Transcript: Trump Fury at Dems Grows as Brutal New Shutdown Poll Hits

And so I do think that part of what’s driving this is they’re scared. They’re losing. They don’t feel like this stuff is working. They know the economy isn’t going well. So what it’s causing them to do, Greg, is a version of what you were saying—which is for him to have to restore his strength and his manhood and his manliness through these other extraordinary means, right? Through the use of the military, through killing fishermen in the Caribbean, through the saber-rattling that he does against the Democrats every day, to putting James Comey into jail.

These are ways of him restoring strength that he actually doesn’t have. It’s like drinking the blood of virgins in order to restore the decline that he’s going through. And I think that again, you know, we are now in this place where he’s made a decision not to course-correct, not to try to become popular, not to do the right thing for the American people, but to stick to his oligarchical agenda that’s enriching a couple hundred of his buddies and screwing over everybody else.

And in order to do all that, he has to become a full-on authoritarian. And I think that, you know, this is the moment we’re in. We can keep both of these true at the same time: that he’s failing politically and his government is failing—but he’s also doing things such that I don’t know that you can argue that America lives in a democracy, that we live in a democracy, any longer.

Sargent: So, Simon, I agree with your articulation of Trump’s situation, but to close this out, I want to throw some pessimism your way and have you tell me why I’m wrong, okay?