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David: Welcome to chatbox.

I'm David Cruz.

We are one week into the second Trump Administration.

Probably the best thing we can say is, the country is still standing.

We look at reaction to the week from the perspective of those who have been sounding the alarm since before election day.

We talk with Fordham University political science reporter Christina Greer in our second half.

We begin today with New Jersey's 12th Congressional District representative Bobby Watson go -- Bobby Watson Coleman joins us.

Good to see you.

Elections have consequences, they say.

Let's start from the beginning with inaugural nod your liberation the president's address.

Is it possible it was even darker than even the 2016 speech?

Rep. Watson-Coleman: let me be honest with everyone.

I did not really see it in real time.

I did not see any of the inauguration in real time.

I spent my time doing an event on Martin Luther King Jr. Day.

Thank God for the juxtaposition of peace with all the firing as of the president.

But what I did hear and read was quite grim.

But then, he does not have any other way to address how he feels about America.

And I guess, how he feels about anything other than making in general.

He is really a bit of a sourpuss.

To be the president of the United States when you are looking forward to his lifting you up, giving you hope, promise, and excitement, looking forward to changes.

That is just not within him.

He isn't able to do that.

He thinks for some reason he has to highlight everything that happened before him and without him as a negative thing that is sorrowful and dark.

David: Is there anything you heard in there that really stayed with you that made you shake your head and say oh.

Rep. Watson-Coleman: I think it was typical Donald Trump.

He is unnecessarily mean-spirited.

He says things about the former president that are totally unnecessary.

I think he is just very nonpresidential.

But there is nothing he has said and nothing he has done in a few days he has been president that actually astounds me.

I think he is quite capable of going lower than any of us anticipated.

Ever seeing before.

David: A slew of executive orders to start things off including pardoning most of those involved in the insurrection at the Capitol January 6.

It has even police organizations criticizing that move.

It was a pretty clear day of projecting his priorities, no?

Rep. Watson-Coleman: there is nothing he will be able to do to erase what really happened on January 6.

But, his release of those 1500 or so individuals that were part of the insurrection that caused the damage to the Capitol, the ill health and death of police officers that were protecting all of us, and protecting the Constitution of the United States of America.

In my district, the parents and family of a man who lost his life as a result of being assaulted in the insurrection.

All of that confuses people.

It has to scare people.

I am glad you are telling me law enforcement is speaking out against it.

Because I have not seen the kind of vigor is discussed and demanding that the president apologized for how he has demeaned the impact, the safety and security and the respect we should have for the men in blue that protected all of us that day including the vice president of the United States, Mike Pence.

People were hollering, let's hang him.

It's disgusting.

This whole first couple days has been a disgusting beginning to the new administration.

It is almost like 100 days of the reign of terror.

I'm afraid it will go on for 100 days.

He said he wanted to be a dictator for a day.

He really wants to be a dictator in the United States of America and dismantle our Constitution and the rights, privileges, and opportunities that exist in this Constitution for all people in this country.

David: Let's talk about immigration, which everybody has been covering this week.

The president said Monday he will begin the process of sending millions and millions of criminal aliens back to the places from which they came, which I guess is Mars because they are aliens.

Step one, sending active-duty troops to the border.

Then, the Laken Riley act, the first bill he will sign, passed with support from a significant number of Democrats, including Josh Gottheimer in the house, who is running for governor.

Tell us what it is about the bill you find most objectionable?

Rep. Watson-Coleman: most objectionable about this bill is that it puts immigrants in dangerous positions, even if they have not been convicted of anything.

Even if they have only been accused of very simple infractions.

It just makes families, children, and individuals who are immigrants in this country scared to walk the streets, to go to grocery stores, even though it is very expensive to go to a grocery store and he promised it to lower the price of groceries.

There is no reason for this bill.

It denies due process.

This country relies on the rule of law and due process.

This is antithetical to this.

It is antithetical to what America is supposed to be about.

For it to be the first bill Congress sends to him that he will hurriedly and hungrily sign , it just means, collectively, the majority Republican control of both houses, along with President Donald Trump, or going to engage in very dark, very harmful, very unhelpful policies and practices and laws against the most vulnerable people in our community, while they are going to ignore lowering the cost of living in this country, lowering the cost of food in this country, lowering the cost of access to health care and access to lifesaving prescriptions.

So, let us get ready, strip ourselves in and make sure -- strap ourselves in and make sure we are paying attention and we don't get distracted by everything he does because a lot of it is just performance.

A lot of it means nothing.

It's a bunch of rhetoric.

It is just negative words coming out of his potty mouth.

Things that will really read carmageddon's to the people in our country, -- that will really harm people in our country whether it is innocent immigrants contributing to our economy, elderly people, or minority people, anybody that is other than rich and white.

If we have to stand up.

I look forward to standing with my Democratic caucusf as we fight those things and as we fight to lower costs and protect the people most vulnerable in this country.

David: I want to talk about your colleagues for a minute.

You have the aforementioned Josh Gottheimer voting yes on the Laken Riley bill and New Jersey's two senators voting yes for Marco Rubio.

Marco period Rubio period as Secretary of State.

Is this what bipartisanship will look like in the second Trump Administration?

Rep. Watson-Coleman: let's talk about the Senate.

This and it is generally very decent.

Former senators are being nominated for jobs in administration.

That does not actually surprise me.

That they would go along with this.

It was going to happen anyway.

Marco Rubio was going to be the Secretary of State.

With regard to the bill that some of our colleagues on my side of the aisle in the House of Representatives voted on, I can't speak for them.

I do not know what is in their hearts.

I do not know why they would stand up for a bill that is so wrongheaded.

But it is something they have to answer for.

They have to answer to their constituents.

They have to answer to their God.

They have to answer for these things for themselves.

But I hope we don't have a lot of deflections.

I think coming out of our pockets, the Republicans will throw terrible bills with lots of poison pills, very, very little that is on the right side, looking to help people in their request to live safely, securely in this country.

We cannot fall in line behind that stuff that is more hurtful than helpful.

We have to stand together to fight another day.

We have to make sure people know we aren't Republicans in drag.

We are Democrats because we stand on our values.

David: I have run out of time but I do want to get your response to President Trump revoking an executive order that dates back to the Johnson administration -- prohibited discrimination by Federal contractors.

Did that come out of left field for you?

Rep. Watson-Coleman: this president keeps talking about merit and the fact that DEI or civil rights on any level had somehow downgraded the standards of the people doing the job.

Yet, he nominated every cabinet member that is ill-equipped for the job, that does not have the experience.

He talks about merit based hiring.

Merit hiring must be, for a racist like Donald Trump, white only.

That is what I think.

That is the beginning of his white only agenda for making America something that it is not and has not been and will not be.

David: Congresswoman Bonnie Watson Coleman represents the 12 congressional district here in New Jersey.

Always good to talk to you.

Thank you for a few minutes.

Rep. Watson-Coleman: thank you for having me.

David: When last we spoke to Fordham University political science Professor Christine Greer we discussed voter anxiety ahead of election day.

That ship has sailed.

There was new anxiety over what election results will actually mean.

Professor Greer is back now and we welcome her to the program.

Professor, good to see you again.

Prof. Greer: always great to see you.

David: The ironic juxtaposition of the inauguration and the MLK holiday landing on the same day, for starters.

You must have thought about that this week.

Prof. Greer: Absolutely.

I think MLK would have wanted me to go to the next game, which is what I did good we are in for a long four years.

We have to do two things simultaneously.

One, hold the new president accountable for some of the most draconian policies we have seen in our lifetime and two, we cannot get caught up with his emotional wins we did the first way around.

It is to come up -- incredibly exhausting.

When you said ship has sailed, some people feel like we are on the Titanic.

Will we survive?

If it is being four years we have to sharpen the sword.

We can't be at war with this man all the time.

We can't let him control every being of our life the way many of us about it to happen the first four years he was in office.

David: Interesting point.

What grabbed you from the address?

Did you watch it?

Prof. Greer: I read the transcript.

Honestly, this time around, I have to monitor the intake of the vitriol and cruelty just so I can keep a clear mind.

Much of what Donald Trump says, he denied on the campaign trail that these were promises from project 2025 that he is trying to make come to fruition.

Some of these promises are just pomp and circumstance and performative for his base which we have to remember was not a mandate.

Yes he did win the popular vote and electoral college.

He did not win by a landslide.

40% of the voting eligible population in the U.S. chose not to participate.

By no means did he have a mandate from the vast majority of Americans for anything he is doing.

He can still be vigilant talking about everything from DI to immigration to a woman's right to choose to LGBTQ issues, the environment, our relationships with those abroad, the list goes on.

David: This president, during the campaign, expressed admiration for 1930's Germany's style of government and lo and behold.

What do you make of that?

Prof. Greer: Not just one, but two Nazi salutes, I should add.

Part of the disinformation and misinformation tactics we have seen from dictatorships, in specifically Nazi Germany, is to try to convince people they are not seeing what they are absolutely seen with their two eyes.

Elon Musk has made eugenic and racist statements in the past and even Steve Bannon has said he is the biggest race Tino's.

-- racist he knows.

To see that on not only the U.S. state, but the world stage, to see if condoned and see so many people in the Republican Party excusing it saying Democrats are being histrionic is a real low point.

Especially on day one.

I will tell your viewers, Mitch Jackson has a fantastic piece in Esquire right now about, is this the third Reich?

The return of the Third Reich?

Are we really seen what we are seeing?

The conclusion, essentially, is yes.

He walks us through parallels from the 1930's and 1940's to what we are seeing now.

And the Nile for many people in the Republican Party who know better, should do better, but absolutely refuse because they abdicate to Donald Trump and now Elon Musk as well.

David: A lot of Republicans are saying, look at the results of the election.

It is fair to say, they say, that this is what the country voted for.

Prof. Greer: There is no doubt, unless they find voter fraud elsewhere.

Fine.

Donald Trump did win the election.

Many people could've pulled the lever for a woman.

Many people could pull the lever for a person of color, definitely, a woman of color.

We need to think about the rollback of the voting rights act of 1965 that have made it harder for so many marginalized communities to even participate.

Yes, there was a lack of voter excitement from both candidates.

Sure, it did Democrats have some disarray over the summer as they try to figure out there candidates?

Absolutely.

But we have to remember institutional barriers prevented a lot of people from participating in this particular election.

That has been a decades long project of the Republican Party, to decrease the number of people of color in the voting pool.

Look at some of the polling data, how we treat immigrants.

How we treat our LGBTQ+ neighbors and relatives, how we treat women, their autonomy.

The issue of abortion.

Not just reproductive justice.

All of these questions, Democrats are waiting on.

The problem is, they are on the right side of history and the right side of public opinion.

It is, can they articulate to voters how that affects them economically as well?

We know that Donald Trump has lied on the stump several times and people have twisted themselves into knots to say it is the economy went realistically it is because they could not pull the lever for Kamala Harris.

David: The expression is don't tell me what do you say, show me what you do.

Meanwhile, Democrats voting for the Taoreed Abiodun Lagbaja bill, for instance, eliminating due process for individuals -- for the Taoreed Abiodun Lagbaja -- Laken Riley Bill, for instance eliminating due process for individuals here with legal status.

This is Democrats, 40 of them or more, who voted for this in the house.

Another 20 or some others in the Synod.

In the house, a guy running for governor of the state voted yes on that.

Prof. Greer: I talked to my students about this all the time.

There are several colors of blue within the Democratic Party.

What is frustrating as we have so many Democrats interested in running to the right to try to be Republican light.

Real Democrats want Democrats to behave as Democrats to ensure civil rights and civil liberties.

That is how we attract young people and get people to the polls, in primaries and races throughout the four-year cycle.

We can't have Democrats that want to mimic Republican talking points and ideologies so they can go back to their more conservative districts and essentially keep reelection chances going without having some sort of moral compass when it comes to these larger issues.

And I think we have to remember, descriptive and substantive representation.

Just because people look like members of their community does not mean they have members of their community in their best interest.

David: So, what have the Democrats show him this week that they are not ready to get up off the mat?

Prof. Greer: I said this when Jamie Harrison was the head of the DNC.

I said this is not a job or somebody gets a consolation prize because they ran in a race and lost.

My hope is Democrats will organize themselves at the larger level with that the DNC to actually think about a 50 state strategy, a vision for the party to articulate economic issues and help Americans understand a values issue.

We know that people go to the polls.

Based on economics, how do we mark out the difference between the economy and pocketbook issues?

Joe Biden is leaving Donald Trump, or has left Donald Trump with one of the strongest economies out there but it doesn't matter if Americans don't feel it in their pocketbooks.

That was the conversation on the debate stage through the summer.

Donald Trump was saying, you are broke, legs are too expensive.

We have heard nothing about eggs since the election.

How did Democrats help members of their party be motivated to go vote for them based on economic and social value issues?

That is something that the heads of the anti-parties across the state and a larger unified DNC will have to figure out.

There might be different strategies for different states and different communities, for sure.

What even New York has shown us is Republicans are making inroads.

There is a push towards the right because of the perception of scarce resources.

As long as you can scare people, you can get more conservative policies pushed through.

David: We spoke to Bonnie Watson earlier about executive power and how the executive branch is really exerting itself here.

This president controls his party.

His party controls Congress.

The president appointed the Supreme Court majority that is there now.

Are we really seeing the early days of the demise of democracy?

Prof. Greer: I am hoping the framers put enough Easter Eggs in the Constitution to help us think through checks and balances and separation of powers.

Obviously separation of powers isn't ideal now because it seems like all three branches of government are controlled by Republicans even though the court system isn't supposed to be partisan.

But, checks and balances.

I'm hopeful there will be some courageous Republicans that make sure Donald Trump doesn't run away with the store or sell the country for parts, my real fear from the beginning.

And it is my sincere hope Democrats will have a backbone and stand up to Donald Trump when they know what he is doing is wrong.

Not just in a pomp and circumstance way, in a real whipping votes with Republicans, being strategic, carrots and sticks, thinking about how to compromise or trade on particular issues so there is a certain legislation that want to be able to get pushed through.

Donald Trump has never been interested in legislation.

He likes executive orders and many of those are performative.

That is one of the good things.

He is a legislatively lazy or at least he was the first time around.

Hopefully he wants to do things quickly.

If he does them quickly we have a better chance of overturning them at lower level courts especially, making sure there are some stopgaps there.

David: What are you hearing from your students and saying to them?

Prof. Greer: Some of my students are very worried.

They come from mixed status families.

They might be American citizens, but many of them have siblings or parents who are not.

It's concerning.

I have lots of students that are international students that don't know if they will be able to complete their studies if there is a widespread sweep of all types of immigrants, especially if they are from a country Donald Trump deems worthy.

I teach introduction to politics, a foundational course.

There are a lot of things I have had to slow down to talk about how we used to do things and how things are right now.

So much of how I have taught in the past is the assumption that the status quo has remained, at least in the past several decades.

And our institutions are stable.

This is one of the first times, if not more so, the Donald Trump was elected.

It was really a tossup as to whether our institutions are as strong and stable as we have always believed them to be.

David: We are about to find out from as they say.

Professor Christina Greer, always good to see you.

Thank you for coming on today.

Prof. Greer: Thank you so much.

David: That is a chatbox this week.

Thank you Bonnie Watson Coleman also for joining us.

Subscribe to the YouTube channel to see what else the team is up to.

I'm David Cruz for the entire team at the Gateway Center in downtown Newark.

Thank you for joining us.

We will see you next week.

>> Funding provided by the members of the New Jersey education Association making public schools great for every child.

Promotional support for chatbox provided by insiderNJ a political intelligence network dedicated to New Jersey political news.

Insidernj is committed to giving serious political players and interactive forum for ideas, discussion, and insight.

Online at insidernj.com.