Trump Has Redefined Presidential Scandal

The David Frum Show

The Atlantic

Politics, News, News Commentary

4.6 • 2.4K Ratings

🗓️ 14 January 2026

⏱️ 56 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

On this week’s episode of “The David Frum Show,” The Atlantic’s David Frum discusses the menacing crises the Trump presidency is inflicting on the United States and its own movement to start 2026. David speculates that the recent lethal ICE incident in Minneapolis, Trump’s increasingly unhinged rhetoric, and the targeting of Jerome Powell indicate that the MAGA world is cracking. He argues that Trump’s increasingly unpredictable and escalating actions are taking the MAGA movement, the Trump presidency, the U.S., and the rest of the world down a path of doom. Then, David is joined by Timothy Naftali, the founding director of the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum, to discuss perhaps Trump’s most brazen grift: his proposed presidential library in Miami. Frum and Naftali also discuss why comparisons of Trump to Nixon fall flat and how Trump’s actions in Venezuela reflect a policy of weakness. Finally, David ends the episode with a discussion of Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë. Get more from your favorite Atlantic voices when you subscribe. You’ll enjoy unlimited access to Pulitzer-winning journalism, from clear-eyed analysis and insight on breaking news to fascinating explorations of our world. Atlantic subscribers also get access to exclusive subscriber audio in Apple Podcasts. Subscribe today at TheAtlantic.com/Listener. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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1:15.3	Hello, and welcome to this week's episode of The David Frum Show.
1:19.0	I'm David Frum, a staff writer at The Atlantic.
1:22.1	My guest this week will be Tim Nafthali.
1:28.0	You may know Tim from his many appearances on CNN, where he talks about the history of the presidency.
1:35.1	Tim is a distinguished historian of U.S. diplomacy during the Cold War. He was also the founding director of the Richard Nixon Presidential Library, and we'll be talking about the many
1:40.0	strange schemes, strange money-making schemes around the plan for a Trump presidential
1:46.1	library in Miami, and we'll be talking about the chaos and danger of the Trump foreign policy
	...

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