Trump’s Relentless, ‘Utterly Incoherent’ Battles
"A look at a conflict without end and a constitution under pressure.
President Trump claims America is “winning bigger than ever before,” but his battles abroad and in American courtrooms drag on. This week on “The Opinions,” the national politics writer Michelle Cottle and the columnists Jamelle Bouie and David French discuss Trump’s efforts to build support for the war in Iran. And in domestic politics, the trio discuss why even conservative Supreme Court judges seem skeptical of the administration’s push to end birthright citizenship.
All the President’s Wars — at Home and Abroad
From Tehran to the Supreme Court, a look at Trump’s relentless battles.Below is a transcript of an episode of “The Opinions.” We recommend listening to it in its original form for the full effect. You can do so using the player above or on the NYTimes app, Apple, Spotify, Amazon Music, YouTube, iHeartRadio or wherever you get your podcasts.
The transcript has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
Michelle Cottle: We are now in month two of President Donald Trump’s war in Iran, and so this week we’re going to take a look at his speech to the American people on the conflict and what direction things seem to be going. And then, turning back to the home front, I want us to talk about the court battles over birthright citizenship, and the judicial branch’s attempts at dealing with this president.
So, lots to cover. Let’s get to it. As always, we are recording on Thursday morning. Who the heck knows where this is going to be by the time you hear us? But Trump arranged a prime time opportunity to reach out to the American people and convince us of the necessity and value of the war in Iran. After watching the speech on Wednesday, how successful would you say he was? Jamelle, you go first.
Jamelle Bouie: I would say not successful at all. I would say pretty low on the success-reaching. That’s a terrible sentence.
Cottle: But fits, right? With the topic?
David French: It’s very evocative, yeah.
Bouie: I watched the address, and I’ll say the first thing I was struck by is how low-energy he sounded the entire time.
Cottle: Thank you! It’s like he was sedated.
Bouie: Yeah, almost like he was struggling to get through the words. He obviously made lots of claims that were just not true. His attempt to make the case that there was an imminent threat from Iran was especially unpersuasive.
But the big thing is that the stated objectives, such as they were when this began, was to stop the Iranian nuclear program, and do a Venezuela-style regime change. Neither of those things has happened, right? Those objectives have not been accomplished, and worse, Iran may walk away with undisputed control over the Strait of Hormuz, which is just a major strategic defeat for the United States. And nothing the president said got around those facts. It was all just an attempt to make those things sound like they represent a win, right? “Oh, well, the rest of the world, Europe, can take care of the strait.” No, no, dude. That’s a problem you created. And ending the conflict with the strait firmly in the control of Iran is an outright defeat for the U.S. And I was just struck by how this felt like he was protesting too much, you know?
Cottle: Yeah. David, what about you?
French: I felt like it’s just a live reading of his Truth Social posts. I mean, there was nothing there other than what we’ve seen in various screeds on Truth Social for weeks, including “this is about to wrap up,” “we’re winning,” “well, the strait is going to open” — there was nothing concrete.
Maybe it’s about to wrap up, maybe it’s not. It’s utterly incoherent, which is what this entire effort has been from the beginning. And one way to think through who is “winning this war” — is to think, at the end of it, which side is going to say: “We don’t want to do that again.” That’s how you think through deterrence.
And I will guarantee you this: If this conflict ends with Iran in control of the Strait of Hormuz, and with Iran knowing that, at any given time, it can achieve geostrategic objectives that it wants by closing the Strait of Hormuz — and that there is not the will to open the Strait of Hormuz — then I would say that Iran has probably emerged from this conflict with a greater level of deterrence than the United States has. In part because — even though we are absolutely demolishing all of the targets that we’re trying to hit, we are seriously degrading Iran’s military capacity, no question about it — we’re also dealing with a regime that really, truly doesn’t care about its losses in the same way that, say, a Western military does, in the same way that we would. This is a regime that in the Iran-Iraq war sent teenagers running across minefields to clear the minefields. They do not care about the suffering of their people if they can achieve certain effects.
And so, if they can, at the end of this conflict, achieve the effect of essentially dividing America from its allies — that’s happening. If they can achieve the effect of controlling the Strait of Hormuz — that’s happening. If they can achieve a — even worse — a tolling effect, where in exchange for vast sums of money, they will let some people through and not others, then we may have just created a system that helps enrich this regime — literally enrich it, so that even if their factories are demolished, if their missile stocks are depleted, they can go buy more missiles. They can use the windfall from controlling the Strait of Hormuz to buy more weapons and to reconstitute the force.
And I hate to keep harping on this, but it just really matters. The original sin here, of not articulating a coherent plan, not going to Congress, not rallying the American people — democracies that go into war without public support do not fight those wars well, effectively, etc. That’s what he did. He just yanked all of us in. And it is costing us every day.
Cottle: Well, the one thing that struck me most of all as I watched this — besides the fact, as Jamelle pointed out, that he looked like he was about to doze off — was that this was just a series of distractions so that he could get people to look at the things that he wanted them to think were fantastic, while skipping some of the bigger points. So, he came back again and again to the destruction and the degrading of Iran’s military capabilities. He started off by going through the Venezuela escapade, as though that has any bearing on this situation and what we’re looking at now.
It’s clear that his strategy with the speech was: “I’m just going to throw all these facts at you that I want you to think mean we’ve achieved our goal. Mission accomplished everybody.” I think we all enjoy a good “mission accomplished” speech. But this was without addressing things like what is victory? Iran still has its nuclear stockpiles. It was not reassuring at all for me.
And so, I wanted you, Jamelle, to talk about how he can claim victory if he is indeed planning to wind this down while the regime is still intact and unlikely to stop being a threat. What is Trump going to claim as a real victory, that is going to look remotely like what’s actually happening in the real world?
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Bouie: Oh I have no idea. I can’t speculate about this.
Cottle: Come on!
Bouie: I have no idea what the president will claim as a real victory, because it gets to one of the fundamental issues, not just with this war, but with this administration. And it’s somewhat connected to David’s point about not attempting to get authorization or have a debate. And that is — both David and I have been using this term “strategic.” I’m not sure that anyone in the White House understands what strategic thinking is. I think that all of their thinking happens exclusively at the level of tactics. So exclusively at the level of, “What is the specific thing we can do to an opponent to try to attain a very narrow objective?” Not so much, “What are our broad goals that will establish a new status quo going forward?”
You fight wars to attain specific strategic goals, and if you do not attain those goals, then it does not matter how much stuff you blew up, how many battles you won, how much valor you displayed — none of that matters. You can still lose. And I do not think that they understand that in the least. Or at least they’re not expressing any understanding of that publicly. When I watch Hegseth in particular, I don’t think he understands that.
Here’s the problem: because of this understanding that blowing stuff up and killing people is the objective of war, not the things you have to do to attain your larger strategic goal, it seems to me that whatever victory they’re going to declare, it’s going to be after just blowing stuff up. They might look for some even more dramatic way to blow stuff up. And then they can say, “Oh, well we’ve done so much destruction that we can say that the war is over.” And that, to me, is the only conceivable exit ramp for them, given their own mind-set.
And I’ll conclude this by just noting that the reason I say that this doesn’t just extend to the war, is because you see this way of thinking all over their actions with regard to domestic politics. That’s especially true with the use of ICE and Customs and Border Protection. They seem to think that if you can just hit people hard enough, that they’ll stop. And they don’t seem to get that, (A), the people you’re hitting have their own designs, their own things that they’re trying to accomplish.
But (B), you have to have some larger aim beyond just hitting really hard. And if you don’t have that, then someone who can take a punch will just keep taking the punch.
Cottle: All right. I want to come back to this issue of agency. But David, what do you want to jump in with?
French: I just really want to underscore what Jamelle said, because I don’t think people appreciate how much it is core to the ethos and worldview of MAGA that — on problem after problem after problem that we faced as Americans — the actual underlying mistake of previous administrations is that we were just never tough enough; that we just didn’t fight the war with the gloves off enough, or we haven’t been punitive enough, or we haven’t tried to bully people enough. And so, you see this again and again, and there’s this phrase you see on MAGA that says, “You can just do things.” And what they mean by that is that you could just exercise power and you can change the world.
One of the reasons they look at the Venezuela situation, and they keep going back to that, is that it’s probably their most successful version of this, that Venezuelan intervention. But you go again and again, and you see the same pattern: “We have to pummel people harder.” And that works with Republican members of Congress, for example, but it doesn’t tend to work with other sovereign nations. Other sovereign nations don’t like to be pummeled. And so, what they’ll do is they’ll find a way to stop or prevent the pummeling, and it’s not always the way you want.
So, for example, if you’re trying to torment Canada, well, you can’t go crying if Canada says, “We’re going to forge a closer economic relationship with China and Europe than with the U.S., because we have self-preservation interests.” No. They keep thinking, if we pummel, then we’ll achieve the results that we want, when sometimes pummeling has the exact opposite effect. What it typically does is alienate people at scale. It’s not as if nobody thought of, well, why not use force? I mean, that’s the oldest story in the book. I mean, that’s Vladimir Putin to the core. Again, sometimes that is appropriate, but as a universal way of dealing with the world, it is extraordinarily dangerous and counterproductive.
Cottle: Well, Jamelle, you actually wrote a column last week that was focused on Trump’s complete inability to recognize that other people have agency, and that if you are applying force, they are sometimes likely to push back against moves that they oppose. Not just with the war, but with DOGE slashing at the federal government, the administration’s treatment of Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, the president’s crazy gerrymandering scheme, ICE agents rampaging through American cities. What opportunity does this blind spot with this president provide opponents, do you think?
Bouie: If you are opposed to the administration, you can just be aggressive toward them, because they just don’t expect it. The Department of Homeland Security shutdown, to me, is a perfect example of this. It’s very clear that both the White House and their Republican allies in Congress were like, “Well, enough chaos at airports will just force Democrats to bend.” And they didn’t, which is a victory for the Democratic strategy here.
The White House, in particular, didn’t expect this and didn’t know how to respond when the Democrats were like, “No, we’re not going to back down.” And that inability to deal with what, to me, are very obvious moves to make if you are on the other side — that’s an opportunity to make these moves, because you have a pretty decent chance of encountering an opponent that has not thought one lick about what you might do just of your own accord. Because they don’t imagine that you can do anything of your own accord.
It’s very strange. I guess I’ve never really seen anything like it in American politics. Just an administration, a set of people, who have no real ability to just conceptualize what their political opponents, or their foreign enemies, might want to do of their own accord. It’s like they really do not believe that other people have independent action. That all action is simply a reaction to them. And, as per David, this might just be a function of the fact that everyone there is so used to stunting on Republicans that — Mike Johnson doesn’t seem like he does anything independently of the president. So, yeah, sure, I get it, if that’s your mental model for everyone.
If I sound baffled, it’s because I am. Because as much as I can describe this analytically, I cannot get in the head space of someone who does not — or a group of people who do not — appear to think that other people actually exist.
French: I can’t emphasize enough, how much they think of everyone else that came before them as a collection of idiots. Like when JD Vance basically says, “Well, those were stupid presidents,” or “those were dumb presidents,” or whatever he said about previous interventions. There really is this sense in MAGA that everyone who came before is just corrupt, woke, too empathetic, idiotic, etc. And they are the ones who’ve figured out the world. And that arrogance is overwhelming in this MAGA mind-set. Just overwhelming. Everyone else, complete idiots. We finally are the adults in charge.
Cottle: When I look at this administration, I think: telegraphing total competence.
Do either of you guys want to venture a thought — I’m not asking you to predict the future, but Trump is a man of patterns — do you have a sense of where this playbook, as limited as it is, might take us next?
Bouie: My hunch is that he will just, at some arbitrary point, say, “Yeah, we won.” And end it there.
Cottle: He’ll get that “Mission Accomplished” banner back out?
Bouie: Right, and if everything is in complete and abject chaos, I think Trump’s view is: “Not my problem anymore.”
Cottle: Europe can handle it. David?
French: It’s so hard to know, because I feel like two things are happening at once here. One is that there is an actual strategy, to some extent, that is being pursued by the military. I think the military absolutely has a series of tactical objectives that it is achieving regarding the degrading of the missile systems, degrading of the Iranian forces. No question that these various tactical missions are being accomplished. But I can’t help but wonder if what we’ve got are sort of two tracks at once here. There’s a military track that they’re pursuing. And then, publicly, they’re pursuing a market manipulation track, because if you notice again and again, he will tease the end of the war. He will tease it and you’ll see the markets rally.
And so, I feel like the one force that we know operates as a check on Trump is the Dow.
Cottle: He really likes his stock market numbers.
French: Yes. When the Dow starts to plunge, Trump reacts. And so, we’ve seen this again and again, and he engages in this very blatant market manipulation. And that’s one thing that makes it so hard to discern what he’s actually trying to accomplish. When is he doing his market manipulation versus when is he actually talking about what American goals or objectives are? I don’t know, but I tend to agree with Jamelle that, essentially what’ll happen is, he will declare victory at a point in the unspecified future. And then essentially leave the rest of the world to work out how to cross the Strait of Hormuz.
In other words, if you want to transmit oil and gas, now you’re going to have to pay Iran or you’re going to have to work out your own deal with Iran. And so, you’re going to essentially leave Iran in control of the strait, or at least with enough ability to influence the strait, that people feel like they’ve got to deal with Iran to get through safely. And in that circumstance, it’s very unclear to me if we’ve actually accomplished a strategic objective or if, in a weird and perverse way, we strengthened the Iranian regime at least over the short-to-medium term. But I’m with Jamelle. I think that we’ll see, in the absence of a military miracle, I see a declaration of victory and a lot of chaos unwinding this war.
Cottle: OK, well, that’s certainly something to look forward to, I guess. All right, so let’s pivot to the courts now. On Wednesday, Trump became the first sitting president to actually attend oral arguments in person at the Supreme Court. The case is Trump v. Barbara, on the question of birthright citizenship. Jamelle, do you want to give us a quick overview of this case and why it’s a big deal that Trump decided to show up?
Bouie: I’m going to answer that in reverse. It’s a big deal that Trump decided to show up just because sitting presidents don’t do this. It’s clear that he was there to intimidate the justices. I don’t think it worked, but I’m sure that was his thinking.
The case itself stems back to the president’s Day 1 executive order, attempting to redefine the citizenship clause of the 14th Amendment, which — this is a rough paraphrase — holds that all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of that state as well. He tried to redefine this to mean that the children of undocumented immigrants and some visa holders were excluded from birthright citizenship. And the reason this was a big deal is because there is the collected weight of almost 160 years of history and jurisprudence and historical scholarship that says that the citizenship clause is basically as broad as it sounds, unless you belong to a very narrow set of long-recognized exceptions. The exceptions being that you are the child of diplomats, you were born on territory controlled by a foreign enemy, or that, until the 1920s, you belong to certain Native tribes that had a different relationship to the U.S., in that they were on territory not controlled by the U.S.
Unless you are in those categories, then you are a citizen by birth in the United States. That’s what people thought they were doing when they wrote the thing. That’s what the Supreme Court in 1898 decided, when it held in favor of Wong Kim Ark, a Chinese American born in the United States. And that’s basically been what it is.
Part of what’s been nerve-racking about this case, and crazy-making about this case, is that there’s not a real dispute about what the citizenship clause means.
You can certainly do a thing where you engage in what I would describe as a language game; where you say, “Well, if I move the words around like this, and if I find obscure sources here, I can construct, perhaps, a logically coherent alternative meaning.” But if my grandmother had wheels, she’d be a bicycle, right?
Like, OK, you can do that. But what we know it means is this.
Cottle: So, David, as Jamelle brought up, the 14th Amendment and the question of who is an American was basically chewed over pretty definitively by the high court back in the late 1800s, right? So, why are we back here now at all? Why is this something for the court to have to get involved with?
French: We are here because Donald Trump put us here. So, Donald Trump promulgates an executive order. That executive order will go into effect unless challenged. When it’s challenged, it starts to go up the court system, and you’re not going to get a final definitive ruling on that until you get one from the Supreme Court.
And if the Supreme Court just denies review of the lower courts, that is an answer, but it’s an answer that often comes a lot slower. It’s a lot more fragmented. There’s a lot more uncertainty. But when a president asserts his power this aggressively, in many ways you really do need that Supreme Court — that final Supreme Court ruling that definitively declares an “in bounds” or “out of bounds.” So, I think there’s a logical reason the court would take this, just to settle this once and for all.
And I would say the oral argument to me was fascinating from this legal nerd perspective, because the conservative justices of the current court are all pre-MAGA conservatives — people who spent their entire careers in that Reagan-Bush world of classical liberalism, limited government. Originalism was the touchstone of pre-MAGA conservative jurisprudence. MAGA jurisprudence is not that. It is not originalism. And so you had this really interesting exchange between Chief Justice John Roberts and D. John Sauer, the solicitor general.
Clip of Solicitor General Sauer: “We’re in a new world now, as Justice Samuel Alito pointed out, where eight billion people are one plane ride away from having a child who’s a U.S. citizen.”
Clip of Chief Justice Roberts: “Well, it’s a new world. It’s the same constitution.”
In other words, the new world didn’t change the text of this amendment. And so, if you want to revise citizenship in response to a new world, there’s a way to do it. It’s through an amendment process. It’s not just by reinterpreting the 14th Amendment to defy the plain text of the amendment.
And so, in the MAGA world, a lot of this new constitutional thinking is called “common good constitutionalism.” In other words, we envision our version of the common good, and then we interpret the Constitution, in essence, to back up that vision of the common good. This is completely the opposite of an originalist frame, which says that to the extent there’s any ambiguity, you go back to the original public meaning. In other words, there’s a fixed meaning to the language of the Constitution. “Common good constitutionalism” contradicts that. And so, what we saw was this clash of philosophies.
And it was interesting. There was a moment where the American Civil Liberties Union lawyer, who did a very good job arguing the position, said: “We have to go with the original, public meaning.” And the Trump administration is arguing some version of living constitutionalism, to try to conform the Constitution to their preferences. And the A.C.L.U. attorney, she was right where the justices were — and D. John Sauer — was not. So, I’m not thinking this is going to be a terribly close case.
I mean, with all the caveats — you can’t 100 percent predict all of that — I would be stunned if this was anything other than seven-two, and it may be nine-zero.
Cottle: Well, I was interested in why he would show up. To me, this bullying behavior — which is clearly an attempt to intimidate everyone involved — I can’t see that this would play very well with the high court. The last thing the Supreme Court wants is for people to think that they, in some way, could be moved by that kind of showing out from the president. Am I wrong on this? Is there some practical effect of him showing up?
Bouie: No, I think you’re right to say that the conservative members are not going to change their tune because Trump is there. That would just validate one of the criticisms of the conservative majority on the court.
It’s better to look at Trump’s psychology. Trump doesn’t actually know how to negotiate. He doesn’t know how to bargain. All he knows how to do is intimidate and threaten, and maybe cajole on occasion. And so, he’s just thinking, “If I go there and look stone-faced, this will intimidate them into agreeing with me.” Maybe it’s targeted at Sauer. Maybe this will make Sauer think twice about messing up, which, you know, too late. But that’s where I think Trump was.
I just want to add, real quickly, to David’s explanation of “common good constitutionalism” or what have you, because I myself am not much of a living constitutionalist, and I’m not really an originalist either. I think that there are multiple legitimate ways of interpreting constitutional text, but that they all are all bound by the text.
So, for example, if you want to say that — I’m borrowing from Frederick Douglass here — that the ethos of the Constitution is liberty, and so you have to interpret the Constitution’s provisions according to that ethos, then you have to make that case, still, based on what the Constitution says. You have to look for things that imply, or specifically say, this is about enhancing liberty.
“Common good constitutionalism” doesn’t even do that. It really is just like: “I would prefer to live in a theocracy, and so we’re going to interpret the Constitution in ways that would allow that to happen. I would prefer to live in a white ethno-state, so we’re going to interpret the Constitution in ways that would make that permissible.” I’d say it’s even beyond living constitutionalism and it’s willingness to just say the text ought to mean whatever I want it to mean.
Cottle: OK. Well, that’s very on brand for this president, but I’m not sure that the court’s going to be particularly convinced.
Bouie: Oh, no. And in terms of the court, it was striking. Justice Amy Coney Barrett at one point says, “Well, that’s just not in the text.”
Cottle: She has been kind of awesome. Whether you agree with her interpretations, or her judicial philosophy or not, she has not been cowed by this administration. She’s done herself proud.
French: You know, it’s interesting. I feel like there is such a unique form of invertebrate that is the Republican member of Congress, that I feel like they almost deserve their own genus and species. It’s like republicanus memberus is this unique invertebrate, and Trump keeps seeing what worked with this unique species of invertebrates, and is then trying to import it on everybody else. Good luck. Good luck with these justices.
And I’m not somebody who agrees with all of their decisions. I will shout it from the mountaintops that the immunity decision was gravely flawed. But I don’t think that was yielding to Trump. I think that was an inappropriate yielding to their vision of what the presidency is supposed to be, which is a different thing. And so, this act of intimidation, to the extent that it matters at all, it’s not going to play well for him.
And it’s interesting. This is just a little fun side note: The A.C.L.U. has gotten pretty good at walking into the Supreme Court and speaking originalism to the originalist justices. If you are walking into that court and you can speak originalism fluently, regardless of which ideological side that you’re on, you’ve got a good case to make to this court. And it was very clear throughout the argument that the challengers to the executive order were absolutely in line with the judicial philosophy of a majority of the court. And the administration was way, way out of line with the philosophy of the majority of the court.
Bouie: Not only out of line with the philosophy of the court, but — and this hasn’t come up too much — the government was actually citing the views of white supremacist opponents of the 14th Amendment in order to make its case. And so, in a real sense, what the government would have you believe was that the people who did not want birthright citizenship to exist in the 1860s, 1870s and 1880s, and who were actively trying to exclude people from the country, had a better understanding of what that clause meant than the people who wrote it.
Cottle: OK, so this administration continues to dazzle with its very special legal approach.
We’re going to switch to something less dark, and it’s recommendation time. David, please, please do something nonapocalyptic.
French: I’m still working my way through “Blue Lights,” by the way, Michelle. Just magnificent. Magnificent.
Cottle: Yes. You’re welcome.
French: I’m reading a book called “De Gaulle,” by Julian Jackson, because in an interesting way, he is one of the most currently relevant figures of the 20th century, and in a way that we should all be grateful for. Charles de Gaulle had some priorities about France, and for the independence and greatness of France, that included making a commitment that France is going to have an independent defense industry. France is going to have an independent nuclear deterrent.
And with the fractures with NATO, which are increasing, it’s fascinating to me how much De Gaulle’s vision of France has actually created a secondary bulwark against Russian aggression. In other words, we have a completely independent European nuclear deterrent that does not rely on the United States of America, thanks to De Gaulle — now, much weaker than the U.S., the French military obviously can’t replace whatever we’ve lost. But to the extent that NATO can retain stability and strength with us wavering, it’s a lot because of De Gaulle and his long-term vision.
And he’s also just an endlessly fascinating figure. For a consequential world leader, he might have ticked off more of his peers and counterparts than any other living world leader. The guy was —
Cottle: Well, that’s a bold claim.
French: He was prickly. But it’s a fascinating story, just absolutely fascinating. I highly recommend it.
Cottle: Jamelle?
Bouie: So a rare instance of me saying something I’m watching; I am rewatching “The Wire.”
Cottle: You’re speaking my language.
Bouie: Which I have not done for 15 years and I want to recommend it. It’s on HBO. Unfortunately, on HBO it is the remastered widescreen version. The series was shot in 4:3, so more of a rectangular square format and all of the cinematography and the blocking, like where the actors are in the scene, is built around that frame.
I do have the old DVDs, and you’ll notice that in the 4:3, everything’s much more stagey and theatrical, which I think really works. But then on the HBO widescreen, it’s much more cinematic. I just don’t think it works for the show. But even still, this is truly a remarkable piece of American fiction. As I rewatch it, I’m like: Oh yeah, this is a legitimate case to me that this is the single greatest television show of all time. It’s so nuanced. It’s so real and believable. It’s so affecting.
So rewatch “The Wire,” people. It really is as great as its reputation suggests.
Cottle: I cannot argue with that. All right, so I’m going to go in a different direction. I want to recommend that you grab a bunch of your friends and put together a kind of go-out-and-do-x club — not the drug, let’s be clear.
Bouie: I mean, if you want to, I am not going to judge.
Cottle: If that’s your kink, whatever.
But like a book club, except that it involves a particular kind of outing. So I drafted a bunch of my girlfriends to find live music shows that they want to go see. I said, “OK, everybody bring back a show that you want to go to and we’ll see who can get time off and get the tickets and we’ll arrange these group outings.” There’s no venue too obscure — any kind of genre, no shaming. In fact, I have been impressed by how people are going outside of their comfort zones and joining other people in their groups. And it just gives people an excuse to be on the lookout for things to do, for musicians to go support, whether it’s jazz, Broadway, whatever. And it gives you a built-in group of people who are expected to go along.
I have a friend who’s done it with theater. You can do it with museums, you can do it with whatever. But I think as summer and spring are here and the weather’s good, I’m all for getting out of the house and doing funky stuff. And almost all of our suggestions so far have gathered a really good group of attendees except nobody’s going to go to Pitbull with me. I have a weakness. I’ve been twice. I’m not ashamed of this. So if anybody out there — he’s coming to the D.C. area this summer. I’m pro Pitbull. That’s it.
All right, and with that, we’re going to land this plane. Thank you so much, as always. We’ve solved a lot this week. Let’s do it again.
French: Thanks, Michelle.
Bouie: Thank you, Michelle.
Thoughts? Email us at theopinions@nytimes.com.
This episode of “The Opinions” was produced by Derek Arthur. It was edited by Kaari Pitkin and Jillian Weinberger. Mixing by Daniel Ramirez. Video editing by Arpita Aneja and Kristen Williamson. The postproduction manager is Mike Puretz. Original music by Isaac Jones and Pat McCusker. Fact-checking by Mary Marge Locker and Kate Sinclair. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta and Kristina Samulewski. The director of Opinion Video is Jonah M. Kessel. The deputy director of Opinion Shows is Alison Bruzek. The director of Opinion Shows is Annie-Rose Strasser.
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Michelle Cottle writes about national politics for Opinion. She has covered Washington and politics since the Clinton administration. @mcottle
Jamelle Bouie became a New York Times Opinion columnist in 2019. Before that he was the chief political correspondent for Slate magazine. He is based in Charlottesville, Va."
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