I joined Times Radio’s Trump Report in a 35-minute analysis on Wednesday to link Donald Trump’s “Big Beautiful Rule” to his quest for authoritarian rule.

Host Louis Sykes and I take apart the elements of the bill: massive tax cuts for the wealthy; massive cuts in healthcare, food support and other services for the not-so-wealthy; and the hundreds of billions of dollars for disappearances and deportations of migrants and asylum seekers.

Then after considering the dynamics of whether the bill will pass, from Republican legislators to Elon Musk, we reconnect those elements to the wider tactics and ambitions of Trump and his inner circle.

I talk about the “performative cruelty” of “Alligator Alcatraz” in Florida. I explain how the threat to remove the citizenship of Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic nominee for Mayor of New York City, is the “white noise” for the Justice Department effort to “denaturalize” US citizens.

And I consider the damage and chaos of Trump’s posturing abroad, from withdrawal of support for Ukraine’s resistance against Russian invasion to the reality TV star’s proclamation of “ceasefire” in Israel’s open-ended war on Gaza.