Medicaid, food stamps, housing assistance, all sorts of other safety net programs.

And again, those were a lot of the same things, maybe not food stamps, but those were a lot of the same kinds of programs that just got targeted this week. So if this was really about, “Oh, crap, we’re worried that our own voters are going to be mad at us,” what does that mean for the rest of their agenda this year? Because I think they’ve really been banking on being able to slash the safety net and, in many cases, hurt their own voters without a lot of political repercussions.

Stay tuned. There’s more coming up after this. So, Mark, when you came on the screen earlier and before we hit the record button, I referred to you as Mark “Boondoggle” Leibovich, because I believe you watched the inauguration from another country. Am I correct?

Another country for now. Yeah, I was in Greenland.

You found yourself employed-

I found myself-

… in Greenland?

… employed in Greenland. Yeah. I mean, first of all, I would-

Hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on. Let the questioner ask the question, with suitable, unnecessary buildup. The thing was, when he first talked about buying Greenland or annexing Greenland, the first time around, I was included in that group. We made fun of him. It doesn’t seem to be as crazy a laughing matter this time around. Mark, discuss.

Yeah. Okay. So Greenland. No. Well, it was a serious diplomatic moment for as long as it lasted in 2019. It certainly was serious if you’re the prime minister of Denmark, and they had a back-and-forth, and Trump kind of… I mean, Denmark is not used to fighting with the United States over things that come out of left field like that. So it was a big deal, but it-

How big is Denmark’s army?

I don’t know, man. Not very big.

Right.

You know what? Let me-

But you know why it’s okay vis-à-vis the United States? Because there’s this thing called NATO. Are they members of NATO?

Yeah. Denmark certainly is a member of NATO, and I guess by extension, Greenland is-

Are you allowed to take land from NATO allies? I’m a lawyer.

Presumably no. I mean, it’s certainly never been even in the same ballpark of being tested like this. But by the way, first of all, let me step back. I would quibble with your use of the term boondoggle to destroy Greenland in January for 11 days.

I was going to say Hawaii maybe, but-

Don’t insult our new territory, my friend.

I am not insulting anything. I will just say that I went to Greenland. Never been before. I don’t know if anyone else on this podcast… Anyway-

I’ve been to the sister country, Iceland.

What? Denmark?

I don’t know. Is that a sister country?

That’s not a sister country. After 11 days in Greenland, I had several flights canceled, because small airport, snows every day, you can imagine. Ate a lot of muskox, caribou, that kind of thing. But in order to get home, the only flights out are pretty much to Reykjavík, which is in the other direction. But at least Reykjavík is… You go to Reykjavík.

In Iceland.

It’s a city. Beautiful. So anyway-

I mean, I just wanted the record to reflect that you think that the daily ingestion of caribou was not a boondoggle?

Actually, it’s a very lean red meat. I had two or three restaurants-

Yeah. No, I wasn’t being sarcastic. It sounds like a boondoggle to me.

I mean, Nuuk has a population of 50,000, about. Nuuk is the major population area, so to speak, of Greenland. Preet, for your travel podcast, I would love to come on and discuss this greatly. But basically, I wanted to watch-

Did you meet everyone?

Yeah. Well, it didn’t take long. It took a couple of days.

You met all the people?

It’s an amazing country, amazing people. Yeah. Yeah. I wanted to watch Donald Trump’s inauguration there, because, obviously, this is the only story there. I wanted to hang out with the prime minister, who suddenly is this very small-time, no one’s ever heard of him, guy who is in the middle of this geopolitical crisis. And suddenly, the world is watching him.

Can you name-check him on the podcast so he gets notoriety and fame?

Yes. Prime Minister Múte Egede, and I called him Prime Minister Múte instead of Egede. But either way, he remained mute. So fun little words.

I don’t think you’re going back to Greenland.

I’d love to go back to Greenland. They are going to be the last-

But can we set this… So part of the reason it’s not laughable is that, as I understand it, there have been a lot of bad consequences for many countries of global warming and climate change. But global warming and climate change has made certain assets of Greenland, including mineral deposits and other things, more accessible and mineable. Correct?

Correct. Yeah.

Okay.

I mean, Greenland is warming. That area of the world is warming faster than any other… The climate there is warming faster than any other part of the world. A lot of ice is melting. That allows for, as you said, just access to greater resources, whether it’s oil or mineral deposits or what have you. It also opens up shipping lanes. It opens up trade possibilities. It opens up tourism possibilities. It sounds kind of perverse, but Russia and China-

Put aside the methodology.

Yeah.

Is it right and wise and smart for the United States to want to have Greenland?

There is a definite geopolitical argument to be made for a country like the United States being able to try to leverage the resources of Greenland, far more so than certainly Denmark has. However, the people of Greenland seem to feel very much otherwise. If you believe some recent polls, most of whom, 80-plus percent of the respondents, want the status quo. They want to remain an innocuous part of Denmark, and I think most of them would like to go back to being kind of an inobtrusive part of the North Atlantic that no one really thinks about.

But no, I mean, look, Donald Trump… Here’s the thing. I mean, here’s the bottom line of a lot of what we’re talking about here if you can tie it up, which is Donald Trump feels like he can do what he wants. He feels like he is operating in a consequence-free environment, say take what seems like the most absurd eventuality here, which is, say, he actually does deploy some kind of military asset there, which he has not ruled out. I mean, what’s Denmark going to do? Blockade the U.S. blockade? Is there going to be some intra-NATO crisis?

Does he hate Denmark for the windmills?

I think he-

He’s very anti-windmill.

He seems to be anti-windmill. If you’re anti-windmill, I would imagine Denmark, at least symbolically, would be a great target, don’t you think? It’s like if you were against-

Catherine, how does this play out under the madman theory?

Actually, I’m learning something from hearing Mark talk about what is actually to our advantage here, because I have been wondering, one of the more facile theories is that, well, maybe this is to Putin’s advantage if we take Greenland somehow, and then it’s no longer a major NATO base, particularly if the United States pulls out of NATO, as Trump has threatened to do.

I’m sorry. Why isn’t the simple explanation elbow room? As that Saturday morning cartoon used to say about the Louisiana Purchase, “Got to, got to get me some elbow room.” Remember that?

No idea what you’re talking about.

Yeah. You guys are too young, although, Mark, you’re not. Schoolhouse Rock! We’ll look it up. We’ll put it in the show notes.

I watched Schoolhouse Rock!

We’ll put it in the show notes. Okay?

Fine. Fine. Fine.

Greenland may not have a lot of people, 56,000 or so, but I was told that it was four times the size of Texas.

Three times.

Three times the size of Texas. That’s a lot of land. And can’t you imagine Donald Trump, for the rest of his days in this presidency and thereafter, and his allies saying, just as a boast on its own, that he increased the size of the United States of America by 3x Texas? Isn’t that enough?

Yeah. I mean, look, Donald Trump likes big. Greenland is big. Again, if you want to be completely simplistic about this, yeah, he would love that. He would probably want to rename it from day one, like Trumplandia or something.

Well, there’s already America. Right? But Catherine, how is this emblematic of other things that we will see two weeks past just the first fortnight of the presidency?

I think it’s the complete disregard for our diplomatic relations with anyone. No rational cost-benefit analysis of… Again, the upside here, I guess, is we get a few more natural resources and some more land. I don’t know. Maybe Trump can build some more hotels or something.

Okay. What’s the downside?

But the downside is enormous. Right?

What? What? Okay. List them.

I don’t know. Potentially creating another world war-

Within NATO.

… if we invaded NATO ally.

Yeah, but we’re not going to invade. So I started to make this argument with Ian Bremmer-

You just roll it out, Preet.

… our podcast friend Ian, and my in-real-life friend Ian scoffed at the idea. And on the not ruling it out, that’s gamesmanship on the part of people like you in the media where he was not signaling that he was going to do… I’m just telling you his point of view, and he will figure out some way either to get it done or not, but it will be bloodless. Don’t you agree?

Okay. Let me take a crack at this first. First of all, I want to know if me and Catherine are real-life friends or just podcast friends. Can you clarify that before we go any further? All right. You’re pausing. I’m not going to do it.

I’m not-

All right.

All right. Fine. Fine. Fine.

That was the answer.

Okay. So I watched Trump’s inauguration speech with a whole group of political people from Greenland, a bunch of members of Parliament, a bunch of political operatives, whatever. I mean, the James Carville of Nuuk, or people like that, a lot of political official Nuuk. Right? They were all sort of saying, “Hey.” They were kind of curious, like, “Are they going to mention us? Is Trump going to mention Greenland? Do you think we’d get a line or two in there?”

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

They think it’s kind of a fun little parlor game. Probably about 10 minutes in or five minutes into the speech, when they heard the tone of it, the aggressiveness of it, everyone was like, “Please don’t mention us. We don’t want to be part of this. This sounds sort of menacing.” I mean, this is sort of a direct quote from one of the people I was watching with. And he’d come to the Gulf of America part of the speech or the Panama part of the speech when, typically, that’s when the Canada-Greenland part of the speech comes, or he’s got, “We’re going to add Canada as the 51st state,” and Greenland usually comes next.

And they were all holding their breath. And at the end, they were sort of… There’s like, “Phew,” a sigh of relief. I mean, “We dodged a bullet,” or a harpoon dodged, or something like that. Yeah. I mean, it’s, in some ways, kind of a comic dynamic here, but at the same time, it’s really, really kind of scary, especially if you live in a place like this that has really no army, no defenses, and is completely vulnerable to the whims of a suddenly aggressive superpower not that far away.

This is one of the challenges of figuring out how to cover this administration, which is how much of what he’s saying is just like whatever popped into his head at the moment, and he’s just spitballing about invading a NATO ally, and how much of it is there actually groundwork laid to execute, and a lot of it’s insane. And sorting out the signal from the noise, I have found very challenging.

Catherine, you wrote recently, going back to the economy, quote, “As I’ve said many times before, there isn’t much presidents can do to reduce inflation, whatever their promises. But there’s a lot they can do to make things worse,” end quote. Are you talking about mostly tariffs, other things, or both?

Basically all of Trump’s agenda at this point. So Trump ran and won by promising to reduce prices, which he cannot do.

Yes. So this is the disconnect that you need to help us with.

Yeah. So first of all, prices generally don’t go down. The overall price level doesn’t go down. The long-term trend is things go up. That’s the first problem with all of this. The second is, even if his goal is to just help them not grow as fast, which is what the Fed has been aiming for, that’s what is really meant when we say inflation is slowing.

Yeah. You want to keep it at 2%.

Right. Right. If, I don’t know, a slice of pizza was… Well, I live in New York. A slice of pizza was a dollar-

$39. It’s $39.

… and it went up to $1.50. You want it to stay at $1.50.

Yeah.

It’s not going to go back to a dollar. So there are things that can be done policy-wise to try to help that happen, to keep prices from growing much further. Mostly, that’s the purview of the Federal Reserve. There are things here and there that the president can do, but not very much. And unfortunately, Trump is doing the opposite of all of those things.

So, for example, he has threatened global tariffs of 10% as well as much higher tariffs on potentially Chinese goods, Mexican goods, Canadian goods. Again, I don’t know why he’s targeting some of our closest allies, in addition to our quasi-adversaries, but those would raise prices for consumers. We saw this last time. There was a ton of research looking at the first round of Trump tariffs, which were, by comparison, much more limited even if, at the time, they seemed pretty extreme. You can see he put tariffs on washing machines, and washing machines got way more expensive, just as an example. This would be much broader.

And we don’t know exactly how much of the taxes, which is what they are, would be passed along to consumers, but at least, in part, they would be. So if he tariffs everything from Mexico, that means almost all of our avocados come from Mexico, a lot of our tomatoes. So forget grocery prices stabilizing, let alone going down. We have a lot of cross-border trade with the auto industry, with the oil industry, with Mexico and Canada.

All of that stuff will get more expensive. So that’s one big chunk of it. There’s also the fact that he’s planning these major changes to immigration policy. The deportations alone would potentially cause a lot of supply chain disruptions. Remember that immigrants are much more likely to work in agriculture, food services, construction, all areas that have been major price point sensitivities for regular Americans. Housing is really expensive. How are you going to build more houses if you don’t have any workers to do it?

Catherine, can I ask you a question on that before we wrap up? It seems to me that notwithstanding all sorts of proclamations about birthright citizenship and the deputizing of law enforcement agencies and the suggestions of using the military, and all this pomp and circumstance surrounding deportations, and it’s only been two weeks, the numbers aren’t that impressive. Right? And I keep seeing breathlessly reported on networks that one or both of you are affiliated with, these numbers that seem to be meant to convey shock and awe are lower than the Biden numbers and lower than the Obama numbers. Is that a fair observation?

I don’t know that we have all of the data yet that we need to know what’s happening with… Well, with ICE raids, deportations will come later. One piece of all of this that I think has been undercovered is that there’s so much focus on people who are undocumented. I am much more concerned at this point about what his effect will be on those who he will, for lack of a better word, de-document.

So there are a lot of people who are immigrants who are currently working here legally. These are people on DACA, for example; people on a program called TPS, temporary protected status, millions of people on that; asylum seekers who have work permits. There are lots of categories of immigrants who, again, are allowed to work currently.

But Trump is in the process, if he has not already done so, of killing their ability to work as well as potentially making them subject to deportation. So this is what happened last time. He had a much bigger effect on the legal immigration system than the illegal immigration system, and the media completely missed it in my view. And I think that’s the big change that we’re likely to see in the months ahead.

Mark, do you have any comments on any of those things, particularly about immigration, and/or do you want to comment on what landmass Trump will seek to annex next, and/or is there some news in the coming week, the week of February 3rd, that we should be paying most careful attention to? Multiple choice for you.

Yeah. I mean, I guess I’ll sort of start with the random. First of all, no avocados are imported from Greenland. I guarantee you that. There’s no produce there whatsoever, except possibly grass. Let’s see.

Don’t encourage him to invade Mexico, annex Mexico.

You know what?

That’s what he’ll hear from that comment.

Avocados are really good for Mexico. I will say this. I mean, this is an area we haven’t really touched on, but I think what Catherine, or what Preet said earlier about the numbers not being good, and again, the data is just-

I’m not saying good or bad, and I’m being normative.

No.

They’re just not as high as being advertised.

Look, I think given the Democrats have been completely neutered or are on their heels, whatever metaphor you want to use here, it wouldn’t be a dumb idea for Democrats to talk about, one, how inflation has not moved. The war in Ukraine has not been solved in 24 hours. No one during the campaign was talking about Greenland or what to name the Gulf of Mexico. This is not helping, and this is not what he campaigned about. This is not what anyone voted on, and these are not real-life issues for the vast majority of people.

So, look, I think as far as predicting next week, I mean, I think if past is prologue, there’ll be something completely different that we didn’t anticipate, and that’ll be the topic of next week. But I think this is, again, it’s a kind of a souped-up version of what we experienced during the first term and what, I guess, we’ve had a break from for the last four years.

Well, I could talk to you folks for many, many hours into next week.

Can we do that?

Time to let you guys go. Yeah, we can do it again. Catherine, Mark, thanks for being with us.

Thanks, Preet.

Great to join you. Thanks for having me.

For more analysis of legal and political issues making the headlines, become a member of the CAFE Insider. Members get access to exclusive content, including the weekly podcast I host with former U.S. Attorney Joyce Vance. Head to cafe.com/insider to sign up for a trial. That’s cafe.com/insider. If you like what we do, rate and review the show on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen. Every positive review helps new listeners find the show.

Send me your questions about news, politics, and justice. Tweet them to me, @PreetBharara, with the hashtag #AskPreet. You can also now reach me on Threads, or you can call and leave me a message at 669-247-7338. That’s 669-24-PREET, or you can send an email to letters@cafe.com. Stay Tuned is presented by CAFE and the Vox Media Podcast Network.

The executive producer is Tamara Sepper. The technical director is David Tatasciore. The deputy editor is Celine Rohr. The editorial producers are Noa Azulai and Jake Kaplan. The associate producer is Claudia Hernández. And the CAFE team is Matthew Billy, Nat Weiner, and Liana Greenway. Our music is by Andrew Dost. I’m your host, Preet Bharara. As always, stay tuned.