Transcript: Trump Is a Weak and Failing President. Treat Him that Way.

Rosenberg: Yes. And I’m willing to bet that Harvard has already gotten pledges probably for more money from their own alumni than from the money that was taken away from them. We’re now at a point where, politically, Trump has entered into a new place, where there is this greater willingness to challenge him. You see it in the courts every day. You saw it. Twelve House Republicans came out and said they were not willing to support the Medicaid cuts that are essential to passing any reconciliation bills. Seven Senate Republicans just two weeks ago came out and backed a bill in the Senate that would claw back tariff authority for the Senate. And the thing is, as part of this movement that we’re in, we have to be making progress every day.

We have to be moving the ball down the playing field every day. And what is just clear as day now is that we are stronger today—the opposition movement—and he is weaker. What’s also true, though, is that we have to have a great sense of urgency about this work because Donald Trump is breaking things that will be very hard, if not impossible, to repair. Both of these things can be true at the same time. He can be weaker, we can be stronger; and he’s also continuing to break things, requiring enormous urgency around our work.

Sargent: I want to read some numbers from the new Reuters/Ipsos poll. Fifty-seven percent of respondents, including one-third of Republicans, don’t think that a U.S. president should withhold funding from universities if he doesn’t agree with how they’re run, and 66 percent say the president shouldn’t be in control of big cultural institutions. I think there’s a paradox here, Simon. We’re seeing a combination of weakness and overreach at the same time. He’s trying to use state power to force the big institutions of this country to help implement or conform with his project of culturally transforming the country. And we were told over and over that this is not something the American people care so much about, they only care about the price of eggs, etc. That’s not bearing true, and it’s looking like there’s a genuine public backlash to the authoritarianism, to the abuses of power. That seems to me to be overreach, which is weakening him. Those two things are like a vicious cycle as well.