Gail Collins and Bret Stephens

Bret Stephens: Gail, the word is that Robert Mueller may soon send his report to Attorney General William Barr. Do you expect a bombshell, a dud — or just a lot more confusion, depending on what Barr makes public and what Congress chooses to do with its conclusions?

Gail Collins: Well, we’ve already got indicted minions. As to Trump himself, I feel very safe voting for “a lot more confusion.” Just on general principles. The Trump presidential campaign was knee-deep in conflicts of interest, many of them involving Russia. But given the man’s general disorganization, I find it hard to imagine the report picking him out as the sinister, canny leader who was orchestrating everything behind the scenes.

Still feeling that the real disaster for Trump is going to come with the investigations into his business practices in New York. How about you?

Bret: That’s my guess, too. Trump’s $100 million inauguration committee looks like a giant pay-to-play scheme. I still think his alleged campaign-finance violations in connection to the Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal payoffs are criminal and impeachable. And who knows what else Mueller’s investigation have dredged up about Trump family values.

Gail: The family that stays together preys together …

Bret: And vice versa. That said, if Mueller finds no clear and credible evidence of collusion or cooperation between the Trump campaign and Russia, it will be a major political victory for the president and a liability for his detractors. Fairly or not, it will call all the other investigations into question, however credible or serious they may be.

That’s one of the reasons I’ve been leery of investing too much political capital in wondering what Trump might have done behind people’s backs. It’s what he does every day in plain sight that is much more concerning.

Gail: Even if the Mueller investigation fails to produce, we’ll still have a bunch of congressional committees digging up dirt. But I know that’s not as satisfying for a conservative Trump-hater. You’re right that there’s plenty to investigate in his normal day-to-day life. Which horrible things the president has done lately seem most appalling to you?

Bret: Well, that list is long. But let me start by praising Trump on a couple of fronts. I think he’s shown moral leadership on Venezuela, by getting much of the world to recognize Juan Guaidó as the legitimate president and drawing attention to the humanitarian catastrophe unfolding under the Maduro regime. And I’m also glad he’s partially reversed course and will keep at least some troops in Syria. I hope he winds up withdrawing none of them so long as they can help protect our Kurdish friends and deter our Syrian, Iranian, Russian and Turkish foes.

OK. Now to the rest. His declaration of a national emergency over border-wall funding is a threat to constitutional government and the separation of powers and sets a precedent that both sides will abuse if the Supreme Court doesn’t stop it.

Gail: No disagreement on the national emergency. The fact that you haven’t seen a major uprising of Republicans over that is proof that there’s no real Republican Party anymore, only Trumpism.

And I’m looking forward to the next Democratic president declaring that climate change is a national emergency …

Bret: His unloading on The New York Times as “a true ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE” is an assault on the First Amendment and the safety of journalists, including us. His hankering for a deal — any deal — with North Korea’s Kim Jong Un so that he can win a Nobel Peace Prize is a danger to peace and stability in Asia.

Gail: Our publisher really called Trump out on the danger he is creating for journalists. It’s perilous enough reporting from trouble spots around the globe without having the president of the United States cheerleading for the enemies of a free press.

Bret: His desire to start another trade war with Europe, this time over cars, is a threat to global growth and another nail in the coffin of trans-Atlantic unity. His nonstop lies and exaggerations and demagoguery about the purported evils of illegal immigration are an insult to our intelligence and devastating to the GOP’s chances of ever again being a majority party.

Gail: I love it when you get on a roll like this. Keep going.

Bret: And his overall comportment continues to be a foul stain on the office of the presidency, a moral embarrassment to a majority of Americans, and a blot on the record of liberal democracy. How about you?

Gail: Well, you’ve kind of run the table. But I’d add his attempts to undermine women’s reproductive rights. The assault on Planned Parenthood isn’t just about abortion, it’s about the far right’s hatred of anything that gives women the power to decide if and when they want to get pregnant. Can’t tell you what a deep irony it is to have this guy leading that crusade.

Bret: I’d call it hypocrisy, not irony, but I’m being pedantic.

Gail: And everything about guns and domestic violence. Many people have taken note of the fact that the president tweeted out about the Smollett scandal and the suit against The Washington Post by the Kentucky high school student who was involved in that incident with a Native American in Washington. But not a twittery word about the white supremacist Coast Guard officer who has been accused of stockpiling weapons to murder newscasters and liberal politicians. When reporters asked him about it, all Trump could come up with was, “I think it’s a shame.” That’s the kind of thing you say when a politician gets caught cheating on his wife, not when you’re talking about a self-declared white supremacist intent on a politically inspired mass slaughter.

Bret: The Smollett and Covington High stories are fascinating in a cultural sense, mostly for what they tell us about our current culture of victimhood and the assumptions too many people, including too many in our profession, make about who is the victim based on current stereotypes. But the case of the Coast Guard officer is genuinely terrifying given that it comes on the heels of the Florida mail bomber, the Pittsburgh mass killer and the California man charged last year with phoning in death threats to journalists. That’s a terrifying reality of the culture war from which most of the right prefers to look away.

Gail: Not long before he announced that he was running for president, Trump went to an NRA convention and got a wild, massive reception. Right then I knew he was going to be a huge gun-rights supporter, no matter what he had believed before.

When he was running against Hillary Clinton I thought he was terrible, but not nearly as terrible as he turned out to be. Kind of amazing. Did you foresee all of this?

Bret: Partly. I wrote more than a dozen columns for The Wall Street Journal during the last presidential campaign, denouncing his bigotry, lawlessness, ignorance and demagoguery. He vindicates my first impression with his every foul tweet. I think he’s debasing our political culture in ways we will be living with, and suffering from, for at least a generation. And he’s becoming a role model of sorts for other populist demagogues around the world, from Brazil to Italy.

Gail: Well, I wrote a lot about what a jerk he’d been in New York for the last 30-odd years. I guess I didn’t take him seriously enough because he’d always behaved like such a fool.

Bret: On the other hand, the world didn’t end with his presidency. The economy is robust, we haven’t stumbled into a catastrophic war (yet), and democracy is still alive and well considering all the Democrats planning to run against him. That isn’t to say things might not still go horribly wrong, only that the habit of comparing Trump to despots of yore is off the mark and undermines the case against him.

Gail: Right. He’s our own special unique despot wannabe.

Bret: But can I switch the subject? Last week The Times ran an eye-opening story on Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, basically to the effect that she is a truly horrible boss, with some of the highest staff turnover in the Senate. From a policy standpoint she’s my favorite Democrat in the race, but this is a serious issue for her candidacy. How do you think voters should factor that into their considerations?

Gail: I’m playing the wait-and-see card. We’re undoubtedly going to find out unpleasant things about a lot of the candidates as we go along. But that story about her using her comb to eat a salad on an airplane and then giving it to her aide to wash is going to … resonate.

Your position is that you’ll vote for whoever the Democrats nominate, even if it’s a modern-day Attila the Hun, right?

Bret: Definitely not! Of course I can’t vote for Trump under any circumstance. But I would never vote for Bernie Sanders, who seems to think bread lines are a good thing because they’re egalitarian. I couldn’t vote for Elizabeth Warren, either; she’s too far to my left and her prevarications about her ancestry are morally insulting and intellectually embarrassing.

I have personal reservations about Cory Booker, stemming from his deceits as mayor of Newark, and Kamala Harris, stemming from her behavior as a prosecutor. If any of them is the nominee, I will probably write in Bill Weld or John Kasich or Larry Hogan — middle-of-the-road Republicans or former Republicans who know how to win over Democrats and could govern from the center.

Gail: Ah, I remember many Republicans who had those sentiments: Trump was appalling and impossible to support, but Hillary Clinton was too far a bridge to cross. And so they voted for people like Gary Johnson, the Libertarian. Which meant they helped put Trump in office.

Bret: I voted for Hillary Clinton, even though I had plenty of reservations. But there’s no way I’m going to follow Democrats jumping off the cliff on the left because I’m angry at Republicans for jumping off the cliff on the right.

Gail: Really, I have to warn you. If I hear any Trump-hater talking about writing in his mother’s name or the Green Party name or Howard Schultz I immediately decide this is a person who would rather have four more years of Donald Trump than compromise his principles by voting for a deeply imperfect Democrat.

Bret: I’m already compromising many of my usual political principles by voting for centrist Democrats, never mind the real lefties. I could vote for Joe Biden, though I doubt he’ll get the nomination, or Sen. Michael Bennet from Colorado (our boss’ brother), or any other middle-of-the-road Democrat. That category included Klobuchar, but I have a problem with people who are horrible bosses and don’t have the good sense to use their fingers to eat the way I do.

But let’s talk about something our readers really care about: the Oscars. Did you watch? Did your favorites win?

Gail: I believe this is the first year ever that I’ve seen all the movies nominated for best picture, and best actress and best actor — and pretty much everything. This is all about avoiding Donald Trump. Since he’s been president I’ve instinctively organized my life around trying to forget about current events for at least a few hours a day. It’s the same reason I’ve been watching football for the first time in my life.

But about the winners — I like watching people be genuinely surprised, so I really enjoyed seeing Olivia Colman win for playing the dotty queen in “The Favourite.” How about you?

Bret: I saw only a few of the films. But I was thrilled with the win for “Free Solo,” the documentary about climber Alex Honnold that I wrote a column about last year. And I was deeply moved by “Roma.” I grew up in Mexico City, and the movie perfectly captured a world I know very, very well. Nice to see that in this accelerated age of ours there’s still appreciation for a film that takes it slow and goes deep.

Gail: And while we’re talking about awards that made me happy — congratulations on winning the Ellis Island Medal of Honor, Bret! I’m so glad your fight for immigrant rights is being recognized. You deserve it. And as a bonus, I can’t think of anything that would irritate Donald Trump more.

Bret: Thanks, Gail. Of course I’ll be bringing my mom to the ceremony. This year will be her 69th as an immigrant in this country.

This article originally appeared in <a id="9f67f952-1164-4072-a39d-81636d03f10e" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/26/opinion/trump-democrats-2020.html">The New York Times</a>.

Still feeling that the real disaster for Trump is going to come with the investigations into his business practices in New York. How about you?

Trump is epic

Gail Collins: Bret, in honor of Valentine’s Day, I’m going to give you the gift of deciding what current event we should start off with. Virginia? Jeff Bezos? Trump investigations? Supreme Court? Rapidly exploding population of Democratic presidential candidates?

Bret Stephens: Oh, Gail — that’s the most wonkishly romantic gesture I’ve ever heard. Maybe we should talk about Bezos, because it involves a lot of double entendres and it reads like the next installment in the E.L. James series. Let’s call it: “50 Shades Richer.” Billionaires! Sex! Political intrigue! Allegations of blackmail! And a storybook villain named David Pecker, which is a name worthy of a Charles Dickens character.

Gail: The Bezos story does have everything, including Donald Trump, whose great pals at the National Enquirer got hold of, um, embarrassing pictures Bezos exchanged with his girlfriend. Then according to Bezos — who’s the owner of The Washington Post — Pecker’s team threatened to make them public unless he said the National Enquirer’s stories about his sex life weren’t politically motivated.

Several thoughts here. One is that even if you’re a superbillionaire, texting a “below-the-belt selfie” is a bad plan. But that aside, it seems as if Bezos has been handling the whole thing well. And third: Everything sleazy always seems to wind up with a Trump connection.

Bret: Yes, Bezos has dealt with it brilliantly. It helps — how shall I put this delicately? — that his pride got the better of his embarrassment, and that there was nothing embarrassing about his pride.

Gail: OK, that’s a quote to remember.

Bret: It also helps that Bezos has the financial means and journalistic tools to get to the bottom of the hacking. I don’t know if the government did the hacking — the truth is probably prosaic, but Pecker’s friendship with Trump raises an eyebrow — but if it did it would be a scandal for the ages.

Gail: In an age when it’s hard to ignore any big political scandal, we’re going to be reminded of this one every time we see a package from Amazon, which is approximately every three waking minutes of the day.

Bret: Even now the connections are tantalizing. Why is Pecker “apoplectic” about Bezos’ investigation into who leaked the story to the Enquirer and whether the leak was politically motivated? And how might the potential withdrawal of legal immunity that Pecker obtained last year in connection with his handling of Trump’s hush money payments to his mistresses affect the Southern District’s investigation of Trump’s probable violations of campaign-finance laws?

Going forward, I think we need to start describing all of these ties as the Axis of Pecker. Just saying.

Gail: Pecker politics definitely tops anything else we can possibly talk about. Still, I have to ask you about Virginia. You wrote a very powerful column taking the governor’s side. I wonder if that’s what convinced him to refuse to resign.

Bret: Thanks, though I think he had made up his mind before my column appeared.

Gail: But we may differ on this blackface thing. I came from a pretty conservative background, but I can’t think of ever seeing anybody at my college putting shoe polish on their face or a sheet over their head under the theory that it would make them look cool. And Ralph Northam was in medical school! I know medical students aren’t all the omni-dedicated healers we saw on “ER,” but good grief.

Bret: I don’t know if we really differ. But I think context and intention matter. Billy Crystal did “blackface” for a Sammy Davis Jr. impression, and I don’t think Crystal is racist in any respect. Jimmy Fallon, Jimmy Kimmel and Sarah Silverman, to name a few boldface names, have all done blackface. If we’re going to start excommunicating people from public life for this, we’re going to destroy a lot of people who almost surely intended no harm.

Gail: Yeah, but I don’t remember Billy Crystal doing his act with a guy wearing a sheet.

Bret: That’s true. And I think that’s in a different league in terms of offensiveness. But again, I think we need to better understand the context, whether it was connected to a pattern of behavior and whether it was ever repeated. And again, we are talking about an incident from 35 years ago followed by an admirable life without any hint of racial bias.

Right now, Northam’s real moral jeopardy is that he has contradicted himself and is doing a duck-and-cover move. He has a good opportunity to rise above it, first by clarifying how exactly that photo ended up on his yearbook page — and whether he’s one of the people in the picture, as he now claims he isn’t — and then by explaining why the casual racism of a past generation mustn’t be communicated to the present.

Gail: I do find it hard to believe he looked at that picture and said: “Who are these people? How did they get in my yearbook?” He’d be a gone goose now if the Legislature weren’t busy talking about trying to impeach the lieutenant governor over some terrible allegations of sexual assault.

Did you know Virginia has, for all practical purposes, a one-term limit for governors? I’m wondering if that has anything to do with all these crises.

There was a time when I thought term limits were a great idea. But I’ve cooled on it. When you’ve got a politician who isn’t going to be able to run for re-election, you’ve got a politician spending a whole lot of time planning how to get the next job. Plus you get a lot of ... strange people. Rest my case.

Bret: Well, we agree on term limits. Let’s switch topics to oversight and investigations. I’m as eager as anyone to see what’s in Trump’s tax returns. But how do Democrats handle this to make sure it doesn’t redound to Trump’s political benefit?

Gail: You mean how do they avoid having so many people investigating him the public begins to feel sorry for him?

Bret: I mean, going down every rabbit hole means that you are going to come up empty many times. That can do as much to obscure criminal behavior as it can to expose it, and to desensitize the public to the significance of truly scandalous disclosures when they are merely bobbing in the sea with not-so-scandalous ones.

It doesn’t help when cable TV is obsessing about this stuff 24/7. I think the investigations would be better helped if news about them came out only once every other week, with Rep. Adam Schiff or someone like him saying: Here’s the stuff we’ve learned, here’s why it matters, here’s what we’re going to look into next and here’s why.

Gail: Well, cable TV does cover other stuff — I’m just sitting here watching CNN cover climate change in Louisiana. But the producers know what the public is obsessing about, and so do politicians. When they see their constituents these days, the first question a lot of them get isn’t “How’s the infrastructure bill doing?” It’s “What are you going to do about Trump?”

Not that I’m demeaning the poor infrastructure bill.

Bret: I long for the days when we could debate the merits of, say, the Davis-Bacon Act, and not the emoluments clause and how Trump is probably violating it. That said, I do think people will ultimately judge Congress by whether it’s working for them and not on political score-settling.

In the meantime, it looks like we may be heading for another government shutdown. Is this really happening? I didn’t realize it was possible for an administration to commit suicide twice.

Gail: This administration? Hahahahahaha.

I have hope we won’t smash into another shutdown, but it’s hard to tell. Right this second it looks like it’s not happening, but it’s complicated because Trump would have to accept what’s basically a face-saver on the wall issue. And give a little bit to the Democrats, who want to reform his mean, miserable border detention policies. In a normal world, that would happen. I miss the normal world.

Bret: I think Trump’s calculation is that he can do a Groundhog’s Day in reverse: that is, shut down the government again and again, and behave worse with each successive iteration. This rallies his base while, at some point a majority of Americans will say, “Just give him his darn wall.” Or so he figures. But we’ll have to see how he reacts to the “agreement in principle” that the House and Senate seem to have reached.

Gail: Don’t think Bill Murray would like us turning over his Groundhog Day role to Donald Trump.

Bret: The alternative narrative, and the more convincing one, is that Trump has continued to play games with the livelihoods of American workers for the sake of a bit of fencing that solves nothing except his own political problems. One thing that is becoming clear is the GOP campaign theme for 2020. They are going to claim Democrats are the party of socialism, open borders, nationalized health care and an environmentalist agenda that will wind up outlawing air travel and steaks and maybe even milk, too.

Gail: The Republicans are indeed ranting now about the Green New Deal, which Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and other Democrats put forward. AOC did mention eliminating “emissions from cows or air travel,” but — contrary to Trump’s swipes — that was a rather lighthearted description of a perfect future rather than a part of the plan.

And Trump has been playing the socialism card, but I don’t think it’s going to work. There are a number of Democrats who’d like to move toward a society that offers health care for everyone, free college tuition for those who can’t afford to pay, and federal work programs for the unemployed — paid for by much higher taxes on the rich. Most Americans want the same things. If the Democrats are smart about the way they present the programs, things should be fine.

I am aware, Bret, that this sort of talk causes you great pain. That’s why we’re in different political camps.

Bret: It causes me great pain because I’m attached to no party: I can’t support the Trumpian GOP, but I can’t support the Democrats, either, as long as they’re repudiating their belief in traditional liberalism for the sake of an anti-capitalist, ruinously expensive policy agenda. I would love to hear a Democrat say, as Hillary Clinton did, we are not Denmark! And I fear the Democrats’ new progressivism will so turn off voters that they’ll re-elect Trump as the better of two bad alternatives.

All of which is to say, we’ll have plenty to converse about in the months ahead. And maybe we might even disagree a bit more.

This article originally appeared in <a id="45eb98e3-e62e-4910-b580-8009998ce9b3" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/12/opinion/bezos-trump-pecker.html">The New York Times</a>.

Several thoughts here. One is that even if you’re a superbillionaire, texting a “below-the-belt selfie” is a bad plan.

The Bezos story is big

Bret Stephens: Hi, Gail. I know you must be girding for the crushing defeat the New England Patriots will sustain this weekend.

Gail Collins: My husband is from Boston and we have learned, from being a Patriots household in New York, what it means to be truly ostracized. There are probably more Republicans in our Upper West Side neighborhood than there are Patriots fans.

I’m not normally a sports person. But Donald Trump has educated me in their big plus: Whenever things are terrible in the rest of the world, you can just talk with your friends, or neighbors or relatives, about who the best quarterback is. Or how the New York Mets will do this year. It’s a very unifying concept.

Bret: And speaking of crushing defeats, that’s a fairly good description of what Trump has just sustained in his shutdown showdown with Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer. As a purely political matter, do you think he can recover?

Gail: I’m almost finished writing a book on the history of older women in America, and it is really a treat to watch Nancy Pelosi wiping the floor with Donald Trump. I’d be happy to see any reasonably progressive, reasonably sane politician doing the job, but this particular saga really tickles me.

Bret: This is a good moment to admit that I was totally mistaken about Pelosi. I thought her election as speaker would play into Trump’s hands, because he would lampoon her as the quintessential left-coast liberal elitist. Instead, she wasted no time cutting his, er, fingers off.

Gail: Have you noticed that he’s terrible even at the things he was supposed to be good at during his cheesy reality show period, like making deals and firing people?

Bret: Anyone who survives a half-dozen bankruptcies and goes on to win the presidency should never be written off.

Gail: Sigh. Good point.

Bret: Trump is a master of inventing new dramas to make us forget the old ones. And if unemployment and growth figures remain good a year from now, he’ll still have a powerful argument for a second term.

That said, Trump’s hopes of being re-elected depend on his appeal to his base, and his base support is eroding. A poll from earlier this month has him down a net of 10 points with Republicans, down 13 with white evangelicals and down 18 with suburban men. If I were looking at those numbers as the head of the Republican National Committee, I’d be thinking that Trump would be wise to declare that he won’t run for re-election. Whether he would do that is, of course, another question entirely.

Gail: Well, you’re presuming he has a life outside of this.

Bret: Depends on his legal jeopardy, I guess.

Gail: If the jeopardy level is high enough, he’d need to run again just because you can’t indict a sitting president. I for one do not want to imagine a 2020 campaign in which the base believes he’s a martyr who has to be saved from imprisonment.

Bret: Maybe Bob Mueller can offer him immunity if he promises not to run. OK, now I’m dreaming.

Gail: We’re both trapped in an anti-Trumpian vortex where we agree about so much, but I know that deep down you’re a serious conservative, particularly on economic issues. So I want to ask about ... oh God, Davos.

Bret: God is of no use in Davos, Gail. Go on.

Gail: Davos, as you may have heard, is an annual gathering in Switzerland where the economic and political elite come to have dinners and chat and pontificate. This year there were two things that interested me. One was that Anthony Scaramucci was there. This is the guy who lasted 11 days as White House communications director, appeared as a contestant on “Celebrity Big Brother” and then vanished from the series to reappear at Davos.

I truly believe that reality TV is a thermometer of our cultural mindset. Maybe the Mooch connection is proof that Davos is indeed a magnet for the best and the brightest.

Bret: My long-held view of Davos is that nothing good that happens there is real, and nothing real that happens there is good. The Mooch’s presence this year proves both those points. Go on.

Gail: One big topic was what happens to working people when automation takes over the world. Don’t care so much what the Davosians thought as I do about your opinion. You wrote a really powerful column the other day about socialism ruining Venezuela. But I don’t see how capitalism survives a techno-boom where automation puts half the population out of work. Thoughts?

Bret: I’m not too worried. Capitalism survived the transition from horse-and-buggy to the Model T. It survived the transition from an agricultural economy to a manufacturing economy to a service-based one. And it survived the creative destruction of countless other forms of employment. Where, for instance, are the typesetters these days?

Gail: Well, they’re not creating hot new social media sites.

Bret: Now the question everyone is asking is what will happen to all those truck and cab and Uber drivers — a total of 3 million professional drivers — once driverless cars become ubiquitous. There’s no doubt the transition will be painful for some of them, and policymakers need to be sensitive on that point. But if history is any guide, things will work out. Many of those drivers will find work in industries that currently don’t exist. Just ask yourself, where was the mobile apps economy at the turn of the century? Where was the internet economy in 1990, or the personal computing industry in 1975?

Gail: I still don’t see the truck drivers working on mobile apps. And if you’re worried about the left’s solutions, I don’t see a whole lot of candidates running around talking about the state taking over the means of production.

Bret: Just wait an election cycle or two.

Gail: But if we’re moving to an economy in which trucks are automated, robots do all the warehouse work and some kind of artificial intelligence is taking orders at the restaurant, we’ll need a government that can create a whole lot of useful public service employment to make up the difference.

Bret: Heaven forfend.

Gail: And underwrite free college education for everybody who needs it.

Gail: And assure lower-middle-class people decent housing.

Bret: My soul is dying.

Gail: All of which would have to be paid for by large taxes on the very rich.

Bret: Now it’s dead.

Gail: That’s one area where Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez makes a lot of sense.

Bret: And buried.

Gail: I love it when we have a real argument.

Bret: You know, I was going to change the topic to Roger Stone, where we’d be nodding our heads in unison. But let’s explore our disagreements a bit more.

Gail: Yeah, I suspect we are in accord about Roger Stone, career political con man and threatener of small, fluffy service dogs. So back to good government ...

Bret: I’m all for universities figuring out ways to become more affordable for those who need and deserve it, but making college free for everybody makes it bad for everybody. We would wreck a university system that’s still the envy of the world.

Gail: Ahem. I believe I said free college for everybody who needs it. And happy to have vigorous government oversight. Employing talented Americans tossed out of their old jobs by robot accountants.

But continue with your verbal shudder …

Bret: As for affordable housing, I’d sooner trust the invisible hand of the market than the heavy hand of the state. Large taxes on the very rich won’t raise the kind of income you need, and sooner rather than later those taxes will land on the decidedly less rich. And AOC should start mastering her facts rather than getting into Twitter wars with fact checkers.

Gail: Hehehe. Knew I’d get you with AOC. That’s what people love about her.

The weather is lousy, Bret, but I’m seeing a little bit of sunshine. The government’s running, for the moment. Nancy Pelosi knocked down Donald Trump’s wall plans. Roger Stone is indicted and the Mueller investigation is chugging right along. Now let’s raise some taxes and build some bridges.

Bret: I was with you until you mentioned taxes. Purely theoretical question for you (and our readers) for our next conversation: If Congress would agree to cut the top marginal rate to 33 percent in exchange for a pledge by Trump not to run again, would you take it? I’m sure we’ll be hearing from readers on the comments page.

Gail: Can’t wait to take this up.

Bret: In the meantime, go Rams.

This article originally appeared in <a id="68438977-94a3-4610-a4e3-4aa7ed7639f3" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/29/opinion/nancy-pelosi-donald-trump.html">The New York Times</a>.

It will be a while before anyone underestimates Pelosi again

I’m not normally a sports person. But Donald Trump has educated me in their big plus

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Gail Collins and Bret Stephens

Articles written by the author

Trump is epic

The Bezos story is big

It will be a while before anyone underestimates Pelosi again