Ep. 17 - Keeping it simple, w/ Chris Cillizza

Clarity on the return of Donald Trump, January 6th, and some hard truths on the limits of power. All delivered cleanly.

🚨🚨 Please welcome

Kaylie Klausing

, 24sight News’ very first intern! I’m very excited to have Kaylie on board, she’s a senior at Fisher College in Boston, studying journalism. She’s coming on at one of the wildest moments in modern American history and will be writing, researching and more here. Welcome, Kaylie, to the 24sight family! 🚨🚨

Look for the latest 24 Seven wrapping the first week of the second Trump term tomorrow.

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Chris Cillizza

knows how to keep it cool when the whole world is melting down, so

Patrick Pfingsten

and I figured that inauguration week in Washington was the perfect time.

We taped this show on Tuesday, so we didn’t get to all of the wild news of this week, but we did hit on a number of key dynamics which have been true through all of the Trump decade of politics. And Cillizza, as always, is a master of cutting through the fog.

Show Notes

Patrick is cranky af, Tom is sedate af and somewhere in between lies pundit nirvana.

Trump is doing exactly what he said he would on campaign trail, from trying to erase

First Down: Low energy inaugural speech, it needed some Howard Dean scream energy

Second Down: Opening Day stamped with historic pardons of the January 6th rioters, including violent militia members.

Third Down: You can sign an executive order saying anything, it doesn’t make it real or enforceable. We’ll write about things when they move from bluster to reality.

RICHARD TOFEL: Ep. 16 - Write about what’s real

Fourth Down: Patrick the Grouch wants a ray of optimism, and Tom’s laptop promptly crashes right when he’s about to deliver some high-grade hopium, like so much narco-trafficking over the dark web. (That’s why the video cuts out.)

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The Cillizza Interview

19:01 - We already know Donald Trump's not going to get everything he wants

20:11 - we're not even 24 hours into him being president and you know he's already done things that I think are quite dangerous, including pardoning all or commuting the sentences of all the January 6, people who are arrested including 600 people who were charged with violent crimes including assaulting police

22:09 - every professional Republican operative who said well America is not talking about this, America does not care about January 6 nobody is talking about. Well, the president is talking about it

23:20 - in 2024, there's zero voters who could be like I'm not really sure what Donald Trump stands for or would do because I mean he doesn't hide

23:50 - Can I swear? Yes!

24:30 - There was shit on the wall, they wanted to hang Mike Pence. How is it how is it accepted by an entire political party at this point that history never happened?

25:30 The best way to think of what he says a lot in his campaign speeches is like a comedian is he tests out lines and the ones that get good response from the crowd he keeps it

26:30 People are dead right I mean like there's no that people are injured people like we saw them bleeding, we saw people jabbing flag poles into cops like I don't unless you believe those are actors on the stage like the moonlanding wink wink like I just don't I don't I don't know how you

27:00 - They put GoPros on while they beat the sh*t out of the cops

29:00 - Why can’t we just say facts are inconvenient to our deeply held beliefs

29:40 - Jeff Zucker back at CNN told me facts aren’t a partisan position, but I’m not sure how many voters would agree with that.

31:40 - I understand why people want simple sounding answers, but that’s not how these issues work … Democrats often lose elections for this reason

33:10 - Ok, you’ll round up 11 million people here illegally, using local police? How? The allure of easy solutions is an allure, it’s not a reality

33:46 - We’re starting to see the reality of disappointment already

And more.