Will Iran Break Trumpism?
About this episode
Ezra Klein asks whether Donald Trump's Iran war marks the end of Trumpism as a governing project. Christopher Caldwell argues Trumpism was defined not just by loyalty to Trump but by a substantive program: perceived economic inequality, anti-'woke' cultural politics, popular control of the permanent bureaucracy, and above all a refusal to launch major new wars. Iran, in Caldwell's view, violates the restraint at the coalition's core and may end Trumpism even if Trump's personal following survives. Klein pushes back, suggesting Trump's appeal is personal and strongman-oriented rather than programmatic, and asks whether self-dealing and moral transgression have already corroded the movement's democratic responsiveness. They debate whether post-Reagan conservatism has any economic theory, what would revive the coalition — tight labor markets, wage growth, workable tariffs — and whether 'Trumpism without Trump' can exist at all.