Donald Trump and the 'Revolt of the Elites'

Описание: In 2016, when Donald Trump won the first time, a little-known book became an unexpected phenomenon. It was “The Revolt of the Public,” self-published two years earlier by a former C.I.A. media analyst, Martin Gurri. Gurri, who is now a visiting research fellow at the Mercatus Center, argued that a revolution in how information flowed was driving political upheavals in country after country: The dynamics of modern media ecosystems naturally created distrust toward institutions and elites, and this was fueling waves of revolt against the status quo. The problem, though, was that though these dynamics could destroy existing political systems, they could not build enduring replacements.

Gurri’s book has been on my mind over the past year. In some ways, it explains 2024 better than it explains 2016. But time didn’t just change Gurri’s book; it changed Gurri. After refusing to cast a ballot for president in 2016 and 2020, he voted for Donald Trump in 2024. And in his writing for The Free Press, The New York Post and elsewhere, he’s been arguing that Trump’s second term might herald the mastery of this new informational world and the emergence of an enduring new political system.

I found myself more convinced by Gurri’s old theory than his new one. So I asked him on the show to talk about it.

(Also: If you’re interested in joining Ezra Klein on his book tour in March and April, you can see the stops and get tickets for the events here: https://www.simonandschuster.com/p/ab...)

0:00 Introduction
1:11 The Revolt of the Public
18:47 The meaning of Trump
28:19 The war on the administrative state
40:29 The revolt of elites & how polarization is shifting
49:11 Trump's personalist regime
56:00 Transparency and bureaucracy
1:03:00 Book recommendations

Read the full transcript here: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/25/op...

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You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-....

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