From New York Times opinion, I'm Ross Douthat, and this is Interesting Times. What does the second Trump administration really stand for?

How different is Trumpism from past forms of conservatism?

Just in the last week, we've seen the great break with Elon Musk seemingly bring an end to the experiment with having the tech right the Silicon Valley hotshots try to run Washington, D.C.

We've seen the protests in Los Angeles and the president's militarized response highlight just how central immigration politics is to contemporary conservatism.

And we've seen the battle in Congress over the big, beautiful bill bring back the ghosts of the Tea Party era.

So it's a good time to talk about what Trumpism 2.0 actually represents.

And my guest this week is the perfect person for that conversation.

Matthew Contenetti is a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, and he's the author of

the recent book The Right, the 100-year War for American Conservatism, which in my humble

opinion is the best recent intellectual history of the American right.

So Matthew Contonetti,

welcome to interesting times. Ross, thank you. It's great to be here. I'm looking forward to our discussion of Andor. Oh, did we schedule you for the wrong week? I was told. I was told.

That's how we lure everyone in. Oh, I'm sorry.

Come for the Star Wars discussion.

Well, I enjoyed that episode very much, so it is a pleasure to be.

Well, you're very kind.

Well, there can be a science fiction element here as well, because I wanted to start with Elon Musk, a science fiction figure, if there ever was one.

And the great Trump-Mussk schism, which sort of put an exclamation

point on Elon's departure from the White House or from government. And I want you to talk about

what you think the Musk experiment represented in the realm of ideas. What was that all about? Well, I think the way to approach this question is to look at

the shape of the coalition that Donald Trump brought into being in his reelection last year.

And a large part of that coalition, certainly a lot of the intellectual energy, a lot of the

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