Watch: Our Pundit Panel Returns! "Trump Has a Big-Time Grudge against California"

A gabfest of political lifers, who came up in the Before Times, sift the evidence of Trump's first 100 days and see someone in a deep hole who won't stop digging

May 03, 2025

In the 1787 version of a Substack newsletter, Alexander Hamilton proposed that the question of whether to approve a constitution, to form and govern the United States, offered citizens an immense decision, unique in the history of human civilization.

“It has been frequently remarked that it seems to have been reserved to the people of this country, by their conduct and example to decide…” Hamilton wrote in Federalist No. 1, clearing his throat for the money line:

“…the important question, whether societies of men are really capable or not of establishing good government from reflection and choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend for their political constitutions on accident and force.” (emph. added).

As every school child knows, that Hamilton essay was the first of 82, penned by him, James Madison and John Jay under the collective pseudonym “Publius.” They were published in local newspapers over a period of months, part of a campaign to win the critical support of New York in adopting the Constitution.

The papers represent, not only a remarkable feat of political strategy, but also a guide to the extraordinary, profuse, complex, subtle and interconnected compromises that helped establish a remarkable and singular system of government that had not previously existed.

Appreciation for the historic achievement of the Constitution underpins this week’s edition of Newsmakers TV, which features the return of our All-Star Panel of Political Pundits, to decode and dissect the first 100 days of Donald Trump’s second presidency.

Veteran political strategist Bill Carrick, celebrated political writer Carla Marinucci and author and investigative journalist Dan Morain all worked for decades in and around politics, campaigns and government, an arena in their time packed with partisan battles but held together by the combatants’ fealty to the Constitution.

Trump changed that.

The gang joins the genial host for a conversation about the ways the reality TV president is stressing and straining the fault lines of the Constitution to advance his authoritarian project of expanding and consolidating power in the executive branch - from extra-legal extraditions of people to an El Salvador prison, to unilateral imposition of reckless and capricious tariffs, and threats to block federal disaster aid to victims of the L.A. wildfires.

“Trump has a big-time grudge against California,” Carrick said, in a discussion about the behavior and possible political fortunes during the Trump Era of Gov. Gavin Newsom, former Veep Kamala Harris and U.S. Senator Adam Schiff, among others.

The gang also brings its experience and expertise to examining the raft of independent public polls that show the public — moderates and independents most crucially, as a political matter - has turned on Trump, as he has pursued in office an extremist agenda differing from his basic campaign promise to lower prices and improve the economy.

“It’s going to come down to the economy,” said Morain, looking ahead to the 2026 mid-term elections, which represent the best (only? last ever?) hope of Democrats to wrest back some portion of political power that provides a platform curb Trump.

In the meantime, Trump’s feckless, fatuous and impulsive actions will continue to present controversies and conflicts challenging and confounding the norms and values of America’s constitutional order, starting with the assumption that public service is intended to benefit the national interest, not some personal grift. Like tissue, Trump tosses aside the notion of honest intentions and honor in the singular interest of accumulating, increasing and consolidating personal power.

Or as Hamilton would put it, a government of “accident and force,” not one of “reflection and choice.”

At one point during the program, Marinucci emotionally described being arrested and held at gunpoint while backpacking in Argentina during its “Dirty War” in the 1980s, when its right-wing government “disappeared” tens of thousands of people; she compared the ethos she witnessed then to the Trump Administration’s extra-legal immigration onslaught, including his anti-constitutional musings about sending Americans to foreign prisons.

“Gulags,” she said of the El Salvador and Venezuela detention camps.

Check out our conversation with the Newsmakers pundit panel via YouTube below, or by clicking through this link. The podcast is available on Spotify, Apple or on Soundcloud here. TVSB, Channel 17, airs the show every weeknight at 8 p.m. and at 9 a.m. on weekends. KCSB, 91.9 FM broadcasts the program on Monday at 5:30 p.m.

Good Viewing

While Prince Gavin is palling around Nazi-friendly right-wing podcast bros and trying to decide what kind of Democrat he wants to be when he grows up, Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker is getting an early start on the 2028 presidential sweepstakes and delivering the kind of red meat anti-Trump talk that rank-and-file members of their party say they want.

We posted his big-swinging state of the state address last month; this week he was in the early presidential primary state of New Hampshire, for a speech to the McIntyre-Shaheen 100 Club Dinner, a big fundraiser for that state’s Democratic Party.

“Never before in my life have I called for mass protests, for mobilization, for disruption, but I am now,” he said, stressing that the party “must castigate them on the soapbox and then punish them at the ballot box.” Here’s the whole thing:

Sign of the Week

Mega-kudos to Bob Stout, small business owner and downtown hospitality industry advocate, for getting the front window of his Wildcat Lounge all dressed up, just in time for Thursday night’s big anti-Trump rally and march down State Street.

SB Newsmakers

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