MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Will the Supreme Court's rulings change how President Trump's signature issues play out during the rest of his term? Jonah Goldberg has been giving some thought to this. He's a conservative political commentator and co-founder and editor in chief of the online magazine The Dispatch. Jonah, good morning. Thanks for joining us.
JONAH GOLDBERG: Always great to be here.
MARTIN: As we just heard from Tam Keith, the president views this as a winning Supreme Court term with workarounds for any losses. How do you see it?
GOLDBERG: I think it's a mixed bag. I mean, at the very minimum, you know, the tariffs case, as Tamara was talking about, the tariffs case alone, was a rebuke of his central policy agenda. You know, he basically bet the early part of his presidency on it, and he got rebuked on that. And at least culturally, the birthright citizenship is a big reversal. But I agree on a lot of structural, you know, executive branch, executive authority things. He's won a lot, and, you know, going back to the immunity case, which was actually before he took office again, the executive branch has been really strengthened by this court.
MARTIN: You know, the Supreme Court did reject his effort to end birthright citizenship, but only a bare majority of justices said that his executive order was unconstitutional. This is thought to be settled law. I mean, Vice President Vance said that that means birthright citizenship is, quote, "hanging on by a thread." You wrote about this. Where do you think this leaves the debate over birthright citizenship?
GOLDBERG: Yeah. I mean, we don't need to, like, recount every single crazy right-wing Twitter personality or anything like that here. But the response from the sort of infotainment new right, MAGA right on this decision has been bat-guano crazy. Talking about it's the end of America. You know, you have one writer from The Federalist talking about we may have to just sterilize women before they are allowed to visit America. I mean, just truly crazy stuff. And what's amazing about it is nothing's changed. This has been the way birthright citizenship - they're upholding what has been in effect for over a century. Like, literally, it's an extension of the status quo.
And what's fascinating to me about it is these people are losing their minds over this, like, what they literally call an apocalyptic worst-than-Roe decision that changes nothing. While this win, at least on their terms, culturally, politically, on the trans sports ban stuff, they're almost entirely ignoring because what it tells me is what Trump and what these guys want are these issues more than they actually want the victories they claim to be pursuing.
MARTIN: And do you - who do you hold more responsible for that? Who do you think is the prime player at that? Is it President Trump or is it the Congress, which, in the Republican-dominated Congress, which in so many issues does not exercise the authority that the Constitution grants it? On tariffs, for example, has not.
GOLDBERG: Sure.
MARTIN: And all these other issues. So is this Trump driving this, I'd rather have the issue than the win, or is it the Congress in its abdication of its authority?
GOLDBERG: So I think Trump is exploiting a long-term structural problem in our politics that I think starts with Newt Gingrich's Contract with America, which I thought was awesome at the time as a young policy wonk in Washington. And now I think that was the beginning of basically the self-dismantling of Congress' role in our constitutional order. The - Congress is the first branch of government. It's the only branch that can fire members of the other branches. It is the supreme branch. All that co-equal branches stuff is Nixonian propaganda.
And what Congress has done is it's turned itself, in effect, into a parliament of pundits. You know, you have an enormous number of people who seem to go to Congress in order to have a steppingstone to a career in cable TV and podcasting, which is bizarre. And what you basically - what has happened with Congress, and it's happened with, you know, over 30 years. So it's not just this Congress, but this Congress is the worst, is they are basically a rubber stamp for the presidency. And every time - and one of their great abettors has been the Supreme Court, which steps in and takes responsibility for fixing problems in public policy and in law, away from the president and away from Congress.
Congress could have changed the tariff - you know, Congress has sole authority over tariffs under the Constitution. It has outsourced that authority to the president. It has the authority to write laws about anything it wants. It could have amended, or tried to amend birthright citizenship years ago, but what it would rather have is this thing to talk about, to campaign on, to, you know, aggrandize and preen rather than actually do the hard work of legislating. And the muscle memory in this - in Congress these days, among people who actually even know how to write legislation is atrophying at an astonishing rate.
MARTIN: The irony being, though, that a number of these policies that the president is advancing are deeply unpopular. The tariffs are deeply unpopular. I don't know that people have polled on birthright citizenship, but my guess is, given how Americans have reacted so negatively to some of the president's more aggressive moves on immigration, probably unpopular, that the trans issue we see, trans athletes issues, Americans broadly agree with it, but they haven't seen it really play out yet, so who knows? So I'm just - so how does this sort of play out? The fact of the matter is the president is underwater right now in all of these polls. He's deeply unpopular. These policies are deeply unpopular. Congress is not willing to assert itself. So are they basically shooting themselves in the foot by refusing to step in?
GOLDBERG: Absolutely. But, you know, part of the dysfunction and part of the reason why Congress is broken is because of the sort of self-sorting polarization and the primary system and a little bit campaign finance. The - you know, you can talk about how Trump is unpopular in the country, and he is. He's not unpopular among Republican primary voters.
And that's the stranglehold that Trump has had over the Republican Party from the beginning is he can threaten the incumbency, the careers of elected Republicans. And when he does that, he has often in the past resulted in Democrats winning those seats, either in the Senate or in the House, but he doesn't care. He would rather be king of a rump Republican party where he is the absolute and sole ruler than a player - the most important player in a majority party.
And so the - you can talk about how these issues don't play well necessarily with swing voters and the rest. An enormous number of Republicans don't care because they just want to be on the right side of Donald Trump and the right side of those primary voters. And that's the reason why Congress doesn't do its job a lot of the time.
MARTIN: So we only have 30 seconds here. Where does that leave these signature issues that the president still says he wants to advance? Basically, nothing going to happen for the next two years is what you're getting at?
GOLDBERG: I think very - look, first of all, all likelihood of Democrats taking back at least the House. And also Donald Trump has always had this schizophrenia about wanting wins on policy versus what wins on his political interest. And now he doesn't seem to - there's this third thing, which is just sort of getting richer and...
MARTIN: OK.
GOLDBERG: ...Redesigning, you know, the White House.
MARTIN: All right. We have to leave it there for now. That's Jonah Goldberg, editor in chief of The Dispatch. Jonah, thanks.
GOLDBERG: Thanks, Michel. Thanks for having me.
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