Know Your Enemy - Trump's Triumph (w/ Ian Ward)

Matt and Sam talk to reporter Ian Ward about Trump's victory and the fight for influence in his second term.

Duration: 1h 10m
Broadcast on: 08 Nov 2024
Audio Format: other

As the reality of Donald Trump's decisive victory sets in, we wanted to talk to Politico's Ian Ward, who's done some of the very best reporting on post-liberal intellectuals, JD Vance, and MAGA-world, in addition to spending time on the campaign trail this fall. After breaking down the results of the presidential election, we discuss Vance's role in the campaign, his standing with Trump, and friendship with Don Jr.; how the Trump transition is taking shape and who's likely to influence his decisions at the start of his second term; whether Project 2025 will actually be implemented; if the Republican Party will actually govern in a pro-worker way; and much more!

Sources:

Ian Ward, "Trump Loves Her. His Allies Don’t Trust Her," Politico, Oct 25, 2024

— "What the Mainstream Media Can Learn from 'Bro Podcasters,'" Politico, Oct 24, 2024

— "The Seven Thinkers and Groups That Have Shaped JD Vance’s Unusual Worldview," Politico, July 18, 2024

— "Is There Something More Radical than MAGA?" Politico, Mar 15, 2024

— "The Socialists Who Love Talking to Conservatives," Politico, Feb 4, 2022

Sam Adler-Bell, "The Shadow War to Determine the Next Trump Administration," NYT, Jan 10, 2024

Matthew Sitman, "The Morning After," Liberties, Nov 7, 2024

...and don't forget to subscribe to Know Your Enemy on Patreon for access to all of our bonus episodes!

All right listeners, welcome to episode 103 of Know Your Enemy. I'm Matt Sippen, your podcast co-host, and I'm not here as always with my great friend, Sam other Bell. However, he's very much a participant in the conversation we're about to share with you. This is our first episode after Donald Trump's decisive victory in the presidential contest. We recorded this episode Thursday, November 7th. So for example, we discussed Susie Wiles, who has been named Trump's White House Chief of Staff. However, that happened after we recorded this. So just a note in case there's any other late breaking news or votes that are found or other developments as Trump hurdles toward his inauguration and second term in January. Our guess for this episode is Ian Ward. Ian's a reporter at Politico. Some of you may remember him. He wrote one of the first and best profiles of Know Your Enemy a couple years ago. But since then, he's been doggedly reporting on the post liberal right, the MAGA World Intellectual Currents Project 2025. And he spent a lot of time writing about JD Vance. He's interviewed Vance. He followed Vance on the campaign trail, especially in Pennsylvania. So we wanted to have Ian on both because he's been out there on the campaign trail. He's followed the campaigns. He saw JD Vance and others on the stump. But he's also extremely fluent in and familiar with the world of Donald Trump, the figures who populate his circles, who might have influence in a second Trump turn. We talk about the results, but we also talk about who's up and who's down, who will have Trump's year early in the administration. How's Project 2025 shaping up? What do we think the first days of Trump's administration will look like? So we discussed both the election and what's to come. And we couldn't have asked for a better guest than Ian. We've linked to a lot of his articles in the show notes. So please follow him in his work. If you don't already, we highly recommend it. Well, we should get some housekeeping items. As always, we're grateful to our partners at Descent. One thing they do for us is if you subscribe to KnowYourEnemy on Patreon.com/KnowYourEnemy for $10 a month or more. You get access to all of our bonus episodes and a free digital subscription to Descent. And I might add access to the KnowYourEnemy Discord, which the night before the presidential election, we had a group chat on there. Sam and I, you could listen to us. People asked us questions in the chat, and it was a great turnout for it. In hindsight, it wasn't that fun, but it was an interesting experience. And so if you're interested in kind of having more access, both to those kinds of more informal discussions with me and Sam, but also to interact with a lot of brilliant and wonderful listeners who make many smart comments on the Discord server, please consider joining at the $10 a month. That's how you get access to our Discord. Of course, for $5 a month, you get access to all of our bonus episodes, which surely there will be a lot of those in the weeks ahead as we try to make sense of what's happened in this presidential election and what's to come. Of course, I'm grateful as always to our intrepid producer, Jesse Breneman, who did a great job on this episode in all of our episodes. And thanks to Will Epstein, who provides the music for Know Your Enemy, which we often get questions about. All right, no more announcements, no more housekeeping. Time to get to it. Here is our episode with Ian Ward of Politico about Donald Trump's decisive win and what we can glean about how the transition in his second administration is shaping up, enjoy. All right, gentlemen, let's get started. Ian Ward, welcome to Know Your Enemy. Thanks for having me for the really happy episode. Yeah, this is the reward you get for writing one of the first nice profiles of this podcast many years ago. Well, Ian, we wanted to have you on in part because you are like us, a kind of student of the right. You've written a lot about post liberalism, JD Vance, the kind of intellectual currents on the Trump era, right. But you also have been out on the campaign trail. You're especially interested in JD Vance and I know you followed him some on the campaign trail. So before we get started talking about what actually happened, I just wondered if you could tell listeners a little bit about the work you've done on the campaign trail, where you've been and who you mostly saw. Yeah, I mean, a little bit of context. I started paying pretty close attention to JD Vance last year because I was talking to all these young conservatives in DC, former Trump staffers, future Trump staffers who said, you know, this is the guy who we all believe in. He's the guy who represents our point of view on the national

Transcription truncated.

Matt and Sam talk to reporter Ian Ward about Trump's victory and the fight for influence in his second term.