AYESHA RASCOE, HOST:
President Biden has invited former and future President Trump to the White House this week. The two will meet Wednesday in the Oval Office - that's as Trump moves to form his new administration. Will it be the same as the old one? For that, we turn to NPR national political correspondent Mara Liasson. Hi, Mara.
MARA LIASSON, BYLINE: Hi, Ayesha.
RASCOE: So, let's talk about these first few days as president-elect. What are we seeing from Trump?
LIASSON: Trump has announced a chief of staff, Susie Wiles. She's the first woman to be White House chief of staff. She was the head of his campaign, she ran a pretty tight ship, so she seems to have the potential to stay on as chief of staff longer than the people who did that job in Trump's first term. Some of them didn't last very long at all. So I think this is another indication that Trump is going to hit the ground running faster and potentially more efficiently than - and certainly less chaotically than he did in his first term.
RASCOE: And that brings us to Trump 2.0. Like, what are we seeing about how things are going to look after his inauguration in January?
LIASSON: I think Trump and the Republicans are going to try to move quickly to extend the Trump tax cuts that are expiring. In his first term, those tax cuts were skewed toward the wealthy, and they increased the deficit. I think he'll try to move forward on his - one of his signature campaign promises, which is to secure the border. We're also seeing the beginnings of another Trump promise, which was to take revenge and retribution against his political enemies. The Republican House is already starting investigations into Jack Smith, the special counsel. Smith is winding down his operations, because the Justice Department doesn't investigate a sitting president. But Elon Musk, one of Trump's biggest supporters and allies, posted, quote, "Jack Smith's abuse of the justice system cannot go unpunished." And Trump himself has said he wants Jack Smith deported. You know, Jack Smith was hired to be the special counsel to investigate Trump's activities around the classified documents that he took and refused to turn over and also his encouragement on January 6, 2021, that his supporters should go up to the Capitol, try to overturn a free and fair election.
You know, Trump has called for televised military tribunals for Barack Obama and Liz Cheney. He's called for a special counsel for Joe Biden. And we don't know how fast he'll move on all of those promises, but certainly it looks like Jack Smith is his first target.
RASCOE: Is Jack Smith not an American citizen? How would he be deported?
LIASSON: I have no idea what it...
RASCOE: OK. I just wanted to...
LIASSON: ...Means to deport Jack Smith.
RASCOE: I just wanted to check that.
LIASSON: Yeah. He's an American citizen.
RASCOE: OK. You mentioned Elon Musk, so let's get back to him and what the future may hold for Ukraine. It seems like Musk is going to play some sort of role in this administration.
LIASSON: Yeah. It sounds like a big role. Elon Musk is the richest man in the world. He's one of Trump's biggest supporters. He turned his giant social media platform, X, into a megaphone for the Trump campaign. His companies have billions of dollars in government contracts, and he was on the phone call with Trump and Ukrainian President Zelenskyy. Ukraine is very dependent on Musk's Starlink satellites for its defense against the Russian invasion. And Ukraine is potentially going to be the first big geopolitical shift under Trump, because Trump has a very different view of the Ukraine war than Joe Biden did. Biden felt it was a high priority for Europe and NATO to back Ukraine against the Russian invasion. But Trump has a longtime animus toward Ukraine, and he has a lot of affection for Putin. He said he would settle the war even before he was inaugurated.
JD Vance has floated a peace plan that looks like what Russia would want, and Elon Musk is a big player there. Trump has also said Musk will play a big role in the government. He'll be a kind of government efficiency czar. And this is unprecedented, to have the richest man in the world holding tremendous unofficial power in a new administration.
RASCOE: And what about the Democrats? What are you hearing from them?
LIASSON: Well, the Democrats are engaged in what parties do when they lose a presidential election this broadly and decisively - a lot of head scratching, soul-searching. You can see the headlines in the Washington Post Opinions section. The list is incredible. Trying to protect Biden, Democrats sacrificed their credibility. Democrats should stop campaigning on abortion. Democrats' three biggest mistakes. And then the humor columnist, I'm the only one who knows what really went wrong with this campaign. So they're really trying to figure out what they can do to move forward. It's possible there's a realignment underway, where Republicans are becoming a party based on a multiracial working-class coalition that also gives tax breaks to billionaires and big corporations. And Democrats want to reverse that - they just have to figure out how to do it.
RASCOE: That's NPR's Mara Liasson. Mara, thank you so much.
LIASSON: You're welcome. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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