I'm Charlie Sykes. Welcome back to the To the Contrary podcast. Donald Trump is not having a very good week. He just lost a big vote in the House of Representatives on tariffs, a very rare moment where Republicans actually voted against him. A federal grand jury has refused to indict six Democratic members of Congress for recording that video where they told people that they ought to

obey the law. You know, what's more shocking? The fact that the grand jury turned down those

indictments are the fact that the Department of Justice actually wanted to criminally charge

six Democratic members of Congress. There's nothing normal about all of that. And then meanwhile, we have the continued

fallout from the Epstein files and the Epstein cover-up. It does appear that this week is Howard

Lutnik's turn in the barrel. If there is actually a barrel, we talk a lot about 2.0, what it's

what it would be like to live in a rational world with actual real consequences where

truth actually mattered and that lies might be career ending. Well, we don't actually have to

imagine Earth 2.0 because we can actually watch the rest of the Earth, the rest of the world,

what's happening in the split screen where there's a lot

of accountability in other countries. And the United States is very much an outlier. So we have

awful lot to talk about today. And our guest today is a veteran Trump watcher. Ashley Parker from The Atlantic, former reporter for the Washington Post in the New York Times.

Ashley, how are you?

I'm well. How are you?

Good. I was reflecting that I first met you 10 years ago in a different world. It feels like a different century.

I was on radio and you were at the New York Times

covering what felt like for about five minutes of the Ted Surge cruise against Donald Trump.

Yeah, never mind. Yes, we met at the cusp of a changing world because that was the moment,

I think people were realizing Donald Trump

could actually win the Republican nomination when we were both in Wisconsin. Yeah. Cusp of a changing

world. And even though it's, you know, 10 years, you could say out on one level, that's really a long time.

We've been doing this. Ashley, we've been doing this a very, very long time, a whole decade talking about all of this.

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