You're listening to Robert Wright's Non-Zero Podcast.

Hi, Eric.

Hi, Bob.

How you doing?

Oh, doing all right, all things considered.

I know that feeling. Let me introduce us. I'm Robert Wright. Publisher of Nonsor Newsletter. This is a non-zero podcast. You're Eric Levitts, senior correspondent at Vox.

You've been with us once before on the podcast. A lot has happened since then. In fact, a lot has happened in only the last

seven weeks since Donald Trump was inaugurated. And I wanted to talk about that, try to take stock

of that, and also talk about how the Democrats are reacting, what sort of long-term plan

they may be developing, what kinds of arguments

there are surrounding that. But just to start with the Trump stuff, do you have a way of

like summarizing where we are in this? Yeah, I don't know. There's, as you said, a tremendous amount has happened.

I think that, you know, we've seen a few, I guess one way of focusing the conversation maybe is on what has surprised me, I guess, or at the very least, I think that there are a lot of things that

have been happening more rapidly and to a more extreme extent than I had anticipated.

Velocity is definitely a feature of this administration. I would say high velocity, yes.

Yeah, and I think a lot of that is attributable to Elon Musk's entry into the government.

I think that one of the saving graces, I think there were a few,

but of the first Trump administration was the fact that Donald Trump is not necessarily the

most diligent individual in the world and is, I think, most enjoys some of the least consequential

aspects of the role of president in terms of public relations and media stunts and whatnot. Whereas Elon Musk is, you know,

a manic, workaholic, possibly drug addled, but who is, you know, actually very interested in

implementing policy change and is used to the role of used to running

...