Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs Gail Collins: Well, Bret, here we are. Neither of us is crazy about staggering into another four-year Trump term, but I’ll bet you can come up with a more optimistic spin than I can. Go to it.Bret Stephens: Well, here’s one hope: Donald Trump’s return to power will serve as a wake-up call for a lot of liberals, including liberal journalists, who lost touch with the concerns and values of regular Americans — people who didn’t enjoy having their common sense insulted by being told that there wasn’t a crisis at the border, or that their inflation concerns were overblown, or that President Biden’s memory was fine, or that racial identity should be the dominant consideration in choosing a Supreme Court justice or a vice president. Maybe it will inspire Democrats to do better as an opposition party.Any chance?Gail: Hey, I see some excellent subjects for debate there. However, there’s no doubt that the Democrats will try to develop younger options when it comes to presidential candidates. Particularly when the nation’s stuck with a chief executive who will soon be in his 80s and who has already lost a step or two or 10.Bret: You’re referring to Trump, right? I think you’re mistaking purported senility for confirmed scurrility.Gail: Good point. And as to the policies — I’ll bet you that any serious attempt to expel all the immigrants who are here illegally will lead to a shortage of workers that will make food prices higher, not lower. Major tax cuts for the rich will lead to higher deficits and worse inflation.Bret: It’s not a political winner if Democrats tell working-class Americans, including Latino and Black Americans, that they want to flood the labor force with desperate migrants who are willing to work in construction or meatpacking or service jobs for longer hours and less money.My advice to Democrats — not that they necessarily want to take it from me — is to race toward the political center. Get tough on border enforcement. Join hands with Trump in building a wall. Mount Democratic primary challenges against progressive D.A.’s like New York’s Alvin Bragg or Philadelphia’s Larry Krasner, both of whom have allowed petty crime to flourish. Repudiate the Woke lefties who want to destroy Israel or allow trans women to play in women’s sports. Show some independence from the teachers’ unions who are putting the interests of their members ahead of those of their students. Remember that the reason Trump was re-elected wasn’t that normal Americans liked him; it’s that they liked Kamala Harris even less.In other words, who’s the next Bill Clinton?Gail: Ah, I remember long ago when the answer to that question was: Hillary Clinton. Just goes to show that older wisdom isn’t always wiser wisdom.The Democrats have plenty of talent on the second level — governors and members of Congress who can reach the general public. The governor of Michigan, Gretchen Whitmer, gets mentioned a lot, and I do yearn to see a female presidential nominee win the presidency.Bret: Seth Moulton. Andy Beshear. Elissa Slotkin. Wes Moore. John Fetterman. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez. Ritchie Torres. Dems, that’s your sanity caucus. Listen to them.Gail: But it’s — oh gosh — four years to go. In the meantime, my advice to Republicans is to try to steer clear of the deep Trump craziness. Don’t see how the sane senators can embrace his tariff plans.But on the immigration front, many Democrats feel there’s really no purpose in fighting the Mexican wall. It’s mainly symbolic. And party leaders have already thrown in the towel on a bill that encourages deportation of undocumented immigrants charged with crimes like burglary and shoplifting.Bret: You’re raising a great point. The political challenge for Republicans is to steer a course between the normal loyalty owed to their party leader and the self-beclowning that Trump so often demands of his minions. Most Republicans will find a way to make peace with Trump’s love of tariffs, even though they know they’re economically destructive. But they’ll have a harder time with other stuff. I don’t envy Marco Rubio trying to steer a course between his hawkish instincts on Russia and Trump’s lovey-dovey feelings for Vladimir Putin.Switching subjects, Gail, we promised last week we wouldn’t argue the politics of the Los Angeles fires while they were still raging. Now that it seems they’re mostly over — fingers crossed — what do you think the fallout will be?Gail: There’ll be no end of political cross-blaming, with a lot of the attention now going to the decision by the mayor of Los Angeles, Karen Bass, to attend the inauguration of the new president in Ghana at a time when the possibility of some kind of serious fire was clear.Bret: Especially after you promised voters you’d stop taking those sorts of junkets if elected mayor.Gail: But you know, Bret, my big target is global warming. Americans should embrace the Los Angeles disaster as a symptom of what’s already happening — and could wreck the future for coming generations.Bret: Sure. But whatever the all-encompassing grand solution is, what firefighters need in an emergency is a working fire hydrant, not an electric-vehicle mandate.California has become a political metaphor for a certain kind of harebrained progressivism that is harming liberalism’s good name. California’s Democratic leaders want to be compassionate to the homeless, to the point of calling them “people experiencing homelessness.” OK. But it’s not OK when homeless encampments keep catching fire and possibly starting fires. They want to honor the constitutional rights of drug addicts living on sidewalks and be sensitive to their plight. But then they let addicts turn entire cities into cesspools. They want to be sensitive to the environment. But then they slow-walk essential water projects out of concern for small fish. They want to maintain the look and feel of historic neighborhoods. But then they wonder why there’s a housing shortage, and why people keep leaving the state in droves.If I were Trump, I’d be in California by Wednesday, making all these points and more. Watch California flip to a red state sometime in the next 10 years.Gail: Do not think California will flip red. But I’m sorry to say this disaster has probably extinguished Gov. Gavin Newsom’s chance for a presidential nomination.Bret: Hallelujah.Gail: Back to Trump, Bret. Here we are at Inauguration Day — tell me your impressions of the new cabinet nominees, now that the rubber is actually hitting the road. I’m kinda thinking that there’s at least a chance some Republican senators will feel free to vote against one of them, and if so the loser will be R.F.K. Jr. Am I wrong?Bret: Hard to say. It’ll be very, very difficult for any G.O.P. senator to be the deciding vote who brings down a Trump nominee. A few Republicans, like Louisiana’s Bill Cassidy, who’s a doctor, just might vote their conscience and bring down R.F.K. Jr., and maybe Mitch McConnell will do the same to Tulsi Gabbard. We’ll see: Political courage these days is a fast track to early retirement.Another big subject. Gail, is TikTok, the social media app preferred by teenage kids and Chinese spies. The Supreme Court voted unanimously last week that the government had a right to ban it as a national-security risk, but Trump seems to have given the company a reprieve. Any thoughts on this?Gail: Hate censorship but I’ve been cowed by the possibility of China using TikTok to worm its way into the private lives of millions of Americans. Trump should pressure the Chinese to sell it. Could be a good compromise, depending on who the buyer turns out to be.But I’m no tech wizard — what do you think?Bret: I wish we could ban TikTok totally, not just to keep the Chinese from vacuuming up our personal data, but also to keep cat videos from vacuuming up whatever is left of our collective I.Q. But Trump’s proposal of an extension makes a certain amount of sense, especially for small companies that do a lot of legitimate business via the app.Gail: That is the highest praise of the Donald I am prepared to tolerate.Bret: The larger question here is what the next four years brings in terms of our relationship with China. This is one of the areas where I’m comparatively happier with Trump in the White House than I would have been with Harris. He conveys a combination of toughness and unpredictability that might do more than the Biden team did to really deter a strongman like Xi Jinping. Either that — or it’s World War III.Gail: Not thrilled with ushering in four more years with a guy who might blow up the planet. Good Lord, four years. My mind keeps coming back to that. I guess that’s a test of my side of the political world — can we march along for 48 months, standing up for sanity and not going insane ourselves?Can’t say I’m exactly looking forward to arguing it all out every week, but if I have to stagger through it, happy to know I’ll be doing it with you.Bret: Feeling is mutual. It’s gonna be a helluva ride.
