Following the 2026 midterms The Atlantic podcast host David Frum warned that the final two years of President Donald Trump’s term could involve multiple constitutional crises following what he described as a humiliating defeat and a blue wave.
Frum opened an episode of The David Frum Show by questioning how the president will respond to constraints on his power and whether Republicans will engage in real soul-searching.
Frum pointed to past behavior when Trump lost the House of Representatives in 2018, noting that the president behaved worse rather than better, eventually staging an attempted coup against Congress and an overturning of the 2020 election. Frum also cited the appointment of Stephen Miller as White House chief of staff as a sign of impending confrontation.
“Stephen Miller is your choice if your plan is to go to the wall: to refuse subpoenas, to refuse cooperation, to deny information, to fight, fight, fight with everything you have.”
David Frum
Joining the program, former Republican Representative Bob Inglis discussed the mindset of defeated Republicans and the potential for a shift in party direction.
“Where do Republicans go from here?” The Atlantic podcast host David Frum asked, told Inglis.
“And I believe that’s what we’re going to see over the next two years. I think that the product is going to be so grotesque that Republicans say, Oh, how did we ever do that? And, Let’s find something new. And it is all about finding that new presentation that is able to say, No, no; we can actually help people, and we won’t just be about power and transactional nature. We’ll be about actually caring for people.”
Bob Inglis
Frum and Inglis also discussed the future of faith-based politics within the GOP, while the episode concluded with a discussion of Walter Kempowski’s novel All for Nothing.
