I have a range of scenarios. One of them is a chaos, that what could happen is Congress does step up a little bit and the administration is paralyzed. And we go through all kinds of constitutional crises, impeachment or the 25th Amendment removal process. Another frightening scenario is Donald Trump is steering his way to a series of international confrontations at the same time as he's appeasing Russia.
David FrumVenezuela has gone from being a democratic country 15 years ago to being totally not a democracy today. Usually that de-democratization doesn't take the form of a heavy handed police state.
David FrumI am really and truly frightened by the collapse of support for the Republican Party by the young and the educated.
David FrumTrump is not just unlike a Republican, he's unlike a presidential candidate. The whole elaborate presidential process is designed to screen out people like Donald Trump. And that process broke down in ways quite unlike anything in the recent experience of the United States.
David FrumRepublicans have been fleeced and exploited and lied to by a conservative entertainment complex.
David FrumAnybody who imagines that an election can be won under these circumstances by banging on about William Ayers and Jeremiah Wright is ... to put it mildly ... severely under-estimating the electoral importance of pocketbook issues. We conservatives are sending a powerful, inadvertent message with this negative campaign against Barack Obama's associations and former associations: that we lack a positive agenda of our own and that we don't care about the economic issues that are worrying American voters.
David FrumNormally what happens in a new presidency is the president has a big agenda, and Congress is full of people with human weaknesses. And so the president indulges the human weaknesses of members of Congress in order to pass his agenda. This time it's the other way around. Donald Trump does not have much of an agenda. Congress burns with this intense Republican agenda and so does Congress that has to put up with the human weaknesses of the president in order to get a signature on the things it desperately wants to pass.
David Frum