Trump’s Yes-Men Presidency | The Ezra Klein Show

in his speech, he seemed to be living in a reality that is not the one we're actually living in. >> This is the golden age of America. >> What do you make of that disjunction? Like he's in one place and America is in another. >> I think he believes his own [ __ ] and I think that is an important skeleton key at this point to understanding the Trump administration. You you remember when the times Times opinion in fact published in the first administration the famous incognito we are the resistance inside the Trump administration. >> Of course I remember >> piece. Yes. >> Yeah. And it reflected like that was an extreme version of something that was more broadly happening inside that administration which is that there were a lot of people who were not bought in in a loyalist sycopant way to Trump himself. They were serving under him. They understood themselves as serving partially him partially the country. And so there was some kind of normal structure around him that was built to somewhat restrain him. Can I interrupt you for one second? You know what's so interesting about that? >> The guy who wrote that and of course he's out and about talking about it now was in DHS which I think is Department of Home Department of Homeland Security which I think is very significant actually in terms of what you're talking about. Right. The people who were there >> were in some ways the people who were the most skeptical. >> Yes. And if you were looking at the first State of the Union, the State of the Union a year into Trump's first term, who would the speaker of the house have been? been Paul Ryan, another senior Republican who did not owe his career to Donald Trump who has not fully bought in on on Trump. Trump is fully taken over the Republican party. His administration is truly stacked with loyalists. There is a complete submission all around him to the rules of winning his favor, which is to say, you tell him things he wants to hear. You flatter him. I thought one of the both funny and dark refrains of the speech was where he kept saying that it wasn't his idea to name the savings accounts Trump accounts. >> Dear children's brand new Trump accounts >> and I didn't name it. I didn't >> Oh, it wasn't his idea to name the website Trump RX. >> And I didn't name that one either, by the way. >> Oh, what? Me? For me? You want to name it after me? And when the world around you has bought into manipulating you that way and you have an ego like he already has and you don't have rigorous modes of thought or policy process, it is actually impossible that you will maintain a normal connection to reality.

Trump’s State of the Union was a mirror of his administration. On “The Ezra Klein Show,” Ezra and the Times Opinion editor Aaron Retica discuss the yes-man culture surrounding Trump. Watch the full episode here: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/25/opinion/ezra-klein-podcast-sotu-2026.html