Scott Lucas on Trump 2.0

The UK in a Changing Europe Podcast

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4.1 • 102 Ratings

🗓️ 21 March 2025

⏱️ 35 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The first three months of Donald Trump's presidency have been remarkable. But what are the key differences between Trump 1.0 and Trump 2.0? How have the Democrats and other Republicans responded? As Trump and his team hollow out the US state, why have Congress and the courts not been able to slow his agenda? And what does his willingness to flout judicial orders mean for the checks and balances of democracy in the US? On this episode of The UK in a Changing Europe podcast, director Anand Menon speaks to Scott Lucas, Professor of American Studies at the Clinton Institute at University College Dublin to find out more about the impact Trump is having on the US state and the US. Listen in to hear his expert analysis.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi, everyone and welcome to the UK in a changing Europe podcast, and I'm delighted today to be joined by not just an expert, but an old friend and former colleague Scott Lucas of University College Dublin, where he is professor of what Scott, because I've forgotten what you've just told me.
0:22.5	US and international politics and anything else that might pop into our frame in this crazy world of ours.
0:28.3	Excellent. So I imagine our audience by now have guessed what we're going to be talking about.
0:32.2	In fact, we talk about it nonstop, whether we're having a podcast about it or not these days,
0:36.4	which is Trump's second
0:37.8	presidency. And I mean, there's two broad areas I want to talk about with you. Firstly, what's
0:42.1	happening inside the US, which I think we maybe notice a bit less, but then the international.
0:46.3	But on the domestic side of things, have you been surprised by the pace with which Trump has
0:53.7	gone about things?
0:55.1	What Donald Trump, and I think equally important, Trump advisors, not just chainsaw Elon,
1:01.3	the unelected co-president, Mr. Musk, but others who are in the White House, no, they were going to wreak havoc.
1:08.1	It did surprise me how quickly they hit the ground running. And I think
1:11.9	here's the difference between Trump 1.0 and Trump 2.0. Trump 1.0 had people who would talk about
1:19.6	the deep state. In other words, agencies doing their job and how these agencies either had to be
1:24.8	loyal to the president or they had to be purged. But the Trump
1:28.3	folks didn't really have a coherent approach to how they did that. And indeed, you might remember
1:33.1	in Trump 1.0, we had adults in the room. You could talk about, for example, that Jim Mattis,
1:38.3	who is a military guy, was the defense secretary. Another general, H.R. McMaster, was the national
1:43.4	security advisor. Exxon
1:44.9	CEO, world of business, but still someone who was quite competent, Rex Tillerson's Secretary of State.
1:50.4	Mike Pompeo, who had been a representative but wasn't a diehard Trumpist, he was at CIA,
1:55.7	and then he eventually goes to State Department. You know, these guys, in other words,
	...

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