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On this week’s episode of The David Frum Show, The Atlantic’s David Frum opens with his thoughts on the absurd Peace Prize awarded to Donald Trump by FIFA. David discusses how the invented prize reflects what FIFA understands about our president—that he’s the kind of leader who can be won over with shiny trinkets and fancy ceremonies.

Then, David is joined by Michael Waldman from the Brennan Center for Justice to discuss how the Trump administration might try to undermine or even outright steal the 2026 elections. David and Michael discuss the possible actions Trump could take, along with the systems in place to stop him and what reforms need to happen to the American electoral system. Michael also discusses the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and what Republicans are doing to undermine it.

Finally, David closes the episode with a discussion of an article titled “How Responsibility Shapes Career Success for Leaders,” and what a lesson in management tells us about Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s leadership and accountability (or lack thereof) in the controversy over the strikes in Caribbean Sea.

The following is a transcript of the episode:

Frum:  Hello and welcome to The David Frum Show. I’m David Frum, a staff writer at The Atlantic. My guest this week will be Michael Waldman, president of the Brennan Center [for Justice] at the New York University School of Law. We’ll be discussing at the end of the show not a book this week, but an article: “How Responsibility Shapes Career Success for Leaders,” published in 2024.

But first, before the discussion and before the article, some thoughts on events of the week. A lot of the things the Trump administration does are just horrifying, terrible, destructive. Some of them are silly and weird, and I wanna talk this week about one of the silly and weird ones. As you may have observed, President [Donald] Trump was just awarded the first-ever Peace Prize by the football association FIFA. Now, those of you who follow sports more closely than I do know that FIFA is not exactly a paragon of moral integrity, so any award from FIFA seems kind of dubious; a peace prize seems even more dubious. But there they were at the Kennedy Center here in Washington, D.C.—or, as President Trump said during one of the ceremonies, the soon-to-be-called Kennedy-Trump Center, because he does have a fantasy of renaming it for himself, but it’s still, for the moment, the Kennedy Center. At the Kennedy Center, there was a big ceremony, and President Trump was awarded this FIFA Peace Prize.

Now, this is a prize that was created in November of this present year, 2025—never been awarded before. Unlike the Nobel [Peace] Prize, it’s a real doorstopper: It’s a giant desktop trophy, and it comes with a disc, a medal, that can be worn around the neck. The actual Nobel Prize comes with a disc too, but it doesn’t have the little attachment that allows you to hang it around your neck like a prizefighter. But as the FIFA president said to President Trump, You can now wear this with you wherever you go, and it will not be surprising if he does. President Trump does dearly, dearly love a prize.

Now, why did FIFA do this? We don’t exactly know, but it is noteworthy that, along the way, President Trump has done many, many things that might be considered a threat to FIFA plans. FIFA awarded the 2026 World Cup to a joint bid from North America: from the United States, Canada, and Mexico. Not to the United States alone, but to the three NAFTA—or as it used to be; today, USMCA—the three trading partners in the USMCA.

And President Trump has been making a lot of noises that he’s getting ready to blow up the USMCA altogether. And even if he doesn’t quite do that, he’s done other things that FIFA might consider threatening. He’s imposed limits on visas from many countries, including many of the countries that are big investors in FIFA in the Middle East. And he was lobbied successfully in June of this year to say, okay, that any visa restrictions will not apply to people [who] are traveling to play in the World Cup or their immediate family or their coaches, so that was good news for FIFA. And he was finally persuaded to make a more than $1 billion commitment of taxpayer funds to support and provide security for the FIFA events in the United States. This announcement was made by the White House coordinator for [the] World Cup, a true merit appointee, son of Rudy Giuliani, Andrew Giuliani, who’s—you didn’t know this, but he is the White House coordinator for the World Cup. But at every step of the way, there have been problems, they’ve been overcome, but FIFA has been worried about them. So what better way of locking in President Trump’s support than to announce that he’s going to be given a prize, a peace prize, both a trophy and an around-the-neck medal?

Now, it might not have occurred to Donald Trump that he even wanted a peace prize if President Obama hadn’t got one first. And that seems to have really stuck with him. And everybody in the world has seen it. President Trump has talked so often about his hunger for a peace prize, and it’s become a talking point, that if you want President Trump’s favor and you’re on television, you have to say he should get a peace prize. Now he’s got one—not the Nobel original but the FIFA, and as I said, bigger, gaudier, and you can wear it around the neck.

It’s absurd, but what it also is a warning of is the president of the United States is someone who is very vulnerable, susceptible to these kinds of childish, imbecile blandishments. And if you know that and I know that and the FIFA people know that, everybody knows it, that you can manipulate the president of the United States with appeals to his vanity and with little geegaws that no republican leader should want—lowercase-r republican.

There have been a series of events that indicate that Donald Trump does not understand the role of president in the way that George Washington and Abraham Lincoln understood it. You drive around downtown Washington, you will see hanging from the Department of Labor, near the Capitol Hill, a giant banner with President Trump’s picture on it. Well, that’s just not done. Presidents, living presidents, are not honored in that kind of way in the United States—or they never have been before. Or the National Park Service just announced that they will no longer have free entry to the parks on Martin Luther King Day and Juneteenth, federal holidays, but they will have free entry on June 14, President Trump’s birthday.

When I first heard this story, that the National Park Service was going to offer free admission on President Trump’s birthday, I thought, I bet this story is being exaggerated, because June 14, President Trump’s birthday, is also Flag Day. So maybe that’s why June 14 is free: It’s because it’s Flag Day, and they’ve replaced Martin Luther King Day with Flag Day. That’s a little culture worry, but it’s not quite monarchical. But when you go to the National Park Service website and see, they actually describe June 14 as “Flag Day/President Trump’s birthday.” That is, the Park Service is itself saying at least 50 percent of the reason you get a free ticket is because it’s President Trump’s birthday. The United States has never before marked in any way the birthday of a living president. And it leaves most of the presidents’ birthdays just gathered together in a single President[s’] Day that started as George Washington and Lincoln’s birthday, and has now been grouped together to be a catchall for everybody, but only the past presidents—those out of office, and ideally, those who are passed away—because democracies, republics, don’t honor living leaders in their lifetime.

But that’s what we’ve done. And that’s what FIFA understands about us, that [we’re] just kind of a joke country with a kind of joke leader, and you can get things out of him by giving him a geegaw. It’s shameful, it’s embarrassing, and it’s not the worst scandal, but maybe it’s part of the series of explanations that helps you to understand why the worst scandals keep happening and why nobody is stopping them.