(tense music) - Hello, everyone, and welcome to Amanpour & Company.

Here's what's coming up.

David Bier from the Cato Institute tells us how Trump's policies on immigration and tariffs are changing America and the world.

Then.

- Everyone understand that we are not going to negotiate in public.

- [Christiane] As Iran negotiates with the United States, is it taking more hostages as bargaining chips?

Siamak Namazi, Morad Tahbaz, and Emad Shargi together for the first time since their release from captivity in Tehran.

Plus.

- Liberal and conservative historians in the future will look upon these hundred days as destructive.

- [Christiane] Presidential historian Timothy Naftali joins Walter Isaacson on how Trump's first 100 days compare with his predecessors.

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- Welcome to the program, everyone.

I'm Christiane Amanpour in London.

"Just getting started."

Those are the words of President Donald Trump as he marks 100 days in office.

Hundred days of policy blitz, whiplash, head spin, but the President can't be pleased with today's headline.

The US economy just had its worst quarter since 2022.

Thanks to Trump's chaotic tariffs spree and abrupt policy shifts, GDP has plummeted since he entered office.

Multiple major polls this week have shown the President's approval ratings underwater, not just overall, but on the very issues that help propel him back into the White House.

On immigration, a majority of Americans now say Trump has gone too far on enforcement.

But Trump insists this is what his vote is signed up for and the MAGA faithful still stand by him.

Today, immigration authorities finally released detained Palestinian Columbia University student, Mohsen Mahdawi, following a judge's order.

He had been arrested earlier this month after arriving for an interview for his US citizenship.

David Bier is Director of Immigration studies at Cato, a libertarian think tank.

He is an expert on border security and previously worked on Capitol Hill, and he's joining me now from Washington.

David Bier, welcome to the program.

- Thanks for having me.

- Can I first ask you one of the most important things, President Trump in his latest interview blitz that he's done for these a hundred days said that this is what his voters signed up for.

Even, you know, as we said, the GDP is down, prices are up, uncertainty for business, and all the rest of it.

But he said this is what they signed up for.

Is that what he telegraphed on the campaign trail?

- I don't think so.

If you look at what voters were interested in, they wanted to see the economy booming.

They wanted to see inflation come down.

They wanted to see first term Trump economic policy.

And this is not first term economic policy from this Trump administration.

They are radically reshaping the world economy through tariffs and ultimately, through their immigration policy as well in just the first hundred days.

- So, just staying on tariff for a moment, the latest CNN poll shows 59% of the public says Trump's policies have made the economy worse and for them as well.

What do you think the takeaway is?

What do you think will be going on between President Trump and his advisors when they see the stark reality of these 100 days?

In other words, how long can they keep saying it's gonna be painful but you're gonna get through it?

- Well, I think they can say it for a while.

They're not looking at the short-term electoral consequences from this.

They really buy into their own propaganda on the tariffs that this is ultimately gonna bring back manufacturing jobs even though we're seeing manufacturing be hit by the tariffs.

We're seeing opposition from manufacturers to these tariffs.

So, yes, they're gonna keep saying it and they're gonna keep saying it until actually an election punishes them for it.

- I wanna play a little bit of a soundbite from the CEO of Ford, Ford Motor Company, who spoke to CNN's Erin Burnett earlier, and he talked about how even Ford, a company deeply committed to American manufacturing is feeling the pain of tariffs in certain essential instances.

Here's what he said.

- Boy, do we have a lot of work to do with administration on exports, you know?

And these parts, affordability of parts is a really important thing for America because we gotta keep the vehicles affordable.

Yes, we wanna make them like Ford does in the US but we also wanna make the vehicles affordable that are built in the US and the parts are critical for that.

- David, do you think that message will get through to the president and an associated question is somebody like the Ford CEO can presumably get quite close to the president, maybe pick up the phone, maybe have a meeting, but so many other American small and medium business owners are really complaining about practically losing their shirts and everything else that they've mortgaged to the hilt for their businesses.

- Yeah, absolutely.

We're gonna see more crony capitalism as a result of these tariffs as you have the big players be able to convince the president to give some exceptions for their products or their inputs where the small players get pushed out.

That's the lesson of tariffs.

They don't work, they harm the very people they're trying to help, the workers at these companies that are gonna be punished by the tariffs and ultimately lower our standard of living.

And so, I don't think he is going to back off.

They're too central to his message and his campaign, but the reality will hit at some point and there will be electoral consequences to that reality.

- David, you know that he did a bit of a U-turn.

Some people say he blinked when the bond market started to talk and issued that U-turn in a 90 day pause for the reciprocal tariffs.

I just wanna ask you, devil's advocate, because there are plenty of Trump economists who believe that tariffs are a legitimate way to get revenue and to re-shore manufacturing.

So, I heard a professor from the University of Chicago basically saying that yes, it's a tax, but it's a lower tax than income tax.

And so, why shouldn't you have tariffs as the main source of income?

- Well, it's distortionary and that's the main problem here is that you're going to distort the economy result in these huge costs that are passed on to consumers and really result in more problems.

Yeah, obviously the income tax is also a problem, not supportive of that.

At the Cato Institute, we wanna see much lower income tax rates for Americans as well, but that's not the trade off that companies are faced with right now.

There's this pervasive uncertainty.

So he can flip flop all he wants, he can lower it and make exceptions, but if there's no certainty, companies are not going to build products in America.

They need to know what the law is gonna be.

And with President Trump, no one knows what the law is even right now.

It's flip-flopping daily and that is causing an enormous part of the problem when it comes to the economic growth in this country.

- Let's move to immigration.

And you, as I said, have done a huge amount of work on that.

Now, let's not forget that going into the election, the majority of his supporters, I guess the majority of American voters who voted for him said immigration was right up there at the top of their list of demands.

Let's just set the table.

There is almost zero movement or maybe zero movement from Mexico into the United States right now.

So, that's a success, right?

- Yeah, absolutely.

Look, the trend, even before President Trump took office, crossings were down almost 90% from December 2023 to December 2024.

And it's continued 90% reduction since that time.

So he can claim credit, the border is sealed, and I think that is what voters wanted him to do when it comes to illegal immigration.

They didn't wanna see continued illegal immigration and he's delivered on that promise.

Unfortunately, it's come with a lot of unintended consequences for legal immigrants and US citizens who are getting caught up in some of the immigration policy moves that the public doesn't wanna see.

- So let me read you then some of these latest polls, again, the CNN poll, the latest.

52% say Trump has gone too far in deporting undocumented immigrants.

52%, again, more than half now say that Trump's immigration policies have not made the US safer.

And 57% say the federal government is not following the law while carrying out deportations.

Are you surprised by this amount of pushback, frankly, this early in a presidential term?

- I'm not really surprised.

We saw a similar move in 2017 when he came in and he started to try to deliver on his promises at those times.

Really the public thought they were voting for someone who was gonna crack down on immigrants who commit crimes in this country, who victimize Americans, who are public safety threats.

That's not been the focus of this administration.

They immediately on day one rescinded requirements to target those people who are public safety threats.

We know a majority of the people booked into ICE custody so far have not had a criminal conviction.

So that is not what the public thought they were getting when it came to interior enforcement.

And there's also this issue of it's not criminal versus non-criminal and it's also not legal versus illegal.

He is arresting and detaining many people who never violated any immigration laws in this country.

Foreign students, legal, permanent residents, other people who entered this country legally in humanitarian statuses.

And he's even arresting and deporting them to El Salvador to be incarcerated there indefinitely without charge or trial.

I think Americans are concerned that their rights and the rights of legal residents in this country are being eroded by this president.

- I wanna get to those two instances in a moment but first, I want to play for you something that the former Secretary of Homeland Security, Alejandro Mayorkas, told us just sort of an exit interview days before the inauguration of President Trump about what he thought Americans would feel about the promise of mass deportations.

This is what he said.

- I think that's a very difficult choice to put to people and it can effect a great deal of suffering.

But if, in fact, the policies are consistent with the rhetoric and the practices follow the policies, we will see how the electorate responds because words are very different than seeing those words materialize in human suffering.

- It was really quite prophetic.

- Yeah, absolutely.

Look, we're deporting people who are legal residents of this country, people who are married to US citizens who have not committed any crimes in this country, who've not been convicted of any crimes in this country, who've not gone through any due process and we're imprisoning them in a essentially a torture prison camp in El Salvador.

So yeah, I think Americans are concerned when you start talking about getting rid of their rights.

And when it comes to the First Amendment, when it comes to free speech, we don't wanna live in a country where you need to show your passport in order to say something critical of the foreign policy of our government.

And so, that is the direction that this administration is going in.

And yeah, there's reasons for concern when it comes to the immigration policy of this administration.

- So, you've called Trump's immigration policy economically destructive and socially damaging.

You said, "The country is facing four years of indescribable, lawlessness, waste, chaos, and economic uncertainty that will leave America smaller, poorer, and less free."

How should all this be done?

- Look, we need to reform our immigration laws in the United States.

The most important thing is for people to have a realistic opportunity to immigrate here legally.

So there's no incentive to cross the border illegally to pay cartels to get smuggled into the United States, to violate laws, to have border patrol caught up policing people who are just seeking economic opportunity or safety from threats abroad.

We should have legal ways for people to come and those legal ways are being eroded and taken away by this administration.

We've already seen a complete obliteration of the humanitarian parole program, the termination of the refugee program, and of course he's targeting those legal immigrants who've come here for deportation and arrest as well.

So people, it's not just illegal immigration that's down, it's legal immigration as well because people are fearful that if they come to the United States, they will not have their rights protected and they could end up in a foreign prison.

That's not a good sign for American economic growth and for ultimately our prosperity in the long term.

- Let's just take the case of Abrego Garcia, the Salvadoran from Maryland who was snatched.

He's married to an American citizen, I believe, and there's been a huge kerfuffle between the US president and the Salvadoran president.

A court has told the US president to bring him back to facilitate his return.

In an interview with ABC News to mark his 100 days, Trump said, "I could if I wanted to," contradicting himself because before he said, "I can't, it's up to El Salvador."

Now we understand that Secretary Rubio has been in touch with President Bukele of El Salvador and the answer is no from El Salvador.

This doesn't sound right.

I mean, the US president calls the El Salvadorian president and says, "You send this guy back because our courts."

I mean in a second, he'd be on a plane.

- Of course, we are paying the his government to detain hundreds of people on our behalf.

Millions of dollars are being sent there in order for this purpose.

And so, of course he would send him back if President Trump actually wanted him to come back.

But he knows that this is just something that they're going through the motions in order to appease the courts who ordered this to happen.

And so now they get to say, look, El Salvador said no, there's nothing we can do and this should be really terrifying.

This was an illegal deportation of the spouse of an American citizen who has committed no crimes in the United States, who's not been convicted of any crimes in the United States.

And this could be something according to the appeals court who reviewed this case, this could happen to a US citizen.

And the Trump administration's response could be the exact same.

They could say, look, there's nothing that we can do about it.

We can't get this even a US citizen out of custody in El Salvador.

That's a terrifying thought for the future of our country.

- Well, as you know, there've been several US green card holders, students arrested and threatened with deportation.

Again, the courts have intervened somewhat.

One of them, Mohsen Mahdawi, has been released today on a judge's order and he was taken in going for his US citizenship interview.

Here is what he said upon his release.

- Keep in mind that, yes, you might think I am free, but my freedom is interlinked to the freedom of many other students, including Rumeysa Ozturk and Mahmoud Khalil.

Those students and those students don't have the privilege, which should be actually the due process which I went through.

- So, David, are you surprised that he got due process, Abrego Garcia is not getting due process?

What's happening between these two groups?

And as you mentioned, two other students still held, no charges filed.

- Well, you have to look at what happened with Abrego Garcia and all of the other people who were sent to El Salvador.

The Trump administration engaged in a conspiracy to avoid judicial review in those cases.

It hustled those individuals onto planes as the court hearing was taking place and then ignored a court order ordering the planes to stop and come back to the United States.

So, that is the distinction.

There was a hearing, there was a judicial process that was happening and the Trump administration ignored it, thwarted it, and ultimately did so in violation of the law with the intent to ultimately imprison people without due process.

So, this was a distinct case where they arrested him at a citizenship interview.

They kinda suspected that this might happen.

And so, there was some preparation there and ultimately they were able to file a petition for his release and obtain that release.

So, this is the concern that many people have.

- Yeah and showing up in the polls in a very clear way.

David Bier, thank you so much, from the Cato Institute.

- Thank you.

- Now Iran and the United States will continue negotiations in Rome on Saturday.

And the prospect of a new nuclear deal also raises the questions of hostages.

For years, Iran's government has targeted dual citizens, often locking them up on spurious charges only to release them as part of a wider deal and cash.

Most recently in September 2023, five Americans were released, including Siamak Namazi, Morad Tahbaz, and Emad Shargi.

Siamak spoke to us on this program by phone from inside Evin Prison to plead for their release and eventually it did happen.

But the risk for others is still very real.

Siamak, Morad, and Emad are now joining me for their first joint interview since that release to talk about how they are now and what they're worried about.

So everybody, welcome.

It makes me very happy to see you free and able to talk.

- Thank you.

- And no longer in that hell.

So, let me just ask you how you are doing?

Siamak, how are you doing?

- Well, I'm here.

I'm great.

I'm very grateful to be here and I'm very concerned about what is going on and all the people who are still there, that we still have a lot of hostages that we need to rescue, American and European nationals that we're all very, very concerned about.

- Okay, well, we'll get to that in a minute.

Morad, can you describe a bit of the friendship that you guys have formed, either when you were there, when you finally got together in an area of the prison and since you've come out?

- Well, I think it was, I think for all three of us, although we have somewhat dissimilar backgrounds, but we do share a lot of things at the same time.

So, it was comforting to be amongst a few who we could relate to, which was not an easy thing in the circumstances we were in.

And we've actively stayed in touch, seen each other.

Emad and Siamak have a bit of an advantage, they're both in Washington, But when I get down to Washington, we make sure we get together for lunch, dinner, a one-year anniversary or anything that we can, and we stay in touch by message, by phone fairly regularly.

- [Christiane] And Emad- - [Morad] But I think it's been important to all of us.

- Yeah and Emad, you are now sort of getting together on this issue because you want to, you know, you want warn travelers about what happened to you.

Can I just ask you, when you were taken in and you knew that Siamak Namazi was there and Morad and others, did you think, well, maybe they did something.

What did you think about the charges?

- Absolutely.

You know, I always thought that the Islamic Republic just doesn't go and pick up random people off the street and charge them with espionage.

I knew Siamak's cousin very well.

I was well-aware of Siamak's arrest.

And when I first met Siamak in person in September of 2021 when they moved me to the general ward and he was sweet enough to come and say hello to me, I apologized to him.

And I said, "Siamak, I thought you had done something.

And now that I've gone through it, I know what it feels like and how bogus the whole thing is."

And just one other quick example.

When Morad was taken, I knew about that story and about his colleagues that were taken.

When his friend and colleague, Professor Emami, supposedly committed suicide while he was in the custody of the IRGC at the 2A facility, my daughter, my youngest daughter called me from Washington crying and begging me to leave.

And do you know what I told her?

I said, "Love, they must have done something.

I'm just a businessman.

I haven't done anything.

There is not a single percentage chance that I will be picked up."

- [Christiane] Wow.

- I was wrong on all counts.

- That's really, really dramatic.

And just so that we can underscore, I mean you were accused of all sorts of things, none of them obviously stood up and none of them were true.

But Morad's accusations, including, listen to this, training lizards to spy on Iran's nuclear program.

You were, we must say, an environmentalist and they accuse you of training lizards.

Siamak, you say your charges included hacking Iran's SMS system in the year 2000, three years before SMS even existed there.

Siamak, talk to me about the charges and how you were able to stare them down.

- Well this is exactly the point.

When Iran's heinous hostage diplomacy, they don't look for guilty parties.

They manufacture guilt.

And when they take you, they have the entire power of the state.

So it's not in all three of our cases, we were taken by the Revolutionary Guards.

So it's not just an army attacking you and throwing you in a solitary cell.

It's an army with the full power of the state, the state media, the newspapers.

I think there were probably about a dozen documentaries, false documentaries made about me.

And you can imagine sitting in prison viewing that about Morad and Emad as well.

And so, they throw so much mud at you to create this image that you've done something.

It can't be this much smoke with zero fire, not even a spark.

So people think that, okay, Siamak's probably done one.

These guys are claiming 10.

They cannot imagine it's really zero.

And it took me six years to actually read my file.

I'm a little bit stubborn and I kept insisting, and it's a long story, but I've read my entire file and I was looking at that and that's where I found like where is this story about hacking SMS systems coming from?

I can barely use my mobile properly.

And then when I saw the year, I told the judge who let me see the file that you should have mentioned this in court 'cause I would've mentioned that this is three years and SMS didn't exist.

They're very sloppy in their accusations.

There was an accusation that I had, my main accusation, most of the people they take as a hostage these days, they accuse them of under section 508 of Iranian law of cooperating with a hostile state referring to the United States.

So they can give them a 10-year sentence.

It's very vague.

It's things like attending TEDx Talk in Tehran.

They took that out of my cell phone.

Now, we're not attending a TEDx Talk fully legal license in Iran.

It's like going into a movie theater, buying a ticket going in.

I wasn't a speaker, I wasn't an organizer.

It apparently was illegal only for me.

And I would argue, but you put TED Talks on TV, on state TV, they claim that the TED's intention is to subvert the Iranian regime.

They would say, you know, in my case, my ruling says when they took me for 30 years, I had been building a clandestine infrastructure within Iran to infiltrate and topple the state.

I said, "But you took me when I was 44," You know, how does this work?

Including the eight years I spent in Evin Prison, I haven't lived in Iran- for 30 years.

- Right.

- So, you know, they're really outrageous charges and I think people should know this.

Things like speaking at George Washington University, Columbia University, not what I was speaking about because it was irrelevant.

I was speaking about the shortage of gas in the GCC country.

- Right.

So let me ask, let me ask, because I wanna ask Morad now why you guys have decided to speak out now.

Because obviously one of the big issues on the international agenda is trying to get another nuclear deal between the United States and Iran.

And as I said, these talks are continuing.

Morad, what is it that you want to say to travelers to Iran and about people who might think that it's okay to go there?

- Well, I think that just to continue exactly what Emad and Siamak said, I mean when they level charges at you, in my case it was regarding our foundation, which was a conservation foundation that I had founded 10 years before being arrested.

It had become the largest conservation organization in the country.

Every single project was together with the Department of Environment of Iran.

Half the projects were with the United Nations Development Program.

Every permit for every project that our foundation was engaged in was approved by the Ministry of Intelligence.

I mean, what more can you ask for?

Yet at one juncture, they must have considered that our NGO was a potential danger.

And I mean, you know, I mean this was really a public service if nothing else for the country and the people who live in Iran to preserve and conserve what they have in wildlife and natural resources.

So, I mean to that extent when you've done something which is good for the country and still be framed as a spy, I mean, is really over the top.

So, it really doesn't take much for them to fabricate something, put together.

They create the narrative.

They'll make films of you, they'll juxtapose your speech, they'll forge your signature, all kinds of things.

Anything to fit the narrative that they wanna put out there.

- Okay.

- So, I think anyone going there thinking that we haven't done anything, why should anyone bother us?

I mean that's just being very naive.

- Yeah, but I wanna ask- - They really don't need much.

- Okay.

I want to ask Emad then.

Why do you feel you have this heightened need to speak out now?

I understand that there are several Iranian Americans and Iranian other nationals who are under some form of duress there.

We, for privacy and all sorts of other legal reasons are not naming any names or specifics, but they are, there is threats to several out there.

What can you tell us about that and I understand also you as a group, I think the three of you, asked the state department to issue a heightened travel advisory.

Tell me about that, Emad.

- Correct.

I think, Christiane, what happens is every time that there are talks scheduled between Iran and the United States, it's open season for hostage taking in Iran.

There are elements within the regime who do not want the talks to progress at any level.

So they will throw a monkey's wrench into the work.

And then there are elements within the regime who don't actually mind having a few extra bargaining chip.

Now, we are entering a new phase of discussions and the three of us fear that this will cause these elements within the regime, within the IRGC to go out looking to fill up their cells for those two reasons that I mentioned.

And we have actually individually talked to our friends at the State Department.

We've asked them to make it as public as possible, this is not the right time for any American to get up and go to Iran.

And unfortunately, I see YouTube videos of these adventurers who go to Iran and they have these beautiful shows and they encourage other Americans to go to Iran.

You know, if you want a rush, adrenaline rush, go bungee jumping.

Don't put yourself and your family through this nightmare.

- [Christiane] And did the State Department agree?

Is there a heightened advisory?

- They listened to me.

I'm sure they listens to Siamak and Morad.

I haven't seen anything come out yet.

- Siamak, I don't know whether you know whether they have or not, but furthermore, describe a little bit how the US government does or doesn't help you.

I mean, you told us that you had been, and we know that, left behind by several administrations over several opportunities to free you with others.

This kind of hostage taking has been going on through many administrations.

Just boil it down for us.

How does the US government deal with its citizens who are held hostage, wrongfully detained as pawns inside Iran?

- I think the US government is very keen to get its people out, but making political deals to rescue hostages involves a price that is very difficult for a president to pay.

Now, the good news right now is that we do have a president in power who cares about getting Americans home.

He's shown this very much.

We can have a lot of criticism about different policies, but there has been a good track record.

What I'm asking today, besides a heightened travel warning saying it's always a bad time to go to Iran, but we know the patterns.

This is a particularly bad time to go to Iran.

And I want that out there.

I also think that what we need to do, because the US is negotiating, is for the American negotiators to make clear that for future negotiations or the continuation of the negotiations will be pending the release of the Americans who are there today.

And that there will be very heavy price to pay if we repeat the pattern that we've seen over and over that during negotiations and right after negotiations, they're gonna take more Americans.

And I wanna make this point, do not think that inking a deal will make you safe.

That's a mistake I made.

I went right after, like exactly the night the JCPOA was signed and the ink of the JCPOA did not protect me against the handcuffs of the Revolutionary Guards and then getting thrown into a cell.

So what we need is for the American government to make it very clear, they will not tolerate the repetition of a pattern we're pretty certain will happen.

And that there'll be very strict, very draconian consequences that would deter future hostage-taking.

- Yeah, you're talking about- - We need to get our people out.

- Yeah.

Breaking the hostage-taking business model.

- It's a profitable business that has to be upended.

- And in our very last few seconds, Morad, what would you say, given your experience and all your three experience, to those who are being detained now in a similar way to what happened to you?

- Well, Christiane, I mean, I found a particular way to manage my mind through the period that I was held hostage there.

And my savior in large part was doing art.

I focused on things that I consider beautiful.

My subjects were all animals, wildlife, nature.

And it's to try to divert my mind as much as possible to things that are peaceful that will keep your mind away from all the dark things going on around you.

I think it's very critical for anyone who finds themselves in a situation like that to be able to manage their own sanity in some fashion.

Not just for the time that they're in prison, but also for the time when they come out.

Because you have to come back out into the real world.

- Yeah.

Well listen, we could go on and on, but we've run out time for tonight.

Thank you, both, all three of you very, very much for being on, Siamak, Morad, and Emad.

And good luck to you as you continue to navigate your freedom.

And to note, we asked the Iranian government for its response, they got back to us with no comment.

Now, as we've been discussing, despite some worrying economic results, President Trump has been taking a victory lap to mark the first 100 days of his second term going so far as to say his success surpasses any in US history.

- We're here tonight in the heartland of our nation to celebrate the most successful first 100 days of any administration in the history of our country and that's according to many, many people.

- Well, perhaps not according to our next guest, the presidential historian Timothy Naftali, who puts the Trump presidency in full context for Walter Isaacson.

- Thank you, Christiane and Tim Naftali.

Welcome back to the show.

- Thank you.

Pleasure to be with you, Walter.

- So we're at the hundred-day mark of this second Trump administration.

What's your take on it so far?

- I think we should assess the Trump hundred days in light of a gold standard for a hundred days.

You know, that whole term comes from the first term of Franklin Roosevelt.

And Franklin Roosevelt's main theme was to banish fear from the American space.

He wanted to restore the American people's confidence in American institutions, banks, the federal government.

He wanted Americans to feel that they had some capacity, predictive capacity over the future.

And by those standards, I think Donald Trump has done the opposite.

I think Donald Trump has tried to introduce fear into the American space.

Fear among American universities, fear among American law firms, fear among international students and recent immigrants.

Fear among members of the Republican party on the hill.

So in that sense, the hundred days that we have witnessed, which have been as active and revolutionary as FDR's hundred days have had the exact opposite objective.

And I think that's why it'll be safe to say that liberal and conservative historians in the future will look upon these hundred days as destructive.

- Well, one of the big differences between the hundred days of Franklin Roosevelt and of Trump is that Franklin Roosevelt did most of his work by passing laws through Congress.

I think there were 12 major pieces of legislation.

Trump has not followed that route.

Why and what does that mean?

- Franklin Roosevelt, even though it was a hundred days a period led by Congress, many people associated this activity with Franklin Roosevelt.

And Franklin Roosevelt in his third fireside chat, after the hundred days, made clear to everyone that what he was doing was in the American tradition.

That he was simply implementing laws passed by Congress.

So he, too, understood that the American tradition was not to have a dictator.

Fast forward to our current time, President Trump has sought to act as if he were the only branch of government.

We do not live in a dictatorship, but he has acted in the style of a dictator.

Issues- - Oh wait, let me stop you there, which is whose fault is that?

I mean, Congress is the thing not standing up to him.

- Well, he hasn't encouraged... Two things.

He has gone about his business acting both rhetorically and physically as if there is no other branch of government.

And indeed, when branches of government have stood up to him, he has been vicious in denouncing them.

We just saw a perp walk of an American judge, a judge.

So, when the other branches of government have sought to oppose him, he has not acted in the spirit of Franklin Roosevelt by speaking of the national government.

He has talked about the presidency as the seat of all power.

So yes, whose fault is it that there is a permissive environment for this activity?

Of course, it's the fault of elected Republicans who have been, as we learned from Senator Murkowski, fearful of opposing their president.

So by that, that's why I'm talking about the installation of fear, not simply in private institutions, but in the Republican party itself.

- Well, let's go to that Senator Murkowski quote 'cause it struck me.

She said, "We are all afraid.

We're in a time and a place I've not been here before.

I'm oftentimes very anxious myself about using my voice.

Retaliation is real."

What do you make of that?

- It chills me.

It's a chilling statement by the senator and it echoes something that Mitt Romney, I think, wrote in his diary.

It appears in his authorized biography where he had hired, when he was senator, he had hired security for his family.

And he wrote, I think it was during the first impeachment in 2019, that he understood why there were so many of his colleagues who knew that they should be voting for impeachment, but were afraid to because they were afraid of the effect on their families, physical effect.

And he said, "You know, they can't afford 24/7 security the way I can."

So, that echoes the fear that existed back in the first Trump administration.

We saw that also with the way in which the Senate dealt with the confirmations of President Trump's new cabinet.

There were a number of senators who found a way to leak the fact they were not happy with some of President Trump's choices.

For example, now Secretary Hegseth at the Pentagon or RFK Jr. at Health and Human Services.

But in the end, they were so fearful of a primary challenge and I think also fearful of their own supporters that they fell into line.

- Well, wait, there's a big difference between being fearful of a primary challenge 'cause you voted- - Right.

- Against the way people in your district may want or being fearful of physical harm and you gotta hire a bodyguard.

What do you think this is?

- Well, Walter, let's make clear that the first branding of this new Trump administration, in my view, was the pardoning of the January 6th felons.

When you pardon violent felons, you are sending a signal about law and order in America.

And unlike President Andrew Johnson, not one of my favorites, but President Johnson when he issued a blanket pardon to the leaders of the rebellion in 1868, he did not deny that they had committed a crime.

His pardon talks about those who led a rebellion against the lawfully authorized government of the United States.

But when Donald Trump issued his pardon, he issued it after he said, after four years of injustice, making the point that the January 6th insurrection was just.

So, when you set that kind of tone, you are inviting vigilantism.

I'm not saying that Donald Trump wants it, I want everyone to understand I'm talking about a spirit here.

But there are many Americans who might be troubled, who might see the way in which the President is speaking of January 6th as license to engage in violence against those who oppose Donald Trump.

- One of the historical comparisons that comes to mind is with Andrew Jackson, who very much was a populous expanding executive power and in one of his actions, which was removal of Native Americans, the Indian removal, it almost in some ways echoes the removal of unauthorized immigrants that Trump is trying to do.

And when the Supreme Court said, don't do that to Jackson, just like they've just said it, don't do that to Trump, the tale is that Jackson basically intimated Chief Justice Marshall has made his decision.

Now let us see him enforce it.

Do you worry that Trump may just defy like that Supreme Court?

- I don't know what Donald Trump will do when push comes to shove because I anticipate Donald Trump will lose a series of very important cases.

I suspect, I'm not a lawyer and I don't play one on television, but I do know something about federal assistance to universities.

I think Donald Trump's DOJ will lose the case against Harvard.

I suspect he's going to lose the case regarding birthright citizenship.

I assume he's gonna lose some of the immigration cases.

He's already started to lose them.

And I think there will be enormous pressure from the MAGA wing on this president to defy the courts.

And I cannot predict what Donald Trump will do.

I hope that he will conclude that he can't defy the courts.

But I can't predict that because this Donald Trump is an unleashed, unplugged Donald Trump from the person we saw in the first term.

The first term Donald Trump accepted having people around him who could dissuade him from his impulses.

In the second term, Donald Trump made clear in the campaign, by the way, that he wanted no guardrails.

He wanted no so-called adults.

He wanted unfiltered Trumpism in his second term.

Whether or not unfiltered Trumpism means defying the court and talking like Jackson is something to be seen.

- What happens if he does defy a court order?

Who could step in?

We know the FBI is pretty much under his control, even to some extent it seems the top officers of the military, the US attorney maybe in Washington is a loyalist.

Who could step in?

- Under my understanding of constitutional tradition, there isn't anyone who can step in because we have three equal branches.

The Supreme Court has a marshal service to protect the lives of the, members of the Supreme Court.

Thank goodness.

In this very pitched dangerous moment, it's very important for us to have a Supreme Court that doesn't have to worry about its physical security.

But the Supreme Court doesn't have an army.

One salutary, one sign of hope is that in our country, when you take an oath, the Oath of Office, you take it to the Constitution.

And even though Donald Trump doesn't accept the norm, that might not accept the norm, that the President must defer to the Supreme Court on matters of the Constitution, it is not clear that the leadership of the US military would accept the commander-in-chief's interpretation of this norm.

I am not suggesting nor do I wish that the US military should have to intervene to preserve our Constitution because that puts us in a category of nations where we do not wish to be.

But keep in mind that the leaders of our military do not give an oath to the president.

It's to the Constitution.

- But wait, do you worry then about the way he changed the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the way he put a somewhat unconventional pick as Secretary of Defense all loyalists to him?

- Yes, I worry I worry deeply, Walter.

One of the lessons of studying the periods in our history when we've had quasi authoritarians in power is that the system can correct itself or right itself.

And usually it rights itself because members of the, I don't wanna use the term elite, but among those with power and influence in our society, come to a bipartisan understanding that that authoritarian action threatens the fabric of who we are, of our society.

And so, in 1974, you had elected Republicans come to the conclusion that Richard Nixon had to go.

In the 1950s, you had elected Republicans who came to the conclusion that Joe McCarthy's reign of terror had to end.

That's how our system works.

It doesn't work because the opponents to the president succeed.

- Are you seeing some signs that that could happen?

Are there things changing?

- Not yet.

I saw glimmers of this when a few Republican senators decided to send a note of disapproval of the president regarding tariffs on Canada.

But those senators understood that they lack the power to change the president's approach on tariffs towards Canada.

But they did send a signal.

What I am seeing though are the beginnings of a retrenchment on the part of the president that indicate to me that the president and his inner team think they might be losing popular support.

So, we are seeing the president pull back a little bit on the issue of international students.

It's not quite clear what's gonna happen to the Liberation Day tariffs, which have been universally denounced for being stupid.

Besides being high, they don't actually have any economic logic attached to them, and the public isn't buying them.

The president's approval ratings on the economy are lower than they have been, I believe they're lower than they were in the first term on the economy.

So the president himself is retrenching a little.

So I see a little bit of institutional pushback on the hill.

I see a lot more institutional pushback on the part of universities and some law firms.

So, we're beginning to see a reawakening of the American constitutional order.

But let's be fair, let's be clear about this.

For the first 2/3 of this a hundred days, it appeared that the American constitutional system was asleep and the President was acting without any pushback.

The situation has changed and I think will continue to change.

- One of the things that has driven his popularity is he's tapped into resentments, resentments against the elite that you just mentioned might be there to save us.

I think at one point in the campaign rally in 2024, he said, "I am your warrior.

I am your justice.

For those who have been wronged and betrayed, I am your retribution."

- Yes.

- He's even pushed retribution against people like Cheney or against the law firms and others.

Do you think this spirit of retribution is something that he's actually tapped into?

And how dangerous is that?

- Well, there's no doubt in my mind that he has tapped into a popular desire for change, and in some cases for retribution.

I think the disquiet in our country goes back to the great recession and the unequal recovery that American, that regions of this country experienced.

I don't doubt that the pandemic sharpened unhappiness and divisions in our country.

I think about, you know, 15, 20 years from now, we're gonna have pandemic studies in various universities because I don't think we fully absorbed or processed the actual effect political, cultural, and social of the pandemic on our country, let alone the world.

So yes, there was a lot of disquiet and anger that he could tap into.

- Now, if you look at Nixon's campaign, he ran on resentments to the elite.

So did Andrew Jackson, we've had this before.

- He ran on resentments but what he didn't promise was retribution.

That's the key difference.

He wanted retribution and he tried to use his government to achieve it.

But good government Republicans pushed back and wouldn't allow him to do what he wanted to do with the IRS.

You know, like the Enemies List was initially his idea as a tax list and he was never able to implement it.

My point simply is that American leaders have tapped into resentment, whether it was resentment in the South for the Civil rights revolution, that yes, what Donald Trump did that's so different is that he made retribution his governing philosophy and he told everyone he would, and now he's doing it.

Now, the question I have for fellow Americans is, is that who we are?

Is that how we wanna be governed?

And I'm not convinced, Walter, that there is a sustainable broad governing coalition behind a government of retribution.

But maybe I'm an optimist.

I don't know.

- Tim Naftali, thank you so much for joining us again.

- Thank you for asking me on.

Thank you, Walter.

- And of course that is the great story of our time and we will continue to follow it.

And finally, today, a huge parade in Ho Chi Min City, formerly Saigon, has marked 50 years since the end of the Vietnam War, the grueling 20-year conflict between the Vietcong and the United States military, which ended with the fall of Saigon in 1975.

Some 3 million Vietnamese people and almost 60,000 Americans were killed during that war.

And many still live with the toxic fallout of Agent Orange, which left people disabled or with chronic health issues.

The US dropped more bombs on Vietnam than on Germany and Japan combined.

And yet 50 years later, Vietnam has emerged as an economic powerhouse in Southeast Asia with full fledged diplomatic ties with the United States.

It is remarkable how far these two enemies have come, although Vietnam has also been slapped with Trump tariffs, a massive 46%.

And that is it for our program tonight.

If you want to find out what's coming up every night, sign up for our newsletter at PBS.org/Amanpour.

Thank you for watching and goodbye from London.

(bright music) (bright music continues)